We've got 70 pages on amplifiers, adding anything else at this point should be considered a red herring.
I submit that "bullying/fooling people with numbers" is superior to bullying/fooling people without numbers. Numbers can be verified. Numbers involve a higher degree of knowledge.yldouright said:
As Lord Kelvin said "I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." See William Thomson - Wikiquote
When a satisfying meal that I've shared with friends and acquaintances is praised, is it meaningless for its lack of numerical analysis of the chemical and temperature of each delivered molecule? The same kind of thing goes for any other number of the most important things in a life experience including a beautiful day or a weekend tryst with your beloved. Lord Kelvin was probably a lousy lay and didn't even know it, is that knowledge? 🙂
When one is doing sensory evaluation in food or beverage development, the aims and protocols are quite different than when one is enjoying a meal or a bottle of wine.
It is the music that should cause theses emotions not the replay system, whatever some here might wish and believe a hi-fi system is just a means for reproducing music, a tool nothing else. (though some designers see them selves as Luthier's creating an instrument, they are not).
The art is in writing and creating the music, a system is just a tool to reproduce that music....
No doubt there will be some Yabba Yabba Yabba from the delusional camp🙂
Personally I will listen to music on what ever is at hand if I have no choice, as it is the music I care about, but then as many have pointed out I am probably deaf and don't know it yet, the listening equivalent of Dr Malcolm Crowe.
SY
I see, reproducing a musical experience has nothing to do with a sensory evaluation
I don't probe around my amp with a voltmeter when I'm listening for pleasure. I do probe around my amp when I'm designing and developing.
Developing equipment and understanding the variables to create the reproduction is a different undertaking than listening for enjoyment. Not surprisingly, the methods are different. If one wants to do a full hedonic analysis that includes visual, tactile, and brand appeal, in addition to actual listening tests, that is yet again a different process with different protocols. If one is interesting in sonics as part of the development process, that means ears-only evaluation.
If you said that your meal tasted better because it was on a red plate, you'd better believe that someone would want to smash that plate and put it in a gas chromatograph to see what was in it.
So here we are, the results of the gas chromatograph show that the plate has the exact same elements in it and the food tasted the same if you covered the plate so you couldn't see the color, but yet you guys are still going on and on about the best colored plates for maximum food taste.
DrDyna
No one has suggested eating plates and that is a silly analogy.
SY
Understood, you don't listen to the result when you design and develop and rely totally on what the numbers indicate. This is what I find bizarre since the ultimate product is what we will hear.
auplater
Pathetic rebuttal? I don't recall you doing anything in this thread except nay say and repeat comments. What exactly is your objection to the framework offered herein?
I have no objections to measurements, they are an important part of the framework and this has been restated too many times already. My objection is in the unwillingness to accept their limitations in how they are being done and presented today.
No one has suggested eating plates and that is a silly analogy.
SY
Understood, you don't listen to the result when you design and develop and rely totally on what the numbers indicate. This is what I find bizarre since the ultimate product is what we will hear.
auplater
Pathetic rebuttal? I don't recall you doing anything in this thread except nay say and repeat comments. What exactly is your objection to the framework offered herein?
I have no objections to measurements, they are an important part of the framework and this has been restated too many times already. My objection is in the unwillingness to accept their limitations in how they are being done and presented today.
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If I ran a restaurant, yes, I'd want to know that my customers believed that their food tasted better on a red plate than a white plate. Even if it was the same food. That doesn't mean that the food actually tasted different, it means that my target audience believes it does, and that's the customer demand I need to satisfy to be successful.
If some random guy on Yelp started in on chromatographic analysis or the effects of different light reflection and absorption on food molecules, I'd smile, take the money, and run. 😀
Pretty much defining ironic: You're unwillingness to accept that your postulates are meaningless with respect to amp design is no different.
Except that you're wrong about promoting them as meaningful.
As has been stated over and over again, an amp is supposed to be transparent. If it is not, it is an effects box.
I suggest you purchased an effects box and experiment with various settings to see how they relate to your postulates. Then, it should become evident that an amp does not do those things.
BigE
An amp is supposed to help reproduce music and my postulates describe music better than transparent . As for everything else
An amp is supposed to help reproduce music and my postulates describe music better than transparent . As for everything else
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Ok, look, it's pretty easy. Amplifiers are designed, as they should be, with only one goal that can be attributed to sonics.
Linearity.
A goal that they've been largely successful with, thankfully.
Now, what you're suggesting is that not only is this goal not successful (the current argument) but to go even further, suggesting that designs should go the opposite way, slanting this way and that, depending on what "tuning" a person likes or doesn't like.
Aside from the absolute failure in the market that this would ensure, it sets the science and theory behind amplifier technology back by decades.
It doesn't matter if the objective or subjective argument from either side wins, the only important part is, if you were to actually win this debate, (and designers were actually stupid enough to go along with it) it would destroy good design practices as it pertains to amplifiers and detract attention from what people should actually be paying attention to in their systems if they want to tune any of these ridiculous suggestions.
Linearity.
A goal that they've been largely successful with, thankfully.
Now, what you're suggesting is that not only is this goal not successful (the current argument) but to go even further, suggesting that designs should go the opposite way, slanting this way and that, depending on what "tuning" a person likes or doesn't like.
Aside from the absolute failure in the market that this would ensure, it sets the science and theory behind amplifier technology back by decades.
It doesn't matter if the objective or subjective argument from either side wins, the only important part is, if you were to actually win this debate, (and designers were actually stupid enough to go along with it) it would destroy good design practices as it pertains to amplifiers and detract attention from what people should actually be paying attention to in their systems if they want to tune any of these ridiculous suggestions.
That's called a "tone control." Or "EQ." They're easy to implement and have had considerable market success. The resistance to using a well-established solution and instead casting about for magic phenomena is curious, but that's probably why this thread is in the Lounge rather than in any of the serious technical areas.
Damm, having spent thousands on audiophile cables to tune my system, you now tell me I could have twiddles those two knobs marked bass and treble, but I was taught that to touch them was to deny all audiophile beliefs and the ultimate sin.....
Right, hence my irritation at the notion that amplifiers should have built-in, rigid effects.
Suppose you're right yldouright..is your suggestion that Krell should not only have the "Duo 175" amplifier, but they should also have a 'Duo 175 yldouright edition" and a "Duo 175 Dyna edition" and a "Duo 175 SY edition"?
I mean, set aside the obviously contentious discussion about subjective amplifier sonics and tell the class what you're really suggesting amplifier designers actually DO, aside from what they already do, such as including DSP.
The usual category error, yet again. You are confusing musical performance with sound reproduction.yldouright said:
There may be a forum rule against such juvenile statements. Even if not, good manners would prohibit them. I take it this is your way of shooting the messenger?
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