Science and Subjectivism in Audio

bikezappa

In the last twenty years, there has developed a major dislocation between the scientific evaluation of audio equipment and "subjective" assessment, the latter philosophy having come to be called "subjectivism"....

This article is a fair discussion of the last 30 years of how audio is evaluated.
It also tries to explain the endless debate and the singular position of audio engineering.

http://www.douglas-self.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm

Glowrdr

Not enough pictures for me. Let me know when they make a movie

Erik Tracy

bikezappa

"A short definition of the Subjectivist position on power amplifiers might read as follows:

-Objective measurements of an amplifier's performance are unimportant compared with the subjective impressions received in informal listening tests. Should the two contradict the objective results may be dismissed out of hand.

-Degradation effects exist in amplifiers that are unknown to engineering science, and are not revealed by the usual measurements.

-Considerable latitude may be used in suggesting hypothetical mechanisms of audio impairment, such as mysterious capacitor shortcomings and subtle cable defects, without reference to the plausibility of the concept, or gathering any evidence to support it.

I believe this is a reasonable statement of the situation. Meanwhile the overwhelming majority of the public buy conventional hifi systems, ignoring the expensive and esoteric high-end sector where the debate is fiercest."

He is not trying to bust balls in the paper but just explain why there is this never ending difference between measurements and hearing.

The POLK Forum has asked this question and had many debates on this topic.

His approach to the topic and the history is straight.

"No doubt that most of the esoteric opinions are held in complete sincerity."

madmax

1% distortion, 0.0001%, 10%. Who gives a rats **** about the number if the 10% one sounds the best. And why does it? No one knows. There has to be millions of parameters (and combinations of parameters) which we cannot even measure. Numbers and audio do not go together. Great article!

bikerboy

Science hasnt got the right tools to really explain why some audio gear sounds better than others. We dont use scientific testing equipment to test why a certain wine tastes better or what perfume smells better. There are tools to do that but we always use our senses to make the final choice. There are no taste test machines that I know of and why we rely on test equipment to tell us an amp is good is beyond me.

treitz3

Science, hogwash, snake oil, peer pressure and even a scantily clad, red headed woman that just walked out of the pages of Playboy, feeling areas she shouldn't be at, that was sent directly by the Audio Gods suggesting softly in my ear what sounds better couldn't sway my opinion.

I trust my ears. They never lie.

bikerboy

I read the whole article and it seems that he says its easy to design an amp that measures well and therefor must sound good. Why is it that almost all stereo setups do not sound like real music?

treitz3

Measurements aside, no stereo setup sounds like real music. It's an approximation and artificial reproduction of the real thing.

BlueFox

Hard to read with the grid background, but I guess that is subjective. :rolleyes:

Interestingly, he didn't really say anything other than his own opinion.

WilliamM2

BlueFox wrote: »

Interestingly, he didn't really say anything other than his own opinion.

So you missed this part?

REFERENCES.


1] Martin Gardner. "Fads & Fallacies In The Name of Science" Ch.12, pp.140-151. Pub. Dover.
2] David F. Mark "Investigating The Paranormal". Nature, Vol.320, 13 March 1986.

3] Randi,J "Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions." Prometheus Books, 1982. pp196-8
4] Harris J.D. "Loudness discrimination" J. Speech Hear. Dis. Monogr. Suppl. 11, p.1-63.
5] Moore, B.C.J. "Relation between the critical bandwidth k the frequency-difference limen." Journ. Acoust. Soc. Am. 55, p.359.
6] Moir, J. "Just Detectable Distortion Levels" Wireless World, February 1981, pp. 32-34.
7] Hawksford, M. "The Essex Echo" Hifi News & RR, May 1986, p.53.
8] Self, D. "Ultra-Low-Noise Amplifiers & Granularity Distortion" Journ. Audio Eng.Soc, November 1987, pp907- 915.
9] Harwood & Shorter. "Stereophony & The effect of crosstalk between left and right channels" BBC Engineering Monograph No 52.
10] **** et al, "On the audibility of midrange phase distortion in audio systems" JAES, September 1982, pp.580-595.
11] Harwood, H. "Audibility of phase effects in loudspeakers" Wireless World, January 1976, pp.30-32.
12] Shinners, S. "Modern control system theory and application" publ. Addison-Wesley, p310.
13] King, G. "Hi-fi reviewing" HFN & RR, May 1978, p.77.
14] Harley,R "Review of Cary CAD-300SEI Single-Ended Triode Amplifier" Stereophile Sept 1995, p141
15] Baxandall,P "Audio power amplifier design" Wireless World, January 1978, p56.
16] Belcher, RA. "A new distortion measurement" Wireless World, May 1978, pp.36-41.
17] Baxandall,P "Audible amplifier distortion is not a mystery" Wireless World, November 1977, pp.63-66.
18] Hafler, D. "A Listening Test for Amplifier Distortion", HiFi News & RR, November 1986, pp.25-29.
19] Colloms, M. "Hafler XL-280 Test". HiFi News & RR, June 1987, pp.65-67.
20] "Hifi Choice; The Selection" Pub. Sportscene, 1986.
21] Greiner & Melton, "A Quest For The Audibility of Polarity" Audio, Dec 1993, p40
22] Greiner & Melton, "Observations on the Audibility of Acoustic Polarity" Journ. Audio Eng. Soc. Vol 42 #4, April 1994.
23] The AES. "Draft AES recommended practice Standard for professional audio- Conservation of the Polarity of Audio Signals." Inserted in: Journ. Audio Eng. Soc. Vol 42 #11, Nov 1994.

