[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Do you think that the design team who designs a car never drives it to gather subjective impressions?
Or more on point, do you think the design team that designed a fridge never touched the fridge, looked at it, operated the shelves, etc to ensure that, subjectively, it was a "good"fridge?
Same goes for a toaster or a tea kettle.

 
We're not talking about cars, refrigerators, toasters or tea kettles.
 
se

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

 
We're not talking about cars, refrigerators, toasters or tea kettles.
 
se

 
Well I guess that settles that!  LOL!

Audio equipment really is just a fancy toaster or tea kettle or fridge, i.e. just another luxury commodity.
 
The point is, do you actually think audio designers never listen to their equipment?
Because if they don't listen to it, they are completely unlike any other designer I have ever seen.
Period.

 

[mikeaj]

Many of the things that are being described relate to usability, function, and form—not particularly what's being discussed.
 
I think we're talking about certain specific cases where any listening wasn't used as an input to tweak the electronics, to try to improve sound quality.  Nobody's claiming that there was no listening at any point.  I'd think it's more analogous to the process of designing an engine rather than designing a car, if you want to give an example, but that doesn't work perfectly either.

 

[AKG240mkII]

Quote:

Do you think that the design team who designs a car never drives it to gather subjective impressions?
Or more on point, do you think the design team that designed a fridge never touched the fridge, looked at it, operated the shelves, etc to ensure that, subjectively, it was a "good"fridge?
Same goes for a toaster or a tea kettle.
 

 
Do you think they take a ride and then base the technical claims on the 'oomph-feeling' they got or do you think they measure the 'performance' ?
Do you think they stick their head in the fridge and subjectively feel 'it gets cold enough' or do you think they measure it ?
Or doesn't it matter, because 'we don't measure temperatures the same way we feel them' ??
 
 
Quote:

Subjectively, the whole experience still has to be positive.
Unless, of course, you don't mind a piece of audio equipment which looks like ugly lab equipment, and has some wierd quirks
(which you conveniently expect the customer to ignore or work around) when you turn it on, or switch inputs, use functions, turn it off, etc?

Or having to replace vacuum-valves in your DAC ..
In a piece of audio-equipment that looks like it was designed 60 years ago and will fry you if you put your tweaking fingers the wrong place ?

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

The point is, do you actually think audio designers never listen to their equipment?

 
I'm sure most everyone hooks up a complete system and listens to the output.
 
But there's listening and then there's listening.
 
You've got your analytical, fly speck listening of the audiophile, and then you've got your purely utilitarian "Ok, we've got music coming out of the speakers. Nothing obviously wrong. We're good" listening.
 
In the Beta 22's case, it was the latter.
 
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[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

I think we're talking about certain specific cases where any listening wasn't used as an input to tweak the electronics, to try to improve sound quality.

 
Exactly.
 
se

 

[JadeEast]

Quote:

Many of the things that are being described relate to usability, function, and form—not particularly what's being discussed.
 

 
There does need to be a line drawn between considering the product as a whole and it's performance metrics.

 

[Citan]

The bottom line is that audio equipment is meant to transmit a signal/information.  The output signal can be measured against the input signal.  If a component measures significantly well, then the signal/information is being transmitted accurately and we can be reasonably sure that it is functioning properly.  

 

[Magick Man]

Well I guess that settles that!  LOL!:rolleyes:
Audio equipment really is just a fancy toaster or tea kettle or fridge, i.e. just another luxury commodity.

The point is, do you actually think audio designers never listen to their equipment?
Because if they don't listen to it, they are completely unlike any other designer I have ever seen.
Period.

Yep. I have to call shenanigans on the B22 no subjective listening thing.

"What do the other senses have to do with hearing?" and "We're not talking about cars, refrigerators, toasters or tea kettles."

It's as if somehow audio gear is perceived as different than any other product, or that hearing is more suspect than any other sense. I can't tell the difference between a $12 bottle of Mondavi Cabernet and a 2001 Quintessa ($120), but I've seen experienced sommeliers distinguish between the like, with unerring accuracy, within seconds during a DBT. However, I can tell you which of the 7 different CD releases of FM's Rumours that I own are playing (all ripped to FLAC) without looking. Coincidentally, I heard, and chuckled over, Lindsey's expletive at the beginning of The Chain waaay before it was "revealed" to the world, even though many experts say you can't hear it on vinyl (you can on the 1980 Nautilus pressing, provided your gear is up to the challenge).

With electronics there often is a difference, even if at times it can only be detected over extended listening, but it's up to the listener to decide: 1.) if they care, and 2.) if the added detail and such is worth the oftentimes nosebleed-inducing prices.

 

[kLevkoff]

I have to say that I *do* understand the "subjectivists - I simply don't agree with them.
 
