Subjective vs measurements in the perception of sound quality

[Crowbar]

Maybe his point was that the thread was so off-topic, that he made an off-topic post in yet another direction.

One paper that I think was mentioned here before but didn't get much discussion is http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/...%20testing.pdf
It's Hawksford proposition of a distortion metric that seems significantly better than THD/IMD (though there isn't a related human study to see how well his metric correlates with perception).

So, anyone have any comments on that? It would be interesting to try to run one's own amplifiers through such a testing procedure.

[Freq Band]

Forgive us if we outsiders are squishing your amoebic enertia.
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When reading the first post in this thread (PPL), I came upon this section and link:

Soundstage magazine describing how they test Amplifiers
http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/me...amplifiers.htm

...and assumed the link would apply to the testing of how an amp "sounds".
Silly me. Of course it was about the electrical testing they were speaking of.
My mind was somewhere else.

What is the end use of an amplifier, or any other audio component ?
Did you answer.....as a means of listening to music ?
Shouldn't the equiptment's final purpose be the proper place to judge it ?

And once it has been deemed "worthy"......

......shut off the lights, ...........

and listen.........

to the music.


-------------
see my thread and unscientific amp comparison blind tests:
Graham Slee new portable amp - The Voyager

=FB=

[Crowbar]

Sure, but you have to shut off the lights before you listen, a blind test is in order. Measurement people are indeed mistaken, in that their mistake is they measure with equipment that is not the human ear. But when you know which amp is playing, you are measuring with not just your ear as well--you are measuring partially with your psychological bias.

[peelax]

More and more individuals are doing such screening, and my guess is that will actually have a worse effect than no screening at all, since it will tend to produce very similar people in the long run by selecting for a few specific attributes. But no intervention at all doesn't work as I explained before due to lack of any selection.

I kind of agree, but what would actually happen if there is no screening? Such a large number of people will become such a burden on society it will not be able to sustain them? If that was the case then natural selection would come back into play as anarchy took over. If you do screening and mess it up then a disease could come along and wipe everyone out. The lack of gentic diversity could have serious consequences, we need alternative thinkers who verge on insane. Either way its pretty much the same outcome. I'm not sure you can really say (at the moment) that given the big picture it would be a good idea to do anything, or ever do anything, over doing nothing.

[ppl]

As intriguing as the forgoing off topic discussion is I am going to refer you guys to this Link for some more thinking on the Amplifier Genome project. Some people operate primarily in the "Subjective domain"

[melomaniac]

see here for some engineering info and tests

[OblivionLord]

Im personaly all for what sounds good to my ears regardless if its subjective or objective.

[6RS]

Originally Posted by OblivionLord

Im personaly all for what sounds good to my ears regardless if its subjective or objective.

2x that! And I do not need double-blind tests to build my judgement.

[kilgoretrout]

Where can I find objective information on different DAC and how DACs across different price ranges compare with each other.