To Traderbam:
This statement was posted by sam9, you reacted somewhat vaguely (my pereption, pun intended) to it:
/Quote/
Measurements have the potebtial of being reproducable and communicatable over space and time. But if ten people try to me(independently) to describe the difference between example one or two (expecially without knowing the physical difference) the cances of consistancy are small, there would be little chance I could reproduce the differences and I doubt I could make much sense out of the various adjectives used or relate them to my experiences.
/Quote end/
This is exactly why you cannot just use human perceptions and opinions to communicate or discern qualitatively reliable about equipment. And, if we are taking ourselfs serious in our endeavour to make progress, it is required. Because we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it, and stubbornly continue to try to communicate in this totally insufficient way, that audio is going around in circles for the last 20 years without going anywhere. Unless you call the rise of snake oil, magic cables and/or colored CD pens "going anywhere".
Jan Didden
This statement was posted by sam9, you reacted somewhat vaguely (my pereption, pun intended) to it:
/Quote/
Measurements have the potebtial of being reproducable and communicatable over space and time. But if ten people try to me(independently) to describe the difference between example one or two (expecially without knowing the physical difference) the cances of consistancy are small, there would be little chance I could reproduce the differences and I doubt I could make much sense out of the various adjectives used or relate them to my experiences.
/Quote end/
This is exactly why you cannot just use human perceptions and opinions to communicate or discern qualitatively reliable about equipment. And, if we are taking ourselfs serious in our endeavour to make progress, it is required. Because we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it, and stubbornly continue to try to communicate in this totally insufficient way, that audio is going around in circles for the last 20 years without going anywhere. Unless you call the rise of snake oil, magic cables and/or colored CD pens "going anywhere".
Jan Didden
And to that extent, please open a new thread if you want to hash it out. I have a couple things to say myself, but this isn't the thread to go in that direction, OK?
Ok Stuart,
Got your point, it's no longer on Blameless (I think), but on the "useability" of human perception and reporting. You could split this thread off with your Mod hat on, but I don't intend to continue this for days on end. I think I explained my views, and tried to argue why I think the way I think. Anyone can agree or disagree.
Jan Didden
Got your point, it's no longer on Blameless (I think), but on the "useability" of human perception and reporting. You could split this thread off with your Mod hat on, but I don't intend to continue this for days on end. I think I explained my views, and tried to argue why I think the way I think. Anyone can agree or disagree.
Jan Didden
Oh I love these discussions 🙂
I'm with Traderbam here, whilst he's not saying measurements do not have value, they are as he states, by definition indirect.
Anyone who designs audio gear without recourse to listening is totally missing the point, completely.
It's whole raison d'etre is to be listened to. It's purpose in life is to create emotional responses in human beings. It's about dancing, laughing, crying and all the gamut of human emotional response. Music has this effect on us, it's what makes us listen and what keeps my overweight **** glued to a listening chair for more hours than is healthy 😉
We don't go to live gigs and rate the performance on the distortion levels of the PA, we talk about the MUSIC, we dance, sing and feel an insatiable urge to join in (assuming the band are any good!). By most normal measures live amplified gigs are awful, yet those of us who go to them get something that most HiFi in my experience misses, that important 'X' factor. It's all about content over presentation.
Not one single piece of my test gear has a measurement button for the above categories, so we're stuck with the effect that it has on me when listening and trying to correlate that with any measurements I can find that seem to correspond with what I hear.
Sometimes one finds them in the most unusual places, but often 'internally' rather than the usual simplisitc 'external' measurements one sees performed.
One fact remains though, you cannot predict with any accuracy the emotional effect a piece of HiFi will have on a human from any of the measurements you can do. You can make some judgements about it's 'sound' but none about the *music*.
And yes these response vary, as the human brain and psyche is affected by the day to day changes around it, but over time, it all averages out, in my experience.
The ONLY measure that is ultimately of any significance to me is whether I get that 'one more CD' feeling, or whether I'd rather watch telly. Nothing else matters.
