Dilemma: Should I not believe any reviewers who talk about cables or just ignore that section of... - Page 96

I'll answer questions by people who've made an effort to understand. that includes all the people who are challenging me such as BigShot and knucklehead. but not you.

LOL!!!  That's it?  That's the sum of your response?  You meet a skeptic and suddenly you're tongue tied?   Sheesh, I should post more often! 

 

I had no idea the truth was such a delicate commodity.  Indeed, I thought the truth was something people would want to shout from the rooftops. Not in the wacky world of mike1127!  There the truth is a mewling little worm that must be sheltered from the sunlight and kept in its little fertilizer lined box.

 

You have babbled in this forum for weeks.  I ask you now, straight out, what's the point of your ramblings?  How are we, the uneducated denizens of the Sound Science forum to make use of them?  I am literally all ears.   What practical advice can you give us?    

Now you've got me LOL. Maybe someday it will dawn on you what a hostile person you are and why someone might not be interested in having a discussion with you.

And still you won't answer the question.  What use can the board at large make of your "philosophy?"  I know you don't like me, but why be so niggardly to the other members of the Sound Science forum?

 

Mike1127, when it comes to debating, I'm a pushover.  All I ask is a coherent, cogent argument that actually comes to a point.  Give me one of those and I'll respond with respect and the best points I can muster.

 

On the other hand, behave like a "stand up philosopher" and you'll earn my scorn. 

 

You can dismiss my complaints all you want.  It doesn't mean your postings are any less of a shining example of "stand up philosophizing." 
 

I should have answered this. Yes, I've heard fantastic equipment. And I've talked to some of the designers. They evaluate equipment in a way like I describe, as far as I can tell. I should make no secret of the fact that I think DACs and amps matter a whole lot, even though the "orthodoxy" here is that they don't matter once they measure close to perfect. You can read my discussions of those on other threads. But I also think speakers, microphones, and acoustics matter a whole lot, so we can discuss those.

 

The idea that you use the same neural circuits to evaluate a recording as you use to listen to a live performance -- this idea is foreign to the Sound Science board, but it's common sense among the people I hang with.

And yet you never do.  At least not in Sound Science. 

 

Yet you keep posting in the Sound Science board!  Why not take your neural circuits and go hang out with the people who think they are common sense?  Or any kind of sense, for that matter?

In fact I mentioned a measurement which is most commonly associated with speakers and suggested it's a good place to explore how distortions affect rhythmic quality. Now go learn enough to find where I mentioned it.

Eventually, all the moms had dragged their kids away from the cage. It was just me and the monkey. I wondered if scientists had ever studied monkey rhythm.

All the time

 

I find this hard to believe. Electrical engineers who design and build audio electronics do not worry about this abstract rhythmic philosophy. They design the unit using hard math and measurements. It's the marketing/public side of things which feed all the ethereal nonsense to the so called audiophiles.

As a blanket statement, this is false. I don't know where you get this.

Mike do you know anyone who does design with the pattern recognition/rhythmic method? Or are you saying that listening is based on this pattern recognition and if anyone "uses their ears" to design they are using this method?

Edited by JadeEast - 6/28/12 at 3:18pm

I think we are conflating design, with evaluation. Though honestly, without robust measurements in the evaluation stage as well as listening tests, making design changes in response would be a lot of guesswork. 

Edited by liamstrain - 6/28/12 at 3:20pm

There's two different types of thinking that go into a mix or recording session.... Technical thinking, where the engineer sets up his equipment and systems to reproduce the sound faithfully; and creative thinking, which involves the nuances of performance and balancing the various elements. Usually, the former is taken care of before the session, and is put into action at the session itself by the recording engineer. The latter is implemented by the performers and A&R man or producer. Everybody has their own specific job to do. Ideally, you don't want to be worrying too much about technical aspects while you're recording. It has to run like a well oiled machine, because time is money.

When we sit down and play a CD on our stereo, we hopefully have already worked out the technical issues, so we can focus on the performance and not be distracted by the mechanics. We aren't performing a creative act ourselves, we're simply consumers of creativity. It's an entirely different sort of process than recording. When we listen to music, we just have to enjoy it as a complete finished process.

All this talk about microphones and recording philiosophy may be interesting to some people, but it's completely irrelevant to being a consumer of music. All we as passive consumers care about is if we are getting an accurate reproduction of the package that the performers and producers have put together for us.
Edited by bigshot - 6/28/12 at 3:25pm

Any evaluation by listening is pattern recognition. Quality of rhythm is just one example of a pattern that many people listen for. The reason I am putting it in such abstract terms ("pattern recognition") is that I'm trying to emphasize that different people listen for different patterns. Someone might say PRaT is nonsense; but it's just another pattern. If someone says that PRaT is nonsense then they probably haven't trained themselves to hear it. I'm sure they hear other patterns.

 

So, yes, I'm talking about using listening as part of the design process. But more specifically, I'm talking about someone who sees live music and recorded music as closely related things that can be evaluated with the same pattern-recognition. Also, I'm talking about the way that evaluating accuracy is ultimately a matter of listening, not measurements. See my post a few pages back where I listed about 12 bullet points.