The last time I heard, the term "high fidelity" meant something like "an accurate rendition of the original". This means that, at least if you're claiming to want high fidelity sound, there is indeed a *right* and the goal is to get as close to it as possible. (Now, if you just happen to *like* the way a tube amp adds second harmonic distortion and rolls off the high end, that's fine - just don't call it high fidelity. Likewise, if you want to put pink glass on all your paintings because you like pink, that's fine too; but "museum glass" is still specified as *not* altering the color, and your pink happy-glass won't qualify.)
 
Now there is room for a tiny bit of subjectivism here - and that is in the way different people weigh different factors. I may be very sensitive to frequency response (and so systems too far off flat bother me); you may be *insensitive* to frequency response, but maybe phase errors bug you. In that case, we really both agree on what's right, but we each consider different deviations to be important and don't especially care about others. In that case, we may well choose different products in a given price range as "our best choice".
 
In the past, there were also several famous examples where what we were measuring failed miserably to be appropriate to what we hear. Yes, many early solid state designs "measured good and sounded bad" - and now we know why... because they had low THD (which is easy to measure) and very bad transient distortion (which was hard to measure and, frankly, nobody was even trying). This obviously does *not* mean that measurements don't correlate with how things sound; what it means is that you have to measure the correct things and, if two things "measure the same but sound different" then, clearly, you're missing an important measurement.
 
The very idea that "it's all up to you" is crazy. There clearly *IS* a goal, which is perfect fidelity to the original, and I think that current technology is getting close enough to it that we shouldn't get lost in the whole "it's all OK" ********.
 
To air another pet peeve of mine, I also have a huge problem with the "it's different so it must be better" crowd. Human hearing is very sensitive, and you really can hear very minute differences between various devices (and even cables) in a fast A-B test.... but that doesn't constitute proof that one or the other is better. So, if you listen to a $10 Monoprice cable and a $3500 frou frou one, you may well be able to hear a difference, because their electrical characteristics are slightly difference. Unfortunately, human frailty and illogic then takes over, and far too many people will *assume* that the expensive one must be better - when, in fact, it's just a small fraction of a dB *different*. I get so bored of hearing people rattling on about how "their system is so good at resolving detail that they can hear the differences that different cables make". Sorry, no! Your system is just so poorly engineered that it is sensitive to the minute differences between them (when a well designed system should be immune to those differences.)
 
So, yes, audio equipment *IS* just another toaster or refrigerator. It is designed to do something, and it should do it well.
It isn't magic, it isn't emotion (even though YOUR emotions may alter how YOU perceive it to sound), it is a device designed to do a job..... and, if you think about it that way, you will avoid spending tens of thousands of dollars on liter batches of Mad Dog in $1000 bottles.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Yep. I have to call shenanigans on the B22 no subjective listening thing.
 

 
Call what you like. It was right there in the open and I read Ti's post myself. The person I built a Beta 22 system for didn't believe it either until he read the post for himself.
 
Pity that Chu Moy has chosen not to restore the Headwize forums and Wayback Machine never crawled past the first page of the Beta 22 thread.
 
Anyway, as I said, call what you like. I know what the truth is and that's really all that matters.
 
se

 

[kLevkoff]

The travesty is in NOT doing our best to figure out what's going on. If you have two amps that "measure the same but sound different", then the only way to improve the situation is to take more measurements until you figure out what the difference is. Our ability to measure far exceeds our ability to hear. If you hear a difference, then it CAN be measured once you figure out what to measure. Then, once you have that, you can figure out what caused that difference and, the next time, you will be able to build one that sounds the way you like without a lot of trial and error. This is how science works.
 
There is surely nothing magical about OpAmps. If different OpAmps sound different, then there IS a reason, and you CAN measure it. And the next time you can make sure that your design incorporates all of the factors that make the better one better..... in fact, since you now know how, you can exceed it by combining the good points (and avoiding the bad ones) of previous attempts. No two OpAmps EVER measure the same. At most, they may measure so good in some regard that we *consider* them to be "equally perfect" in that regard. If in fact they sound different then either it's because of some other difference we neglected to measure, or because we made a false assumption about where the line that specifies "so good you can't hear the difference" lies. Either way, ignorance of what's really going on *CAN'T* improve our chances of doing better next time.
 
Keith
 
 
Quote:

 
Exactly.
 
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[Magick Man]

Call what you like. It was right there in the open and I read Ti's post myself. The person I built a Beta 22 system for didn't believe it either until he read the post for himself.

Pity that Chu Moy has chosen not to restore the Headwize forums and Wayback Machine never crawled past the first page of the Beta 22 thread.

Anyway, as I said, call what you like. I know what the truth is and that's really all that matters.

se

I'm not saying you made it up, but I will say it does sound like it was made up somewhere up the chain.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

I'm not saying you made it up, but I will say it does sound like it was made up somewhere up the chain.

 
Well, if you're not saying that I made it up, then the only thing further up the chain is Ti's own post. So are you saying Ti made it up?
 
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[Magick Man]

Well, if you're not saying that I made it up, then the only thing further up the chain is Ti's own post. So are you saying Ti made it up?

se

I don't know anything about the guy so I don't rule out anything. Maybe his perception of time is as prone to bias as hearing?