sorry but natural languages, English in particular aren't logical proof systems, with unambiguous resolutions of every possible word use
Physics, Engineering often does use "sound" to refer to longitudinal compression wave propagation in elastic media - with such terms as infra sound and ultra sound having quite commonly recognized meaning that obviously refer back to human perception of "sound"
you can search sound engineering literature, find sound field analysis, synthesis as recognized topics
you are playing semantic games when you don't recognize these multiple meanings, distract the discussion by interjecting these false claims of language precision
any wanting to actually communicate have to credit the statements of other actors with reasonable constructions of meaning, allowing for language usage ambiguity, differing “intellectual communities” construction of the words meaning
it is fact that some words are "overloaded" are recognized as having multiple meanings, by use context, even within a single professional subject some uses of the same word can be very specific, restricted in technical domain while the same word can be used in the same sentence in more general context with different meaning
if truly confused ask for clarification - but don't waste bandwidth in rants about your (possibly intentional) "illogical" reconstruction of the words
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The reference in my hands defines sound as
"Transmission of mechanical energy as wave motion in a medium."
Neither pedantic nor anthrocentric.
BTW, Don Lancaster has an interesting aural perception blog for July 27, 2013 on his website.
"Transmission of mechanical energy as wave motion in a medium."
Neither pedantic nor anthrocentric.
BTW, Don Lancaster has an interesting aural perception blog for July 27, 2013 on his website.
You are just speculating based on what you imagine it to be like because you've never done it yourself. I've seen this posted many times online by subjective side. Once again, fiction based opinion.
There is no requirement that DBT can't be done at leisure. You can take as much time as you want in your own listening environment in case you didn't know.
I've seen people argue about it for different reasons. Following are some I've noticed.
1. Shills of boutique audio electronics who try to discredit the findings of DBT so that their sales can benefit.
2. Uninformed forum members who don't want to believe the findings of DBT because it contradicts their preexisting belief picked up from some audiophool sites or marketing hype.
3. Trolls.
None of them do it because they've found contrasting evidence to the findings of DBT. When I say evidence, I'm not talking about opinion although some people confuse it as equal to evidence.
I was reading recently your eyes see high resolution at the item your are focusing but your peripheral is low resolution, it does this to conserve the amount of processing required to interpret the visual information. I wonder if your hearing act similarly ?
Bill
Bill
Bill, much of the reason for that is physical- the eye is a lousy camera. But it's tough to build a good camera out of water and jelly!
Take a medium sized word like "metaphysician." Note that the beginning and ending letters are unfocused if you keep your eyes fixed on the "h."
Take a medium sized word like "metaphysician." Note that the beginning and ending letters are unfocused if you keep your eyes fixed on the "h."
You won't have to wonder once you do a Google search on "digital audio file compression" and read about it.
So we have:
* DBT is great for picking up variations in technical aspects of sound.
* A system is built which is "perfect" in respect to the technical aspects of the sound that the DBT have determined that people can detect.
* This system however doesn't "sound good" to a significant number of people who listen to it. In particular, it is not 'convincing', it doesn't sound realistic, it causes many people who listen to it to get bored, or irritated - who then want to switch it off.
So where do we go now ...??
* DBT is great for picking up variations in technical aspects of sound.
* A system is built which is "perfect" in respect to the technical aspects of the sound that the DBT have determined that people can detect.
* This system however doesn't "sound good" to a significant number of people who listen to it. In particular, it is not 'convincing', it doesn't sound realistic, it causes many people who listen to it to get bored, or irritated - who then want to switch it off.
So where do we go now ...??
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No, just variations in sound when used in audio business.
Go back and reanalyze because you've made an error with the first one.
By the way, look up the term "high fidelity".
Hmmm ... SY has been very active in providing examples of precisely what I was referring to - level matching, FR, phase, etc ... and I'm sure that when people are focused very acutely on detecting such things happening that they can be very adept in doing so ...
