[coli]

Of course it's subjective. A lot of high end audiophile hardware are in fact DSP like in that they alter the sound trying to make it sound "better"
 
Also, the more accurate the sound reproduction, the easier it is to identify bad recording/mix and or room interaction, and guess who the audiophile will blame? That's right, the sound system.

 

[castleofargh]

Placebo and expectation bias have caught me out so many times. Probably foolish to think that everything can be tested and measured though.

measuring everything can't be done because any measurement tool has a resolving limit, from the measurement gears, or the conditions of the measurement.
also we hardly go look for what we do not know to exist. ^_^
 
now in the context of personal audio, the maximum quantity of data we can expect from a record is determined by the recording microphones and recording gears, and from that point we go down in resolution until the headphone/speaker being really not the best at keeping data clean. so the precision of the data is very much limited. and the variety of the data just as well as any signal recorded is no more than a voltage value changing as a function of time when we get it from a microphone, or send it to a headphone/speaker. not exactly overwhelming complexity. so the idea that we can't know everything of a signal we can represent in totality on a 2 axis graph, that's just plain ignorance.
 
usually people decide that sound is very complex and full of unknowns, because they project human constructs like pleasure or even more ludicrous like quantifying a perceived soundstage, and hope for a machine to tell them all of it in a simple graph...  except that has very little to do with the audio signal and a lot to do with the person listening. they're not asking to measure the sound, they're asking to measure the guy and pretend like we're still talking about the sound. but stuff that are created by the brain, aren't acoustic anymore. even if the stimulus is sound, what needs to be studied if the human brain. so the unknowns are in the human(and placebo certainly is all about the human side), not in the sound.

 

[krismusic]

measuring everything can't be done because any measurement tool has a resolving limit, from the measurement gears, or the conditions of the measurement.
also we hardly go look for what we do not know to exist. ^_^

now in the context of personal audio, the maximum quantity of data we can expect from a record is determined by the recording microphones and recording gears, and from that point we go down in resolution until the headphone/speaker being really not the best at keeping data clean. so the precision of the data is very much limited. and the variety of the data just as well as any signal recorded is no more than a voltage value changing as a function of time when we get it from a microphone, or send it to a headphone/speaker. not exactly overwhelming complexity. so the idea that we can't know everything of a signal we can represent in totality on a 2 axis graph, that's just plain ignorance.

usually people decide that sound is very complex and full of unknowns, because they project human constructs like pleasure or even more ludicrous like quantifying a perceived soundstage, and hope for a machine to tell them all of it in a simple graph...  except that has very little to do with the audio signal and a lot to do with the person listening. they're not asking to measure the sound, they're asking to measure the guy and pretend like we're still talking about the sound. but stuff that are created by the brain, aren't acoustic anymore. even if the stimulus is sound, what needs to be studied if the human brain. so the unknowns are in the human(and placebo certainly is all about the human side), not in the sound.

I love it when technical aspects of this hobby lead to more philosophical discussion.
The trouble is, I love listening to music. I have until recently believed that if you have gear that is 99 % right you do not need to worry about the last tiny bit of performance.
Having bought a little amp/dac which seems to improve on the iPhone, I am realising that musicality does perhaps lie in that last percentage of performance.
If this is the case it is highly unfortunate as this is the area where diminishing returns not to mention the snake oil merchants come into play.
It is also the area where psychoacoustics are very influential. A fact that the aforementioned snake oil purveyors thrive on IME.
The benefit of turning gear into a hobby,as we do here on HeadFi, may be the unlocking of exceptional musical performance.
Unfortunately it also leaves us open to wasting time money and effort on illusions.
I do not know how to avoid that if Science cannot help!
BTW. +1 for the biggest unmeasurable variable being the listener.

 

[mmerrill99]

measuring everything can't be done because any measurement tool has a resolving limit, from the measurement gears, or the conditions of the measurement.
also we hardly go look for what we do not know to exist. ^_^

now in the context of personal audio, the maximum quantity of data we can expect from a record is determined by the recording microphones and recording gears, and from that point we go down in resolution until the headphone/speaker being really not the best at keeping data clean. so the precision of the data is very much limited. and the variety of the data just as well as any signal recorded is no more than a voltage value changing as a function of time when we get it from a microphone, or send it to a headphone/speaker. not exactly overwhelming complexity. so the idea that we can't know everything of a signal we can represent in totality on a 2 axis graph, that's just plain ignorance.

usually people decide that sound is very complex and full of unknowns, because they project human constructs like pleasure or even more ludicrous like quantifying a perceived soundstage, and hope for a machine to tell them all of it in a simple graph...  except that has very little to do with the audio signal and a lot to do with the person listening. they're not asking to measure the sound, they're asking to measure the guy and pretend like we're still talking about the sound. but stuff that are created by the brain, aren't acoustic anymore. even if the stimulus is sound, what needs to be studied if the human brain. so the unknowns are in the human(and placebo certainly is all about the human side), not in the sound.

