[Anaxilus]

So I haven't been around as long as many around the forums have or obtained a Masters in Audio Engineering but I do like to read and learn and have had a nagging question I'd like to bring up.  Why do so many around these parts feel, believe, 'know' that we have learned all there is about the transmission of sound and its reproduction?  As someone who had a Philosophy and Biology major (among others), worked in car audio, avid Formula 1 follower and technically schooled in engine building and blueprinting, this level of certainty puzzles me.  The latter aspects of developing Aero packages and managing air flow around a moving vehicle as well as through the intake valves of a cylinder head are nearly as much art as science.  The amount of money devoted to a single F1 team per year concerning the management of Fluidynamics and Aerodynamics is of an exponential magnitude compared to what almost any audio company could manage in a lifetime.  I've spent much time on a flow bench port matching, dimpling, angle cutting and measuring the static and dynamic effects.  Granted a combustion engine in a moving car is a far more complex system than a speaker but measuring the effects of air movement and environmental conditions is no simple task it seems to me.  The varying impressions w/ respect to a broad range of topics on Head-fi seem to bear this out.  Not one automotive company can agree on the best way to allow air to enter a combustion chamber.  Yet, some seem so certain as to how a piece of audio gear should measure or sound.  In fact, when designing a car or engine you can remove the human factor entirely.  Not true of designing speakers, sources and components.  You build and tune w/ respect to a mic but ultimately the ears have it appears to me.  So my honest question to those more learned in audio science is this.  Do we really know all there is to 'sound science'?  Including the biological and electrical aspects?       

 

[myinitialsaredac]

If someone on these forums believes he or she knows all of the biological and electrical aspects involved in reproduction and interpretation of sound then you can kindly dismiss them with a nod and a smile.
 
How can we understand sound in entirety when we are still guessing at nerve networks and how the brain processes information? We certainly don't know how to make Plato's driver either; if we did there wouldn't be more than one company making the 'perfect' driver.
 
Dave

 

[Prog Rock Man]

You will get clear results with an F1 car, it will go faster around a circuit. The same is not true of audio, that is too subjective as to what is better. My experience is that different is often presented as better. And we will also struggle to agree on what is different. That is why subjective opinion is usually such a fail. With regards to cables, we do know all there is to know. With regards to the mind and hearing music, that is the dark area. We should look there to explain cable differences.

 

[EthanWiner]

Quote:

Do we really know all there is to 'sound science'?  Including the biological and electrical aspects?

Audio "science" may not know everything, but it knows an awful lot. Especially the electrical aspects of fidelity such as amplifiers and A/D/A converters. Speakers and headphones and microphones are in some ways more complex, and no one design can solve all the problems. Microphones are the simplest, and closest to "perfect" of the transducers. For example, a condenser microphone with a very small diaphragm can be extremely flat with very low distortion. But the small diaphragm size reduces the signal to noise ratio. Larger diaphragms have more output, but that introduces other problems. Loudspeakers have even more trade-offs. So it's not so much whether all is known or not, but finding the best trade-offs between audio fidelity, size, and cost.
 
--Ethan

 

[Uncle Erik]

I don't know if an engine is a good analogy.  There's a lot of work on those to increase output, lower weight, make more efficient, and any number of goals.  No one knows where the limits are or what else is possible.

Audio is different because it's reproduction.  You can sort of make the same analogy with headphones and speakers.  No one knows where the limits are.  Sources and amps are pretty much solved problems.  Of course, manufacturers must have some kind of "upgrade" and some marketing hoopla, but $300-$400 for a good solid state amp and a $100 Blu-Ray player are probably all you need.  Well, as long as your definition of need doesn't include fashion and status-seeking.

 

[InnerSpace]

Quote:

Sources and amps are pretty much solved problems ... $300-$400 for a good solid state amp and a $100 Blu-Ray player are probably all you need.  Well, as long as your definition of need doesn't include fashion and status-seeking.

 
Erik: this is a genuine inquiry with no agenda other than curiosity: IIRC you use an expensive Zana Deux, and you mentioned its soybean oil capacitors with no hint of skepticism.  Why do you and did you, if amps are solved problems and a $300-$400 SS unit is all you need?
 

 

[Yoga Flame]

Most likely audio science is not 100% complete. I would be surprised if a scientist or engineer announced that we have discovered all there is to know about audio, and here is the math to prove it. However, we do know far more than we don't know. We know enough about it to rule out certain things as all but impossible. It's like the science of astronomy. We don't know all there is to know about the stars and planets, but we do know enough to not take astrology (horoscope, zodiac, etc.) seriously.
 
It would be a mistake to use the small gaps in scientific knowledge as "proof" that all sorts of spooky stuff really does exist. That's what science fiction is for. The hero needs to overcome impossible odds, so he uses the quantum dark matter nano ray to save the day. We don't know for sure what any of those things can do, so it sounds plausible for it to do anything.
 
That said, a true scientist will still seriously consider a claim about astrology if there is good evidence to support it.

 

[Mdraluck23]

 
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It's kind of similar to the discussion I heard somewhere about color.
 
How does one know that the colors they see as Red, Green, Blue, etc, are seen the same way as somebody else? My Blue may be something entirely different to you, it could be like my Green. Our minds are fascinating tools.
 
Just because a sound is defined as "a trumpet", we all hear that sound, "a trumpet" and assume it's the same for everyone. How do you know it sounds the same to another person? It could be very different. Our minds interpretation of the world is based on the inputs it has collected. If you had been raised thinking that red was blue, in some parallel universe, and everybody around you thought the same, would it matter? It could be different from what anyone else observes to be that way.
 