bikezappa

madmax wrote: »

1% distortion, 0.0001%, 10%. Who gives a rats **** about the number if the 10% one sounds the best. And why does it? No one knows. There has to be millions of parameters (and combinations of parameters) which we cannot even measure. Numbers and audio do not go together. Great article!

7: THE IMPLICATIONS.
This confused state of amplifier criticism has negative consequences. Firstly, if equipment is reviewed with results that appear arbitrary, and which are in particular incapable of replication or confirmation, this can be grossly unfair to manufacturers who lose out in the lottery. Since subjective assessments cannot be replicated, the commercial success of a given make can depend entirely on the vagaries of fashion. While this is fine in the realm of clothing or soft furnishings, the hi-fi business is still claiming accuracy of reproduction as its raison d'etre, and therefore you would expect the technical element to be dominant.
A second consequence of placing Subjectivism above measurements is that it places designers in a most unenviable position. No degree of ingenuity or attention to technical detail can ensure a good review, and the pressure to adopt fashionable and expensive expedients (such as linear-crystal internal wiring) is great, even if the designer is certain that they have no audible effect for good or evil. Designers are faced with a choice between swallowing the Subjectivist credo whole or keeping very quiet and leaving the talking to the marketing department.
If objective measurements are disregarded, it is inevitable that poor amplifiers will be produced, some so bad that their defects are unquestionably audible. In recent reviews [20] it was easy to find a £795 preamplifier (Counterpoint SA7) that boasted a feeble 12dB disc overload margin, (another preamp costing £2040 struggled up to 15dB ( Burmester 838/846) and another, costing £1550 that could only manage a 1kHz distortion performance of 1%; a lack of linearity that would have caused consternation ten years ago (Quicksilver). However, by paying £5700 one could inch this down to 0.3% (Audio Research M100-2 monoblocs). This does not mean it is impossible to buy an 'audiophile'amplifier that measures well; another example would be the preamplifier/power amplifier combination that provides a very respectable disc overload margin of 31 dB and 1 kHz rated-power distortion below 0.003%; the total cost being £725 (Audiolab 8000C/8000P). I believe this to be a representative sample, and we appear to be in the paradoxical situation that the most expensive equipment provides the worst objective performance. Whatever the rights and wrongs of subjective assessment, I think that most people would agree that this is a strange state of affairs. Finally, it is surely a morally ambiguous position to persuade non-technical people that to get a really good sound they have to buy £2000 preamps and so on, when both technical orthodoxy and common sense indicate that this is quite unnecessary.

bikezappa

treitz3 wrote: »

Measurements aside, no stereo setup sounds like real music. It's an approximation and artificial reproduction of the real thing.

I think we all agree with you.

bikezappa

bikerboy wrote: »

Science hasnt got the right tools to really explain why some audio gear sounds better than others. We dont use scientific testing equipment to test why a certain wine tastes better or what perfume smells better. There are tools to do that but we always use our senses to make the final choice. There are no taste test machines that I know of and why we rely on test equipment to tell us an amp is good is beyond me.

I think there is much chemistry in making wine. Wine producers use chemistry to make better wine.

Audio manufacturers use electronics to make amplifiers.

1: SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVISM.
Audio engineering is in a singular position. There can be few branches of engineering science rent from top to bottom by such a fundamental disagreement as the Subjectivist/rationalist dichotomy. Subjectivism is still a significant issue in the hifi section of the industry, but has made little headway in professional audio, where intimate acquaintance with the original sound, and the pressing need to earn a living with reliable and affordable equipment, provide effective barriers against most irrational flights of fashion. (Note that the opposite of Subjectivist is not "Objectivist". I understand this term refers to the followers- if any- of the philosophies of Ayn Rand)
Most technologies have universally accepted measures of performance car makers compete to improve MPH and MPG; computer manufacturers boast of MIPs (millions of instructions per second) and so on. Improvement in these parameters is universally accepted as progress. In the field of hifi, many people seem to have difficulty in deciding which direction forward is.

