[Magick Man]

Just as some other forums here are DBT-Free Zones, the Sound Science Forum should be a Subjective-Free Zone.

So we couldn't talk about sound when discussing equipment used to produce sound? Interesting...

 

[Shike]

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Under  the condition I just listed the effect is highly audible & is not up to debate for me.

 

 
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So what gives? I have no idea. Bottom line is that I think all effects in audio can be measured, but we just need to discover the right ways to measure them. Just remember that no one knew what the heck "treble ringing" was with headphones just a year ago until I started posting CSD waterfall plots. I dunno, may the entire CSD thing was reality distortion field thing that I set up to make people hear even slight amounts of it with the LCD2r1s.

 
It could be that you may not like well measuring gear, or have a degree of inherent bias like everyone else.  There's tons of well measuring gear that people find boring, and there's some (IMO) awful/"tuned" gear that some people say sounds amazing.
 
As for people not knowing about treble ringing and CSD till a year ago, Ryumatsuba has been doing them for ages and tons of people, at least in Sound Science, were pretty informed about it.  Equally, goldenears.net has been doing them too, and with much better equipment IMO (I think your rig may actually excite some of the treble frequencies in some examples, like the K601).  That's another discussion entirely though.

 

[purrin]

 
 
Oh, I'm getting an eargasm with that HE400 30Hz square wave!

 

[Steve Eddy]

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So we couldn't talk about sound when discussing equipment used to produce sound? Interesting...

 
You conveniently left out what I said prior to that, which was:
 
...science doesn't get by based just on peoples' assertions. Those assertions have to be supported by credible, objective evidence.
 
The cart before the horse are those who assert there are audible differences based solely on their subjective experience, i.e. how something "sounds" to them. And that's what I'm suggesting be kept out of the Sound Science forum. It's effectively the same thing as going into one of the DBT-Free Zone forums and demanding people support their subjective experiences with objective evidence.
 
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[Steve Eddy]

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Oh, I'm getting an eargasm with that HE400 30Hz square wave!

 
Good God, man. Go get a towel and clean that mess up. If there's anything I can't stand it's sticky floors.
 
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[purrin]

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 (I think your rig may actually excite some of the treble frequencies in some examples, like the K601).

 
Look carefully at the floors (-40db/-36db on my site vs. -30db with his). He applies 1/3 octave smoothing, which I do not. I also consistently align the left edge of the initial FFT window right before the rise of the impulse response. He doesn't. It's all over the place with his CSD plots - in some cases, the left edge of the initial FFT window is several milliseconds before the rise, which has led to at least a few uninformed readers to be mislead into thinking certain headphones were "slow". 
 
Of course an astute objectivist would have easily noted such things.
 
This is the other side of the coin and what can be dangerous about measurements. The visualizations can be modified, shaped, presented in varying ways.

 

[TMRaven]

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But yet at the same time, after rigorous comparison (involving other test subjects, not just me) the O2/ODAC just don't stack up to better sounding gear. Last night, we had an O2, Bryston BHA1, and Eddie Current S7 shootout, and I can say for certainty that the O2 that thoroughly trashed by the latter two amps. The O2 sounded flat, lacked low-level information extraction, and even sounded slightly muffled or veiled in comparison. And as for the "colored" tube amp, the EC S7; it actually sounded clearer, faster, more dynamic, more airy, and more capable of reproducing dynamic cues than the solid-state Bryston BHA1.

 
Was this a blind test?
 
 
That HE-400 30hz square wave does sound damn good ur right!

 

[Anaxilus]

I've also noticed various shifts in his scales when correlating other sources and other interesting discrepancies.  I't nice to have other sources but his data and evaluation process is the most suspect to me.  The subjective scale, the comments about phone X besting phone Y in his impressions which seem sometimes far off to my ears and eyes.  I've asked about 5x's over the years WTH a goldenears amp is w/o any answer.
 
