Still no answer to these. It's clear now. You are posting your opinion which is fine but your opinion is fiction based. Try fact based. It's an eye opener.
Based on one anecdotal experience performed by you (no mention of expertise in audio technology) and no expert reviewed but it's somehow to be held up as the evidence?
Hey, I've seen Buckingham Palace from the outside and I'm going to write about the "flaw" of living in Buckingham Palace. Everyone, buy my book because it really tells something.
I've given you the reference already, but your brain seems more focussed on anecdotes and UFOs then on actually processing information on the psychology of perception. This could go on forever, since you seem to have zero ability to focus on the subject.
Meanwhile evenharmonics seems to be in the bewildered zone somewhere around Buckingham Palace.
Why is it so difficult to understand human perception? I could understand if this isn't your field and you simply admitted it, but this fanatical determination to carry on as if it didn't exist is bizarre. What is it about the word "sound" in "tube sound" that you are not getting? Sound is perceived by our hearing and processed by our brains. I've given you numerous references which I'm sure you haven't even read, let alone discussed or made any meaningful contribution about.
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No, a link to a website of a group that does quack therapies isn't a reference.
I understand enough about perception to perceive that you have no better evidence than UFO abductees, though there's always a cosmic (though unlikely) possibility that you have it but are trying to keep it hidden.
Andy,
I think some of the issues you are raising about the human perception of sound are very interesting. However...
I don't think they are directly relevant to the question of whether people can hear the difference between tube and solid state amplifiers. This question is a purely factual one, which can be settled by means of double-blind listening tests. Either listeners can reliably demonstrate an ability to discriminate between a tube amp and a solid state amp in rigorously-conducted double-blind tests or they can't. It is not necessary to know anything of the devious and indeed truly marvelous workings of the ear/brain system in order to settle this one.
In order to make a more worthwhile discussion, I think the test should really be between a tube amp, and a solid-state amp that has beeen equipped with a simple R/C network to match the frequency responses fairly closely and an output resistor to match the output impedances fairly closely.
From that point on, the test should proceed essentially with "hands off the steering wheel." Allow the listener as long as he likes with each of A, B or X, and see whether he can reliably distinguish them. It doesn'ty matter how the ear and brain function; one simply tests to see if the subject can discriminate reliably between the two. This should give a rather reliable answer to the question of whether the human ear/brain can recognise a distinctive "tube sound" or not.
Chris
To listen to one tube amp and one solid state amp would not be objective, It would require probably a dozen of each and that would be scratching the surface. My first encounter with "tube amp sound" was guitar amps, and because the were run constantly into distortion there was a night and day difference.The second was mixers, early tube mixers sounded significantly better than solid state. In the hifi application it is run into distortion considerably less so that aspect is more subtle.To me it is more about implementation, I tend to like more how the design implements the tube or solid state device into the circuit. This falls into more voicing the amp then the devices used. I amp constantly in a learning mode as to what is the proper sound in reproduction, I tend to lean to those I consider more experienced in those areas. I have built a few of Sys designs and was pleased with the sound, I like the way Pete Millets amps sound. My latest adventure is an Aikito preamp just to see what it sounds like. I have build over a dozen Pass designs enjoyed every one of those. And yet I could not attribute my like for these to the amplifying devices themselves.
Bill
Bill
I forgot to add, although it was implicit in my assumptions, that we need to compare amplifiers with reasonably low distortion (less than a percent or so, maybe). I wasn't talking about things like guitar amps, which are more like effects boxes.
As I understand it, from the outcomes of actual ABX testing, it would be quite unusual enough to come up with any example at all of a pair of amps, one tube and one solid-state, that could be reliably distinguished provided the basic conditions of distortion, frequency response and output impedance are taken care of.
Chris
I think you may have hit on a point here!
Yes there is a difference when playing guitar through tube equipment and not just in distortion. It seems to cut through the mix of the band.
The "Feel" is different, and yes you can hear your bad fingering or position on the guitar neck mistakes stand out. This is in stark contrast to SS equipment which is more forgiving. (Call this clarity/sensitivity or what you will)
I would think it should be measurable?
I think this is relevant to audio. (Just my opinion)
Regards
M. Gregg
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Hello Chris,
I wouldn't necessarily dismiss human factors in ABX testing. For a start, subjects are likely to react differently in a test situation than at leisure. You might measure rises in adrenalin and arousal which may on the one hand result in slightly more acute hearing but on the other hand cause a rise in mental interference. You might find that professional musicians have more left hemisphere responses and non-musicians more right hemisphere responses (see Shuter-Dyson and Gabriel, 1968), and so on. Some of this may matter or it may not matter.
Another thing you could do is to put subjects in scanners with the sound material presented in headphones through each of the amps and map their brain responses to see if the areas of neural activity were significantly different for solid state and tubes.
If this is an area you have experience of, maybe you could speak a little about what circuitry you would have to add to equalise the parameters of the amplifiers, and whether adding this circuitry would then invalidate the findings.
It's not trivial to set up these kind of experiments.
Best,
Andy
I wouldn't necessarily dismiss human factors in ABX testing. For a start, subjects are likely to react differently in a test situation than at leisure. You might measure rises in adrenalin and arousal which may on the one hand result in slightly more acute hearing but on the other hand cause a rise in mental interference. You might find that professional musicians have more left hemisphere responses and non-musicians more right hemisphere responses (see Shuter-Dyson and Gabriel, 1968), and so on. Some of this may matter or it may not matter.