Working as a professional audio designer, I often encounter opinions which, while an integral part of the Subjectivist offshoot of hifi, are treated with ridicule by practitioners of other branches of electrical engineering. The would-be designer is not likely to be encouraged by being told that audio is not far removed from witchcraft, and that no-one truly knows what they are doing. I have been told by a Subjectivist that the operation of the human ear is so complex that its interaction with measurable parameters lies forever beyond human comprehension. I hope this is an extreme position for it was proffered as a flat statement rather a basis for discussion.

bikezappa

Glowrdr wrote: »

Not enough pictures for me. Let me know when they make a movie

I wil,l do you need it in 3D and color? Grin.

bikezappa

bikerboy wrote: »

I read the whole article and it seems that he says its easy to design an amp that measures well and therefor must sound good. Why is it that almost all stereo setups do not sound like real music?

Great question. I think the weak link is the room and the speakers. Of course poorly recorded music is another big factor.

bikezappa

treitz3 wrote: »

Science, hogwash, snake oil, peer pressure and even a scantily clad, red headed woman that just walked out of the pages of Playboy, feeling areas she shouldn't be at, that was sent directly by the Audio Gods suggesting softly in my ear what sounds better couldn't sway my opinion.

I trust my ears. They never lie.

Trust but verify.

"Some tentative conclusions are possible as to why hifi engineering has reached the pass that it has. I believe one basic reason is the difficulty of defining the quality of an audio experience; you can't draw a diagram to communicate what something sounded like. In the same way, acoustical memory is more evanescent than visual memory. It is far easier to visualize what a London bus looks like than to recall the details of a musical performance.

Similarly, it is difficult to 'look more closely'; turning up the volume is more like turning up the brightness of a TV picture; once an optimal level is reached, any further increase becomes annoying, then painful.

It has been universally recognised for many years in experimental psychology, particularly in experiments about perception, that people tend to perceive what they want to perceive. This is often called the 'experimenter expectancy' effect; it is more subtle and insidious than it sounds, and the history of science is littered with the wrecked careers of those who failed to guard against it. Such self-deception has most often occurred in fields like biology, where although the raw data may be numerical, there is no real mathematical theory to check it against.

Erik Tracy

The article, while a 'link on the internet', didn't seem very professional (grammatical errors, clunky flow, etc)- so not sure if it is to be considered of any 'weight' in the never ending debate of audio.

And it kinda ended like Monty Python's "Holy Grail" - it just stopped.

Nothing more than another link to post that 'objectivists' will use to say how misguided and deluded those that hear differences are.

drselect

bikezappa wrote: »

I think there is much chemistry in making wine. Wine producers use chemistry to make better wine.

Audio manufacturers use electronics to make amplifiers.

There is also a lot of chemistry being used to make amps-at least in their components.

And just like in wine tasting - listening to music involves chemistry through the use of your senses.

bikezappa

Erik Tracy wrote: »

The article, while a 'link on the internet', didn't seem very professional (grammatical errors, clunky flow, etc)- so not sure if it is to be considered of any 'weight' in the never ending debate of audio.

And it kinda ended like Monty Python's "Holy Grail" - it just stopped.

Nothing more than another link to post that 'objectivists' will use to say how misguided and deluded those that hear differences are.

The writing flow is difficult sometimes.

He has written many artciles in EW and written many books an amplifier design, but that doesn't really make him right.

"Some people feel uncomfortable and distrustful with science. We are all different, but science makes the amplifiers work in a cost effective manner.
Would you spend big bucks on a amplifier with gold plated knobs that a reviewer said sounded wonderful with no data to support it?

"It seems unlikely that subjectivism will disappear for some time, given the momentum that it has gained, the entrenched positions that some people have taken up, and the sadly uncritical way in which people accept an unsupported assertion as the truth simply because it is asserted with frequency and conviction. In an ideal world every such statement would be greeted by loud demands for evidence.

However, the history of the world sometimes leads one to suppose pessimistically that people will believe anything. By analogy, one might suppose that subjectivism would persist for the same reason that parapsychology has; there will always be people who will believe what they want to believe despite the hardest of evidence."

Not trying to start any pissing contest just politely showing another side of the issue.


.

bikezappa

drselect wrote: »

there is also a lot of chemistry being used to make amps-at least in their components.

And just like in wine tasting - listening to music involves chemistry through the use of your senses.

+++1

BlueFox

WilliamM2 wrote: »

So you missed this part?

Not at all. The references are what validate my point.

The entire article is filled with unrelated references that clutter and hide his opinion. Their only purpose is to trick the gullible into thinking there is an element of legitimacy to the article.

Strip away the irrelevant references, and you are left with these types of quotes, and answers.


Some anonymous quote:
"Cables are directional, and pass audio better in one direction than the other."

No reference or attribution given.

