Peter Daniel said:
When did I ever say that I was sure that such a system couldn't possibly satisfy me subjectively? I never said any such thing. It was Bill who was making claims of absolute certainty. Saying that an objectively perfect system MUST, by some immutable law of nature hitherto unknown, satisfy me subjectively. No ifs, ands or buts.
To wit:
<i>What I am espousing is totally impersonal technical perfection. When that is achieved everyone, subjectivists and objectivists alike will be as happy as a bed of clams.</i>
I don't know about you, but I don't see any room for exclusion in there seeing as "everyone" must by definition include myself.
se
Well, let me rephrase that.
<i>What I am espousing is totally impersonal technical perfection. When that is achieved everyone, subjectivists and objectivists alike <u>ought</u> be as happy as a bed of clams</i> <u>with their equipment</u>.
There remains the problems of the room and the output of the recording studio, as I previously mentioned, but at least the listener will not have to subject themselves to round after round of listening sessions trying to find equipment that satisifes.
I should reinforce that my original comments suggesting that a subjective evaluation is not required when the playback equipment has reached standards of perfection. And, I repeat, a deaf engineer could design such equipment.
Of course, as it stands now we all do evaluate subjectively and that is as it should be. We do, after all, need to find the equipment with the least annoying flaws from out own personal point of view.
<i>What I am espousing is totally impersonal technical perfection. When that is achieved everyone, subjectivists and objectivists alike <u>ought</u> be as happy as a bed of clams</i> <u>with their equipment</u>.
There remains the problems of the room and the output of the recording studio, as I previously mentioned, but at least the listener will not have to subject themselves to round after round of listening sessions trying to find equipment that satisifes.
I should reinforce that my original comments suggesting that a subjective evaluation is not required when the playback equipment has reached standards of perfection. And, I repeat, a deaf engineer could design such equipment.
Of course, as it stands now we all do evaluate subjectively and that is as it should be. We do, after all, need to find the equipment with the least annoying flaws from out own personal point of view.
Steve Eddy said:
Steve,
Have you noticed that you use this phrase an awful lot? This can be argumentative and in many cases is not even appropriate. I have seen several instances were someone made a general comment about something and you have replied back demanding to know why they think you said something else.
Gentle comment: Every word in a reply is not always about what you said in your post. Sometimes people like to put their own thoughts and interpretations in as well.
Phil
Rantings
Why are you arguing with a man who appears to be mentally ill. This guy ran up over 2000 post on another audio forum and left voluntarily when they tried to run him off. Ignor him and maybe he will leave. He is never going to agree with anything or even express a consistent or even coherent view, his technical knowledge is also suspect. He is doing nothing but giving the forum a black eye.
Art
Why are you arguing with a man who appears to be mentally ill. This guy ran up over 2000 post on another audio forum and left voluntarily when they tried to run him off. Ignor him and maybe he will leave. He is never going to agree with anything or even express a consistent or even coherent view, his technical knowledge is also suspect. He is doing nothing but giving the forum a black eye.
Art
Steve,
Fair enough. 🙂 and i am with you in this point.
I would go even further, 🙂att'n: .. lengthy diatribe!) when i act as designer, be it DIY and for my own pleasure or be it professional and targeted to bring a product out of the door, i am shaping the thing, my mind is embossing a stamp on it, consisting of my priorities, sonic preferences, way to look at things and to solve technical problems. Let's call that the designer's handwriting. Of course, i take all possible means to ensure objective, comparable quality level. But even in what and what not i consider as relevant for quality, there is my utterly subjective choice (and i am quite sure that my choice is different to your choice and Bill's choice and we all can give understandable reason for our choice).
Now it makes a considerable difference if i do it DIY and for my own fun or professional and for a product. If i design a product, i may see myself urged to give the product an appearance and a sonic footprint shaped to meet the market's demands and not aligned with my personal taste. But even for that, i am deciding how i achieve this and what i consider as relevant to achieve this and at which priority.
AFAIC, i must be happy and satisfied with the result, DIY or product, it must meet my standards as i have to stand responsible for it. If i am not happy with it, i will change it or make a design re-start.
As Mr Pass said, this is the entertainment business. People, customers, want their expectations, dreams fulfilled. If i manage to guess and meet many peoples expectations, i will sell many of my units.
The only customer relevant in the DIY case is memyselfandi.
I want to return to the entertainment thing once more.
