There's Too Much Subjectivity in Audio

Early B.

....Now back to our regularly scheduled love fest...

PolkThug

heiney9 wrote: »

It's not that cut and dried to just record something and play it back exacty as it sounds.

Agreed, but keep in mind you don't need speakers to meausure the source media.

However, for a fair comparison of actual speaker output, things get a little trickier, an 'Early B Standard' would be needed to ensure that the speaker output is measured the same way every time.

So, staying on topic, you would need a standard source, ie the first 5 seconds of Diana Krall track2 CD, and an 'Early B Standard' of output measurement. Compare the source data vs the output data and you can get a % of deviation between the two, ie Speaker ABC recreated 92% of the source and Speaker XYZ recreated 87% of the source. You could even break it down into frequency ranges, ie lows 75%, mid 83%, highs 89%.

(I agree with everyone that says your ears are the final judge, but that is not really the topic here.)

Early B.

PolkThug wrote: »

Agreed, but keep in mind you don't need speakers to meausure the source media.

However, for a fair comparison of actual speaker output, things get a little trickier, an 'Early B Standard' would be needed to ensure that the speaker output is measured the same way every time.

So, staying on topic, you would need a standard source, ie the first 5 seconds of Diana Krall track2 CD, and an 'Early B Standard' of output measurement. Compare the source data vs the output data and you can get a % of deviation between the two, ie Speaker ABC recreated 92% of the source and Speaker XYZ recreated 87% of the source. You could even break it down into frequency ranges, ie lows 75%, mid 83%, highs 89%.

(I agree with everyone that says your ears are the final judge, but that is not really the topic here.)

DING! DING! DING!

Step aside, folks, we have another winner of the, "He Gets It" award.

shack

Early B. wrote: »

DING! DING! DING!

Step aside, folks, we have another winner of the, "He Gets It" award.

Let's give him a cookie....

MGPK

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

well I use more than my ears for that......

I do not mean to say that the specs are not part of it, for me they are indicators. I still say actual empirical data trumps bench testing.

Depends on the mic PT.......a logical assumption though that a high quality mic and cabling was used but I suppose its possible not.....thing is a mic cannot feel it has no emotion, which is for me what I like, the emotional enjoyment of listening to music, when the Amazings dig out some low bass from a track it makes me feel a certain way, how exactly deep on the Hz scale measurement just does not matter to me, for others it does and that is fine.

Tim de Parnivicci from EAR recently stated that humans can sense sound to 45 khz if so then the spec that the gear can deliver that Khz. would be relevent but how well the piece does it I still choose to rely on how it sounds or in the example how it feels when the track is playing.

RT1

I think you hit the nail on the head by stating the emotional component of listening.

I believe that everyone that is in this hobby/obsession has had at one time some kind of positive personal response with music and found the means to pursue and maintain those responses via audio/HT gear. Kind of like a crack addict getting their first "ringer".

But to use mechanical and electrical devices to develop a standard for what we feel when we hear a jaw dropping bass note or the clarity of a crash cymbal is going to be next to impossible (unless you're a transhumanist).

I personally know that my system is far from the best but, I do get a great sense of satisfaction listening to it by not coveting or obsessing on how I can pull an extra 3db of 35 Hz information to satisfy an aural craving. I go to a lot of live music and after listening to that...I listen to same music on my system knowing that it won't be the same but damn close enough for my liking. If anything...your system should help you develop a higher appreciation for live music because your systems should be a close standard if you are trying to reach aural perfection and you can use those systems for reference and benchmarking that experience.

ohskigod

WOW,

15 minutes of my life i'll NEVER get back......lol

getting subjectivity out of audio?... cmon man, thats like saying "lets take the subjectivity out of what makes a woman beautiful" Its impossible

case in point? I still think Rachel Rey is hot, but I've said before, I like a big girl.

your talking about a standard in audio when i can move my frikking couch by 2 inches and make things sound different? are you guys serious?

I can see it now......"ok guys, we got our reference all set up, now lets.....oh....wai...WHO PUT A CARPET ON THE FLOOR!!!!!!! CMON PEOPLE!!!!!!"

I like Shack's theory, if my ear likes it, so do I. If my system keeps my fat **** planted on the couch for other reasons than my fat **** being tired and lazy (i.e. i am enjoying what I am hearing), then its all good in the hood. Try new gear, sound better? yes? keep it. no? dump it, repeat!

PolkThug

MGPK wrote: »

But to use mechanical and electrical devices to develop a standard for what we feel...

Nobody is suggesting this be done. Microphones don't measure feelings or human perceptions, they only measure sound.

Early B's "concept" is nothing new, many speaker manufactures already compare their speakers' output to a standard (freq sweep) and some publish the results.

