Hoisted on your own petard?

After completing a PhD in electrical engineering at Imperial College London, Floyd E. Toole joined Canada's National Research Council (NRC), where he would stay for more than 26 years doing audio-related research. He continued his research at Harman International after leaving the NRC in 1991. When Toole left Harman in 2007 (footnote 1), Harman kept the work up under NRC alum Sean Olive (footnote 2)—which fact surely has much to do with the excellence of their current loudspeaker lineup.

The importance of Toole's project is hard to overstate. His goal was to provide a scientifically rigorous foundation that could inform choices made by audio designers, especially designers of loudspeakers. He succeeded. Drawing on his own research and the research of others, he established a template for what I call the "classical" loudspeaker: flat frequency response; excellent, well-controlled off-axis behavior; nonresonant cabinet, etc.

Toole's main technique was to carry out blind listening tests over many years with many subjects and analyze their preferences statistically. He learned that when it comes to loudspeakers, people mostly like the same things. As they get more training as listeners, they still like the same things; they just become more certain about their preferences.

The fact that there tends to be agreement between trained and untrained listeners adds depth to the research—it's much more than a mere survey of broad consumer preference—yet the work does not attempt to capture individual variation. It averages over preference. That's what needed to be done—really the only way forward, especially at the time the work was done and maybe still. And yet, while a loudspeaker designed to the classical Toole template will sound the best to the largest number of people, some people will prefer something different. That's not a defect of the research—it is what it is—but it is important to note what it isn't.

Some of the most passionate, deeply committed designers in the audio world refuse to buy in to the classical model. Their creations may lack the broad appeal of a classical loudspeaker, but many of them are very good at certain things and appeal to the significant subset of audiophiles who value those virtues over others. As the late Art Dudley wrote in one of his last columns, "From its acoustical beginnings, when two incompatible forms of physical media—Edison's cylinders and Berliner's flat discs—slugged it out for primacy, domestic audio has attracted an almost incalculable number of iconoclasts, heretics, mavericks, nonconformists, lone wolves, enfants terrible, and hidebound kooks. Because the above are among my favorite people, I don't have much of a problem with that state of affairs." (footnote 3)

Nor do I—I like the fact that the world is rich and varied. There is no single path forward but, rather, many paths leading in many directions and ending at many vistas (footnote 4). You may not prefer the view there over another view, or the sonic perspective, but someone does, and if your mind and ears are open, you can enjoy it. Do we want to live in a world where everything sounds the same? I don't.

It's disheartening, then, when speakers (and other components) that so obviously do not aspire to classical behavior continue to be judged by classical standards. "That speaker doesn't have a flat frequency response!" shouts an all-caps critic on some online forum, about a speaker whose designer never aspired to a flat response. "This speaker has a resonant cabinet!" exclaims another, about a speaker with a cabinet that's tuned to vibrate in a particular way. "That designer is inept!" writes a third, about an engineer who has sold tens of thousands of speakers—perhaps more—and won awards.

I admire Toole's work, but I do not admire conformists who insist, often with insufficient self-examination, that everything be judged by the same narrow criteria. There may be a single best way to roast a chicken, but I'm glad different chefs use different recipes. We at Stereophile encounter this problem ourselves sometimes, especially in measuring but also in listening. A loudspeaker (for example) that is intended to have a certain sound should not, I feel, be panned because it sounds different from what the reviewer expects or prefers. The reviewer's job is to characterize, not to condemn. As Art often advised reviewers, "Tell us what it sounds like!" If a loudspeaker is a sonic outlier, we must tell our readers that, but we have no responsibility to condemn it unless its sin is grave indeed.

And when a component is measured, what should it be compared to? Here, again, the reviewer's job is inform readers when a component deviates from what is classically thought of as excellent behavior, especially when that deviation is likely to be audible (although it is often difficult to know). We must of course tell them when that flaw is especially egregious and without obvious justification.

But there's a difference between ineptitude and nonconformity. Confusing the latter with the former makes the world a more arid, less-rich place. One can pursue excellence without excluding passionate outliers.

It's especially disheartening when narrow-minded online critics use one aspect of our coverage—our measurements—to attack the other side: our subjective judgments. We're providing a complete picture; the two halves make a whole. You don't get that from our competition.

Broaden your mind. Seek perspective. Look at the big picture.—Jim Austin


Footnote 1: Today, Toole lives in L.A. and heads his own acoustics and psychoacoustics consulting firm.

Footnote 2: A report by Kalman Rubinson on taking part in listening tests at Harman's facility can be found here.—John Atkinson

Footnote 3: Art addressed this topic in Listening #207—his fourth-to-last column.

Footnote 4: Which assuredly does not mean that forward progress isn't possible.

COMMENTS
reponkic's picture

**** Self censored ***

Jim Austin's picture

So you think you get to decide not only what toys I play with but also what my duty is. Gotcha.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored ****

CG's picture

I may regret this...

But, I'd like to interject a couple of very objective points here.

One is that the measurements as currently popular in audio circles are incomplete and can therefore be misleading.

For one thing, in order to measure down to very low noise levels, averaging techniques are used. The idea is that the signals you want to measure are consistent over time and the noise is random. Therefore, the average of the desired spectral components will stay constant over a number of measurement samples while the noise will average to a lower value since it is by definition random. Unfortunately, the test gear can't tell the difference between random events that may be audible occurring on a somewhat random basis, at least with regard to the number of test samples taken, and true random noise. This is a problem not just in audio measurements - it happens all the time in communications systems. (Easy to look up...)

Second, all this equipment under test is measured separately with little attempt to determine interaction with other system components. For example, please point to where anybody, anyplace has measured the common mode signal rejection of any piece of audio gear, especially above the audio band. Or, the power supply rejection with regard to the AC mains connection. Or, even, what noise is put back into the AC mains connection by the device under test. And, how does any of those vary with applied signals, aka program material? In many cases, these few examples can cause performance degradation well beyond seventh harmonic performance at -123 dB. Or -67 dB.

Third, intermodulation distortion really dominates the distortion spectrum when you get above a few desired tones in the band of interest. As in, actual sound (music). This was mathematically demonstrated three quarters of a century ago. The behavior of devices under this kind of loading often is not predictable based on an analysis of the harmonic spectrum of a single tone. Although ASR has begun to use the multi-tone testing function available in the latest and greatest Audio Precision test products, these tests are kind of on the academic side. Yeah, some results look better than others, but just what does that means? How does the human aural system react to various distortion spectra? And, obviously, actual sound is not a bunch of equal amplitude tones spread from 20 Hz to 20 KHz. So, while these tests are great in stressing a device under test, they may not be entirely relevant to how we hear things. Our hearing systems are more sensitive to some frequencies than others, and our perception of sound is also not exclusively based on what goes into our ears. These tests are the right idea, but they aren't fully examined enough to give us an idea of what actually sounds better to listeners. (Maybe not so easy to look up...)

A couple other observations:

You do know that strain gauges are made from silicon, right? (Easy to look up...) Transistors are microphonic to a degree. As are the capacitors used in amplification gear. To what degree that matters in actual practice, I can't say. And, how various stands provide isolation or a more euphonic path for feedback, I also can't say. Some enterprising scientist could perform this experiment and tell us.

Also, cables really are directional. In the RF world, most everybody understands the idea of structural return loss and how the impedance of a cable changes over its length due to manufacturing tolerances. Given the length in wavelengths for audio cables, this may not be significant. Except if a power amplifier is susceptible to RF interference or is marginally stable and is affected by the outside-the-audio-band impedance. Digital signal interconnect cables, like those for USB connections, certainly are long enough in terms of wavelength for structural return loss to matter. I'd also point out that, again in the RF world, practitioners have become more aware of a phenomenon called passive intermodulation distortion. (Easy to look up...). I've never bothered to measure the possible affects of this in the audio band, but again the outside-the-audio-band performance may be significant. Personally, I can't dismiss that possibility without some kind of detailed analysis.

If you don't think the above is based on physics and electrical engineering, check it all out for yourself.

Jim Austin's picture

I have not had the experience, but it's quite well known that in some electric circuits, certain components (notably ceramic capacitors) can "chatter." This of course is electrical energy being transformed into mechanical energy and not the other way around, but mechanisms do exist.

My interlocutor has also overlooked one very obvious directional aspect of cables: Sometimes a conductor is grounded on only one end.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

CG's picture

No need to thank me!

Certainly, many materials have piezoelectric and other conceptually similar characteristics associated with them. This works both ways - apply electricity in some way and you get vibrations; apply mechanical energy and you get electrical variations of some kind. The real trick is finding out and understanding just what that does to the system performance and whether it's actually meaningful.

I plain forgot about the deliberate cable geometry aspect! Doh!

Personally, I think it's important to fully investigate the whole system from many perspectives in order to give a really objective and honest evaluation of pretty much anything. This includes how people hear and perceive sound and react to it. (I know very, very little about the existing science behind all of that part.) But, people are entitled to own opinions regardless of how they get there. That doesn't make them scientifically complete and therefore accurate.

Jim Austin's picture

>>The real trick is finding out and understanding just what that does to the system performance and whether it's actually meaningful.

Exactly right. When I first got seriously interested in perfectionist audio, I assumed my physics training would give me a major leg up. I soon learned that to get answers to any of the interesting questions, you have to do actual, quantitative work--you can't just answer them conceptually. Mechanisms exist, so you have to figure out if the effects are large enough to be perceived. And that is hard to do.

Jim

CG's picture

A lot of the underlying mechanisms really are measurable. You "just" have to have an idea of what to measure, though. In general, people aren't smart enough to wander through the everything of life and suddenly have great revelations about something they weren't even previously thinking about. (I'm not that smart, for sure!) So, you have to have a bit of an idea of what to look for and be aware enough to look further into something when it feels relevant or otherwise significant.

A big problem is that almost nobody has the time or resources to do this kind of work. Once upon a time, researchers at places like Bell Labs and the BBC had a certain amount of freedom to investigate ideas that vaguely had something with the business that employed them. For example, look at Jansky's work at Bell Labs. Those days are long gone, I'm afraid. Imagine if two decades ago somebody had funded John Atkinson with $10+ million per year to figure all this out, with no other responsibilities. We might have a better idea about all this. Didn't happen, did it?

JHL's picture

...and Jim's point to the profound difference between data and complex behavior. The data Objectivist hasn't thought just how limited the data is, how it's an abstract that doesn't substitute for phenomena - data has no sound - and how it fundamentally differs from total complex behavior.

The Objectivist is subject to a presumption about data that it comprehensively conflates to behavior, but that complexity simply doesn't and cannot exist. Behavior lies in a different realm than the parsed, limited, isolated data concerning it. The data Objectivist is guilty of sighted bias.

Whether this is a universal problem in the sciences is a point that can be explored, but it's certainly a point where human perception goes. The ear and mind are instantaneous processors of all complex behavior at once, while the microphone is a vastly more acute logger of a single aspect of behavior whose data requires interpretation.

I mentioned how our Objectivist also hasn't the technical basis to apply data to behavior meaningfully. As you allude above, there are scores of principles deep in every component and sub-component in electronics, transmission, and transduction systems. Nobody knows all of them but everybody hears all of them all at once, imperfectly as that may be.