Sandbox game #1: I may say to myself, well, i do not care for my own POVs and my own style, as entertainer i want to make as many people happy and i act as an opportunist in doing so. And then comes the day when someone challenges me and and asks to stand by my word and i have to ask back, sorry, what was my word (remember i hypothetically did it the opportunistic way) and I am standing out there, naked on the stage, unable to stand responsible for my work, for my message, i crack up because there is none, just opportunistic rip-off intentions. In this game i may (or may not) have a huge success but be unable to repeat it as i met the masses' taste accidentally and fall back into meaningless. Like Bay City Rollers, Britney Spears, Spice girls and the like.
Sandbox game #2: i do it my style, stick to my ideas, POVs, methods, preferences, entertainer's handwriting. I maintain my style. While i do intend to make my customers happy, i am aware that i will not meet everybody's taste. Now an increasing number of customers may say "this guy entertained me best once, i am interested, i like his style, hee seems to maintain his style, now i need something similar but slightly different or better, i go back to him, he is probable to entertain me best again." In this game i am not prone to have huge commercial access at once. But those customers i satisfied are probable to come back and my work has some success, increasing slowly but steadily. Like with John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. Ooops, should not forget Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach. None of them cared if he would attract a huge crowd, all of them did their own thing and cared to make their work perfect. All of them were incredibly skilled, incredibly diligent in using their objectivists tool set and doing their homework but also inspired where to leave the orthodox path and create something new, something original. So i am trying to follow their example, knowing i will never reach it.
I consider engineering as an art and part of the art is to (subjectively !!) decide whether and where using orthodox techniques and proper engineering homework or trying out new stuff and entering new pathes brings me closer to my goal: realizing the vision i have. Considering myself as an artist, i stick to my style and develop it further.
I am not fussy which method to choose, no matter if others call that objectivist's or subjectivists methods. I just make the distinction between successful and futile methods.
Another example to follow: Leonardo da Vinci. the aforementioned POVs and qualities apply to him as well, methinks there is no way to tell the borders between engineering and art in his work; his art/engineering is a montonously changing continuum. BTW, he build a lot of highly efficient military machinery. Unlimited budgets to toy around with new ideas, i suppose, and i doubt he had moral inclinations about his work helping to kill people.
And another probably not-so-wellknown example: the Swiss construction engineer Robert Maillard. He mainly used prestressed steel-reinforced concrete to buid his constructions, mainly bridges. His bridges are beautiful and merge organically to the landscape they are part of; his work is pure art. But he considered himself an engineer and, when once asked how much effort he would put into the artistic part of the design, he answered "No effort at all; everthing well designed has inherent beauty." For me, as mechanical engineer by trade, it is amazing to stare at pictures of his construdions and see his virtuosity in handling all forces and in connecting them to the ground where it fits and see how the shape of a bridge of his comes out of those forces and boundary conditions as a logical consequence.
Back to thread topic, those exemplaric artists i mentioned would not have permitted mental self-limiting in their work. Methinks, the whole subjectivism/objectivism thing is yet another ideology, mentally self-limiting as all ideologies.
Bill,
as i re-read my post, i find your post: I have exposed myself now as not following either ideology, subjectivcism or objectivism. But i lean to the subjective side as far as i strongly believe in a thing called listening taste. IMO each of us has personal taste and this stretches as far as sonic preferences are concerned. I once had a weird experience: as a personal favour, i adjusted a fellow audiophile's phono cartridge tonearm (a man of the "golden ear" tribe, just like me). He did not care about tonearm adjustments that much as he was almost a phono newbie back then. I did not only adjust his TT, i explained and commented every single of my actions. And i arrived at an optimum as clear as i could wish it. He was unsure if he liked it. So, with my explantions in mind, he re-did any adjustment i made, step by step. I had told him, always try to measure anything you adjust, you may wnat to find you way back to that adjustment. So he did that too and phoned me the next day, telling me that he arrived at a completely differnt set of parameters. The most funny thing was that hifidaddy ( diyAudio and Munich Triode Mafia member) was witnessing this adjustment session too and he agreed with the fact i found an optimum and he liked the resulting sonics.
Now i have to tell i take my pride in adjusting tonearm VTA to a reproducable precision of 0.02mm pivot height position; means, you disadjust it twice and i arrive twice at the same VTA/ heigth position.
But my fellow's subjective perception and his preference was a considerably different one. My belief that my hearing acts as a calibrated and reproducable measuring instrument was down the tube as you can imagine.
Seconding your point that listening alone is no valid substition for measuring
Of course, i tried it out ASAP if my ability to judge correct VTA was gone. It was not, i found **my** sweet spot as easy and precise as i was used to. But it was my sweet spot, not my fellows one. He was ignoring sonic properties and improvements important to me and i was ignoring sonic properties and improvements important to him.
