Yes, I agree. That is why I both measure and listen. But I don't push my subjective preference on every possible thread.
You seem to forget that you are the only one in this thread bringing up transparency.
Well - that's clearly subjective. Because if I don't like the music, I won't be able to listen in detail. YMMV, but it's still a subjective thing.
Reading this thread is subjective. Interpreting an FFT is subjective. Everything a human does with their senses is subjective. So what?
If you can't do quality work, not even briefly, unless its pleasurable, does that mean you couldn't hold down a job if it wasn't pleasurable 100% of the time?
There still is some hope that time will tell, who is right. 2:10 ... 2:35.
Until then, the happy merry-go-round may further go round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and... Hopefully. Because it's as fun as educative. Here and in every other audio forum of all imaginable parallel universes.
Clashing paradigms might be the greatest invention since the discovery of chocolate.
Until then, the happy merry-go-round may further go round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and... Hopefully. Because it's as fun as educative. Here and in every other audio forum of all imaginable parallel universes.
Clashing paradigms might be the greatest invention since the discovery of chocolate.
Colloquial use, comparable to 'by any measure.' Not that a tightening of terminology wouldn't be welcome. Sean Olive would be surprised that music can be used for determining subjective preference but that is not a metric.
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Most systems sound bad. Just different levels of bad. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, “but my system sounds fabulous!”
“Words are just words, they have different meanings to different people.”
- Bob Dylan
“Words are just words, they have different meanings to different people.”
- Bob Dylan
This must be the most content-free statement of all times!
Even the most seasoned politician will be green with envy.
Jan
Its not about the medium but an effort related to listening to music . It's a major PITA with LP but it mostly forces you to listen to the whole side on one take. It is much less Pita with CD but the thought of getting up and changing the CD makes you listen to at least a few tracks . I have 10TB drive filled with music and significant part of that drive are High Rez and DSD files. I'd be damned if I ever listened to the whole album. The other reason is my best drive which is now cheaply acquired MBL 1521 transport sounds better than a specialized audio computer serving in this duty not to mention that it looks infinitely better too and my recently acquired Theta Gen VIII sounds better on CD playback then Antelope Zodiac Gold on 384Hz High Rez files . Surely new $25k DSD Streamer DAC may sound better still but I don't have that budget. There were days when people aspired to have libraries at home with shelves filled with books and records. Now we aspire to have an open space , no cables and huge TV covering most of the wall. Music changed accordingly too. I have no problem with streaming and computer audio and once I grow up I will have that too but I'm already getting an information overload and tend to mostly listen to an FM radio on SOTA tuner these days.
That looks to be YOUR problem rather than the format. I happily listen to a whole album off my server in one go. In fact I am more likely to do than with vinyl as, when you get up to flip the side you think 'side B is limp let's try something else'.
You have that backwards, measurement excellence IS paramount here, as what other benchmark would you like to use, as indeed we all hear differently, so your ears are not the golden standard, nor are mine. So you need an objective benchmark, which is exactly what measurements provide.
Actually according the nobel comittee it's attoseconds now based on the prize for physics
Absolutely correct. I don't have problem with any format but acknowledge that what mostly motivates people is convenience not quality of playback.
And I can assume that it was the most important factor (among others) for you to choose that format too, correct ?
It was mainly because I had run out of space in the house for more music in physical formats so went to downloading and ripped what I had. Convenience really didn't enter into it, but nice to be able to play music on all 3 systems and phones from the server. I still have 2 turntables and 5 cd players
Not if someone is measuring the wrong things. Then too much focus on measurements can produce perverse results.
And we all see differently. What I mean by that is when two people walk into a room, they don't both necessarily focus attention on the same things. One person may notice a nice looking chair or maybe a big TV, while another person might focus on a piece of art hung on the wall. Nobody sees everything in room full of details even if they stay there a long time.
To a large extent the same is true with listening. Two people may go to a symphony concert. One person may hear balance of the woodwinds versus the brass. Another person may focus more attention on the textures formed by chordal notes summing to produce beats.
IOW a lot of perception has to do with habits, biases, and preferences for the focus of attention. If someone reads these words who doesn't like me, their bias may look for any fault, anything that makes for a possible angle of attack. Someone else might ponder whatever truth they may find it it. It means everyone reads differently too.
What people hear typically isn't wildly wrong things that don't exist. What they hear is from focusing attention on different things about the sound.
Why does it matter? Because in each example above, there is only one true reality. There is only one symphony being played at once, etc. So it means that everyone can hear differently, but there can be an underlying objective reality which is the goal, such as for audio design.
Then the question would be do typical measurements fully capture that reality? The answer as I see it is, no. If followed too far, eventually they lead to a distorted model (distorted in the general sense, not necessarily nonlinear distortion) of the true reality of whatever happens to be encoded on a CD or other media (which may already be a distorted model of some original musical event's reality).
Why am I so sure about measurements not accurately capturing enough of reality? That's easy. Because measurements, when they look pretty good, have little predictive value for how two well-measuring devices will sound different from each other. QED, the measurements miss too much of reality to be solely relied upon for design decisions, and or for comparing two similar designs.
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Chucking a brick into the pond. The LEDR test was developed to test imaging on stereo systems. Does that mean that, if your system does well on those tones but doesn't have a wide soundstage on a particular music track there is something wrong with your system or the recording?
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