My concern is the commoditization of audio into presumed approved principles - "The Science", which is a presumptive fallacy - from which comes a dumbing-down of the art until it ceases to exist. When the finest audio made is very arguably the extreme DIY rig of alternative tech - some dating back to the Mid Century - you know we're just in an era of "objectivism" that's highly subjective to a contemporary conventional wisdom. One day we'll look back on it as such.

Jim Austin's picture

Right. I was referring specifically to the experience of sending power through a circuit and having the ceramic capacitors or other components rattle unexpectedly.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

CG's picture

One more thing!

You *have* had the experience. If you have a digital audio component anywhere in your system, you've used a crystal oscillator that fundamentally works because you can make a piece of rock vibrate when you apply an electric field to it. Or, a Diesel engine. Or, have had an ultrasound examination. Or... Have used a computer.

reponkic's picture

**** Another act of self censorship ****

Jim Austin's picture

The fact that cables are different electrically oriented one way instead of the other has nothing to do with the directionality of cables. Okay.

It's time for me to add that I require posters in this forum to be respectful. You long ago passed over that line. Fix it or your posts will be removed. That goes for others in this conversation, too.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

reponkic's picture

I boldly presume to be one of the few on this forum who has done any actual EE design. Lets take a standard EE design tool, say LTspice, and try to find any directional cables, or speaker cables that have "orientation dependent" properties etc. No luck. You won't find any capacitors that need to be broken in or transistors that act as strain gauges or any other similar notions that exist in the minds of audiophiliacs.

Now, those engineers at Analog Devices might be really simple minded and should learn from audiophiles, or many audiophiles here don't know what they are talking about. Anyone can judge for him/her self. But given that electrical devices (some that are many times more sensitive and mission critical than audio gear) in the whole world run quite well well without relying of the, hm, creative ideas of audiophiles, I think the judgment is clear.

As regards removing my posts, don't worry -- I will self-censor them for you.

CG's picture

Care to bet on that?

The actual EE design part, I mean.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Edit: I'll leave my original response above, for everybody to see. Yeah, I was dumb to respond to the original postings (they went to my email in box, prior to editing).

In thinking about it, I realized that trying to compare credentials and all that solves and proves nothing. What's the point? Nobody wants to read that bologna.

If anybody has any interest in reading up on the subjects I earlier posted on, I'll be happy to locate some references and post them here. That way you all can decide on the subject matter rather than taking some guy on the internet's word. If not, no big deal.

I get why people might not be interested in any of this, since for most of us this is a hobby. For enjoyment. Y'know - fun. (I know - a really stupid concept.) Various people find different aspects of the hobby fun to investigate. Arguing is not high on my own list of fun stuff.

reponkic's picture

...when you compared transistors to strain gauges.

Nobody asks you to compare credentials. You can shine in other ways. Derive the equations for electro-mechanical coupling between a speaker and transistors in a simple amplifier circuit (can be a single transistor class A for simplicity) and quantify the "strain gauge" effect of transistors on the output. Show your work and prove that you are a genius and I'm ignorant. Should be easy for a confident fellow like you.

But, something is telling me that you will scoff at this challenge. And I know why -- to someone who studied EE, it is painfully obvious that your "knowledge" consists of googling stuff and regurgitating words, without understanding their scientific foundations. Your verbiage betrays you, dear fellow.

Poor Audiophile's picture

betrays who as being full of yourself dear fellow.

Jim Austin's picture

>>Just shows how those engineers at Analog Devices lack ideas -- I mean, what do they know?!

I know you didn't intend it that way, but it is a legitimate question. A long time ago, at a time when the audio press was dominated by measurements, some audiophiles started noticing that what they were hearing didn't correlate very well. Some of the best-measuring (eg) amplifiers simply didn't sound very good. So they had an audacious idea: Maybe the engineers don't have the market cornered on wisdom. Maybe the best way to evaluate the sound of a component is to listen to it.

I started out from a more or less purely scientific perspective (although I've always read widely, and I've always been oriented toward music and literature also), and my perspective evolved from there. If you look, you'll find no shortage of writing from me looking at the hobby from a scientific perspective--although my mind was always more open than yours.

I don't remember who suggested that audiophiles are motivated by luxury and status, or even if it was here or on that other site. Whoever it was, it was among the more clueless posts I've seen on this or any other board, as anyone who knows anything about this hobby can attest.

The people who do read Stereophile--the people I make the magazine for--are in it for the music and the experience of sound. They take deep, subjective dives into sound, serious as death and pleasure. Some are willing to spend serious money to get there--if they have it, and if they believe, based on an audition, that the equipment on offer will deepen their experience of the music. Few things in their lives are more important (SO's, children, good health)--and they don't give a damn what anyone else thinks about their practice of this peculiar hobby. (It's ironic, or maybe it's just clumsy thinking, that people who attack our hobby so viciously assume we do it to impress people.)

Views on science as it relates to audio vary, but I think it's safe to say that most of us, while certainly not anti-science, are committed to listening first. We listen first and suspend disbelief because so many of us have had the experience of hearing what others say we can't possibly hear--and some of us have noticed how what we hear/experience is limited by what we assume is scientifically plausible. Which is another way of saying that "you hear what you expect to hear" works both ways.

Audiophiles aren't ignorant, or naive. We are aware, to varying extents and degrees of detail, of how our stance on our hobby relates to science. It's a choice we have made--to listen first. We don't murder puppies, or deny the Holocaust or the efficacy of vaccines, or sell (or buy) shark cartilage as a fake cancer cure. We are willing to spend significant money on equipment that gives us pleasure. Some of us--not all--want to see measurements to corroborate our judgements on the quality of a piece we are considering, but as a rule, we listen first and trust what we hear.

If you think that's evil, or wrong, or misguided, fine. But do save the lectures, or post them elsewhere. You're quite welcome to stay and engage in respectful debate, as long as it doesn't get personal. But unless you're willing to open your mind and learn from others as you would have them learn from you, you are wasting your time and making this website a less civil place.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

reponkic's picture

...urge audiophiles to patent their novel ideas and make tons of money by designing chips and circuits for AD, TI and other companies.

I'm expecting audiophiles will make tons of money from the design of directional fuses and revolutionize the quality of computer communications with $10k/meter USB audio cables. Those simpletons who design supercomputers will thank you for saving their machines from dropped bits.

Oh, almost forgot, this is sarcasm -- but one should spell it out for those characters who lurk around here and have no sense of humor.

reponkic's picture

...

reponkic's picture

*** Self censored ***

JHL's picture

...doesn't have the technical chops to defend his position, Jim. He essentially demands from his targets the entire library of audio, which no one's going to delivery in a comments thread and which he's not going to absorb anyway. After all he hasn't so far.

That's because he's a subjectivist. He's the little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing guy, arguing in bad faith.

And that's on top of throwing all your furniture around with a dozen fallacies.

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored -- nobody should challenge a postmodernist ****

Bogolu Haranath's picture

See, 'Obscurantism' in Wikipedia :-) .......

JHL's picture

But it's always the same. The self-identified Objectivist - ot this type - is the most subjective animal in the batch. It has always been such, not that you don't know that already.

The Objectivist extrapolates *limited abstract* data into sound. Sound never need happen.

The Objectivist projects. To the Objectivist complete strangers are moral defectives.

The Objectivist invariably argues. You may not oppose the Objectivist.

The Objectivist never speaks in terms of connection to the music event behind the recreation.

The Objectivist's own system invariably wants for musicality.

And on and on. The Objectivist - of this type - also harasses, condemns, reads minds, and frankly has enormous holes in his understanding of how things actually work. He's a graph paper tech, a few inches deep at best.

These are imperious times. Postmodernism has given us the subjective, variable reality; the up is down and left is right reality. And in hifi it wants to stamp out the entire human element. It comes gunning for you for you are defective.

It's a technical fascism and it bothers me because great audio is a wonderful, human element that for moments, transcends and suspends disbelief. It's instinctive and organic. And the Objectivist of this type never experiences it. He doesn't have the equipment, no pun intended.

Listening just doesn't factor because the gallery has been sacked. The art's been outlawed. It's what happens when you become *this* dismal. I wish it were different.

RH's picture

Well, that seems well-strewn with strawmen.

To take some parts:

"The Objectivist's own system invariably wants for musicality."

I'm sorry, but that comes off as just self-serving snobbery - just the reverse version of the "objectivist" position you are decrying.

"Musicality" isn't some objective or even highly specified quality. It's used to denote a listener's own reaction. Audiophiles tend to apply "musical" to denote systems they find "musical." You find a system "musical." But which system is "Musical" varies hugely among audiophiles - that's why you find audiophiles loving music through every type of speaker design you can mention. So you have no grounds on which to say someone else's system lacks "musicality" other than to say "I don't like it." You have even less grounds to imply anyone in this thread's system lacks "musicality" as you haven't heard their system.

It's just an empty audiophile dig at other audiophiles, insult for insult sake. (And, btw, Amir over at ASR is a measurement guy, and he owns Revel Salon 2 speakers - highly raved up by Stereophile staff. You'd have little grounds aside from pique to call those unmusical).

"These are imperious times. Postmodernism has given us the subjective, variable reality; the up is down and left is right reality. And in hifi it wants to stamp out the entire human element. It comes gunning for you for you are defective."

That seems to me to get things completely backward. Postmodernism is typically understood to critique Enlightenment Rationalism and the form of empiricism that arose from those schools of thought.
More pointedly, postmodernists tend to cast skepticism on a single objective, seeing empirical and truth claims as contingent and relative "you can have your truth from your perspective; I can have mine." Etc. It's attacked science as it has been mostly practiced and understood for over a hundred years.

That is the very opposite of what "objectivists" of the sort you are trying to criticize actually operate. Those who take a science-based stance on the truth claims about audio value measurements for technical claims, and scientific-type controls for subjective claims (e.g. double blind testing) as the gold standards for justifying confidence in a claim. It's based on a general concept of an objective truth - that there are truths about the way the world is about which you can be RIGHT and WRONG.

And, crucially, it is a system whereby you can determine if you, yourself, are "right" or "wrong." So, for instance, if I think an audio tweak changes the signal somehow, from the "objectivist" position I can test that claim, measure the signal, and if the signal is the same in before-tweak and after-tweak measurements...then I have evidence that I was mistaken.

And you are not restricted to measurements in testing claims either.
The claim could be that "I can hear a sonic difference between A and B, though it won't show up in measurements because the instruments aren't measuring what I can hear." Claims like those are legitimate and accommodated within this objectivist paradigm. You can set up a subjective test, using only your ears - a blinded test controlling for variables like sighted bias - to see if you can show evidence you can hear this difference. If you keep failing the blind test, well, you've got evidence you were wrong.

This is in no way some sort of funhouse logic "up is down and left is right reality." This is how science operates!

By contrast:

Audiophiles on the pure subjectivist side of the debate are closer to postmodernists. I'm referring to the many audiophiles who view subjective experience "listening to gear" as the ultimate or final arbiter of audio evaluation. "The best way to test audio claims is to listen for yourself, and if you hear a sonic difference, then establishes there is a real sonic difference. Because the BEST tool we have is our ears and our brain."