Voila, listening taste! My taste and his one obviously met mutually exclusive sonic properties.
A big lesson learned, this day i found out how subjective my perception is. And probably anyone else's too.
Bill, one of the nasty things with improving audio gear by ear is that you depend on your own sonic judgement alone. Noone can help you with that. No textbook will tell you where north is. Frightening!!
,. But, even more unfortunately, if you stick to impersonal, objective criteria, if you rely on the textbook telling where north is and the textbook **fails** to agree with the compass needle, you are as lost.
My sincere recommendation to anyone making adjustments and changes by ear is to measure and to listen and to measure and to listen and to find out how measurement and listening results are married. Means: try to arrive at a situation where measurements and listening results backup each other.
Fair enough. 🙂 and i am with you in this point.
I would go even further, 🙂att'n: .. lengthy diatribe!) when i act as designer, be it DIY and for my own pleasure or be it professional and targeted to bring a product out of the door, i am shaping the thing, my mind is embossing a stamp on it, consisting of my priorities, sonic preferences, way to look at things and to solve technical problems. Let's call that the designer's handwriting. Of course, i take all possible means to ensure objective, comparable quality level. But even in what and what not i consider as relevant for quality, there is my utterly subjective choice (and i am quite sure that my choice is different to your choice and Bill's choice and we all can give understandable reason for our choice).
Now it makes a considerable difference if i do it DIY and for my own fun or professional and for a product. If i design a product, i may see myself urged to give the product an appearance and a sonic footprint shaped to meet the market's demands and not aligned with my personal taste. But even for that, i am deciding how i achieve this and what i consider as relevant to achieve this and at which priority.
AFAIC, i must be happy and satisfied with the result, DIY or product, it must meet my standards as i have to stand responsible for it. If i am not happy with it, i will change it or make a design re-start.
As Mr Pass said, this is the entertainment business. People, customers, want their expectations, dreams fulfilled. If i manage to guess and meet many peoples expectations, i will sell many of my units.
The only customer relevant in the DIY case is memyselfandi.
I want to return to the entertainment thing once more.
Sandbox game #1: I may say to myself, well, i do not care for my own POVs and my own style, as entertainer i want to make as many people happy and i act as an opportunist in doing so. And then comes the day when someone challenges me and and asks to stand by my word and i have to ask back, sorry, what was my word (remember i hypothetically did it the opportunistic way) and I am standing out there, naked on the stage, unable to stand responsible for my work, for my message, i crack up because there is none, just opportunistic rip-off intentions. In this game i may (or may not) have a huge success but be unable to repeat it as i met the masses' taste accidentally and fall back into meaningless. Like Bay City Rollers, Britney Spears, Spice girls and the like.
Sandbox game #2: i do it my style, stick to my ideas, POVs, methods, preferences, entertainer's handwriting. I maintain my style. While i do intend to make my customers happy, i am aware that i will not meet everybody's taste. Now an increasing number of customers may say "this guy entertained me best once, i am interested, i like his style, hee seems to maintain his style, now i need something similar but slightly different or better, i go back to him, he is probable to entertain me best again." In this game i am not prone to have huge commercial access at once. But those customers i satisfied are probable to come back and my work has some success, increasing slowly but steadily. Like with John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. Ooops, should not forget Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach. None of them cared if he would attract a huge crowd, all of them did their own thing and cared to make their work perfect. All of them were incredibly skilled, incredibly diligent in using their objectivists tool set and doing their homework but also inspired where to leave the orthodox path and create something new, something original. So i am trying to follow their example, knowing i will never reach it.
I consider engineering as an art and part of the art is to (subjectively !!) decide whether and where using orthodox techniques and proper engineering homework or trying out new stuff and entering new pathes brings me closer to my goal: realizing the vision i have. Considering myself as an artist, i stick to my style and develop it further.
I am not fussy which method to choose, no matter if others call that objectivist's or subjectivists methods. I just make the distinction between successful and futile methods.
Another example to follow: Leonardo da Vinci. the aforementioned POVs and qualities apply to him as well, methinks there is no way to tell the borders between engineering and art in his work; his art/engineering is a montonously changing continuum. BTW, he build a lot of highly efficient military machinery. Unlimited budgets to toy around with new ideas, i suppose, and i doubt he had moral inclinations about his work helping to kill people.
