Yea, that's why that Souza example, mentioned earlier is a croc - it completely misunderstands what auditory perception is all about & how it works.
Once this sort of simplistic thinking is left unchallenged, progress in realising what makes better sound will be slow
Once this sort of simplistic thinking is left unchallenged, progress in realising what makes better sound will be slow
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Well; after I figured out what is needed for high end reproduction, I designed several nice topologies. Should I patent them? I don't think so, because patents draw attention of trolls and Chinese copy-pasters.
That’s a great quote.
I really appreciate Romy’s style and philosophy.
Too bad all the good ones wind up banished to some refugee forum in the far flung corners of the internet.
You two lived near one another I believe? Ever have the pleasure?
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This is the kernel of the matter - our auditory perception groups together the set of frequencies, amplitudes, timings that it analyses belong together as being from the same auditory object. The ongoing stream of signals are continually analyzed & categorized & form auditory streams - an auditory stream is perceived as the ongoing sound coming from the same auditory object. We can switch our focus between auditory streams or hear them as a more general whole soundscape.
When we enter room or any acoustic space, within a short period we have analyzed & differentiated the room acoustic as the background & the sounds being made in that room as the foreground - this is what is meant by Toole "listening through the room". The same ground differentiation happens with the constant tape noise or vinyl noise - we can listen through it to the foreground sound (of course we can switch our focus to this background & listen to it explicitly). But generally this background stream resides in the background of our auditory perception unless there is some unusual change in its pattern. So, for instance, Mallinson says in his presentation that we are particularly perceptually sensitive to noise modulation - the reason being that it jumps out of the background into the foreground because our auditory analysis has sensed a change & a decision is required, is this still part of the background stream or is it a new auditory stream arising from a new auditory object?
When auditory perception is viewed with this perspective, it clarifies some basic mistakes in thinking about this hobby.
Exactly. For example, when with decaying of sounds distortions increase and their order increases, it sounds as distortions, and vice verse. Hence, "Airy sound" of SE amplifiers.
This is not true of ALL amplifiers, maybe it was the rule with 70's SS. Again the multitone but at mW levels could help here. BTW I've complained for years here that THD + N plots obscure this behavior and again the measurement of it is well known for decades.
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No, I wish I had. He embraces the extremes sort of a Michael Hoy of audio.
Love a good outsider / underdog.
Raul Ruegas is another good one. I’d like to put them both in a room together and see what happens, kind of like how kids put two insects in a jar.
He drove audiogon nuts, expressing how he sold all his $1k+ MC carts in favor of old stock and used MMs grabbed off eBay for $15.
Has something like 13k replies and 20M views.
Who needs a MM cartridge type when we have MC? | Audiogon Discussion Forum
Reminds me of you and your Grado.
Raul Ruegas is another good one. I’d like to put them both in a room together and see what happens, kind of like how kids put two insects in a jar.
He drove audiogon nuts, expressing how he sold all his $1k+ MC carts in favor of old stock and used MMs grabbed off eBay for $15.
Has something like 13k replies and 20M views.
Who needs a MM cartridge type when we have MC? | Audiogon Discussion Forum
Reminds me of you and your Grado.
There is also Arthur near you? HIGH-END AUDIO and Arthur Salvatore
I'm over the top now with the $75 Grado no more $15 versions for me.
How come?
That makes absolutely no sense as written. Did you mean 'whilst'? Either way you are completely stuffed whilst the Lord-Algae brothers are paid $200k a time to fsck up a perfectly good recording to make it a 'hit'
@Space: There are a number of things about the grado that make you realise that JG knew exactly what made a 'good' cartridge. Just these days the story matters more than the performance.
Auditory perception (indeed all our perceptions) is optimally efficient at dissecting, analyzing & categorizing real world soundscapes into intelligible audio streams. It has no particular facility with audio trickery - one song buried -80dB down in another song. A typical biased idiot, Ethan Winer, designed this particular trickery to prove what? Basically it proves he has such a simplistic grasp of how we hear - it's not an FFT in our heads. Surprised JJ sat on the same panel as Winer.
I have no idea what you are talking about? What do you think Winer's Souza file demonstrates?
Rigght. I thought as much. You are doing flail quoting from memory.
1. It was Bill Waslo who did the Sousa test referred to
2. It was 50dB down
3. It had a specific point which you appear unaware of.
Try the search function old boy. It really does work...
1. It was Bill Waslo who did the Sousa test referred to
2. It was 50dB down
3. It had a specific point which you appear unaware of.
Try the search function old boy. It really does work...
Accept your correction, thanks
Again, I'm wrong, thanks for the correction
Yes, it was to demonstrate Diffmaker's effectiveness
You keep forgetting about dynamic nature of hearing and dynamic distortions.
I have had a pair of Hypex NC400 here (I have since sold them) and the amplifier that I am using now is a hybrid, solid state front end and tube output stage. Sorry, but the NC400 probably qualifies for your double blind test requirements. But you don't need a double blind test when the NC400 sounds 'nice' and is inoffensive and the other makes your spine tingle when an acoustic guitar player gently strokes the six strings and your hear those incredible tones and overtones that the Hypex just glosses over, a sin of omission.
The same applies to an acoustic piano and most people don't hear what a piano can do, but I live with a Grand Piano in the room next to my soundroom and have a family with a number of piano players. Way better than any test you could devise!
Also, analogue gets the piano right much more often, digital can but rarely does, the decay is where you can hear it most clearly.
Joe
PS: The NC400 uses heaps of feedback and the tube hybrid no global feedback at all, but has lower measured distortion beyond the vast non-feedback tubes designs out there.
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Yes, what better systems do is portray this low level inner detail which gives sound interest & richness, just like real world sounds & it's why we find them better - it's also why we usually talk about them in emotional terms ("spine tingling")about such systems - they no longer have to use as much processing power trying to tease out the ambiguity in the signals - this freed up processing from the limited processing pool is now possible to devote to the upper emotional & cognitive areas of the brain.
Not necessary, it seems much of this thread is a few folks elaborating on personal opinions (often via anecdotes) as if the are some kind of proven facts.
FWIW, in case you are interested, you just described the results of a sighted preference test, this is not what I was talking about.
To add insult to injury, even if the preference test was double blind, you were not comparing what I was mentioning: two modern solid state amplifiers with less than 0.01% distortion and > 100KHz bandwidth [+/- 0.1dB].
So your story has to be taken at face value: just another anecdotal story with zero evidence allowing to extrapolate its pure subjective conclusion. The usual logical fallacy typical for the High End Audio cult priests
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