This is a very common stance among audiophiles. The problem is that, unlike the objectivist appeal to science, this subjective stance often becomes unfalsifiable. There is no way to show this type of audiophile that he may be in error.

If the subjective audiophile believes his new boutique AC cable has changed the sound of his system, how do you test this? It you say "Let's actually measure to see if the sonic signal has changed." The subjective audiophile rejects this test on the grounds "That doesn't help: I know what I heard. If you show me that the measurements are the same with the old and new cable, all that means is you aren't able to measure the right thing - what my ears can hear but you haven't measured."

Ok, so we suggest a test of the subjectivist's actual perception: You suggest a blind test to control for sighted bias. Then the subjectivist objects with claims about all the ways blind testing isn't a valid test for what he hears - "totally different from the type of listening we do in regular music listening" and the like.
So the subjectivist has rejected a way to test his own subjective claims.

It's kept unfalsifiable - the subjectivist can claim until the cows come home that the new tweak has "deepened the soundstage and made the high end more liquid" and his paradigm provides no way to challenge it because even if you listen and say "no, it doesn't" he can always say "Well, clearly your ears, or your system isn't refined enough to detect what I detect."

So it isn't the (non-strawman version) "objectivist" who is going all post modernist: it's the audiophile who rejects scientific empiricism, ways of finding out one's subjective opinion is wrong or right, as valid for the realm of testing his own claims and experience.

Of course, in practice there's a span between these extremes, and one's views can be more nuanced. But as a general characterization of the two poles of the audiophile debates, again, it seems to me you misdiagnosed things.

Cheers.

JHL's picture

...with strawmen as consciously let off the chain at folks who, like one in this thread, see fit to appear and call everyone a crook. In a case like that - which is representative of far too many self-styled, so-called Objectivists - I feel no obligation to not respond in kind, which is personally. You don't negotiate with terrorists and you don't meet that level of presumption, projection, insult, and incivility in the middle. Nobody was ever reasoned out of something he wasn't reasoned into.

Not strawmen, therefore; evident history. It happens and it's happened and it is out of place. We owe it nothing.

To some of your points:

Musicality is the organic sound of nature. In the reproduced sound it is the virtually intangible, over-the-threshold quality of anything that suspends disbelief. The best of it transcends comprehension and inspires awe at the technical accomplishment while immediately transferring attention back to the performance.

That's an audacious accomplishment. In 40 years I've witnessed scores of listeners become enrapt by it - as rare as it is - and scores of folks on the other hand who hear a mere stereo system as a stereo system. Put another way, a significant enough sense of reproduced reality - of technology - per A. Clarke, is indistinguishable from magic. Everything else is sound from boxes.

I don't accept that by a meaningful definition in our context, musicality is arbitrary, haphazard, or up to opinion. At the same time it's not definable, *especially* by the data. That's the conundrum, and it proves that audio is for the hearer at the same time as truly truthful, real sound is impossible to deny. Whether this can be reckoned by a rule or to a science or by a majority or pursuant a consensus is as irrelevant as it is not our problem.

And that shows that nobody retains their credibility while telling the other guy what he can or can't hear and/or enjoy. Many Objectivists fail right there. So while none of us have that right, or the right to inspect the other guy's ethical and moral standards, we do know that crap sounds like crap. Like I said, reconciling that is not a problem I lose sleep over. But I know what I hear and when it's right. I reckon you do too.

(As for folks who have effectively trained themselves to hear only amplitude through high order constant power vertical multiway speakers and prefer it, I'm not one of them. I know technically why this is and as noted, I know where to go to better it; by significant degrees, *including* in the tech and its sciences. Hearing like they do is not guaranteed to be the same as pursuing top-shelf musicality.)

Postmodernism simplified finds that when all minds perceive reality somewhat differently the extended principle is that reality cannot objectively exist. The Objectivist latches onto this and with a little folder of random, armchair data accuses the next guy of inventing *his* reality, typically because he's a fool or a profiteer.

However the fuller perspective naturally sees that the roles are reversed. The Objectivist's subjectivity is to nothing more than a contemporary and very incomplete convention, and to an incomplete, if any, interpretation. Many Objectivists find the very presence of what looks kinda sorta like acceptable data constitutes something to cudgel the other guy with.

This is a subjectivity. It's a perversion and an inversion of the reality of reproduced musicality.

As for a science-based stance, pursuant what we actually know about these devices, remember that we know parts of a whole. Science, in order to be science, accepts this and well accommodates its own open-endedness. The scientific mind does not take a slice of reality and use it as a weapon. Too many objectivists do, however, with their folders of random factoids.

With regards to testing, the ultimate test is the ear, naturally, and the notion that seeing your dinner ruins your taste buds or recreating a recipe six months later by taste is impossible is risible. (The real sighted bias hazard of our time is incomplete data incompletely spplied.)

Remember, we do this instinctively - we do it to see if we're sufficiently over the threshold into suspension of disbelief. That's not measurable except physiologically and personally, which I trust comes back to some of your own points about musicality. It's also quite undeniable - if the sound of Miles Davis appeared intact in your living room tomorrow, how would you react? Could you *not* react?

I'm going to therefore reject your opinion that standard, died-in-the-wool, ears-on, audiophile Subjectivists are the reality-shifters. I don't see that historically, statistically, empirically, rationally, or personally. If snake oil peddlers exist and infiltrate the ranks is not my concern, unless it happens to be my scientific pursuit to find it, in which case I'll be doing 1% opining on the matter and 99% lab work, that being the scientific method. I won't be in this comments thread either, tearing hunks out of the publisher, the reviewer, or the rest of us.

Bias and judgementalism as core defects are always descending on the audiophile Subjectivist but forever landing on the armchair Objectivist and his superiority. I don't much care if that's his gig; I do care that he's both as aggressive as he's always been, as ill-informed about how things really work, and that he'll have plenty of free time to organize mobs to force all devices into sets that exhibit the right kinds of data. The rest of us will be too preoccupied listening through that data and chatting nicely about sound to make a sound defense of the moats. And the bad always drives out the good.

It is the Objectivist who's inverting definitions, RH, and with it the broader, deeper realities of what we're doing. He's abusing the word science, and he's spending too much time poking around in someone else's head, always finding things he's made up himself.

It's truly a pot and kettle problem, a problem that if we keep an open mind about true science and allow things to unfold instead of wrongly demanding they already have, we just might survive. And I'm not terribly concerned if in not negotiating with terrorists I'm not at the same time gently lobbying them not to be ignorant and offensive.

As for the science, it itself is a mile long. This thread isn't the place to republish it all and claim we have reproduced sound down pat in any way, shape, of form.

Roger Scruton said postmodernism hated beauty because it was offended by love. Music is beauty and I love this pursuit. I don't see that much in people who attack my sensibilities. Further, data-reading is not much of anything if it's not first interpretive. It is abstract, after all, and it is therefore commonly asserted with whatever style it can muster, to paraphrase Dennet. In its worse forms it's just a bad performative, either of outrageous solo actors or of mobs. Look what it did in this thread alone. It spun intrusive malefactors into leading authorities and the genuinely curious into charlatans.

Weak minds assume weak minds must forever be led, inevitably to like congregations and utopias, someone else said. Let's not.

RH's picture

JHL,

I'm afraid I just didn't find a lot of clarity in your post. So many contentious claims mixed together in a way I found hard to untangle.

"Musicality is the organic sound of nature. In the reproduced sound it is the virtually intangible, over-the-threshold quality of anything that suspends disbelief. The best of it transcends comprehension and inspires awe at the technical accomplishment while immediately transferring attention back to the performance."

Well, that pretty much proves my point. First of all, you've given your own definition of "Musicality" which included a lot of vague, non-specific language. Others may have a different take on the term.

But in any case, it still seems entirely subjective and under-determinitive, given that the sensations you described are subjective reactions, and audiophiles who have owned every type of system under the sun have had similar "awe inspiring" and "amazed at the technology" and "focused on the performance" experiences. As I said, it's a subjective evaluation and if some other audiophile experiences those things with HIS system, and finds it musical, you are on no grounds to say he's wrong. You can just say a version of why YOU don't find it to be those things.

And I have no idea, from your own claim, as to whether I would have the experience you have in front of whatever system you are referring to. Many times I've heard systems that have left it's owner absolutely swooning in bliss, that left me cold.

" At the same time it's not definable, *especially* by the data."

Sure...and that's leading to the unfalsifiability I was talking about. You've told me you can hear some "virtually intangible" quality in a system. How do I know your claim is true? Well, because you feel its true and claim it's true. Can it be challenged by objective data? Nope. You've judged it not definable by data.
Now, if I hear the same system and judge it differently than you - NOT musical - will you rescind your claim? No of course not. What you think you hear is The Truth, and if someone else doesn't hear it, it's something to do with them, not you or the truth of the musicality of the system.

In practice, what you get at the output is a subjective "truth" that can't be vetted against an objective standard. Welcome down the road to postmodernism.

"Postmodernism simplified finds that when all minds perceive reality somewhat differently the extended principle is that reality cannot objectively exist. The Objectivist latches onto this and with a little folder of random, armchair data accuses the next guy of inventing *his* reality, typically because he's a fool or a profiteer."

That just gets it wrong again. It's just one strawman after another including equivocation in your use of the term "reality."
The objectivist, as I described, starts with the idea there are objective truths about reality which are not dependant upon mere opinion, and about which we can be "wrong" and "right" about.

The objectivist will evaluate the subjectivist's claim about reality by appeal to measurements and controlled subjective testing. If the subjectivist claims "fails" by these measures, the objectivist does not believe that the subjectivist created some "new reality" in some relativistic post-modern sense. The objectivist says the subjectivist is simply in ERROR about reality. (Provisionally, as any scientific inference would be).

So you are really just playing with words rather than making a cogent argument that actually addresses the methods and beliefs of most "objectivists."

"With regards to testing, the ultimate test is the ear, naturally,"

Yup, you seem to be running along the lines of the very type of subjectivism I described, showing that at least I am not the one building strawmen.

You keep alluding to "incomplete data" but don't give any examples.
What you seem to be saying is that you hear certain things, but the objectivist hasn't grounds to object because he's bringing "incomplete data." But that's just a claim hanging in the air, yet to be justified. And if your justification is "because the thing I claim to hear is real, so if it's not in your data your data is wrong" then THAT is completely begging the question, and is just another unfalsifiable claim like I've earlier described.

So, again, you seem to be getting most things the wrong way around here.

JHL's picture

...in a way I'm sorry you haven't developed enough of a broader perspective to see how this works.

First, realize that I don't care that you can't deduce what you should from plain language, or that you've started to descend to that selective argumentation I've seen from too many audio Objectivists. Or even that you seem to like to step around clear issues to declare victory. But when you do that you start to expose not an objective take on the problem but pedantry and accusation.

Let's try this a final time, just staking on the principles of the thing. Again, whether you accept or do not accept the plainly evident is not anyone's concern; whether you as a collective movement can see it in your good graces to allow the rest of the world their reasonable experiences and practices may be.