This is where Self et al get it totally wrong, he just misses the whole point of music reproduction.
...and look what happened to TAG Mclaren whilst he's been head designer there 🙂
Andy.
I'm with Traderbam here, whilst he's not saying measurements do not have value, they are as he states, by definition indirect.
Anyone who designs audio gear without recourse to listening is totally missing the point, completely.
It's whole raison d'etre is to be listened to. It's purpose in life is to create emotional responses in human beings. It's about dancing, laughing, crying and all the gamut of human emotional response. Music has this effect on us, it's what makes us listen and what keeps my overweight **** glued to a listening chair for more hours than is healthy 😉
We don't go to live gigs and rate the performance on the distortion levels of the PA, we talk about the MUSIC, we dance, sing and feel an insatiable urge to join in (assuming the band are any good!). By most normal measures live amplified gigs are awful, yet those of us who go to them get something that most HiFi in my experience misses, that important 'X' factor. It's all about content over presentation.
Not one single piece of my test gear has a measurement button for the above categories, so we're stuck with the effect that it has on me when listening and trying to correlate that with any measurements I can find that seem to correspond with what I hear.
Sometimes one finds them in the most unusual places, but often 'internally' rather than the usual simplisitc 'external' measurements one sees performed.
One fact remains though, you cannot predict with any accuracy the emotional effect a piece of HiFi will have on a human from any of the measurements you can do. You can make some judgements about it's 'sound' but none about the *music*.
And yes these response vary, as the human brain and psyche is affected by the day to day changes around it, but over time, it all averages out, in my experience.
The ONLY measure that is ultimately of any significance to me is whether I get that 'one more CD' feeling, or whether I'd rather watch telly. Nothing else matters.
This is where Self et al get it totally wrong, he just misses the whole point of music reproduction.
...and look what happened to TAG Mclaren whilst he's been head designer there 🙂
Andy.
JensRasmussen said:
Hi,
Good book about speakers and amps is
W. Marshall Leach
"Introduction to electroacoustics and audio amplifier design" ISBN 0-7872 7861-0.
Regards
Milan
There are listeners and listeners...
I don't trust every people to give a reliable oppinion about the sound of an amp.
You learn how to listen, it takes time, it takes plenty of experience, it takes listening to many things, comparing, testing.
Suppose you're not experienced in listening (I'm talking hi-fi, music, don't take me wrong) and you have an experienced guy with you.
You are testing two amps.
You listen, and then you change the amp.
At first it's ok for you, you can't notice any change.
Then the guy says something like this: "look, I hear a sound that was maskerated with the other amp, it was unrecognizable. just listen, there's a piano on the background. Always. During all the music".
The guy continues: "follow the tune, listen to the music, follow it, you must understand it without any stress, or the system is not good".
You change the amp again and you can't listen to that piano.
Suddenly the difference becomes so obvious to you that you can't realize how you missed it.
And you'll miss things like this plenty of times until you're good at listening and detect subtle changes in the musical content.
After all you're listening to an amp (a system, in fact) but you don't concentrate on it, you just listen to the music.
It's the music that matters.
Enjoy the music!😎
janneman said:
I don't trust every people to give a reliable oppinion about the sound of an amp.
You learn how to listen, it takes time, it takes plenty of experience, it takes listening to many things, comparing, testing.
Suppose you're not experienced in listening (I'm talking hi-fi, music, don't take me wrong) and you have an experienced guy with you.
You are testing two amps.
You listen, and then you change the amp.
At first it's ok for you, you can't notice any change.
Then the guy says something like this: "look, I hear a sound that was maskerated with the other amp, it was unrecognizable. just listen, there's a piano on the background. Always. During all the music".
The guy continues: "follow the tune, listen to the music, follow it, you must understand it without any stress, or the system is not good".
You change the amp again and you can't listen to that piano.
Suddenly the difference becomes so obvious to you that you can't realize how you missed it.
And you'll miss things like this plenty of times until you're good at listening and detect subtle changes in the musical content.