However, last time I checked it, that's not what I'm listening to when I hear the sound of a piano in my home - the gestalt of the vibrations in the air is what registers in my mind ... and part of me makes a snap decision as to whether that is a real piano, or "fake".
So "high fidelity" to me is a measure of how close the "pretend" version of the piano convinces me - over everything else ...
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years back i read from the writings of WM Leach about the difference between a tube amp and an SS amp is its open loop gains, while tubes have lowish open loop gains, SS amps used open loop gains seldom seen in tube amps, perhaps this will explain something....
The point that makes the assertions of the "subjectivisits," if I may call them that, so unconvincing is that we are apparently supposed to believe that all this ability to hear the "gestalt of the vibrations" is suddenly lost if the listening is occurring in a double-blind testing.
This is a little too reminiscent of the physic or the spoon-bender whose powers are suddenly curtailed if a scientist tries to study the phenomenon.
Chris
Gosh, this thread really has got into a philosophical slanging match, hasn't it?
I'm not sure that personally I can characterise "tube sound" very well.
I recall attending a demonstration by a local amplifier builder who had manufactured a transformer output PP amplifier in both Mosfet and Tube versions. There was little to pick between them..
That said, it could well be argued that component choice, feedback usage and topology all have a significant bearing on sound quality.
Many years ago I heard a Marantz PM80 with an AB of Class A switch. The class A version topped out at 25 watts before clipping, the AB having best part of 70 watts on tap, but the difference sound wise was night and day (up to the 25w ceiling). Basically same topology and same component quality but heavier current biasing into the class A version one would assume, but so much richer, smoother in the class A version than when running class AB.
One of my desert island amplifiers remains the Sugden a21a from the late 90's. 25 watts of solid state awesome. I had a 70 watt AB Sugden Optima 140 for a few years and while okay, it had none of the magic of the class A version.
For what it's worth, I also once heard an Electrocompaniet Apliwire class A amp that left me pretty much unmoved...
I once built a tube preamp using a single follower stage (one of the early HiFi World circuits). Have to say, that having it as an additional stage in the replay chain did nothing positive, so one step backwards for "tube sound" there I guess.
One way where tubes can have very positive effects is in the ability to create functional but very simple circuits with few operational stages to achieve the same effect.
For my ears, there's a lot to be said for a shorter signal path with less operational stages and less devices. Nelson Pass's Zen amplifier fits tis criteria *** well as a tube amp does. So is what I'm listening to and desiring "tube sound" or is it simply simplicity in circuit, fewer stages and less feedback...
To say that we cannot tell the difference and only hear what we want to is patently wrong, otherwise I would have loved the preamp that I'd built or the Electrocompaniet because I was "expecting" them to be a sonic improvement. I also would have preferred the tube version of the transformer coupled amplifer to the mosfet version.
Humans (some humans) can hear fine fine details and have definite preferences for particular modes of replay. some want things to be smooth sounding, some are very sensitive to time domain distortions, no-one has a single path to truth.
I'm not sure that personally I can characterise "tube sound" very well.
I recall attending a demonstration by a local amplifier builder who had manufactured a transformer output PP amplifier in both Mosfet and Tube versions. There was little to pick between them..
That said, it could well be argued that component choice, feedback usage and topology all have a significant bearing on sound quality.
Many years ago I heard a Marantz PM80 with an AB of Class A switch. The class A version topped out at 25 watts before clipping, the AB having best part of 70 watts on tap, but the difference sound wise was night and day (up to the 25w ceiling). Basically same topology and same component quality but heavier current biasing into the class A version one would assume, but so much richer, smoother in the class A version than when running class AB.
One of my desert island amplifiers remains the Sugden a21a from the late 90's. 25 watts of solid state awesome. I had a 70 watt AB Sugden Optima 140 for a few years and while okay, it had none of the magic of the class A version.
