Sketches of Spain from Miles Davies, taken in 1959-60 is still my reference if I want presence and atmosphere...
Maybe the heat is getting to you..... I've been a psychologist specialising in musicians for 25 years, using those useful "voices in my head" for publishing my 6th book on performance psychology. There is considerable research now on the psychology of music (I'm not specifically a research psychologist myself but plenty are) which adds to all the research into neuropsychology and brain function. But maybe this isn't what you were referring to as handwaving - I don't quite know what the voices in your head are either.
As for our poor human brains, psychologists have been trying to work out what goes on in them for quite some time. The trouble is we can't hear sound without them, let alone come to any conclusions about what we are hearing. There's not much response to the psychology of perception in these forums so I can't say any of this is much of a surprise.
No, my annoyance is with being grossly misquoted and having statements attributed to me that I didn't make.
Yes I know that fellow, he is very close to me. 🙂 But that's exactly my point, just because we are human and do make mistakes, that's no reason to discount all our skills or perception. I've seen many an experienced sound engineer pick the wrong frequency when notching out feedback. It happens. But they get it right with enough frequency to be of good use, useful enough to get paid for it. Joe Bloggs wouldn't even know that you can notch out feedback, let alone call out the frequency.
Anecdotes about human failings are amusing, but there are also anecdotes about human strengths and skills. They mean nothing?
I'll leave you with this: As a friend once said "Tubes are Nat King Cole, Transistors are Cyndi Lauper". "They may be singing the same notes, but they don't have the same effect." 😀
No-one has. But they (and I) recognize that the ability to know that this funny part of the sound is likely due to a notch at 7kHz doesn't affect one's ability to auto-fool, and that bias and expectations don't respect practice and ability. 😀
Oh, that's funny. I was searching for Miles Davis material because of Homeland and came across it. Didn't work for me unfortunately... Worthy recording though.
And yet, no human can control their own bias which operates in subconscious level. I would love to read about it if you can cite any exceptions.
Can you cite actual examples (names, place, date and results) of those practice and per what criteria did it show you that it may not be so severe?
Again, can you cite actual examples (names, place, date and results)?
How did you compare the two? Was it a level matched double blind test with instant switching capability?
Many time it takes me weeks, if not months to fine tune a project, the flaws take time to notice and tweak out. I think that double blind tests are not as useful as some people think.
Shoog
Shoog
There's bias in all legal systems, and yet we have legal systems. There's bias in medicine, and yet we trust doctors. There's bias in politics, and yet we use politicians to run our countries. There's bias in human relations and yet we date, marry and have kids. There's bias in academic research... I could go on and on. If we eliminated every discipline with bias in it the world, in real terms, would grind to a halt.
As somebody said "If it's you against the world, back the world".
As somebody said "If it's you against the world, back the world".
tubes are always on (in general, design has to trottle down the current)
seems jfets came quite close..
semiconductors often are opposite, with noticeable or sudden transition from off to on state (bjt,enhacement fet)
anyway the hole-electron recombination looks to me bit "messy"
Going back to the original poster, I think quite a few of us have been trying to address this question in different ways.
1. Musicians are the most likely to be present during a large number of actual performances and in sufficient proximity to the original sounds to hear them as well as possible. So they are a useful resource.
2. Memories and experiences of audio reproduction are relevant in terms of what people expect to hear from a "tube sound".
3. If we want to understand how we perceive sound, then a good place to start is the psychology of perception, allied to anything relevant and useful from neuroscience.
How tube circuits work can be studied in numerous textbooks, but if we are talking about how listeners relate audio reproduction systems to live performances then I fail to see how you can eliminate human perception from any consideration of the total system and how it operates. Pretending that none of this matters because it's all "subjective" and nothing else is about as informative as shaking hands with a tree. The usual disclaimers apply, e.g. I apologise for any discriminatory remarks about high-function trees.
Indeed, legal systems are not constructed on logic and evidence. The lack of double blind testing and validation of evidence in many legal proceedings has caused many innocents to go to prison- or worse. The Innocence Project here in the US has done a superb job of exposing the abuse of irrational pseudoscience in legal proceedings and freed many wrongly convicted prisoners.
Thank goodness that DBT is used for medicine and that we don't have to rely on witch doctors and gurus who tout remedies based on "quantum alignment"- though there are certainly plenty of quacks around for those who prefer irrationality (you provided an excellent link illustrating this, for which I thank you). If it weren't for the results gotten through hard nosed rational engineering and medical research, I wouldn't be alive now to type these words, so perhaps I feel more strongly about this than most would.
The research world demands DBT for any sort of sensory-based conclusion, as well as to understand efficacy of medicines and diagnostic procedures. If you want to be one against that world, it's certainly your privilege. The saving grace of not dealing with hifi using a rational, data-centered approach is that you're unlikely to cause someone to die. Worst case, you'll convince the ignorant to believe in something stupid, and no-one ever died from that.