After all you're listening to an amp (a system, in fact) but you don't concentrate on it, you just listen to the music.
It's the music that matters.
Enjoy the music!😎
janneman said:
If I may be so bold, can I ask what you consider to be progress in the context of audio?
rfbrw said:
Not an easy one, true. But I would look for things like a clear direction that the majority of listeners/users would consider "better" than the previous one. Some kind of general consensus that says, yes, using this type of topology or component types gives us a generally recognised step by step better audio performance, meaning that users/listeners clearly tend to prefer certain types of equipment over others. I know I am vague, I sorry, maybe I can better say what is NOT progress: Every year new "concepts", technoglogies, "breakthroughs" but in fact turning around in circles as I said before. Today it is low feedback, yesterday is was low THD, tomorrow it is hybrids, but without going anywhere.
Look at the hype on types of capacitors, with or without plastic jackets, and then with a jacket with a specific chemical composition, that divided again in different COLORS of jackets of specific chemical composition. That is what I call going around in circles, having a good time, but NOT about progress in audio.
Jan Didden
Re: Oh I love these discussions 🙂
Andy,
What have you been smoking? Amp design has nothing to do with "to create emotional responses in human beings. It's about dancing, laughing, crying and all the gamut of human emotional response"
What you describe is MUSIC. The amp has to faithfully reproduce the music, that's all. If you want an amp that messes up the music and creates an emotion of itself, sorry, that's not my idea of hi-fi. that electronic entertainment.
Those emotional responses that force you to put up yet another CD, and keep your **** glued to your listening seat is the MUSIC. ANY amp, even the lowly kitchen transistor radio, can rouse that in you, if you are in the right mood and if the music touches you.
Do you think that people in the 40-ies or 50-ies, when audio reproduction was mediocre at best to today's standards, people enjoyed MUSIC from their shellacs less because of a restricted freq response? Of course not, they had emotional responses and were moved to tears as well as any one of us.
You make a classical error by confusing music and it's effects with straight-forward audio engineering to provide the means to reproduce that music.
You said: "The ONLY measure that is ultimately of any significance to me is whether I get that 'one more CD' feeling, or whether I'd rather watch telly. Nothing else matters."
I 100% agree with that. What I don't agree with, is that that is depending on the value of the C.dom, or the color of the jacket of a certain plastic with a specific chemical composition that covers your supply capacitor.
Jan Didden
ALW said:
Andy,
What have you been smoking? Amp design has nothing to do with "to create emotional responses in human beings. It's about dancing, laughing, crying and all the gamut of human emotional response"
What you describe is MUSIC. The amp has to faithfully reproduce the music, that's all. If you want an amp that messes up the music and creates an emotion of itself, sorry, that's not my idea of hi-fi. that electronic entertainment.
Those emotional responses that force you to put up yet another CD, and keep your **** glued to your listening seat is the MUSIC. ANY amp, even the lowly kitchen transistor radio, can rouse that in you, if you are in the right mood and if the music touches you.
Do you think that people in the 40-ies or 50-ies, when audio reproduction was mediocre at best to today's standards, people enjoyed MUSIC from their shellacs less because of a restricted freq response? Of course not, they had emotional responses and were moved to tears as well as any one of us.
You make a classical error by confusing music and it's effects with straight-forward audio engineering to provide the means to reproduce that music.
You said: "The ONLY measure that is ultimately of any significance to me is whether I get that 'one more CD' feeling, or whether I'd rather watch telly. Nothing else matters."
I 100% agree with that. What I don't agree with, is that that is depending on the value of the C.dom, or the color of the jacket of a certain plastic with a specific chemical composition that covers your supply capacitor.
Jan Didden
Yes Jan, that's entirely my point. How do you 'faithfully reproduce music'?
Music is not there to be measured, it's there to be heard.
An amp without music is a potentially expensive and useless piece of junk.