The sound of nature is Harry Pearson's accepted definition of musicality going back fifty years. He put it something like the sound of acoustic music in a natural space, but it's entirely self-evident that there is somewhere in the cornerstones of the high end the tenet that music has a sound. I've heard it for over sixty years and apply that reference in audio. If you, to make another oblique point on the Internet, expect that it's the sound of the dance club downtown is up to you. But the true and objective definition - because we know your purported expertise on and sensitivity to variable realities - has been cemented into place as long as this pursuit has existed.

So far nothing's proved your point so much as apparently you hadn't yet established terms.

Next, as for how you know my claim about what I've heard is true concerns me - and everyone else of reason and temperament - not in the least. Since I'm repeating myself saying that I'll leave it there. But know that the crux of that matter, seen upthread in attacks on parties, is that it's simply none of your business. Given that data is as abstract as it is and given it exists in a different realm entirely than what any of us are hearing, I'm also not concerned if you can't hold up a graph, squint through it, and pass judgement on my system. Frankly, I'm surprised your stance degraded this quickly...

About postmodernism, I lifted the word from one of our rabid Objectivist's random attacks because of the irony. By the way, stop reading my label Objectivist - referring to the context, which is Audio and graph-reading - as objectivism as a whole.

Like I also said before, I don't honestly care if when railing our Objectivist (read: audio) for his rude ignorance I produce for *you* content that you find you can agree with. Your stuff is getting more impertinent and that tends not to motivate either. And again, these aren't strawmen; they're observations. They're part of a clear pattern of evidence. Given how fallacious the ignorant Objectivist can be, eyebrows rise at just how limited your list of them turns out to be and how your deployment is so pedantic.

Much more than that and I'll be helping you reduce whatever it is you think we're on about to more circular cherry-picking. Simply, audio Objectivism is too-frequently built on accusation, draws from false assumption and presumption, has nothing to do with musical (natural-sounding) reproduced sound, isn't nearly as objective a position as its fanatics think it is, intrudes on objective listening - the hearing of an open mind without precondition or sighted data-bias - tends to reduce valid design classes and types down to one commodity, and shows its ass with its remarkable rudeness.

It appears in this comments thread and it was part of the original opinion so whether you can or can't align that with your definition of a word or your deployment of your pet disagreements is also, once again, irrelevant to the bigger picture. Those are simply observable patterns of evidence, like watching the sun come up, and whether they co-exist with others - like audio snake oil or high audio prices or even all the rubes and fools who like things you don't - is something you're free to write a book about.

I just happen to know what authentic sound is. I know approximately how to get to it, I know many will never experience it, and I know that arguing about how I happen to like my steak is your fool's errand. You're completely free to declare victory over any of that you like but the results will always speak for themselves and I have next to no interest to prove any of them to someone else to their increasingly, obviously, limited satisfaction.

Whether they step over the line and impair my enjoyment, however, or slander us out of their own convinced ignorance, is another thing.

I'm not going to satisfy you with how I align with a particular set of terms and conditions, which was pretty much how I began here. I suggest you fly back up a higher altitude and take another look at this.

RH's picture

"The sound of nature is Harry Pearson's accepted definition of musicality going back fifty years. He put it something like the sound of acoustic music in a natural space, but it's entirely self-evident that there is somewhere in the cornerstones of the high end the tenet that music has a sound."

Again, this just shows the imprecision of your concept and the language you are using. Pearson's definition of The Absolute Sound was: "The sound of actual acoustic instruments playing in a real space."

At least that has some clearer notion of accuracy - a hi fidelity system can better approximate the sound of real acoustic instruments in real space.

But once you bring in terms like "Musicality," let alone use it as interchangeable with The Absolute Sound, you are muddying the waters.

Let's say I listen to a real singer playing a cover of a song I like. The singer sings plays an acoustic guitar in an acoustic space. Right there, this fits the bill as the type of scenario referenced in the concept The Absolute Sound.

But what if the guitar is out of tune, the singer's voice is terrible and he's singing out of tune and out of time, and just ruining my musical enjoyment of the song.

How does it make sense for me to also adduce the term "musical" or "musicality" in describing the actual MUSIC?

I have a friend who absolutely can not stand saxophones. If he hears a real saxophone playing in real space, it will sound awful and "unmusical" to him.

To be conceptually clear, we ought to be able to distinguish qualities of the music from the "accuracy to the sound as it occurred - The Absolute Sound." Otherwise this hopelessly meshes together what could be an objective standard for a hi-fi to shoot for, with what is inevitably bound up in a subjective appraisal of what someone finds "musical." If for you by "musicality" it denotes only The Absolute Sound, then to be clearer just reference The Absolute Sound. But if "musicality" denotes not just that a system is sounding like real instruments in real space but ALSO must have the character of moving you musically, involving you musically, THEN you are hopelessly binding your own subjectivity in to this term and you end up with the under-determined problem I've described, where it's only good as a reference to what you like. It's an opinion.

"I just happen to know what authentic sound is."

And when you hear it in a hi-fi system, this is "musicality," correct?

Are you always correct in this assessment? Is it at all falsifiable?

Can you be wrong in determining a system has "musicality" and if so how can you determine if you would be wrong? What test could show you are in error? Basically, if one person finds a system to have "Musicality" and another does not, how can you determine who is right?

JHL's picture

...precision of language thing would play better if you could be rightly accused of a precision of the good graces of absorbing obvious points. Seems you'd rather conflate a pedantic definition with, as you put it, 'concepts'. Seems you'd also say pretty much the same thing and then claim ownership.

Except my concept is completely intact and judged by the backlash it seems to be producing, I'm leaning more toward capitulation than reason where your remarks go.

Here again I don't really care if you call me chopped liver; whether HP rightly pointed out that reproducing natural sound was self-evidently the goal of high end hifi is etched in history. More importantly, because apparently it needs a fourth telling, that sound is what we read reviewers we trust for.

In other words, it's a human characteristic, as if that needed repeating three or four times. And it is why we do this. When a couple of us aren't attacking the host or arguing for no good reason, I mean.

None of that's impenetrable or even hard, of course, unless we want to take shots at it for other reasons. Like I suggest, fly back up to a higher altitude and clear your head.

How does it play in your mind that people use equally human descriptions of what they hear reproduced by their gear? I'm not sure I really care what you you think of their thoughts, RH, but when you get pedantic because apparently you somehow feel owed I might just say so.

How will we know if the other guy pours ketchup over his turntable and calls it the very sound of the Berlin Philharmonic? Again I don't really care, once because he can do what he wants, and once because even he owes you nothing in that regard. Now before you chalk that up as a victory for objectivity - excuse me, audio Objectivism - let's turn it around a little.

Let's ask by what standard you, his truth-telling arbiter and your little Orwellian use of terms, will demand he make his determination and restate his opinion? What piece(s) of data will you use to ensure that the other guy and I meet your expectations for, as you put it, a clearer notion of accuracy, a precision of words, and presumably, admittance into the audio Objectivity club?

I've left you a dozen some odd applications of the intersections between reasonable terms for everything from the tech to the experience and you haven't picked up on them. Then try this one: What yardstick will you, arbiter, apply to ensure that you are not offended by his or my interpretation and application of any of those terms?

Because, to answer your next question once more, I do in fact know what constitutes a reasonable presence of sufficiently over-the-threshold, natural sound and further, I know why it happens technically and I know therefore fairly reliably how to get it. (It's not a question of a performers tunefulness either, RH, so I don't know why that's in there.)

That's not a controversial statement and it's not even a controversial situation or phenomenon. How do we know? Because people *hear* and because in some cases, they also pass on their thoughts about it. This leaves you and I either trusting them - and appearing in the comments threads behind them - or we can go do the work ourselves. Because it's either that or just shutting the system off because none of it hews to someone's standards. Which I'm beginning to suspect here.

Can I be wrong determining if a system has musicality? Of course not, just like I can't be wrong knowing if that's enough or too much salt on my dish. Or wrong assessing my involvement in any other perceptible pursuit aimed at gratifying the same needs as, presumably, you would. At least so I'd thought.

Remember, the absolute requirement that the next guy pass an absolute standard for you is just dumb. Also dumb is the view that we know enough about complicated phenomena to predict what it's doing ahead of time. Proof? Well, you tell me where you proof lies, RH. Apparently that's where this all leads, and given the obsession bad audio Objectivity has arguing about sound, I don't think too many will find that simple observation controversial. Look at this thread.

But let's get back to the nub of it. By what standard and metric will you, RH, advise the world about the musicality, in this context, of a pair of stereo speakers? Because while I'm no fan of the argument that says you can't criticize what you yourself can't solve, in this case that's about what you're putting to me, just in another way.

I'd asked you if the sound of Miles Davis appeared, intact and unaltered, in your living room tomorrow would you react as such. I asked if you could somehow not react. You didn't pick up on that. In lieu of it, just tell me how you'll know when it does approximately occur, using your rules of loudspeakers as your guide.

That would be a great gift to mankind, RH, that knowledge. The other one would be that the rest of us don't have to answer to the audio police about it or anything else.

RH's picture

"Can I be wrong determining if a system has musicality? Of course not, just like I can't be wrong knowing if that's enough or too much salt on my dish."

Right. Your claim that a system displays "musicality" is always to be taken as true, and it's unfalsifiable. Which as I keep pointing out, means it's a subjective on your part. An opinion. It's not portable beyond your own opinion because you can't tell me how anyone can be right or wrong in assessing a system as having "musicality." Except to take your own subjective claim that you know it when you hear it.

This is why I wrote that your assessment of the "objectivist" as being postmodernist had things backwards. The subjectivist is working with a concept of objective reality such that claims about it can be tested for being right or wrong. Whereas you have landed in something closer to the postmodernist relativity. Unless you declare your own opinion to be the arbiter of reality, anyone can assess "musicality" from his own point of view, making it a relativistic truth claim. And you have no grounds on which to actually judge someone else on this, to say they are "wrong" in thinking their system has musicality where you think you are "right." (And you did indeed render a judgement that objectivist systems tend to be devoid of "musicality." You've shown why no one needs to take this seriously as anything other than your opinion).

But I'll have to finish there. Although the subjects we are discussing are fascinating, I find too much of your writing far too hard to parse. For instance:

"Let's ask by what standard you, his truth-telling arbiter and your little Orwellian use of terms, will demand he make his determination and restate his opinion?"

Try as I might, I can not understand sentences like that. I can only infer from the phrase "little Orwellian use of terms" that it's meant as an insult, but beyond that I have no idea what you are trying to say. And much of your post contains those types of declarations.

So it doesn't seem further interaction between us will be fruitful.

So, thanks for the conversation.

Cheers!

RH's picture

typo in the above. Should read:

" The OBJECTIVIST is working with a concept of objective reality such that claims about it can be tested for being right or wrong."

JHL's picture

Your claim that a system displays "musicality" is always to be taken as true, and it's unfalsifiable.

I've been talking about the right to have an opinion. You seem to think that's an unacceptable subjectivity. You keep coming back to that as if it were some gauge of credibility.

We'd been circular. Now we're just missing each other.

The original article was about not abusing subjective finding in the name of science. I've also been saying that science doesn't exist, at least not as a completed whole. And it does not.

My claim that a system is musical or is amusical is always true by my standards. Whether that claim is unfalsifiable is unimportant. The complete, closed-ended, putative science of audio doesn't exist either, after all, but as some strange variant of it is commonly deployed anyway, is an assumption rooted in peering into incomplete data or into the other guy's rig.