For what it's worth, I also once heard an Electrocompaniet Apliwire class A amp that left me pretty much unmoved...
I once built a tube preamp using a single follower stage (one of the early HiFi World circuits). Have to say, that having it as an additional stage in the replay chain did nothing positive, so one step backwards for "tube sound" there I guess.
One way where tubes can have very positive effects is in the ability to create functional but very simple circuits with few operational stages to achieve the same effect.
For my ears, there's a lot to be said for a shorter signal path with less operational stages and less devices. Nelson Pass's Zen amplifier fits tis criteria *** well as a tube amp does. So is what I'm listening to and desiring "tube sound" or is it simply simplicity in circuit, fewer stages and less feedback...
To say that we cannot tell the difference and only hear what we want to is patently wrong, otherwise I would have loved the preamp that I'd built or the Electrocompaniet because I was "expecting" them to be a sonic improvement. I also would have preferred the tube version of the transformer coupled amplifer to the mosfet version.
Humans (some humans) can hear fine fine details and have definite preferences for particular modes of replay. some want things to be smooth sounding, some are very sensitive to time domain distortions, no-one has a single path to truth.
Hi Chris,
This thread would not exist if everyone was satisfied with the results of DBT. DBT tells us many things, as Sy can relate in detail. It tells us the elements we can reliably distinguish and those we can't. It can give us good information about how these elements relate to what we can measure, just as Sy has said. We have a lot of information here. What I and others find interesting is why listeners express preferences. That's a whole other field of study - different specialisms, different parameters. As others have said, you may find results e.g. that suggest that measured distortion is not related to listener preference. You may find results about listener preference that take you down new lines of enquiry. You would set up different experiments, such as comparing sound reproduction systems to live musicians in blind listening tests. All these experiments are much harder to set up in terms of hard evidence because you are dealing with people, so can be anathema to engineers. But this is an itch which is in need of scratching because in real life so much of the audio world is based on listener preference. This is soft science if you like to put it that way, but psychology has been putting together and analysing evidence of how humans behave for 150 years during which it has robustly survived criticism as an anthopocentric exercise in which all you discover is quackery, for the simple reason that it provides us with research material that is actually relevant to what we want and need to know about ourselves.
This thread would not exist if everyone was satisfied with the results of DBT. DBT tells us many things, as Sy can relate in detail. It tells us the elements we can reliably distinguish and those we can't. It can give us good information about how these elements relate to what we can measure, just as Sy has said. We have a lot of information here. What I and others find interesting is why listeners express preferences. That's a whole other field of study - different specialisms, different parameters. As others have said, you may find results e.g. that suggest that measured distortion is not related to listener preference. You may find results about listener preference that take you down new lines of enquiry. You would set up different experiments, such as comparing sound reproduction systems to live musicians in blind listening tests. All these experiments are much harder to set up in terms of hard evidence because you are dealing with people, so can be anathema to engineers. But this is an itch which is in need of scratching because in real life so much of the audio world is based on listener preference. This is soft science if you like to put it that way, but psychology has been putting together and analysing evidence of how humans behave for 150 years during which it has robustly survived criticism as an anthopocentric exercise in which all you discover is quackery, for the simple reason that it provides us with research material that is actually relevant to what we want and need to know about ourselves.
The term of art is "hedonic." And you've backed into the correct conclusion- from a purely auditory point of view, there's nothing to distinguish a box of gain using tubes from a similarly performing box of gain using transistors. And that's exactly what ears-only testing tells us.
One's overall enjoyment of the box of gain (hedonic) can include input from other senses- the pretty glow, the nostalgia of warmup, the notion of electrons flying through a vacuum, associations with a different time and place, the prestige of owning something out of the mainstream, perhaps even the Japanese concept of "shumi." Indeed, one has to look at a variety of other parameters using different methods to pin that down, and that will be inconsistent from listener to listener. Market research can indicate patterns which will allow manufacturers to target particular audiences, and their methods are fascinating.
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