[cel4145]

I know it's not what you intended, but you have given the perfect argument for never trusting human hearing, measuring equipment is far more accurate and consistent than we will ever be, although I do understand what you're trying to get at.

For those of us that buy audio equipment to listen to music or movies, this is also the argument for never worrying about how equipment measures. All that really matters is how it sounds to you.

There is a good bit of truth in that. If audio equipment was free and easy to obtain, most people (except for some gear geeks) wouldn't care how it measures. Measuring is a means to the end of finding the best aesthetic experience for one's money, particularly now that it's very rare to be able to listen before you buy.

 

[bigshot]

For those of us that buy audio equipment to listen to music or movies, this is also the argument for never worrying about how equipment measures. All that really matters is how it sounds to you.

 
The good thing about it is that the human ear is MUCH more forgiving than specs. If you assemble the specs for human hearing and apply them to audio equipment, almost all of the solid state equipment (not transducers) are audibly transparent. That means all of them are the same. Don't worry about it.

 

[bigshot]

Glad to see an objectivist who follows through

 
Oppo was kind enough to send me some kick ass headphones to audition. I felt that I had a responsibility to give them the straight dope as well as I could determine it. No fluffy guesses. Crossing ts and dotting is.

 

[cel4145]

Oppo was kind enough to send me some kick ass headphones to audition. I felt that I had a responsibility to give them the straight dope as well as I could determine it. No fluffy guesses. Crossing ts and dotting is.

Hey. Hey. Hey. Some of us don't have the equipment to do any more than fluffy guesses

But I understand what you mean. I'm into home audio subwoofers, and this is the holy grail of subwoofer measurement databases, all done by one person (so consistent). Click on any sub, scroll down the description page to the measurements, and you'll find all kinds of great measurements. We have Tyll's, Golden Ears, and headphone.com. But we need more of this kind of stuff.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Hey. Hey. Hey. Some of us don't have the equipment to do any more than fluffy guesses

But I understand what you mean. I'm into home audio subwoofers, and this is the holy grail of subwoofer measurement databases, all done by one person (so consistent). Click on any sub, scroll down the description page to the measurements, and you'll find all kinds of great measurements. We have Tyll's, Golden Ears, and headphone.com. But we need more of this kind of stuff.

 
Worry not, comrade! In the near-to-distant future, Music Alchemist will come to the rescue, with detailed comparisons and measurements between all the gear I ever get from my crazy wish list!

 

[cel4145]

Worry not, comrade! In the near-to-distant future, Music Alchemist will come to the rescue, with detailed comparisons and measurements between all the gear I ever get from my crazy wish list!

Great! I will await

 

[bigshot]

  Here's the thing about subjective evaluations: I absolutely think they have a place in something like audio. However, I would simply ask that it be shown that there actually is a difference between two components before beginning the subjective evaluation.

 
That's a bingo. You have to discern a significant difference before you can determine if a difference exists. If it isn't discernible it doesn't matter.

 

[prot]

No need for technical knowledge for what I'm describing. In fact that is the blindspot of those who place so much emphasis on physical measurements for evaluating audio equipment. The impact of aesthetic experience gets lumped in under bias, despite the fact the aesthetic experience is the main reason most of use audio equipment in the first place (excluding maybe audio professionals). For thinking about aesthetic experience, you have to look to the social sciences and to theory in the humanities, and to start to construct/evaluate your own aesthetic.

Generelly agree with your post but the world "blindspot" sounds like someone forgot or missed something. Quite the contrary, in terms of science that kind of subjective experience is deliberately eliminated. Some type of distortion may sound good to you or me but the objective of science/measurements is to eliminate distortion. The purpose is to simply reproduce what was recorded with 100% accuracy. Whether you like that or not is outside the scope ... and GIGO is one of the main rules of the game.