Which as I keep pointing out, means it's a subjective on your part. An opinion.

I would certainly hope so.

It's not portable beyond your own opinion because you can't tell me how anyone can be right or wrong in assessing a system as having "musicality." Except to take your own subjective claim that you know it when you hear it.

My subjective claim is portable, however. As an expert, so is the reviewer's. Despite our assumed objective knowledge you haven't isolated a science to predict or to confirm sound quality either, so where does that leave us?

I'm not on about your proofs, RH, logical or scientific. They're irrelevant, partly because they interfere with the pursuit and partly because they can't actually exist.

This is why I wrote that your assessment of the "objectivist" as being postmodernist had things backwards.

Of course it didn't; we didn't construct a separate logical analysis of how I could correctly use the word in that context. I did however tell you why I chose to use it and you've ignored that.

The subjectivist is working with a concept of objective reality such that claims about it can be tested for being right or wrong.

Some but not all. After all we don't know how anything came to be in this world yet we think we have a rational scientific *theory* about origins. Science is like that, as I said: It's open-ended, and our theories - which are not facts - generally give way to other theories and yet others and maybe eventually we confirm one of them. Audio is no different.

Unless you declare your own opinion to be the arbiter of reality...

It's not. It's an arbiter of a reasonable state of affairs under a certain set of conditions. Remember, this isn't a science. It's a malleable set of running findings.

...anyone can assess "musicality" from his own point of view, making it a elativistic truth claim.

Like ketchup over a turntable or like the convincing sound of the natural performance. You're free to discern otherwise, that being reasonable under the terms of the circumstance, although when you pour ketchup over the turntable to try and get there you become an opinion of one without any pattern of experienced evidence.

We're always free to ask the neighbors over and ask them about it too. In high end audio we have neighbors.

However, it's not a truth claim. It's a preference about which I can make a true statement: It's truthful that I find that system musical or that I find it amusical. I'm neither lying or delusional.

Eventually we arrive at a collective agreement that generally speaking, Big Macs come from McDonalds. Whether this rises to a science of two patties and special sauce is bounded by the whole continuum of culture. Same for audio. And it's a big world.

The irony is that at such point as it puts its foot down and stops the clock it stops being science. That's what must be avoided, that and pedantry, judging, heckling, and the rest.

And you have no grounds on which to actually judge someone else on this, to say they are "wrong" in thinking their system has musicality where you think you are "right."

Logically no, just as the Objectivist has no right to his absolutism, especially when he's working from an *opinion about* science when science is never wholly written. See, where specific knowledge about speakers goes it's a Venn diagram. It's never complete in one place or time.

(And you did indeed render a judgement that objectivist systems tend to be devoid of "musicality." You've shown why no one needs to take this seriously as anything other than your opinion).

That's what experience does and reviewers do; hear and report. Much experience says that what Jim calls the classical model is less than convincing. There's even a consensus among accomplished technicians and listeners what this sounds like, where it comes from, and how to engineer it out in favor of better sound.

Whether that constitutes a science or even a logic that pleases you doesn't alter that reality. Practitioners would, however, probably prefer not being harassed by their lessors under cover of some misled scientism.

I find too much of your writing far too hard to parse. For instance:

*"Let's ask by what standard you, his truth-telling arbiter and your little Orwellian use of terms, will demand he make his determination and restate his opinion?"*

I can only infer from the phrase "little Orwellian use of terms" that it's meant as an insult...

I was and have been asking where this objective whole science of audio lies. Obviously there is none.

Returning to the original article above, the extraordinary liberties taken by many audio Objectivists - enough to warrant that article, apparently - prompt me, in the line you quote, to push back against contortions I think are aimed at controlling speech and meaning, and those that eventually become the robbing of intent.

RH's picture

"I've been talking about the right to have an opinion. You seem to think that's an unacceptable subjectivity."

Nothing I've written even suggests that you or anyone else doesn't have a right to an opinion.

Rather, I've simply been recommending being clear about when we are referencing something subjective vs objective, so that we can be on the same page and be clear with each other.

I love the album Sgt. Pepper by The Beatles.

^^^^ Subjective claim. An opinion. You could have the opposite opinion and that's ok in the world of subjectivity. Your not liking the album does not entail that I'm wrong in liking the album.

Sgt Pepper by The Beatles was released in the year 1967.

^^^ Objective claim. This is something one is either right or wrong about, and it can be checked against objective facts. If you claim it is wrong, that it was released in 1963, you are objectively wrong.

It is good to be aware when are are talking about subjective claims vs objective claims, isn't it, so we don't confuse issues and communicate clearly?

"My subjective claim is portable, however. As an expert, so is the reviewer's. "

That's your claim. You didn't justify it.
I'm not saying that subjective impressions are useless in communicating to others what they too may hear from a product. Far from it; I support the utility of subjective reviews to a modest degree. But some forms of communicating are better, clearer than others and I find your writing about "musicality" to be unclear.
And also, as I said, you have written confusingly about the nature of subjective claims - your claim that objectivist systems tend to lack musicality was clearly meant as a critique, as if you were actually revealing something informative to the reader. But if it's just your opinion (unfounded too, without hearing your interlocutor's system), then it can be greeted with a shrug. "who cares what you think?"

" It's truthful that I find that system musical or that I find it amusical. I'm neither lying or delusional. "

Yes! There we can fully agree!

If you report to me that you find system A more musical than system B, then I have no reason to doubt your subjective report. It's only when you start ascribing claims, hypotheses, causes, that you claims can be challenged. For instance, if you claim that system A sounds more musical because of your new audiophile usb cable, then...no...your subjective anecdote does not establish that factual claim.

But this is how many audiophiles tend to operate: They presume that if they made a change in their system at all, and the perceive the sound change, they mesh together the two things "I perceived that X changed the sound of my system!" When you are unaware of slipping in to confounding variables like this, you can easily misdiagnose the reality of what is going on. We know this in countless ares of science, and audio is not some magic bubble protected from these problems of subjective misattribution.

"Logically no, just as the Objectivist has no right to his absolutism, especially when he's working from an *opinion about* science when science is never wholly written. See, where specific knowledge about speakers goes it's a Venn diagram. It's never complete in one place or time. "

You keep making these vague assertions, without supporting evidence or examples.

Of course science is never "wholly written" but SO WHAT? Does that mean that any darned madcap proposition is just as probable as any other? That tomorrow I'll be able to run faster than light rather than ride my bike to work? Of course not. The problem is that the hoary old "Science hasn't explained everything you know!" is one of those trite truisms adduced by every pseudo-scientific crackpot to cover for the fact his claims don't pass scientific muster. "Just wait, you'll see, science will see I'm right one say!" Right, sure, but we'll wait for that day, ok?

So I have no idea just what particular example in audio you might have in mind when adducing these vague "science is never wholly written" phrases.

For instance, the reason humans usually invent instruments is to EXTEND beyond what we are capable of. Microscopes capture things finer than we can see with our eyes. Telescopes see further. Microphones/probes detect ultrasonic frequencies beyond what we can hear, etc. So the old "our senses are the most sensitive instruments to evaluate sound" is just misleading, but you hear it a lot from audiophiles who claim to hear things that "can't be measured."

If you tell me you can hear a 33kHz tone....you're wrong. I can as much as guarantee you won't be able to tell me when a 33kHz tone is playing or not.

Similarly, if an audiophile claims to heard a difference between two USB cables that are both showing a bit perfect rendering of an audio signal, it won't do to just maintain the claim and write off any measurement tests or appeal to current theory on "science is never wholly written." That just puts you in line with the same ruse used by the crackpots as well. Again...I just don't know what in the world you are trying to cover with the appeal to science being not fully written.

"Science is like that, as I said: It's open-ended, and our theories - which are not facts - generally give way to other theories and yet others "

This is the old "science is always changing" thing that, again, is so often used by crackpots. That isn't to establish that YOU are a crackpot. Rather, it means that you have to distinguish yourself from a crackpot if you are going to appeal to the same type of moves. Because it at least looks like you are setting up the idea that if you make a claim and I adduce current science to dispute it, you are ready to say "but your science isn't solid...it's just going to change again anyway..." But, you haven't been clear either way on this.

Further, yes theories actually can be facts as well. Water freezes at 32F. That's a fact. How was that fact established? Evidence...many different instances of water reliably freezing solid at that temperature (caveats aside for now).

A theory, an explanation for a phenomenon or set of data, is testable and accrues evidence just like "facts." So the explanation for why water freezes is found in the general Theory of Thermodynamics (or specific thermodynamic theory) which have accrued enough evidence to grant them "fact" status as well.

That's why scientists will point out that other theories, e.g. Evolution, are both a "theory" and a "fact."

Anyway....ya got me goin' there.

Peace out.

JHL's picture

Nothing I've written even suggests that you or anyone else doesn't have a right to an opinion.

If only we had a right to some silence.

Anyway, an abstract right is one thing. Being endlessly browbeaten, as some must, is another.

Apparently the audio Objectivist frequently disagrees with you. So do you when you leap to challenge my hearing something even when I don't honor your terms. The problem, per the topic, is the Objectivist's intolerance of views that don't hew to his narrow reading of what he thinks is science. Judged by the article above and by many comments following it, that's not a rarity.

Rather, I've simply been recommending being clear about when we are referencing something subjective vs objective, so that we can be on the same page and be clear with each other.

No you haven't. Objectivity and subjectivity, no matter how many times it's pointed out, always seem to devolve back into your treatment of them. Not definitions; treatments. Uses. You resemble the attacking Objectivist; always pitting the next guy against your yardstick.

And who cares if we're on the same page? I didn't second-guess *your* terms.

You could have the opposite opinion and that's ok in the world of subjectivity.

Nonsense. I have a rational, objective view on where both objectivity and subjectivity lie per the topic. You won't allow it.

It is good to be aware when are are talking about subjective claims vs objective claims, isn't it, so we don't confuse issues and communicate clearly?

That'd be fantastic if still ultimately irrelevant to the subject. The subject wasn't the legitimacy of claims, it was the free expression to have them and not be assailed by deeply subjective biases and slanders.

"My subjective claim is portable, however. As an expert, so is the reviewer's. "

That's your claim. You didn't justify it.

I didn't justify a subjective claim? No, it's a fact, as such, and it's self-evident. My finding certainly is portable and your reviewer will almost certainly carry his snapshot of live, unamplified sound with him from system to system.

I support the utility of subjective reviews to a modest degree.

Generous of you.

I suggest not reading them. Especially, don't go on obtusely about the rest of us with the capacity to associate review narratives, authors, and measurable behaviors and get something from them. That is Stereophile in a nutshell and in my view, it's a pinnacle effort and achievement.

But some forms of communicating are better, clearer than others and I find your writing about "musicality" to be unclear.

I think you're unclear on a lot of things. For the hundredth time, when I cite the sound of live, unamplified music then that's what I'm citing. When I hear a reasonable facsimile of it, ditto. Nothing else. I keep saying this.

Look, if you have some *scientific*, absolute imprimatur of reproduced sound *lay it on me*. But you don't and you can't, and you don't address that question so I will take that as a capitulation by purported scientists that what they have is a piece of knowledge, which they do, and not a conclusive, predictive, scientific measure.