Edit-Dammit, I got suckered into this thread.  >.<

 

[rhythmdevils]

I'm sorry but Goldenears measurements are complete crap.  Just look at their M50 measurements:
 

 
What, did the driver get stuck?  Read Purrin's post above carefully.  Even when they manage to start their mesurements at roughly the right time, they are so smoothed and averaged, they're completely meaningless to me.  You just can't tell the difference between headphones well enough. 
 
And they show ringing where there is none.  Here's an HD800 graph that makes it look like a resonant mess, when it's one of the cleanest headphones ever made
 

 
Here's the HD650. 
 

 
This shows the HD650 to be both faster, and cleaner than the HD800 and that is such a fricking fail.  I think they do more harm than good, i've seen a lot of noobs post these graphs and make crazy conclusions from them. 

 

[Magick Man]

You conveniently left out what I said prior to that, which was:

...science doesn't get by based just on peoples' assertions. Those assertions have to be supported by credible, objective evidence.

The cart before the horse are those who assert there are audible differences based solely on their subjective experience, i.e. how something "sounds" to them. And that's what I'm suggesting be kept out of the Sound Science forum. It's effectively the same thing as going into one of the DBT-Free Zone forums and demanding people support their subjective experiences with objective evidence.

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The cart before the horse analogy applies to anyone who discards either objective or subjective impressions. Both are important.

If it's a piece of audio gear, I'm more than happy to discuss its technical merits, but I'm also going to talk about how it sounds. If someone wants to criticize that, I know I'm posting in SS and I can handle it. Science doesn't exist in a vacuum and the primary function of audio gear isn't measurement.

 

[rhythmdevils]

This is also why we need subjectivity.  So we know we're measuring something wrong because the HD800 is clearly both faster, and cleaner than the HD650.  These graphs show you what happens when you use objectivity only.  You start measuring things poorly, and just keep doing it blindly because you have no reference.  And it's just completely useless.  It's a waste of time, and if Goldenears were going to be making a headphone using their CSD's as a guide, I have to say it would wind up sounding like complete crap.  (subjectively)

 

[Magick Man]

This is also why we need subjectivity.  So we know we're measuring something wrong because the HD800 is clearly both faster, and cleaner than the HD650.  These graphs show you what happens when you use objectivity only.  You start measuring things poorly, and just keep doing it blindly because you have no reference.  And it's just completely useless.  It's a waste of time, and if Goldenears were going to be making a headphone using their CSD's as a guide, I have to say it would wind up sounding like complete crap.  (subjectively)

Yep. That's why I don't own the HD800, I don't like the way it reproduces music. Technically, I very much appreciate how well it performs, it's a marvel of engineering, but I'd rather listen to my TH900s or HD650s.

 

[Steve Eddy]

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The cart before the horse analogy applies to anyone who discards either objective or subjective impressions. Both are important.
 

 
As far as the Sound Science forum is concerned, subjective impressions are meaningless unless they're accompanied by some sort of objective evidence substantiating them.
 
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If it's a piece of audio gear, I'm more than happy to discuss its technical merits, but I'm also going to talk about how it sounds. If someone wants to criticize that, I know I'm posting in SS and I can handle it

 
But why would you want to talk about your subjective experience on its own in the Sound Science forum except to derail threads and/or generally be disruptive? That's what the DBT-Free Zone forums are for. For people to simply share their subjective experiences.
 
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Science doesn't exist in a vacuum and the primary function of audio gear isn't measurement.

 
But the primary function of the Sound Science forum is science. Again, there are other forums for people to share their subjective experiences.
 
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[rhythmdevils]

Which is why the sound science forum is irrelevant and no one cares.  Let's take a bunch of people who have no idea what they're talking about, put them in an isolated forum, and pontificate endlessly about an objective only approach to a subjective experience. 
 
You all need to get out more. 

 

[Steve Eddy]

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Which is why the sound science forum is irrelevant and no one cares.  Let's take a bunch of people who have no idea what they're talking about, put them in an isolated forum, and pontificate endlessly about an objective only approach to a subjective experience. 
 
You all need to get out more. 

 
That's funny, I don't recall ever advocating an objective only approach to a subjective experience.
 
Care to quote me on that?
 
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