There are some amps out there though that totally fail to create those emotional responses in me. You feed good music in and you get soporiphic noises out. These amps, by all the normal measures, work fine.
My fundamental point is you, or anyone else, cannot measure the amp and predict the effect on the listener. The listener is the whole reason for the amps existence in the first place. There's little, if any, correlation between distortion and other 'standard' technical measures and the effect it has on the listener. To eliminate the listener makes the whole purpose of HiFi redundant.
If you cannot hear the difference and you are happy with the music you get, then stop and be happy!
Exactly, demonstrating clearly that the 'mediocre' perfomance as you put it was clearly capable of doing the intended job. Some supposedly superior equipment is incapable of doing this, in my view.
To paraphrase an old quote, would you rather talk to Einstein on the telephone, or the doorman of the Ritz face to face? One is real and live and accurate, but I suspect the content of the telephone conversation will be far more engaging, despite it's bandwidth and dynamic limitations.
Andy.
There's some interesting semantics wrapped up in this- if you are "listening" to an amplifier, your brain is going through a very different dance than if you're "listening" to music. In the former case, you're trying to find patterns whether they're there or not. And, whether they're there or not, you're likely to find them.
In my case this is not true.
All listening tests are conducted over long timescales, days to weeks.
Over this timespan one can assess the change by examining my own behaviour - the music vs. tv test if you want.
I agree, short term listening doesn't work and is very easily confused. I would not be able to give a reliable, repeatable result on a quick A-B test, even over several hours. When I've tried to do this I have got it wrong in the past, what one thought was an improvement wasn't.
It's this fundamental issue that's being missed, in my view, it's all about music; all one picks up in a-b dems in my experience is tonal and amplitude differences, none of which have anything at all to do with the underlying musical messages.
There, that's enough of my feminine side displayed for one day 🙂
Andy.
Would not the simple answer be to measure the amp during the prototyping phase for FR, Zout, stability, and distortion, then begin the listening tests?
Further, that these listening tests be performed in random over largish samples so that trends can emerge, be analysed and passed to the designer, with a view to tweaking?
No one doubts there is both a subjective and an objective aspect to amp/preamp/speaker design and appraisal. The first is consumer driven; the second technology driven. The product can only achieve commercial success by being sold, and people won't buy it unless the subjectives are right. There is no reason the two methodologies cannot exist side by side; it's been this way in the automotive world for a hundred years! Are we audiophiles that special?
In closing, I once designed an amplifier whoa to go without measuring its distortion, though I did measure FR, impedances, and operating points carefully. All componentry was chosen by ear, though I used a few sets of ears to assist. When finally a friend put the amp on an analyser (HP 339) I was quite surprised. It was very good, less than 0.045% THD at 20KHz at full load. This showed me (at least!) that subjective and objective measurement need not be constantly at war.......
Cheers,
Hugh
Further, that these listening tests be performed in random over largish samples so that trends can emerge, be analysed and passed to the designer, with a view to tweaking?
No one doubts there is both a subjective and an objective aspect to amp/preamp/speaker design and appraisal. The first is consumer driven; the second technology driven. The product can only achieve commercial success by being sold, and people won't buy it unless the subjectives are right. There is no reason the two methodologies cannot exist side by side; it's been this way in the automotive world for a hundred years! Are we audiophiles that special?
In closing, I once designed an amplifier whoa to go without measuring its distortion, though I did measure FR, impedances, and operating points carefully. All componentry was chosen by ear, though I used a few sets of ears to assist. When finally a friend put the amp on an analyser (HP 339) I was quite surprised. It was very good, less than 0.045% THD at 20KHz at full load. This showed me (at least!) that subjective and objective measurement need not be constantly at war.......
Cheers,
Hugh
Don't forget my particular idee fixee, overload performance. At least over in the tube world where I live, that accounts for the vast majority of perceived differences once the basics (level, freq response, distortion) are taken care of. No amplifier measurement suite is complete without understanding overload recovery into the range of loads and signals that the amp is expected to encounter.