I'm very glad you're here to debate this through the intervention of medicine, but frankly so what? So am I - I've survived operations. I come from a family of doctors so how doctors actually function in the real world is not unfamiliar to me. I could tell you many things about doctors that don't fit into a "rational data-centered approach", including how GPs actually come to decisions, make diagnoses and choose treatments.
But I'm not supporting anything fanciful or irrational - I spend a lot of my time measuring and evaluating phenomena and data. What I'm against is the exclusion of the human interface in the evaluation of sound. I've said it many times in different ways and if that causes you difficulties then so be it. There are many on this thread who are trying to contribute personal reactions that are not data-centred. That doesn't make them irrational, and if we didn't have input of this kind we might as well all pack up and go home. This is an audio forum - audio as in sound - not a data forum.
But I'm not supporting anything fanciful or irrational - I spend a lot of my time measuring and evaluating phenomena and data. What I'm against is the exclusion of the human interface in the evaluation of sound. I've said it many times in different ways and if that causes you difficulties then so be it. There are many on this thread who are trying to contribute personal reactions that are not data-centred. That doesn't make them irrational, and if we didn't have input of this kind we might as well all pack up and go home. This is an audio forum - audio as in sound - not a data forum.
No-one ever claimed the contrary. In fact, the opposite- controlled listening is consistent with predictions from analysis and measurement, and it is how we can come to rational conclusions. Like it or not, that's data.
Hand-waving, analogy, and anecdote is how we come to nonsense.
Well, I'm with andyjevans on the quality of a trained musician's ears. I spent 8 years training my ears to hear subtle differences in music. I don't for example, think I need a scope to set a music level to compare A amp against B amp, unless one has gross distortions (2nd harmonic) that affect "loudness". If amps under test had radically different frequency response curves, that could also affect perception as one person perfer some frequencies over another. But none of my three current amps has that problem. (My PAS2 tube preamp does, new off tolerance caps increased the high frequencies audiblly, so that repair is condemned as a failure until I continue work at a later date.)
And unlike andy, my ears tell me my two hifi solidstate amps, on a good day when they are actually working, sound more like the Steinway piano between the speakers on pieces I can play on the Steinway, than my historic tube ST70 amp (which has 1% specified HarmonicDistortion and is possibly worse with actual components instead of lab perfect ones). This comparison is probably only possible now in my 63rd year where I can afford speakers whose own gross distortions don't cover up the distortions of the 1 % HD tube amp.
Double blind tests are a nice idea for professionals, but I am in this hobby because you can listen to music alone. Double blind test take a team. I can't find a music team (band) to suit me in this flyover city, My idea of acceptable performance takes too much time and is too "picky" for the amateurs living here. The professionals that equal or exceed my playing level, want $40 an hour for "lessons", or "accompniment". I could take up slow pitch softball, and be told by the coach every practice how incompetent I am in person. Or left to sit on the bench alone in peace, if he was not confrontational. But I chose not to.
And unlike andy, my ears tell me my two hifi solidstate amps, on a good day when they are actually working, sound more like the Steinway piano between the speakers on pieces I can play on the Steinway, than my historic tube ST70 amp (which has 1% specified HarmonicDistortion and is possibly worse with actual components instead of lab perfect ones). This comparison is probably only possible now in my 63rd year where I can afford speakers whose own gross distortions don't cover up the distortions of the 1 % HD tube amp.
Double blind tests are a nice idea for professionals, but I am in this hobby because you can listen to music alone. Double blind test take a team. I can't find a music team (band) to suit me in this flyover city, My idea of acceptable performance takes too much time and is too "picky" for the amateurs living here. The professionals that equal or exceed my playing level, want $40 an hour for "lessons", or "accompniment". I could take up slow pitch softball, and be told by the coach every practice how incompetent I am in person. Or left to sit on the bench alone in peace, if he was not confrontational. But I chose not to.
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Hello Indianajo! How great to have a Steinway for direct comparison with your audio system. Lucky guy. I grew up with a Bechstein grand, and had to let it go when I moved into an apartment in London. I still have my double bass, which I played most of my working life, and this gives me a very useful insight into what acoustic bass actually sounds like. When I read all this nonsense about bass having "slam" it clearly doesn't come from acoustic bass players. Nothing wrong with slam as such but it's an artefact. It's nice to have real-world examples of acoustic sounds for so many reasons, not least of which is actually playing music rather than just listening to it.
But I think I said in a previous post that one of the best amps I ever heard in my home was a singe ended SIT amp with those rare Sony devices. I'm not a tube purist, though like you I am a sound purist.
But I think I said in a previous post that one of the best amps I ever heard in my home was a singe ended SIT amp with those rare Sony devices. I'm not a tube purist, though like you I am a sound purist.
Did you come to that conclusion after trying level matched DBT with quick switching of amps vs casual subjective listening comparisons?
Strawman argument. Properly bias controlled DBT of amps have been done many times over decades. Those who claimed to be able to hear differences between amps (so called "golden ears") have been debunked once they listened to those very amps under bias controlled set up.
Where have you been all these years?
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