And if you do not care about measurements, Beats will gladly to sell you "the best and most accurate headphones ever"

 

[blades]

For those of us that buy audio equipment to listen to music or movies, this is also the argument for never worrying about how equipment measures. All that really matters is how it sounds to you.

There is a good bit of truth in that. If audio equipment was free and easy to obtain, most people (except for some gear geeks) wouldn't care how it measures. Measuring is a means to the end of finding the best aesthetic experience for one's money, particularly now that it's very rare to be able to listen before you buy.

 
Those supporting objective bias controlled listening tests don't care much about measurements either.  When an audible difference arises where it isn't expected, then it is interesting to find the reason for that and measurements become important.  Otherwise our testing is all about hearing.  I'll give you an example.  In a bias controlled listening test that included 15 different internconnect cables, we encountered one fairly expensive one that had an audible difference from the others.  Measuring told us that it had a very high figure for inductance.  Disassembling the cable showed that the conductor was wound into a coil around a platstic core.  This was an incompetently made cable but it was important to us to find out why.
 
But generally we never claim sonic attributes because of measurements.  It comes from bias controlled listening.  An amplifier with 5% harmonic distortion is likely to sound different from one that measures well but the proof is in the listening, not the measurement.

 

[blades]

   
That's a bingo. You have to discern a significant difference before you can determine if a difference exists. If it isn't discernible it doesn't matter.

 
Here is a good example of that.  I've never encountered anyone who could distinguish a 320 kbps MP3 from a WAV in a bias controlled test.  The files are radically different but the sound is the same.  The compression simply doesn't matter because the data that is removed is not audible.

 

[Chris J]

yup I'm not confused, that exactly why I say that you can't round up everything in one bag and say that cables all sound the same. because simply by not following some requirements(not saying that it isn't dumb, requirements are here for a reason) you can expect some matter of effect and they can be different depending on the kind of cable. it's not like I wrote that changing the impedance of a spdif cable would add bass ^_^. I hope you didn't think I was just following up on my IEM example.

No worries mate.
Cheers.
Chris

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Here is a good example of that.  I've never encountered anyone who could distinguish a 320 kbps MP3 from a WAV in a bias controlled test.  The files are radically different but the sound is the same.  The compression simply doesn't matter because the data that is removed is not audible.

 
That's hilarious, because I could easily tell the difference with at least 50% of the music I tested. Sometimes, the difference was so large it was painful. (Of course, other times, I did not notice any differences at all.)
 
Unfortunately (and this may come as a surprise considering how often I post on Head-Fi), I'm too busy to conduct and publish a proper test at this time.

 

[SilverEars]

I believe the possiblity of difference is based on the recording.  If the recording is modern pop, it's probably recorded poorly, and doesn't matter if it's FLAC or not as it sounds very poor with a transparent setup.  
 
Test is more useful with a file with lots of information and highly detailed or quality recording.  Down converting that to hear any difference would be more telling than taking Mily Cirus's new album and comparing the bit rates.  

 

[blades]

   
That's hilarious, because I could easily tell the difference with at least 50% of the music I tested. Sometimes, the difference was so large it was painful. (Of course, other times, I did not notice any differences at all.)
 
Unfortunately (and this may come as a surprise considering how often I post on Head-Fi), I'm too busy to conduct and publish a proper test at this time.

 
Glad you found a fairly boring subject to be funny.  Tell me about the bias controlled methodology you used in the comparisons.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I believe the possiblity of difference is based on the recording.  If the recording is modern pop, it's probably recorded poorly, and doesn't matter if it's FLAC or not as it sounds very poor with a transparent setup.  
 
Test is more useful with a file with lots of information and highly detailed or quality recording.  Down converting that to hear any difference would be more telling than taking Mily Cirus's new album and comparing the bit rates.  

 
Yep. I tested dozens of titles across most genres, and the modern electronic / pop albums were often the ones with no noticeable differences...although a few pop albums were among the ones with gaping chasms, so to speak. The deeper, punchier bass of the lossless version was especially startling.