Hugh has an interesting point here, one that might lead us back to Self (pun not intended 😉).
I understand Self in that he always wants to keep subjectivist and objectivist views clearly distinct. But not in terms of the two fighting against each other. Rather he always wants to be shure what part of the discussion is objective and what part is subjective. Please note that Self did only state the opinion that an amplifier has to be good from an objectivist perspective in order to be good from a subjectivist perspective. He didn't claim it the other way round.
In his writings, I've never read (or can't remeber) that an amplifier that is good in a subjectivist way can't be good in an objective way, too.
BTW, I don't fully agree with Self on that the measurements he usually makes (and bases his opinion on) cover the full potential of influences that can determine the sound of an amplifier. I strongly don't believe in the existence of "unmeasurable" properties of amplifier sound (that is: I believe every difference in perceived sound that causally relates to the amplifier could be measured!). But I can imagine that Self is stuck too much on his particular measurement experience, equipment and point of view.
As for myself, I can clearly hear differences between differently sounding amplifiers. 😀
But so far I could always relate them to objectivist properties of the amplifier in question (e.g. THD+N, FR), whilst finding this relation again is a subjectivist process!
I can imagine that the difference between what's explained by measurement theory and what's perceived by (subjective) listening can be approached by thinking about the way the measurements are taken.
There's a clear objective difference between an amp's measured frequency response with fully charged reservoir caps in response to a sweep and the slight dynamic changes of frequency response depending on multidimensional (non-orthogonal) properties like signal (change), load (change), supply (change), etc. 😕
Sebastian.
edit: Yes, and SY's post fits in there too. Overload recovery doesn't seem to be part of most people's (and particularly Self's) measurement or listening practice... 😀
I understand Self in that he always wants to keep subjectivist and objectivist views clearly distinct. But not in terms of the two fighting against each other. Rather he always wants to be shure what part of the discussion is objective and what part is subjective. Please note that Self did only state the opinion that an amplifier has to be good from an objectivist perspective in order to be good from a subjectivist perspective. He didn't claim it the other way round.
In his writings, I've never read (or can't remeber) that an amplifier that is good in a subjectivist way can't be good in an objective way, too.
BTW, I don't fully agree with Self on that the measurements he usually makes (and bases his opinion on) cover the full potential of influences that can determine the sound of an amplifier. I strongly don't believe in the existence of "unmeasurable" properties of amplifier sound (that is: I believe every difference in perceived sound that causally relates to the amplifier could be measured!). But I can imagine that Self is stuck too much on his particular measurement experience, equipment and point of view.
As for myself, I can clearly hear differences between differently sounding amplifiers. 😀
But so far I could always relate them to objectivist properties of the amplifier in question (e.g. THD+N, FR), whilst finding this relation again is a subjectivist process!
I can imagine that the difference between what's explained by measurement theory and what's perceived by (subjective) listening can be approached by thinking about the way the measurements are taken.
There's a clear objective difference between an amp's measured frequency response with fully charged reservoir caps in response to a sweep and the slight dynamic changes of frequency response depending on multidimensional (non-orthogonal) properties like signal (change), load (change), supply (change), etc. 😕
Sebastian.
edit: Yes, and SY's post fits in there too. Overload recovery doesn't seem to be part of most people's (and particularly Self's) measurement or listening practice... 😀
SY said:
I want to state the obvious: if you want to lift 1 ton you need something rated for 1 ton or more.
If you want X watt on Y load you need an amplifier rated accordingly so you never overload it.
But SY, you are right, there will be somebody who turns the knob up until you get overload.
IMHO measuring many amplifier parameters in real time and on the field is impractical while amplifier overload can be easily monitored with cheap built-in circuit.
In a high feedback amplifier you can feed input-output signals to a difference amplifier with the output tied to a comparator that lights a led on the front panel whenever you have overload regardless voltage, current or load impedance
I have no experience with tube or low feedback amps but I suspect that can be used something like that too
When you see the led on you have the chance to turn the knob a little bit down ;-)
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