And another probably not-so-wellknown example: the Swiss construction engineer Robert Maillard. He mainly used prestressed steel-reinforced concrete to buid his constructions, mainly bridges. His bridges are beautiful and merge organically to the landscape they are part of; his work is pure art. But he considered himself an engineer and, when once asked how much effort he would put into the artistic part of the design, he answered "No effort at all; everthing well designed has inherent beauty." For me, as mechanical engineer by trade, it is amazing to stare at pictures of his construdions and see his virtuosity in handling all forces and in connecting them to the ground where it fits and see how the shape of a bridge of his comes out of those forces and boundary conditions as a logical consequence.
Back to thread topic, those exemplaric artists i mentioned would not have permitted mental self-limiting in their work. Methinks, the whole subjectivism/objectivism thing is yet another ideology, mentally self-limiting as all ideologies.
Bill,
as i re-read my post, i find your post: I have exposed myself now as not following either ideology, subjectivcism or objectivism. But i lean to the subjective side as far as i strongly believe in a thing called listening taste. IMO each of us has personal taste and this stretches as far as sonic preferences are concerned. I once had a weird experience: as a personal favour, i adjusted a fellow audiophile's phono cartridge tonearm (a man of the "golden ear" tribe, just like me). He did not care about tonearm adjustments that much as he was almost a phono newbie back then. I did not only adjust his TT, i explained and commented every single of my actions. And i arrived at an optimum as clear as i could wish it. He was unsure if he liked it. So, with my explantions in mind, he re-did any adjustment i made, step by step. I had told him, always try to measure anything you adjust, you may wnat to find you way back to that adjustment. So he did that too and phoned me the next day, telling me that he arrived at a completely differnt set of parameters. The most funny thing was that hifidaddy ( diyAudio and Munich Triode Mafia member) was witnessing this adjustment session too and he agreed with the fact i found an optimum and he liked the resulting sonics.
Now i have to tell i take my pride in adjusting tonearm VTA to a reproducable precision of 0.02mm pivot height position; means, you disadjust it twice and i arrive twice at the same VTA/ heigth position.
But my fellow's subjective perception and his preference was a considerably different one. My belief that my hearing acts as a calibrated and reproducable measuring instrument was down the tube as you can imagine.
Seconding your point that listening alone is no valid substition for measuring
Of course, i tried it out ASAP if my ability to judge correct VTA was gone. It was not, i found **my** sweet spot as easy and precise as i was used to. But it was my sweet spot, not my fellows one. He was ignoring sonic properties and improvements important to me and i was ignoring sonic properties and improvements important to him.
Voila, listening taste! My taste and his one obviously met mutually exclusive sonic properties.
A big lesson learned, this day i found out how subjective my perception is. And probably anyone else's too.
Bill, one of the nasty things with improving audio gear by ear is that you depend on your own sonic judgement alone. Noone can help you with that. No textbook will tell you where north is. Frightening!!
,. But, even more unfortunately, if you stick to impersonal, objective criteria, if you rely on the textbook telling where north is and the textbook **fails** to agree with the compass needle, you are as lost. My sincere recommendation to anyone making adjustments and changes by ear is to measure and to listen and to measure and to listen and to find out how measurement and listening results are married. Means: try to arrive at a situation where measurements and listening results backup each other.
Re: Rantings
Hi artnyos,
Gently now
. We are all subject to our own issues and driven by our own needs. I am aware of Steve's postings on other audio sites and have been irritated in the past by how he phrased some of his comments. At the same time I have also seen him express some unique viewpoints that I am not ready to just dismiss.
The only "currency" any of us can spend here is drawn from the accuracy of our observations, the logic of our analysis and the persuasiveness of our arguments. I work with engineers every day and am very aware that social grace is not a job requirement. That doesn't mean that it can't be imparted and that rough edges can't be smoothed. A gentle word turns away much wrath (prove me right Steve).
Phil
Hi artnyos,
Gently now
. We are all subject to our own issues and driven by our own needs. I am aware of Steve's postings on other audio sites and have been irritated in the past by how he phrased some of his comments. At the same time I have also seen him express some unique viewpoints that I am not ready to just dismiss.The only "currency" any of us can spend here is drawn from the accuracy of our observations, the logic of our analysis and the persuasiveness of our arguments. I work with engineers every day and am very aware that social grace is not a job requirement. That doesn't mean that it can't be imparted and that rough edges can't be smoothed. A gentle word turns away much wrath (prove me right Steve).
Phil
You eddyiot..........
Hey man, what kind of preamp do you listen to? I hope it is not one of those Coda Technology logs. I hear they can't give them away.
Ren
Hey man, what kind of preamp do you listen to? I hope it is not one of those Coda Technology logs. I hear they can't give them away.