His answer:
"Audio signals are AC. Cables cannot be directional any more than 2 + 2 can equal 5. Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point in further comment. "

His opinion. No reference or attribution given.

This is the style of the entire paper. All fluff and opinion. While there is nothing wrong with that, due to the irrelevant references, some people who lack reading comprehension skills will read it as fact, not opinion.

kevhed72

treitz3 wrote: »

Measurements aside, no stereo setup sounds like real music. It's an approximation and artificial reproduction of the real thing.

When referring to certain types of rock music, such as punk, "college" radio, "sound bands", and even "classic rock" such as Rush or the Stones, couldn't one make the arguement the goal of a good setup should like the original, master recordings, vs. listening to the bands at even the smaller concert venues? I have seem many concerts of these musical types, and while enjoyable for numerous reasons, I couldn't say I have really went for the SQ of the actual music. Just a thought...

bikezappa

BlueFox wrote: »

Not at all. The references are what validate my point.

The entire article is filled with unrelated references that clutter and hide his opinion. Their only purpose is to trick the gullible into thinking there is an element of legitimacy to the article.

Strip away the irrelevant references, and you are left with these types of quotes, and answers.


Some anonymous quote:
"Cables are directional, and pass audio better in one direction than the other."

No reference or attribution given.

His answer:
"Audio signals are AC. Cables cannot be directional any more than 2 + 2 can equal 5. Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point in further comment. "

His opinion. No reference or attribution given.

This is the style of the entire paper. All fluff and opinion. While there is nothing wrong with that, due to the irrelevant references, some people who lack reading comprehension skills will read it as fact, not opinion.

I can't imagine any EE or material scientist disagreeing with that claim.
There is no evidence or test data that shows cables are directional.
EE starts with the fundatmental assumption, based on data, that metal cable resistance is equal in both directions.
Consider that the statement "cables are directional" as fluff.
Why would you think cables are directional?
The only method to determine if cables are directional is to measure them in both directions.
What data would you need to show you cables are not directional?
What data do you have to state they are directional.
If you don't believe the data that's ok also.

tonyb

treitz3 wrote: »

I trust my ears. They never lie.

Exactly, no need to verify it by science or to anyone else.

bikezappa

tonyb wrote: »

Exactly, no need to verify it by science or to anyone else.

He never said not to trust your ears. They are the bottom line.

However consider the following 2 options.

Both amps sound very similar to your ears.
Well known reviewer says Amp1 sounds much better than Amp 2 based on his subjective hearing tests.

The data

Amp 1 costs $3000 and has 3%THD at rated 100 wpc.
Amp 2 costs $300 and has 0.1 THD at rated 100 wpc.

Which do you buy?

Suppose you had to by an amp without hearing it which would you buy?

I think all he is saying is that subjective reviews on amps with no hard data have limited value. And be very doubtful of subjective reviews that are counter to basic science.

BlueFox

bikezappa wrote: »

I can't imagine any EE or material scientist disagreeing with that claim.
There is no evidence or test data that shows cables are directional.

Thank you for proving my point. The author makes up a quote, and then provides a response. Somebody reads the made up quote, believes it, and now expects others to disprove a made up quote.

First, while I have not read or heard everything in the world, I have not read that claim. I have seen some cable manufacturers state that, due to the nature of their cable design, their cables work better when aligned source to sink. Of course, that is completely different than making a blanket statement that cables are directional.

Also, I forgot to add this part earlier, but why is the author saying somebody who says his made-up quote are not capable of designing amps? Are there any amp designers who said the made-up quote? Is it because people who live in a fantasy world have a hard time dealing with reality?

Anyway, it is apparent the original poster is trolling, and not interested in anything other than starting irrelevant arguments.

jinjuku

BlueFox wrote: »

His answer:
"Audio signals are AC. Cables cannot be directional any more than 2 + 2 can equal 5. Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point in further comment. "

His opinion. No reference or attribution given.

That's not an opinion. Just a simple principle of physics.

madmax

bikezappa wrote: »

I think we all agree with you.

I don't, given the right setup and recording. I have several LP's which you can close your eyes and not tell it is a recording.

bikezappa

madmax wrote: »

I don't, given the right setup and recording. I have several LP's which you can close your eyes and not tell it is a recording.

Is that a subjective observation? Grin.

tonyb

bikezappa wrote: »

He never said not to trust your ears. They are the bottom line.

I think all he is saying is that subjective reviews on amps with no hard data have limited value. And be very doubtful of subjective reviews that are counter to basic science.

Well then, thats the perverbial merrygo round isn't it ? Limited value ? Yes and no,seeing that most buy gear not by scientific fact, but by subjective reviews. In the end, most don't give a rats **** about the science of a piece of gear anymore than they concern themselves with the science in their choice of a toaster. Does it work ? Does it sound good ? Build quality ? Proven performance with actual users ? I'll send you a check. No scientific data sheet needed.