I love it when technical aspects of this hobby lead to more philosophical discussion.
The trouble is, I love listening to music. I have until recently believed that if you have gear that is 99 % right you do not need to worry about the last tiny bit of performance.
Having bought a little amp/dac which seems to improve on the iPhone, I am realising that musicality does perhaps lie in that last percentage of performance.
If this is the case it is highly unfortunate as this is the area where diminishing returns not to mention the snake oil merchants come into play.
It is also the area where psychoacoustics are very influential. A fact that the aforementioned snake oil purveyors thrive on IME.
The benefit of turning gear into a hobby,as we do here on HeadFi, may be the unlocking of exceptional musical performance.
Unfortunately it also leaves us open to wasting time money and effort on illusions.
I do not know how to avoid that if Science cannot help!
BTW. +1 for the biggest unmeasurable variable being the listener.

The highlighted sentence is the most important on in your post.

However, your conclusions & castleofargh's philosophy are both misplaced in a "sound science" section if you genuinely perceive more musicality & are not suggesting it is a delusion?
If so, what I'm suggesting should be done is finding the appropriate measurements & reasons for why the iPhone doesn't deliver the musicality that the amp/dac does.

Castle, just a note of correction - all our perceptions are created in the brain & soundstage differences are a very real auditory perception. You can't simply dismiss everything that is difficult to measure into the "it must be delusion" bin

 

[VNandor]

The highlighted sentence is the most important on in your post.

However, your conclusions & castleofargh's philosophy are both misplaced in a "sound science" section if you genuinely perceive more musicality & are not suggesting it is a delusion?
If so, what I'm suggesting should be done is finding the appropriate measurements & reasons for why the iPhone doesn't deliver the musicality that the amp/dac does.

Castle, just a note of correction - all our perceptions are created in the brain & soundstage differences are a very real auditory perception. You can't simply dismiss everything that is difficult to measure into the "it must be delusion" bin

I don't think he implied that soundstage is only a "delusion and not real". What he says is that sounstage can not be measured because it is mostly created in the brain or at least that's my interpretation of what he said. If it's true, my implication is that it is nearly useless to ask someone about how's the soundstage of X headphone because the brain will play a bigger role to create the soundstage than the headphone.

 

[mmerrill99]

The highlighted sentence is the most important on in your post.


However, your conclusions

I don't think he implied that soundstage is only a "delusion and not real". What he says is that sounstage can not be measured because it is mostly created in the brain or at least that's my interpretation of what he said. If it's true, my implication is that it is nearly useless to ask someone about how's the soundstage of X headphone because the brain will play a bigger role to create the soundstage than the headphone.

That's what I took from his quoted text "they project human constructs like pleasure or even more ludicrous like quantifying a perceived soundstage," - the quantifying bit he's talking about is that one soundstage is perceived as wider/deeper than another (correct me if I'm wrong Castle)

What seems to get very confused in these discussions is that the brain is the central agent for perception & does 99% of the job. It bases it's processing on the incoming signals but that is not the sole input for it's goal which is the almost instantaneous moment-to-moment formation of an ongoing interpretation of these signals that makes sense to us & helps us to navigate the physical world. Speech came later in the evolutionary timescale & music is just an offshoot of this. BTW, the term psychoacoustics get used incorrectly quite a lot on audio forums - it is a scientific study of one aspect of auditory perception - it isn't about "likes" & "preferences"

 

[gregorio]

Castle, just a note of correction - all our perceptions are created in the brain & soundstage differences are a very real auditory perception.

 
That is an oxymoron! Either it is "very real" OR it's an "auditory perception". Just because it's an "auditory perception" shared by the vast majority of human beings, does not make it "very real".
 