I think we've more than confirmed that.

..you have written confusingly about the nature of subjective claims

No I haven't; by watching both sides I've built out a broader use of the terms, quite correct by the dictionary. You should see that.

your claim that objectivist systems tend to lack musicality was clearly meant as a critique, as if you were actually revealing something informative to the reader. But if it's just your opinion...

Of course it's my opinion.

(unfounded too, without hearing your interlocutor's system), then it can be greeted with a shrug. "who cares what you think?"

Not you. And yet I said I *had* heard those systems, which I have. Every one on the planet? Probably not, I'm guessing. So what could possibly be your point if not pedantry, RH? I fully *expect* you not to care what I think, that again being adjunct to the original point.

If you report to me that you find system A more musical than system B, then I have no reason to doubt your subjective report. It's only when you start ascribing claims, hypotheses, causes, that you claims can be challenged. For instance, if you claim that system A sounds more musical because of your new audiophile usb cable, then...no...your subjective anecdote does not establish that factual claim.

And?

But this is how many audiophiles tend to operate: They presume that if they made a change in their system at all, and the perceive the sound change, they mesh together the two things "I perceived that X changed the sound of my system!" When you are unaware of slipping in to confounding variables like this, you can easily misdiagnose the reality of what is going on. We know this in countless ares of science, and audio is not some magic bubble protected from these problems of subjective misattribution.

So what, RH? Your argument - and all the classic, useless arguers with you - leaves zero room or courtesy or space for anyone not hewing to the strictest definitions and beliefs about perceptions - for they are beliefs by the *same* token as you can't identify a comprehensive, lid-slamming, predictive audio science because *it* is also an article of faith - and we're left once again with the tacit demand that audio may not indulge a whole laundry list of words, terms, conditions, findings, experiences, and the like.

Which is subjectivism.

You guys are just spectacularly prohibitive, overruling, intolerant, pedantic, argumentative, and unworkable. You're also inconsistent: You'll rule out USB cables while you rule in the absolute science of loudspeakers you can't locate. And this, I'll add, is why you're seen as the SJW's of audio, and *that's* why, in its tremendously obtuse subjectivity, it's just another arguably postmodern, relative position. You have your degree from U of Beliefs About Audio Science and being woke it's time to be obnoxious to anyone who you think doesn't qualify.

You keep making these vague assertions, without supporting evidence or examples.

You keep missing the obvious point.

Of course science is never "wholly written" but SO WHAT? Does that mean that any darned madcap proposition is just as probable as any other?

[Pedantry snipped.]

First, it means moderate yourself. Second, "darned madcap proposition" *is* - and please, finally get this part, RH - the product of your imagination. It's your subjective judgement. You've just ruled between USB cables and speakers, or between tubes and transistors, or whatever the audio Objectivist believes he knows about reproduced sound.

Then it's extended to an inquisition about belief. I think you're robbing intent, the very height of subjectivity.

It's that pesky latent Objectivist bias that if it doesn't comport with the prescribed view it *must* be a big jar of snake oil. It's the extension that by god the other guy has no claim to an unsubstantiated, unfalsifiable opinion because there's a whole science to salting your steak and the Objectivist simply must vet this seasoning to his own satisfaction, including all the language used with it.

So I have no idea just what particular example in audio you might have in mind when adducing these vague "science is never wholly written" phrases.

Scores of them, and I'll add, for both USB cables and loudspeakers to varying degrees. Audio science does not predict sound by way of a list of final principles no matter how established the physics are, and very many indeed of them are deeply established.

[Pedantry snipped.]

Similarly, if an audiophile claims to heard a difference between two USB cables that are both showing a bit perfect rendering of an audio signal, it won't do to just maintain the claim and write off any measurement tests or appeal to current theory on "science is never wholly written."

Nobody's writing off measured behavior, RH. We're saying that the general science is incomplete, which it is and which is not apparently not even a controversial view. That is a truthful statement and while so, it makes no commentary on the truly self-deluded audiophile who, as I say over and over, pours ketchup on the turntable and claims to hear the Berlin Philharmonic.

..the same ruse used by the crackpots...

Oh hogwash.

I just don't know what in the world you are trying to cover with the appeal to science being not fully written.

How about the fact science is not fully written.

...the old "science is always changing" thing that, again, is so often used by crackpots.

Right. All these many, many crackpots.

But you're not a subjectivist, right RH?

That isn't to establish that YOU are a crackpot. Rather, it means that you have to distinguish yourself from a crackpot if you are going to appeal to the same type of moves.

"The same type of moves". Nonsense. I appeal to a rational and common state of accepted terms and affairs. You won't accept that and back we go to your demanding I prove an occurrence by your language to your satisfaction. And that hews right back to the original article and how pedantry about a belief in science eventually becomes a violence against the congregation. That is deeply *subjective* behavior and it is very, very true of Objectivists.

Because it at least looks like you are setting up the idea that if you make a claim and I adduce current science to dispute it, you are ready to say "but your science isn't solid...it's just going to change again anyway..." But, you haven't been clear either way on this.

I've been as clear as a guy typically, reasonably cares to be. What we're doing instead, RH, is dancing around endlessly because parsing demands down to just the things that interest your pedantic narrowness makes them impossible to satisfy.

[More pedantry snipped.]

This isn't about elementary definitions, RH, because we all know what they are. It's about if you accept that misapplying the gamut of science, language, and especially intent in order to slam the door on the other guy, which you're doing now too to a degree, is an acceptable discourse. I say it isn't and I think that's in the spirit of the original article.

It's subjective to boot. Entertaining their narrowly framed demands is what some audio Objectivists put on the world. They seem to think they're owed.

Let's not do that. Nobody needs to be or should be that generous toward a bad faith argument in which so many are subjectively mind-read into being frauds and *crackpots*. Stay on point: Audio doesn't need woke terminology justice warriors. It needs rational understanding, principle, freedom of expression, and individual liberty.

We know some things about audio; a lot, in fact. Obviously we apply them all the time just to get to this stage. We do not know all things about audio, however. Per your silence, apparently we have no comprehensive, predictive scientific metric about reproducing sound largely indistinguishable from live.

Nobody owes anybody anything except civility. No following claims about fraud and snake oil and conspicuous consumption and about the generally grimy and intolerable failures of audiophiles are justified. Your endless tacit demands are dumb. They remind me of of the original topic: Constantly haranguing.

Try applying the original article and how the editor was attacked for it, as if to prove him exactly right. If you interject yourself against a valid opinion, like you did me, have the good grace to remember that. Interjecting, arguing, framing narrowly, and not dealing topically with broader things plainly becomes pedantic.

RH's picture

I don't know what happened to a couple of our previous posts but...to re-iterate:

Even at this point you clearly have no idea what I'm saying, and I can not keep track of whatever point(s) you are trying to make.

I've done my best to bridge the communication gap. In this case it was fruitless. Win some and lose some. Moving on...

JHL's picture

From the original article: Don't use the data to attack the perception.

That's it.

Why? Why should we avoid using the data to attack the perception? Well, aside from the perception being the goal of all this, because it fails every pertinent yardstick: It's uncivil, grossly at times. Because the data is both incomplete and can't be translated into sound. And because if we become data-centric we obsolete things whose superiority we can't explain yet.

How this can escape anyone is a complete mystery. Whether you extend it to the use of language and how terms like objectivity, subjectivity, and others have been inverted, much as they have been in other contemporary discourse in these times, is up to you. But since you can't follow it, it all dead-ends even before that point.

But it doesn't negate it. And it's rather important to the pursuit of high end sound.

Best advice? Just let it be.

Jim Austin's picture

>>Just let it be

I could not help posting this link after that.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ps-audio-bhk-signature-preamplifier

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

JHL's picture

Thank you for the link; I'd missed that piece. That review *exactly* nails the tone of fine audio sound and writing, right down to the cause and effect an experienced audiophile will connect together.

To wit:

a big toroidal power supply with five MOSFET regulators ... Then there are those "wonderful tubes"—BHK's phrase: two 12AU7...

There's just something magical about a tube, King says—something intangible. McGowan listened, agreed, signed off, and the BHK Signature preamp was born.

"The preamp's tube stage as well as its MOSFET N-channel output buffer are independent circuits and without global feedback," McGowan says. "They achieve their low distortion and characteristics through careful design and high voltages."

With the preamp in, "the music becomes much more compelling and real," says King in an online video. Even he doesn't understand why: "It all comes down to the more general question, why do things sound the way they do? And that's something we don't have definitive answers for in most cases."

With good recordings, the soundstage was wide, deep, layered front to back, and aural images were well delineated and palpable. With good recordings, I could turn the volume way up...

When I added the BHK Signature preamp to the signal chain and matched the levels, the music seemed quieter, more relaxed—as well as more enlivened, more lit up. More tangible energy coursed through Anderson's trumpet, something sustained at the core of the sound. To a much greater extent than before, I seemed to be hearing more than just sound—I was hearing spirit.

(The 12AU7, while not in the top tier of triode voltage amplifiers, has lower distortion than the high gain and very common 12AX7. It makes for a much better line amplifier, as here, and since the supply is good, was a good choice.

Individual stage regulation is crucial to great tube sound, and likely contributes to the relaxed, toneful, neutral sound you heard. On face, this is a well-conceived component. BHK understands the nuances.)

Perhaps no greater violence to great sound has been done by mishandled audio objectivism than that done to tube electronics. This comes from a deep misunderstanding of what the tube circuit is and how it works. In this case we see that there is a fundamental difference between the tube amplifier and it's speaker-matching output transformer and the line amplifier, and it's symbiotic relationship driving balanced lines.

The triode has lower intrinsic distortion and greater bandwidth than any amplifying device. Electrically regulating its local environment produces a super amplifier, the sound of which has to be heard. They are vivid, authoritative, dimensional, palpable, and real-sounding. The review explains this same sound.

The thermonic triode should be promoted as top dog in these such fine audio components. We should be encouraging new and durable supplies of these devices.

Two points come from this. The first is that there is indeed much intangibility to high end engineering and sound, and while all of it can be explained, if practically or theoretically, little of that filters down to the average reader. Staking claims against that intangibility is audio subjectivism - the "science" hasn't been either developed or disseminated or both.

The second is that there's a common, functional difference between the engineer and the engineer-artist. Recognizing that difference and how it plays in both the circuit and its sound is undeniable, and there are countless examples where excellence in design doesn't translate to sonic excellence linearly, and where design specialty may produce better sound.

These two intangibles don't deny, violate, contradict, or prove science. They're just nested components of the greater science. Leaping to conclusions about the art of design is again subjectivism.

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored some more ****

JHL's picture

...what I'm saying to RH is rooted to a large degree how I've seen small, obnoxious armchair specialists in purported Objectivism deploy "science" as some weaponized closed-loop of already-absolute knowledge. Now RH may be finding the limits of his argument but to me you are simply and always an imposter to the sciences. An evident name-dropper from the witless bleachers.

Your integrity took some self-inflicted damage the way you barged in here. Your technical scope will be largely the product of that same mind.

RH's picture

I gave it the old college try to establish a coherent dialogue, but had to throw in the towel this time.