Martin Logan doesn't use a human ear for their pass/fail QA. They use a Crown mic to measure a sweep from each speaker and they have a +/- db deviation that the output must fall between.

cfrizz

Bravo Sona! Excellent post!

hearingimpared

madmax wrote: »

Let me loosely quote a phrase I heard at a polk tour: After all the measurements are done it has to be tweaked by ear to make it sound its best. (I say loosely quoted because I don't remember the exact words).
madmax

Yes I've seen statements to that same affect by Mr. Wilson too.

Music Joe

The difficulty is the ears are more subject to a 'parallax view' then the eyes.

jakelm

MY problem is the question I cant answer and I dont think I ever will be able to answer:

Is there something missing in the music I hear from my system?

PolkThug

jakelm wrote: »

MY problem is the question I cant answer and I dont think I ever will be able to answer:

Is there something missing in the music I hear from my system?

Probably not really missing (assuming decent gear), but more likely the amplitudes will vary from the source.

Early B.

jakelm wrote: »

MY problem is the question I cant answer and I dont think I ever will be able to answer:

Is there something missing in the music I hear from my system?

That's easy -- keep upgrading until the upgrades don't upgrade anymore.

Sounds silly, but if you want to know what's missing, you gotta try lots of products in a variety of combinations. Sure, it's wasteful, time consuming, and often frustrating, but most hobbies are.

jakelm

PolkThug wrote: »

Probably not really missing (assuming decent gear), but more likely the amplitudes will vary from the source.

Or should I refraze the question to, "its sounds great but not quite right yet";)

jakelm

Its like my big screen. I keep messing with the cutts and drives, color and tint. It drives my wife crazy.

Then I go in the other room and look at that tv. Then I really see how good my tv is. Maybe I need to do that with another HT system.

HMmmmm....I know a guy with a Bose 321, Maybe that will make me happy with my system.

PolkThug

I quit adjusting stuff and changing gear about 2 years ago, just check the convergence on the TV every now and then.

Yashu

My wife does the same thing... listens to her Boston Acoustics computer speakers with joy... then I listen to my system and am like "I can't stand this or that" and she reminds me that I said I would be happy with it once I got this thing or that thing.

In audio, we always KNOW what is wrong, but we do not always know what is not right.

As in, you know what you know, you know what you don't know, and you don't know what you don't know.

Sometimes it is better not to know, because once you do know, it doesn't take much, but once you know there is a way for us control freaks to do it better, it is like crack to us. The problem is, sometimes we do not know WHAT is better... many times it is just different. That is where measurements come in... they show the difference. The key word is different. They don't tell us what is better. That is, what I think the confusion is about. As an objectivist, I am not saying that measurements will tell you what is BETTER, but just highlight the differences. I know that any difference is theoretically audible, but how better or worse we perceive it, it something that takes listening to find out.

jakelm

I wish I had my wife's ears, "it all sounds the same to me".....that would save me alot of money.

MGPK

jakelm wrote: »

MY problem is the question I cant answer and I dont think I ever will be able to answer:

Is there something missing in the music I hear from my system?

Real life dynamic range.

The closest you are going to get to hearing to how it's supposed to sound if you were in the studio listening to the original or master recording.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs actually goes as far as finding the original recording equipment when they remaster an artists work from the original master recording. That could be a start. I have Rush's 2112 and Moving Pictures as well as Supertramp's Crime of the Century on their gold disks and it is a good reference to benchmark mass produced discs.

PolkThug

MGPK wrote: »

Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs actually goes as far as finding the original recording equipment when they remaster an artists work from the original master recording.

Why would you need the original recording equipment if you have the original master recording? Or did you word that wrong?

treitz3

Treitz3 wrote:

Due to the recent turn in this thread, allow me to step back in. I have to agree with TroyD......and before I say anything, screw the naysayers. Everything audible is not measurable. IC's,PC's,SC's may all have the same exact characteristics/metals/capacitance yada,yada...but when you place two similar items in the same space [utilized location], the end result is sometimes a slight change when it comes to audio reproduction.

I personally haven't played around with caps and high end internal components or tubes for that matter, but I have no doubt that they also can change an unmeasurable characteristic of the audio reproduction, even if nothing else changes but the sound stage, tonal qualities of an instrument/singer, or location of an instrument. Absolutely no doubt at all.

That said, have you ever had a measured sound stage difference?
Have you ever had a reproduced location of an instrument when the reproduced location changed/moved measured?
Have you ever seen texture in reproduced music measured?

I haven't as of today's date.

PolkThug wrote: »

What sounds can you hear that a microphone can't? If you listen to recorded music, obviously, microphones were used to record the data. If the music is on media, its measureable.

I will agree that your perceptions can't be measured.