You can't simply dismiss everything that is difficult to measure into the "it must be delusion" bin

 
Castle is not the one who needs a "note of correction". Soundstage isn't difficult to measure, it's impossible to measure! It's impossible to measure because soundstage is not an inherent property of sound waves it is purely an auditory perception. The only conceivable method of measuring soundstage would be to create an algorithm which models the behaviour of the brain and then applies that modelling algorithm as part of an analysis tool, much as has already been done with the measuring of loudness. The problem with these types of perceptual measurements is that they are not very accurate, they are effectively broad generalisations and averages based on studies and sample sizes. Loudness is a relatively simple perceptual process to model but the measurement of it has only been available fairly recently, modelling soundstage is far more complex.
 
Finally, soundstage isn't dismissed to the "delusion bin" because it's difficult to measure, it's placed in the "delusion bin" because it's a deliberately created illusion! If we see a picture of a never ending staircase, do we believe this staircase is "very real" and that science simply hasn't yet found a way to measure this staircase property? Of course not! Any rational person would place it firmly in the "delusion bin", commend the artist's understanding of visual perception and their ability to manipulate it to create the perceptual illusion of a never ending stair case.
 
G

 

[mmerrill99]

Castle, just a note of correction - all our perceptions are created in the brain

That is an oxymoron! Either it is "very real" OR it's an "auditory perception". Just because it's an "auditory perception" shared by the vast majority of human beings, does not make it "very real".

Sorry, it's very real AND it's an auditory perception (without the scare quotes). I believe what you meant to say in your follow on (correct me if I'm wrong) "Just because it's an "mass delusion" shared by the vast majority of human beings, does not make it "very real"?

You can't simply dismiss everything that is difficult to measure into the "it must be delusion" bin

Castle is not the one who needs a "note of correction". Soundstage isn't difficult to measure, it's impossible to measure! It's impossible to measure because soundstage is not an inherent property of sound waves it is purely an auditory perception.

What? You know that we perceive width & depth in our real-world auditory perception, right?Where do you think this originates? You know about ITD & ILD & how they are manipulated by recording engineers to create unnatural soundstage?

The only conceivable method of measuring soundstage would be to create an algorithm which models the behaviour of the brain and then applies that modelling algorithm as part of an analysis tool, much as has already been done with the measuring of loudness. The problem with these types of perceptual measurements is that they are not very accurate, they are effectively broad generalisations and averages based on studies and sample sizes. Loudness is a relatively simple perceptual process to model but the measurement of it has only been available fairly recently, modelling soundstage is far more complex.

Ah, right - this I can concur with. So, answer me this - is loudness not "very real"? Is loudness not a property of the signals?

Finally, soundstage isn't dismissed to the "delusion bin" because it's difficult to measure, it's placed in the "delusion bin" because it's a deliberately created illusion! If we see a picture of a never ending staircase, do we believe this staircase is "very real" and that science simply hasn't yet found a way to measure this staircase property? Of course not! Any rational person would place it firmly in the "delusion bin", commend the artist's understanding of visual perception and their ability to manipulate it to create the perceptual illusion of a never ending stair case.

G

I already mentioned recording engineers manipulation of ITD & ILD (mostly ILD) based on very well understood psychoacoustic spaces. But it doesn't have to be a "constructed" soundstage if the venue & micing techniques are appropriate, the size of the venue will be captured without any manipulation.

If you actually want to get into the idea that 2 channel stereo is an illusion - then yes, I concur. And the illusion works only because it mimics or emulates our internal psychoacoustic models & the extent to which it achieves this determines how realistic we perceive the illusion.

To analyse your analogy about art - what the artist is doing is using his knowledge of visual perception to create an effect - just like a recording engineer
Now what Castle is talking about is something else - he's saying that the perception of greater soundstage depth when the only thing that has changed has been the source, for instance, is a delusion. Correct me if I'm wrong, Castle.

 

[gregorio]

Sorry, it's very real AND auditory perception ...

 
Apologizing and then repeating the same oxymoron does not eventually stop it being an oxymoron!
 

What? You know that we perceive width & depth in our real-world auditory perception, right?Where do you think this originates? You know about ITD & ILD & how they are manipulated by recording engineers to create unnatural soundstage?

 
Creating a physical model of the never ending staircase instead of a 2d picture doesn't suddenly make it a "very real" never ending staircase, it's STILL an optical illusion! And, being insultingly patronising doesn't prove your point, it just makes you look even more ignorant!
 

So, answer me this - is loudness not "very real"? Is loudness not a property of the signals?

 
No, loudness is a human perception, it is NOT a property of signals. This is why we've only recently been able to measure it (using modelling algorithms) and why we can only do so relatively inaccurately and under certain conditions.
 