EDIT: Why do I keep writing in Times New Roman?
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[eucariote]

^ In the name of parsimony, I'd like to remind the OP and above post that the problem of audio reproduction is one of physics and not psychology.  I.e. the problem is one of sound reproduction and that stops at the pinna and tympanic membrane.  Beyond that, the problem/processes of the brain are a constant (whose interpretative vagaries are present both at a live concert and between a set headphones) with the exception informing engineers of frequencies beyond those registered by the Organ of Corti that should not bothered with.  if one hears a piano as a quacking duck, that is not a problem for the engineer (beyond rendering the initial, and intrinsically meaningless signal in all its glorious fidelity), any more than one's schizophrenia is a problem for the photo developer.  Funny these philosophical discussions never arise in discussions of television design, whose biological transformation to experience takes place over a shockingly similar neural substrate.

 

[Anaxilus]

 
Quote:

Funny these philosophical discussions never arise in discussions of television design, whose biological transformation to experience takes place over a shockingly similar neural substrate.

I guess it's a shame we aren't discussing eyes and televisions.  Then again, there would be no point according to you.  So your opinion is there is nothing experiential or otherwise that hasn't been accounted for in the world of audio then.  

 

[Mdraluck23]

Quote:

^ In the name of parsimony, I'd like to remind the OP and above post that the problem of audio reproduction is one of physics and not psychology.  I.e. the problem is one of sound reproduction and that stops at the pinna and tympanic membrane.  Beyond that, the problem/processes of the brain are a constant (whose interpretative vagaries are present both at a live concert and between a set headphones) with the exception informing engineers of frequencies beyond those registered by the Organ of Corti that should not bothered with.  if one hears a piano as a quacking duck, that is not a problem for the engineer (beyond rendering the initial, and intrinsically meaningless signal in all its glorious fidelity), any more than one's schizophrenia is a problem for the photo developer.  Funny these philosophical discussions never arise in discussions of television design, whose biological transformation to experience takes place over a shockingly similar neural substrate.

Well, everything is physics. I mean that one sound, as your brain interprets it, may be interpreted entirely differently than mine. It's just a semantic argument. There's no way to prove nor disprove it. I wasn't even trying. Just saying.

 

[rroseperry]

Well, 440 HZ is a concert pitch A and barring disability, your ears and my ears (our brains, really) are going to hear the same thing.
 
That being said, I don't think all the science is complete about how humans interpret complex reproduced sound. On any headphone thread, even if there's general consensus about a phone's sound signature, you're going to get some dissent. I don't think putting it down to psychology is particularly useful. Still as an (ex)biologist I can't think about how you'd even begin to design a study of this.

 

[Mdraluck23]

That's what I mean. It was just some food for thought.

 

[Uncle Erik]

 
Erik: this is a genuine inquiry with no agenda other than curiosity: IIRC you use an expensive Zana Deux, and you mentioned its soybean oil capacitors with no hint of skepticism.  Why do you and did you, if amps are solved problems and a $300-$400 SS unit is all you need?
 

No, that is a great question!

I've grown up with a fascination for tubes. If I'm not revealing my age too much, I remember a big tube tester at the supermarket and how we'd occasionally test tubes there and buy new ones for the TV set. Then there was my Uncle Art. I wish he was still around. He worked for Bell Labs, traveled the world to set up the early warning radar system, was an amazing amateur radio guy, and loved tubes. You can say it rubbed off.

I became a ham, too, and have restored a bunch of tubed radio equipment. Needless to say, I love this stuff. So when I come across something like the Zana, it is fascinating. Craig is an old-scool tube guy like my uncle was and I love that. The Zana has an interesting circuit and sounds wonderful. I will pay for that. Though I should mention that I have about $150 into a Dynalo and think very highly of it. I love the glowing tubes and ingenuity of the Zana, but if someone just wants great amplifaction, that $300 new Dynalo is pretty damned good.

It's the same with a few of my other hobbies. I carry a Chris Reeve Mnandi though I don't find it that much more useful than other knives. It is nice and I especially love that they make a left-handed version. On my wrist is a Sinn 656. I love it. But a $30 Timex will do a great job, too, and I love Timex's minimalist models.

You can get a great amp at a low cost. But I will spend a little more for something with some interesting style and great performance. I drive a Toyota and ride a Honda. In the next year or two, I'd like to add a used Lotus and a used Ducati to the mix. They won't be as practical or affordable, but they'll be fun. A Lotus will get you to the same place a Toyota will, though.

 

[InnerSpace]

Quote:

... I will spend a little more for something with some interesting style and great performance ... They won't be as practical or affordable, but they'll be fun.

Thanks for the answer.  I don't disagree with a word of it, because I come from pretty much the same place.  My dad was trained by the army in radio physics and knew more about tubes than anyone I knew.  (Although the army being the army, he was eventually deployed as a combat mechanic repairing tank engines behind the front line, all the way across Europe in 1944 and 1945.) My great-uncle Wynn built his own amps and speakers during the great era of mono corner units with sand-filled panels.  I started buying gear at the exact moment when the mom-and-pop "brown goods" retailers finally gave up on tubes - one time I got a used TV and two used radios for $3, and the guy threw in a dozen tubes that had been sitting on a back shelf for 15 years.  They were all 1957 Amperexes, and I've still got four of them.
 
But the reason I asked was I find it a little ... discouraging, I guess, for newbies to infer that anything beyond a competent $300 SS amp is about hoopla, fashion, or status.  Perhaps I read "need" more widely than you intended.  I guess you meant, " ... are probably all you need.  Well, as long as your definition of need doesn't include fashion and status-seeking.  But they may not be all you will want ... there is great fun in spending more for things with interesting style and great performance."