I can at least tell he isn't happy with "objectivists" of the type he has in mind, though :-)

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored -- where reponkic thanks a gentleman ****

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored -- to save the feelings of a gentle postmodernist ****

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored ****

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored ****

RH's picture

reponkic,

"It seems that you have a problem comprehending what I wrote, because it is mostly about considering other people's motives"

No, what you are doing is simply ASSUMING the least charitable, least reasonable, lowest motives you can conjure. The fact you continually ignore the reasons I've given to skip to your strawmen shows you are not actually considering someone else's motives, even when they tell you what they ACTUALLY ARE.

" the goal of consumers of so called "high end" audio is to signal status and "refinement" through conspicuous consumption."

Again...that is cheap pop psychology instead of actually listening to someone who has another view.

How about you actually deal with what a fellow human being tells you about his motives, rather than reject them and insert your own (if you were at all about science, you'd recognize that to do so renders your views unfalsifiable).

So, try to listen to what I'm about to tell you of my own motivations, please.

I did not put together my hi-fi system as a means of signalling my "refinement" and show my conspicuous consumption. I am someone with a life-long love of sound - sound is my profession and my hobby.

When I am listening to music through a great (to me) stereo system, I find it a true joy, so like anyone with a hobby, that joy and interest drives my actions. I buy speakers not to please some other person, audiophile or otherwise, but they are carefully selected to please myself. Same with every bit of gear.

And as for giving me "status," that's a laugh. You think audiophiles are seen by most people as having "status?" If anything we are closer to the butt of jokes! Most people don't understand why anyone would spend that much time thinking about or buying audio gear. (That, btw, includes the amazing amount of time ASR members have put towards thinking about and acquiring and testing audio gear).

I NEVER assume anyone will see my audio gear as raising my "status." In fact, knowing that most people view spending much money on audio gear is kind of suspect, I'm more embarrassed if anyone asks about the set up, what it costs etc, than seeking "status." (Note: my hi-f system costs less than Amir's...)

Further: Most of my gear is actually placed out of view in a separate room from the listening area, hidden behind a corner. Only the speakers remain visible. So I'm not trying to bling anyone out. Believe it or not, I actually recognize that spending my limited money on trying to please and impress others is a silly way to go through life.

I do not look upon my system as denoting my superiority over someone else in ANY way. Someone may get just as much joy out of listening to music on their car stereo, smart speaker, earbuds or laptop (my son's listen primarily through earbuds and laptop speakers, and they love music just as I do). So, no I do not look down on those who have different levels of interest in hi-fi gear than I do.

If you seriously can only diagnose my motivations as snobbery, it simply signals your abject refusal to listen to and consider what someone else tells you, in favor of erecting strawmen to always keep yourself "right" and keep your views unfalsifiable.

"Do you seriously see your views as flexible?"

Yes, for the reasons I've just given in this post, and previously.

If someone enjoys reading ONLY subjective reviews, I am not going to say they shouldn't get that joy. If someone, like you, finds that subjective reviews are totally useless for your goals, then that too is PERFECTLY FINE AND I UNDERSTAND IT. I can also understand views that span everything in between. As I said, I happen to enjoy subjective reviews AND measurements, which can put things in perspective for me.

Further, I am always trying to balance my views based on evidence, and whatever debates I can see between those better-informed than I.
My foundational axiom is my own fallibility. I could be wrong about anything. That's why I only even provisionally put forth that my own tube amps actually sound different than competent solid state amps. If someone presented evidence against the proposition, or if I could not tell the difference in a blind test, then I'd amend my belief to the better evidence.

I think that it is a very good thing that information about audio gets out there and debates occur, for instance the measurement-oriented skeptical case regarding many dubious claims in high-end audio. Why? Because knowledge is power. If makes for better informed choices. A purely subjectivist audiophile may completely reject measurement-oriented arguments or blind testing. But insofar as the case is made publicly for their utility, it is there for any audiophile who DOES want to avail himself of the info (and may well end up changing the mind of the "pure subjectivist" at some point).
Ideally, I believe people's views are open to falsification via evidence and reason. (One of the problems I have with pure subjectivism as an approach is how it veers in to unfalsifiability).

But, even having said THAT...I would go further in my "flexibility."
It's great to spread information that will help many audiophiles from not being "duped" in terms of paying money for something they actually aren't getting. But even then, we shouldn't force this on anyone, and presume some moral superiority. Measurements and blind testing are great tools, but no on NEEDS to use information gained that way if they don't want to. This may lead some to make false claims, which can be countered with evidence-based arguments. But let's not be jack-booted storm troopers about this, mocking everyone who don't tow the same line as us, and recognize everyone has their own balance of goals and priorities. And that many of the decisions others make may be quite reasonable given what THEY enjoy.

Now that you have this information about my ACTUAL VIEWS, vs the ones you want to attribute to me, do you seriously see my view as "inflexible?" So you think what I just wrote is unreasonable?

And if your view as "more flexible" I'd like to know how.

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored ****

RH's picture

Thank you.

First of all, it seems reasonable to me when you push Jim as to his scientific consistency with the nature of some of Stereophile's reviews.

Believe me, that hits home for me. As someone who has spent gobs of time defending empiricism, especially scientific empiricism, in dialogue with everyone from other audiophiles, to alternative medicine folks, new-agey ideas, and religion....I'm on board!

I'd add the caveat, that even if it turns out Jim isn't being scientifically consistent - he can defend that for himself of course! - if his goal isn't for a strictly scientifically oriented magazine, he may still have a consistent philosophy for the magazine.

"As long as audiophiles buy expensive components that they cannot tell from cheap ones in blind testing, but prefer when seen, they reveal what I see as snobbery. Sound quality clearly does not drive their choices if they can't tell devices apart, so what does?"

What drives their choice to buy the more expensive audiophile gear over the cheaper item? You've left out the most obvious answer!

PERCEPTION of better sound quality can, and likely is, driving their purchase when they do those comparisons or audition new gear, be it speakers, amps cables or the wildest audiophile tweaks. (Remember, in these cases we are talking about gear that is, in your example, presumed not to actually sound different).

They aren't using blind testing, so they can fall to all the misconceptions that occur under sighted conditions.

After all: you do know that sighted bias can cause changes in how people perceive things, right? That's the rational for blind testing and appealing to measurements in the first place.

To take a crude example: when a salesman gives a demo of cheap speaker cables, and then says "now listen to these big, beautifully designed, expensive cables" then people can perceive the expensive cable as "obviously sounding better." Right?

So the answer you left off the table is the most obvious one: An audiophile may be FOOLED, through any number of means - influence, his own bias etc - in to THINKING or PERCEIVING the gear in question produces higher quality sound. And so it is this BELIEF that the gear sounds as he thinks it does, that motivates the purchase.

So you skipped the most obvious reason - honest mistakes - and went right to "snobbery."

This is what I mean when we are adopting a facile view of other people's experiences and motivations to justify our demeaning characterization of their motivations.

As you say, in the cases we are talking about, the audiophile may indeed be enjoying their new cable or whatever for "reasons unrelated to sound quality." But nonetheless those other reasons may derive from misconceptions from sighted bias, so they at least BELIEVE they have bought better sound quality, which remains their motivation even if based on error.

As someone in to this hobby for many decades and knowing tons of audiophiles, on-line and in real life, by far the main motivation is a pursuit of "better sound quality" by their lights, whether they happen to believe some incorrect things along the way or not.

Are we getting any closer to agreement?

Cheers.

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored ****

RH's picture

"my blood boils when I hear pseudo-scientific babble."

It can drive me nuts too. And I agree not all views are equally valid - in particular all empirical claims. Some are just nuts or wrong in light of the best empirical evidence.

I try to keep open the distinction between being wrong about facts or empirical claims, vs evaluating other people's choices as "irrational." Everything starts with a value judgement - one or more held by an individual or group. If you value for instance "accuracy" or "neutrality" then once the terms are agreed upon, you can show how anyone who holds that same value may be making an irrational or unreasonable choice. For instance, if I ONLY desired the most technically accurate source and I only listened to vinyl, an argument can be made for how I've made an unreasonable choice.
Likely out of my own ignorance.

But if I happen to value something other than accuracy - e.g. the distortions of vinyl and other physical aspects and aesthetics that I don't get from a digital source - then my action of listening to vinyl is perfectly reasonable. It's the most reasonable action to achieve my goal.

So we have to at least consider other people's values and goals without taking some blanket "X is rational, Y is silly" approach.

I don't find audiophiles hearing weird or impossible things to be weird at all. It's just an extension of the same human fallibility (which I'm prone to like anyone else), that explains all the other weird things people believe in. Take a gander here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3xueXaG2rI

Even if you think some of those people are taking advantage of others, the fact is there are people who will believe. A huge proportion of the world believes in many unscientific things. That's pretty much what can happen once you are outside the strictures and rigor of science, where you are controlling for variables like imagination. No reason why you wouldn't also find people believing teeny brass bowls placed in a corner, or pebbles on their cables, change the sound.

That said, we don't *have* to be practicing science for our every decision. That would be so impractical no one could manage. So it makes sense to have some charity among one another in terms of casting stones. I've blind tested some of the things I've owned and tested, but I haven't blind tested every item in my system and I wouldn't want to feel forced to either. If someone doesn't want to do science in putting together their system...fine with me.

As to your experience with audiophiles being snobs, it's possible I misdiagnosed some of my encounters, and/or maybe you've leapt to some conclusions in some of yours, but either way it looks like our perception of most audiophiles is different.

Thanks, and have a nice weekend too!

reponkic's picture

**** Self censored, where reponkic praises empiricism ****

ChrisS's picture

Like watching popcorn pop!

ChrisS's picture

...compare hat sizes to see who wins.

ChrisS's picture

...have a race to see who can load up their shopping carts with the most bargains.

ChrisS's picture

...reponkic doesn't like that some people have more money than he does, and he especially doesn't like that they spend it on items he can't afford...

Is that it?

Then let's get back to the 99cent store.

reponkic's picture

...all reponkic wants is to splurge $100+ grand on single ended tube amp. Monoblock, of course.

ChrisS's picture

...science then.

You just don't like extravagant consumerism.

RH's picture

reponkic,

You jealous guy you! ;-)

I think your current...ahem...dialogue...is a good example of a principle I believe I argued earlier somewhere in the comment section.

That is: People tend to be quite bad at diagnosing the motivations of people with whom they strongly disagree.

We will tend to impute to the other side baser motivations than to our own, and attribute reason to our conclusions; psychology to the other person's claims.

I remember first coming to what seems an obvious realization: why is it that every time the someone with an opposing opinion in the debate tries to characterize my motivation they get it so wrong?
And yet, I think my characterization of their motivation seems right? This "they are always wrong about my motivations, but I'm right about there motivations" seemed just to obviously convenient.

The more sensible explanation was that, being a human like they are, I was probably just as bad at diagnosing their motivations as they are about mine. Because they were never saying "yep, you are right, those are exactly my motivations!"

Basically, when it's a subject we think we've thought through fairly well, we presume we've come to the reasonable conclusion. Therefore, if the other guy has an opposite opinion, clearly he can't have reached it via reason! No, I have to attribute some psychological motivation. So my conclusions I attribute to reason; the other guy's conclusions I attribute to psychology."