But it doesn't have to be a "constructed" soundstage if the venue & micing techniques are appropriate, the size of the venue will e captured without any manipulation.

 
Yes it does! It needs a human with human aural perceptions to judge what mic'ing techniques and positioning is "appropriate" in the first place. Mic'ing techniques and positioning IS manipulation!
 
G

 

[mmerrill99]

G, as I said, if you want to discuss stereo playback as the attempt at producing an illusion of a musical event that "really" took place then yes, I believe we can agree on this & the various manipulations used to try to achieve a better illusion.

But you are talking in circles here & using "real" & "illusion" in a confusing way

 

[gregorio]

But you are talking in circles here & using "real" & "illusion" in a confusing way

 
No, you are the one talking in circles and the reason you find my use of "real" and "illusion" confusing is because you are obviously confused about what is real and what is illusion!
 
If you just want to ignore those facts which are inconvenient to your flawed understanding, incorrectly accuse others of doing what you are guilty of and be patronising just to prove your flawed understanding is actually correct, then feel free but I don't have to listen to another round of your nonsense or comply with your conditions for "wanting to discuss stereo". Whether you "believe we can agree on this" or not, is fortunately irrelevant because reality or illusion, the facts and the science do not depend on your personal beliefs.
 
If you want to talk about stereo and actually improve your flawed understanding, then ask politely and cut out the condescension. These are my conditions for "wanting to discuss stereo"!
 
G

 

[ralphp@optonline]

   
No, you are the one talking in circles and the reason you find my use of "real" and "illusion" confusing is because you are obviously confused about what is real and what is illusion!
 
If you just want to ignore those facts which are inconvenient to your flawed understanding, incorrectly accuse others of doing what you are guilty of and be patronising just to prove your flawed understanding is actually correct, then feel free but I don't have to listen to another round of your nonsense or comply with your conditions for "wanting to discuss stereo". Whether you "believe we can agree on this" or not, is fortunately irrelevant because reality or illusion, the facts and the science do not depend on your personal beliefs.
 
If you want to talk about stereo and actually improve your flawed understanding, then ask politely and cut out the condescension. These are my conditions for "wanting to discuss stereo"!
 
G

At this point after reading so many of mmerrill99's posts I'm starting to think that his basic approach to the understanding of electronically reproduced audio (and that is the proper name for what we are discussing) is that there is some kind of magic buried deep inside it, similar to those old movies where the explorers encounter some primitive people who declare the explorers evil beings because of the magic box that traps the souls of the people. The magic box is of course a Polaroid camera add the traped souls are just photographs. On the other hand, the basic approach of many people in the Sound Science section is that electronically reproduced audio is an applied science and magic has nothing to do with it.
 
I think that it is very fine testament to the marketing (there's that pesky word again) skill of the high end audio world in that they can inject all this belief in magic into what is simply an applied, engineered science. That is no magic, just science.

 

[krismusic]

The debate doesn't seem to go anywhere but it depends if you believe that everything about audio performance can be measured.

 

[ralphp@optonline]

The debate doesn't seem to go anywhere but it depends if you believe that everything about audio performance can be measured.

Which part of "audio performance" are you trying to measure? The complex sound waves coming from a live orchestra or the electrical signal coming from the microphones recording the live orchestra? If it is the electrical signal then, yes everything most certainly be measured.  All aspects of those complex sound waves might not be completely measured, e.g. the exact position of each individual air molecule at each moment, but that is another discussion. As far "audio", in the sense that it is being used on this thread (Note to op: if I'm mistaken, please let me know), is concerned everything can be measured.

 

[krismusic]

Which part of "audio performance" are you trying to measure? The complex sound waves coming from a live orchestra or the electrical signal coming from the microphones recording the live orchestra? If it is the electrical signal then, yes everything most certainly be measured.  All aspects of those complex sound waves might not be completely measured, e.g. the exact position of each individual air molecule at each moment, but that is another discussion. As far "audio", in the sense that it is being used on this thread (Note to op: if I'm mistaken, please let me know), is concerned everything can be measured.

I'm interested to know whether by measuring we can predict how a piece of audio gear will perfom.
For example, I am told that the iPhone measures very well but it sounds flat and lifeless to me compared with my external amp/DAC. This may well be placebo.
The Mojo gets 10.000 posts. In the main extremely favourable. I cannot hear any difference from the iPhone. Is it me?