Another thing you could do is to put subjects in scanners with the sound material presented in headphones through each of the amps and map their brain responses to see if the areas of neural activity were significantly different for solid state and tubes.
If this is an area you have experience of, maybe you could speak a little about what circuitry you would have to add to equalise the parameters of the amplifiers, and whether adding this circuitry would then invalidate the findings.
It's not trivial to set up these kind of experiments.
Best,
Andy
Sound is only and only determined by psychology of human auditive capability. As long as there is no theory of psychology of hearing the question for confirmation by measurement is rather obsolete.
Further then the assumption said psychology is sort of constant is not justified. That is there is no "the perception" but always "a perception".
Unfortunately for sound perfectionists, the signals of the acoustic nerves are "somehow" computed into the mental image of sound. Unfortunately , as the perfectionists do not have access to the program code.
Imho tube sound could be characterized as high resolution of dynamical differences,
a perfectly linear rise of all harmonics with the log of power without irregularities ( the absolute value of thd is of no concern as long as it is below 2-5%), little to none reactive distortion.
Further then the assumption said psychology is sort of constant is not justified. That is there is no "the perception" but always "a perception".
Unfortunately for sound perfectionists, the signals of the acoustic nerves are "somehow" computed into the mental image of sound. Unfortunately , as the perfectionists do not have access to the program code.
Imho tube sound could be characterized as high resolution of dynamical differences,
a perfectly linear rise of all harmonics with the log of power without irregularities ( the absolute value of thd is of no concern as long as it is below 2-5%), little to none reactive distortion.
You and Bill are talking about a real-world application of tubes and solid state. I don't see why it should not have some weight in the argument though I can see this being dismissed by some as simply "effects boxes". This is an area where "tube sound" has been particularly important.
Andy
We all look forward to actual experimental results. As well, we'd all be interested in explanations of why in controlled listening tests of boxes of gain, skilled listeners can distinguish subtleties in measurable engineering parameters (level, frequency response, noise, phase...), but seem to have these abilities leave them when searching for parameters that don't show up in basic analysis or in other fields of electronics. Interestingly, these things are able to be heard once again when peeking is allowed. A psychologist might (heh, heh) find this suggestive.
EQ and equalizing source impedances is very straightforward, though (like level-matching) need to be done carefully and by instruments. Bob Carver did a nice demo of this a few years back, much to the consternation of Stereophile.
Claims have been made, such as in the "amplifier challenge" at Richard Clark Amplifier Challenge FAQ, that with appropriate simple equalisation applied to a solid state amplifier, nobody who has attempted the challenge has been able to demonstrate an ability to distinguish it from a tube amplifier (subject to basic conditions described on the website). It's not the case that the equalisation is "invalidating the findings." Rather, the claim is that it demonstrates that a few dollars worth of passive components (R and C) allow one to "mock up" the effects of a tube amp to a sufficient degree of accuracy that no one has been able to show an ability to discriminate between them in ABX testing.
If there are documented ABX tests that contradict these findings, then it would be interesting to see those too. But anecdotal evidence that is not backed up by double-blind tests are not, I think, convincing, given the well known falibilities of the human brain. (Expectation bias, etc.)
Chris
Whether something should be considered fact or not is just opinion.
I mean, so many established "facts" that have held out for hundreds, if not thousands of years have been shown to be completely wrong.
No-one really studies audio reproduction in any way that could be considered unbiased and encompases fully the human response to audio reproduction. Therefore, may of the "facts" of the audio world regarding how things sound are yet really to come under full scrutiny if any - and hence why people still argue about them.
The psychology of perception in general is hardly understood either so does this mean that anything related to the subject should be immediately dismissed ? This includes the psychology of perception as it relates to DBT or ABX too - there's nothing in either that I would consider to be facts as yet, other than it's a fact that the techniques appear to throw up conflicting results depending on the expectation bias (of the test's strength) of those carrying them out.
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The sound field doesn't exist to be pedantic. An air-pressure field perhaps.. There's too much information in a real-world air pressure field to ever know that much about it - too much detail, too much time variation over too many points. In all intents and purposes, it's infinite compared to our measuring ability so the data you might collect might not be the right data..
Sound is only the perception of what that pressure field relates to in the human mind. Sound doesn't exist outside of a brain..
You could argue that's just sematics but it clearly effects what we are all talking about it - your talk of "Sound" seems to different to mine for example.
Data of listening tests is no more than data of listening tests. What that data means is open to so much interpretation due to human psychology as to be potentially meaningless.. That's why people return back to measurement by machine. The descrepency between current audio measurement and listener experience could be purely down to psychology or it could mean that we're not measuring the right things to find correllation. Either way, there aren't many to bother to attempt to find out - costs too much in time and money for any amateur to do.
Therefore is seems, to me, pointless to argue as if there is a definite truth out there when it comes to audio equipment and human's perception of its effect on sound when the only facts given appear more to stem from dogma and belief than established research.
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You might note my comments about the amazing ability to distinguish quite a few variables using ears-only. You could also add pitch and pitch stability to my little list.
And do you have proof that it is not? That sounds like a flippant question, but I ask it in all honesty. Why is one person's distortion inferior to another person's fidelity?
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