Can we just stipulate that Jack Bybee's advertising claims were utter BS? Nothing to litigate there. What the Bybees actually do has nothing to do with advertising fluff and puffery. As I have tried to point out many times, Wheaties is a breakfast cereal, not necessarily literally "the breakfast of champions." The advertising claim has nothing to do with the food's measured nutritional value. We can make the the same type of distinction with Bybees. What they actually do is not necessarily the same thing as what the advertising claims suggest.
It was only a moderate overstatement. I see PRAT as undefined (it has no technical or "objectivist" meaning), and THD as ill defined. THD is an amalgam measurement of all generated harmonics. Different devices can measure the same THD but sound quite different. Many Class A amplifiers are known for both high THD and "pleasing sound" (the 8 watt 2% thing someone mentioned), but Class AB with crossover distortion generating the same THD figure is widely regarded as nasty sounding. See the Gedlee Metric as an attempt at something better.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/the-gedlee-metric-demystified.287291/
Technically THD is well defined (you can find the formula on Wikipedia and elsewhere), but musically it means something was added, but what was it? Garlic? Sugar? Cyanide?
And that's something the guy in the video doesn't understand, doesn't want to hear, or never heard about. He may see the objectivist viewpoint as claiming that such measurements are always proportional to aural aberrations, though they're plainly not.
Relax, Mark, do you know what the quantum state is in physics? Shoud I believe you or Jack Bybee? Hmmmmmm…
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Geoff, Yes, better than you do. And you should not believe Jack Bybee's advertising. John Curl told Jack about that too. John said here in this forum on more than one occasion that he didn't approve of Jack's advertising and told him so. I will agree with John on that particular issue.
So what you should do, is stop trying to bamboozle people with terms you don't really understand. That would be a good start. The problem is you are giving audiophiles a bad name. Every time one of the skeptics here decries how bad audiophiles are, they are thinking of the kind of stuff you say. Again, its not helpful for you to do that.
So what you should do, is stop trying to bamboozle people with terms you don't really understand. That would be a good start. The problem is you are giving audiophiles a bad name. Every time one of the skeptics here decries how bad audiophiles are, they are thinking of the kind of stuff you say. Again, its not helpful for you to do that.
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They generate noise, probably signal correlated, possibly broadband noise that may intermodulate with and or add to audio. If on the AC line, the noise may be modulated at the line frequency. In some cases that could fool the brain like any other effects box tries to do. To make sound seem better by using a certain amount of fakery and illusion. However, we are perfectly happy to be fooled into thinking we see yellow on our RGB monitors. From some reason visual effects boxes are okay, but audio ones face more critical scrutiny.
That said, here is what people I trust say about Bybees: "Sometimes they can make a bad system sound 'better,' but they usually make a good system sound 'worse.'" Thus, I wouldn't recommend them. Maybe a bandaid at best.
I will say this: at least its hopefully not artificially enhanced to sound 'better' than real. If a recording, its already gone through the pickup patterns of mics, etc. Its not the same thing as being there. However, if want to fake the spatiality, there are lots of ways to fool yourself these days. Did you read what they are doing for upscale car audio these days? You can listen to your symphony in any venue, including your bathroom if you like. They digitally remove ambiance information and "reauthor" the recording to sound you you are really in whatever space you choose. You can even snap your fingers and hear it in that space. Is that an illusion or real, would you say?
Subjectivist: "Yes, it seems a little soft in the voices" Objectivist: "Yes, it seems to be down six decibels centered at 770 hertz" Which one is more accurate? Which one would you trust to design & refine your speaker design?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...
Did you read what I said? Did I say there were measurements? As far as underpinnings go, noise and especially correlated noise is the elephant in the room, too long neglected and or ignored. Its come to light in audio more than anything else probably because of research into dacs, and how their noise affects sound, including due to intermodulation effects in semiconductor junctions. There is more than dither noise to understand. In some ways its a sorta new subject or maybe a new focus on an old subject, at least compared to when I went to school. Bart Kosko wrote a good general book on noise. https://sipi.usc.edu/~kosko/profile_1.html
EDIT: Another good question might be who made a proper set of measurements on humans to show that Bybee effects should be taken as purely imaginary? Who took a proper set of measurements on John Curl to show he was lying when he said Bybees can affect sound? If we are going to demand measurements for everything that can be discussed, then we may as well all head over to ASR.
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One is more precise than the other. Either one may be accurate or inaccurate.
No, considering a singers "voice" can range from eighty-seven hertz on the lowest end, up to four-thousand hertz up top...which voice are you talking about? Accuracy is everything, not generalities... Oh, that's about right just won't do!
The objectivists will never win because the subjectivists will deny logic & reason and will change the rules or better yet ignore the rules.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...
The objectivists will never win because the subjectivists will deny logic & reason and will change the rules or better yet ignore the rules.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...
It’s been my observation amplifier designers are generally the last people to get on the quantum mechanics train. All aboard! Toot, toot!
The forum needs a ‘smack the forehead’ emoji.
Seriously.
Seriously.
Nobody exactly knows, because if you just did, you just influenced the state, therefor we don't know anymore 😉
Statistics is our only friend here.
Actually considerably lower: bass E is 79 Hz and there are some basses who sing down to C or even B, which is around 60Hz; OTOH soprano top C is around 1 kHz, and Zerbinetta’s top F# above that is still well below 2 kHz. No human can sing at 4 kHz.
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