And they are doing the same to me, for the same reasons.

And note, since the other guy is just somehow motivated to be so "wrong," and also that he may have different values, we will tend to lazily attribute the most uncharitable, lower motivations.

So for instance, your motivations for objecting to audiophiles being duped for their money...well...it's just jealousy on your part right? That must be your motivation. This is the lazy way of thinking all of us are susceptible to, when evaluating other people's views and motivations. It's easy. It feels good because we are always attributing the baser motivation to the other guy, making us feel superior. Those ought to be red flags.

So to sum up: When you find yourself so obviously mischaracterized, it's good for us to remember this tends to arise from a common failing that we all share, and when we comment about the other side's motivations, we should keep in mind "how likely is it I'm actually right?" Best for us to respond to the other person's argument, rather than diagnose motivations. (And if we care about the motivations, to ask for clarification).

Sorry, that's being a bit punctilious and school-marmy of me, but it seemed like a good time to consider the example at hand.

ChrisS's picture

...got a big head

and talks too much.

He's what the title of this article is about...

"Hoisted on his own petard"

ChrisS's picture

...that was easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4FfNYjw6qU

reponkic's picture

...to show that you are another individual who doesn't get sarcasm.

Should I indicate sarcastic passages for you next time? Would that make it easier?

ChrisS's picture

...head is too big.

Nothing to do with science at all.

ChrisS's picture

...real good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk

David Harper's picture

Holy Moly, this is the most active thread I've seen on this forum in a long time. I thought everyone had left. IMO the reasons audiophile numbers are shrinking is two-fold; (the obvious one first), young people don't care about audiophile gear. Most of them don't even know that it exists. I tried to explain to a young guy at best buy why I didn't want to audition Martin Logan electrostats by listening to MP3 files on his I-phone.He looked at me like I was nuts. He just didn't get it.The other reason, though, is that older people (like me) may have decided (like I did) that being an audiophile is essentially a silly (and expensive) waste of time. And I spent a lot of years (and money) being one. For me the pursuit of "better" gear had replaced my enjoyment of the music. This became clear to me while listening to songs on my I-pod in my car. Nobody would describe this as "high-end audio". But I just sat there loving the music. Beach Boys, Blondie,Coldplay,INXS,Beatles, etc. "critical listening" doesn't really make sense to me. Like judging the quality of a movie based on the picture quality on my T.V. I only speak for myself. I'm not knocking anyone else. So now I'll have to find something else to get into. Cars? Women? Oh wait, no, they don't like old bald guys.

reponkic's picture

Reason number three to avoid audiophilia is the clown show that is the subjectivist audiophile "community". A bunch of largely scientifically illiterate snobs, narcissists and sad fantasists, who delude themselves that they can hear "immediately the difference" when they e.g. start using "audio quality" USB cables.

ChrisS's picture

...there's a job for you in the White House!

Clown show?

Check!

Scientifically illiterate snobs, narcissists and sad fantasists, who delude themselves?

Check!

They really, really need you!

ChrisS's picture

GMC can use your help, too.

Their products are terrible!

And those 99cent stores...

All those products end up in the landfill!

ChrisS's picture

...an even bigger impact by saving people with "science"...

Then how about the pharmaceutical industry?

Their products can actually kill people!

Their "science" can't be right, can it?

reponkic's picture

It is not the mirror's fault if it shows you your silliness. Rant as much as you want, the fact that subjective audiophiles have turned a once respectable hobby into a clown show, will not change.

ChrisS's picture

Clown show?

Facts?

Oh, you mean the White House...

ChrisS's picture

A successor to the Amazing Randi!

"Quack Watch" is also looking for people like you.

ChrisS's picture

People might pay attention to you if you had your own game show!

REPONKIC vs Everyone Else...

ChrisS's picture

For your rudeness and disrespect here, you can expect heaps of scorn, ridicule, insults, innuendo, disparagement, and quotes from Monty Python, like "You, English pig dog! Go and boil your bottom, you son of a silly person! I blow my nose at you!"

But that depends on how much Mr. Austin lets me get away with...

Jim Austin's picture

>>But that depends on how much Mr. Austin lets me get away with...

Both sides have crossed the line here. I encourage everyone involved in this conversation to practice some self-discipline. Whether it's expressions of passion and loving adoration or of scorn, this site is no place for the personal. Let's keep it on-topic.

This obviously is aimed at everyone, not just you.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

Roger That's picture

…we would still have problems in starting a fire when we wanted and in a very controlled way.

As far as we know, fire was still shown to man by nature itself (when a tree would catch on fire after being hit by a lighting during a storm), so I’d argue that men tried to replicate and understand an event that already existed (and this could be applied to measurements trying to explain and understand some of the answers for what we hear in sound reproduction).

But if science was stuck between “Edison's cylinders and Berliner's flat discs”, we certainly wouldn’t be here talking to each other from all over the globe, and we certainly wouldn’t have anything remotely as good as we have had for several decades in terms of sound and music reproduction.

Evolution was never made without real-world experience running next to it (listening in the case of audio, watching in the case of video and photography), and we’re certainly at a point where we can’t always measure everything that we hear in a meaningful way, at the same time that measurements have way more resolution that any human ear.

If we look at technology from the capturing and recording side, it’s very hard to make a case why an old analogue format, with a much higher noise floor, higher distortion, wow & flutter, uneven frequency response (etc) would be best than any good digital recording system from the last 2 decades, which is mostly as audible transparent as it can be these days.

Sure, tape always had its “sound”, which is a by-product of all those anomalies combined, and there are still engineers that use tape summing just like any other audio effect (like reverbs, chorus, distortion and many others).

But it’s still an effect and a distortion of the original signal, which one might want to avoid if neutrality is intended (effects can always be added later, but not subtracted).

Loudspeakers (in particular) interact with the room in a way that no other audio component does, and that is definitely a problem.

Some Stereophile reviewers (and I mention Stereophile because it often includes the reviewers room measured response) are way too damaging of any loudspeaker response (mainly below the modal frequency, which still ends up affecting the whole perceived tonal balance).

Some of those rooms also correlate with the reviewers preferences on loudspeakers (usually the ones who measure the worst in semi-anechoic conditions or a more forgiving room), which I believe to be the result of those two combined skewed responses (loudspeaker and room) working in a somewhat "compensating" way.

Without those in-room measurements, we would likely never understand why the reviewer loved a loudspeaker so much as he did, and also why other Stereophile members end up not agreeing on a “highly recommended” note or a “recommended product of the year” nomination.

It’s not the reviewers fault if the room he’s able to dedicate for audio reviews isn’t acoustically better, but for a review to be done in such conditions and still be valid for a prospective buyer, not only that person would need to also have a “poorly-behaved” room, but also one that behaved in a very similar way (and that is increasingly harder to become a reality).

I totally agree with the words of the late Art Dudley “Tells us what is sounds like!” (I really feel that he was right on point), but with all due respect for him and his memory, he actually had one of those acoustically challenged rooms (like JA measurements shown several times), and telling how a speaker sounds it that specific room will hardly give very accurate results, no matter how much our brains (or Art’s in this case) could filter out some of the “room sound” (and it is well documented that our brains have that ability up to a point).

This is not to devaluate anyone’s work, not only because there are also other aspects like great writing, great story telling, good introductions on the brand’s history, and details around the product philosophy and build, but even musical "recommendations" based on the material used of the listening tests.

That is also part of a good review, although some of it is purely entertainment (which is still a good thing).

What makes Stereophile stand out from the crowd is precisely that combination of the subjective reviews (that every magazine does) with John Atkinson’s measurements making all the difference on helping to give context (or at the very least try to) why the reviewer like and didn’t like on certain aspects of its performance.

JA also mentions several times on his measurements that a particular loudspeaker might sound “too bright” or “a tad bass boomy” (example) on smaller rooms.

I don’t mean to imply that measurements are more important than the listening tests alone (far from it).
But without the measurements, most listening reviews would be was most audio reviews are and have always been in this industry:
- (Better or worse) pieces of entertaining value.

All these decades of JA measurements (in such a consistent manner) are immensely valuable for decades to come, and I’ve learned over the years that I won’t waste my time on subjective reviews alone (like most magazines do these days).

I wouldn't define John Atkinson as an objectivist kind of person, and he always leaves room for what we might not be able to fully explain.

Unlike most audio reviewers, John's also as a deep knowledge (and talent) on where it all starts (playing an instrument and recording live music with some amazing reference recordings under his belt), so it's also interesting that anyone with talent and good hearing for music is actually the one making all these technical "cold" measurements.

I do relate with JA in a lot of ways, maybe because I share some of the same basics around music and sound, and I don't care about great measurements if in the end it doesn't sound great and appealing.

But the correlation is usually there, and trying to know more about it is a great thing imho.

Loudspeakers end up being the most divergent in how they measure (it’s the nature of the beast), and that might be one of the reasons why it is my preferred piece of the audio playback system (they always have “their” sound).

Measurements can only show design options, but they can also show the lack of expertise from the designer, and that they were “tuned” not only by ear, but also with little regard to how it will present as a load for the amplifier or how sensitive they are to different amplifiers as music content changes in energy content on those problematic areas.

JA often "exposes" (with the upmost diplomacy) what it seems to be a designer deliberate choice vs a doubtful technical design, which feels particularly important when we’re talking about far from inexpensive loudspeaker designs.

We all know that when a manufacturer responds to a JA technical assessment, all of it “was part of a deliberate design”, but that would be always the best answer, even when it wasn’t clearly not the case.

But the Stereophile reader does have all that information (reviewers listening impressions, measurements, response from the manufacturer), so he’s aware of a particular behaviour and can go listen the product and decide if he likes it or not.

Entertaining around audio products is everywhere these days (the new media platforms suddenly turned a lot of people into “audio reviewers” just because they could…).

Keep up the good work, and despite all my words, there are a lot of points in this article that I fully agree with.

Kind regards,

Roger

Jim Austin's picture

>>It’s not the reviewers fault if the room he’s able to dedicate for audio reviews isn’t acoustically better, but for a review to be done in such conditions and still be valid for a prospective buyer, not only that person would need to also have a “poorly-behaved” room, but also one that behaved in a very similar way (and that is increasingly harder to become a reality).

One of my main considerations in choosing a reviewer for a product, loudspeakers in particular, is the suitability of the room.

It's true that most of our reviews are done in real domestic spaces, the kinds of rooms most people listen in (although a few have dedicated listening rooms). But we do--all of us--pay attention to the room's sonic characteristics and correct them as needed.

As to the importance of science and its role in audio, I agree, and in fact have often made similar points. But one need not dismiss, or even disrespect, the achievements of science to realize that science is not the only route to insight. Indeed, as I have often said, it's the nearly unique position of our hobby at the intersection--scientifically mediated human emotion--that most fascinated and engages me. That and the music.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

David Harper's picture

And if you get high the sound quality gets even better!

David Harper's picture

(since I respect his opinion)I would like to ask Mr. Jim Austin a question. Do you personally believe that speaker wires have "sound quality"?

prerich45's picture

I'm just getting around to reading this.....AWESOME ARTICLE!!!!!!!! One of the best ever!!!!!

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