Not to argue at all....you bring up a good point, but if a perception is noticed audibly, wouldn't it be able to be measured? It is audible? I'm trying to just say that all things audible are not measurable. In reference to reproduced music, not recorded.

Again, not confronting. I'm always open to new thoughts, ideas and so forth....but you have my head scratching on that one.

Yashu

IC's,PC's,SC's may all have the same exact characteristics/metals/capacitance yada,yada...

You may be confused because he said something that is wrong, and based his argument around it. Nothing is the same. Nothing. Aside from Bose-Einstein condensation, you are not going to have two things that have the same exact structure ever. On the quantum level (if you wish to go this deep), things are based on statistics and probabilities, and while, it is possible, it is not probable, and 99.99999999... enough 9s to be plenty % that two of anything from the same brand are going to measure and sound slightly different. Sometimes it takes only a slight difference to change our perception in a big way. That is what we seek by studying these things. We want to know how it works AND why it works, and also, what to do to use it to our advantage.

It is both a science and an art. We are using science to enjoy an art, but there is also a little strange luck with respect to synergy, and we know it is out there, so we keep searching until we hear what we want.

I began making my own music because I wanted to hear what I wanted, some of us endlessly tweak our systems to try to get what we want out of music that we enjoy. It is not wrong to want, and if it were not for this drive to make things a little better, we would not be as far as we are today.

jakelm

Ok ..this is aggrivating, 2 threads , just alike. I cant remember what i said in each thread, I have to keep scrolling up.

Damn you Early:mad::mad:

treitz3

treitz3 wrote:

IC's,PC's,SC's may all have the same exact characteristics/metals/capacitance yada,yada...

Yashu wrote: »

You may be confused because he said something that is wrong, and based his argument around it. Nothing is the same.

There is no argument. You may be arguing, but I am not. That said, maybe I should have been more definitive and added, "but with different connectors creating a mechanical therefore electrical connection that differs from one IC, PC or SC..."

Quantum physics is not what the topic I was talking about was. I was agreeing with TroyD in that everything audible is not measurable [when it comes to reproduced music].

PolkThug

treitz3 wrote: »

Not to argue at all....you bring up a good point, but if a perception is noticed audibly, wouldn't it be able to be measured?

Since it is still a perception, it may or may not be measurable.

treitz3 wrote: »

I'm trying to just say that all things audible are not measurable.

Using the word "audible" is tricky when used by itself. What's audible to you and what's audible to me may be the same or different -and may or may not be measurable.

To illustrate...

I can place two mics a foot or more apart in my listening position and use them to objectively center my soundstage, equal volumes will be recorded from both left and right if I'm spot on. People with good hearing in both ears will agree that the sound is centered. Unfortunately for me, my left ear hears better than my right, it sounds like the soundstage is slightly to the left. What is audible to me can't be measured because what I hear is not entirely accurate to reality.

Hopefully this is enough for you to stop scratching your head.

dkg999

My system sounds better when I have a big hunk of fresh blueberry pie with homemade vanilla ice cream on it. It seems to galvanize the ionic mass of the air in the room and the sound retains its purity as it radiates from my speakers to my ear canals. :eek:

TroyD

Again, I repeat....if you listen to your rig and you are more obsessed with what is wrong, you are in the wrong hobby. We listen 1. to music 2. on the hifi.

Second, is everything that is audible, measurable. You are assuming that our testing equipment is perfect and that there is nothing left that science hasn't discovered. I don't buy that. However, I could be wrong....I just don't think that our technology is 'perfect'. That said, even if we COULD measure everything and we DID establish 'standards' (whatever they may be)...it still wouldn't amount to a pile of dry ****. Nobody would ever agree. That being a true statement, it's a pointless discussion.

BDT

F1nut

TroyD wrote: »

That being a true statement, it's a pointless discussion.

Now, where did I read that before? Oh yeah, here it is.....

F1nut wrote: »

This is a pointless thread.

Great minds do think alike.

Yashu

Why is it pointless to search for answers? Why is it pointless to try and advance our understanding of sound and push the limits of the design of our equipment? Isn't this hobby about enjoying the reproduction of music? What is wrong with wanting to increase the accuracy and understanding of the reporduction of recorded sound? The more advances we make, the better the technology that becomes available to people like me that cannot afford the ultra high end. I want to enjoy the same things that you guys enjoy with systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

jdhdiggs

The reason it's pointless is as Troy said: No one would ever agree. I like apples, you like oranges, which fruit is better? Should we make a standard?

Additionally, even if all of the measurements comprising what you hear are made, there would be those always claiming something important wasn't measured and be a set of specs too complex for all but the most informed consumer to make any intelligent decision. That is what makes it pointless.