Ren
Re: You eddyiot..........
That was until Mark Levinson started buying them from us at full retail, slapped a Red Rose badge on them and started selling them for 10 times the retail price. Now we can't make enough of them. 🙂
se
Ren Hoek said:
That was until Mark Levinson started buying them from us at full retail, slapped a Red Rose badge on them and started selling them for 10 times the retail price. Now we can't make enough of them. 🙂
se
peranders,
thank you
Art,
even if you are right, it is not nice to say so in public. In private email maybe?
In my last lengthy diatribe, i have raved about unimportant philosphy of mine and i have used Beethoven as one example for an independent and original mind.
I have a book with letters from Beethovens hand, all possibe letters, also complaint letters to musical editors and note copiers. I tell you, would Beethoven live today and happen to be member of our forum, he would catch sin bin in nothing short. He was not merely bad-tempered and rude-mannered, he set new standards in it. Unbelievable. You would not be able to believe that the same man wrote this music.
Now if i see a guy posting original schematics (i have never seen someone suggesting the use of interstage transformers in SS circuits and raving about sonic results) then i am curious and i tend to look at it like Phil (haldor) does in his last post. You do not know how Steve was treated on the other forums, and i do not know it and, considering the style of some other forums i know, i do not want to learn about it. Let us presume he sees enemies where no enemies are, just out of habit, can be quite lasting. If Steve is exposed to the positive atmosphere of diyAudio for a while, if there are others as curious and he sees there exists mutual willingness to understand, not only to be understood, his defensive habits may fade and he may contribute his stuff and we are happy to have him.
In 6 months you can prove me wrong and call me a hopelessly stupid idealistic mind. 🙂
thank you
Art,
even if you are right, it is not nice to say so in public. In private email maybe?
In my last lengthy diatribe, i have raved about unimportant philosphy of mine and i have used Beethoven as one example for an independent and original mind.
I have a book with letters from Beethovens hand, all possibe letters, also complaint letters to musical editors and note copiers. I tell you, would Beethoven live today and happen to be member of our forum, he would catch sin bin in nothing short. He was not merely bad-tempered and rude-mannered, he set new standards in it. Unbelievable. You would not be able to believe that the same man wrote this music.
Now if i see a guy posting original schematics (i have never seen someone suggesting the use of interstage transformers in SS circuits and raving about sonic results) then i am curious and i tend to look at it like Phil (haldor) does in his last post. You do not know how Steve was treated on the other forums, and i do not know it and, considering the style of some other forums i know, i do not want to learn about it. Let us presume he sees enemies where no enemies are, just out of habit, can be quite lasting. If Steve is exposed to the positive atmosphere of diyAudio for a while, if there are others as curious and he sees there exists mutual willingness to understand, not only to be understood, his defensive habits may fade and he may contribute his stuff and we are happy to have him.
In 6 months you can prove me wrong and call me a hopelessly stupid idealistic mind. 🙂
In 6 months you can prove me wrong
6 months from now I wonder if there will a DIY audio forum as we know it, unless DIY stands for Diatribes,Idiots,and Yahoos*
*Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'
Art
6 months from now I wonder if there will a DIY audio forum as we know it, unless DIY stands for Diatribes,Idiots,and Yahoos*
*Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'
Art
Steve Eddy said:
Steve, it was a complement and a defense of you. Dice45 was saying you had presented something he had never seen or heard of before and that it looks like it might have potential. Don't be so pendantic. People often say things that are not word-for-word precise. It's part of human nature to interpret what we experiance in our own way and it doesn't always come back out exactly the same as it went in (kind of like audio gear).
Phil
I took the freedom to weed the **** out
You forgot one.......
6 months from now I wonder if there will a DIY audio forum as we know it, unless DIY stands for Diatribes,Idiots,and Yahoos*
H.H.
P.S. I would hope everybody would know the difference between the objective and subjective approach by now, but maybe not....
Far be it from me to quell this fascinating disscussion.
You forgot one.......
6 months from now I wonder if there will a DIY audio forum as we know it, unless DIY stands for Diatribes,Idiots,and Yahoos*
H.H.
P.S. I would hope everybody would know the difference between the objective and subjective approach by now, but maybe not....
Far be it from me to quell this fascinating disscussion.
Harry,
{yawn} probably you are right 🙂
after 2 days of no sleep, **** happens
I would be happy if the original discussion could go on now undisturbed ...
provided the participants come back.
{yawn} probably you are right 🙂
after 2 days of no sleep, **** happens
I would be happy if the original discussion could go on now undisturbed ...
provided the participants come back.
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