Improvement statistics universal to customs Part II

[Gastronomic]

Hello again head-fi'ers.
 
I want to make some statistics about the percentage of improvement between a universal and a custom.
Obviously, with so many iem's, some generalizations are need.
 
I ask to the head-fi'ers with a high class universal and a high class custom, to say what percentage of improvement is due to the better isolation and comfort.
 
My intentions are to calc the average, mode, range, and p-value of the results of this poll, and cross with the results of the thread "Improvement statistics universal to customs Part I"
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/532131/improvement-statistics-universal-to-customs-part-i

I hope this will make the opinions about the improvement more objective and thus helpfull to thoose that don't are sure about jumping soo high.



Thank you very much.

 

[Bennyboy71]

Good luck.  See you on the other side of obsessive autism.

 

[Gastronomic]

.

 

[Gastronomic]

Please, keep voting.

 

[Gastronomic]

Come on, head-fi'ers! Let's vote!

 

[Gastronomic]

up. thank you.

 

[Bennyboy71]

I really dont see the point

 

[Gastronomic]

With the first part, i intend to make the improvement of a custom a more understandable thing.
With the second part, i intend to distinguish what percentage of improvement is due to better sound quality or isolation and confort.
 
It's quite simple.
 
For example bennyboy:
 
you can understand the difference between your hf5 and sm3. but you can't understand the difference between your sm3 and a jh audio13, right? coz the only thing you read are subjective words describing a better sound. and so, you don't know if it's worth spending "x" plus money on a "subjective improvement. however, if someone told you that the diference between  a entry class iem and sm3 is 8; and the diference between a sm3 and jh audio 13 is 2, probablly you will do a better judgement is spending or not 500$ for improving 20%.
 
the reason of the second part: i think the better sound quality is being confused with a better isolation, coz a better isolation gives a false idea of better sound. and so, i want to separate those things.

 

[Bennyboy71]

See my answer in part one thread.  How many ghosts can you fit in a room?

 

[yumigator]

I don't think isolation really creates the impression of better sound. Better isolation improves sound in noisy environments, but I would assume and hope that people do their critical listening and comparisons in quiet. And I agree with Bennyboy71 - numerical representations of sound quality don't mean anything if they aren't accompanied by some subjective description of the item.
 
Also, it's not clear what the percentages represent in this poll. It could either mean, "What percentage of the improvement should be attributed to improvements in isolation or comfort?" or, "How much improvement in comfort/isolation do customs offer over universals?" Based on your description, you intended to say the former, and based on the poll results, nearly everyone understood it as the latter.
 
As someone who may be interested in customs (not anytime soon), I am also interested in the customs vs. universals discussion - but I think it's far more useful to ask someone, "What do you like more about this custom over this universal?" than to ask, "What percentage improvement did you experience?"

 

[Gastronomic]

 
Quote:

I don't think isolation really creates the impression of better sound. Better isolation improves sound in noisy environments, but I would assume and hope that people do their critical listening and comparisons in quiet. And I agree with Bennyboy71 - numerical representations of sound quality don't mean anything if they aren't accompanied by some subjective description of the item.
 
Also, it's not clear what the percentages represent in this poll. It could either mean, "What percentage of the improvement should be attributed to improvements in isolation or comfort?" or, "How much improvement in comfort/isolation do customs offer over universals?" Based on your description, you intended to say the former, and based on the poll results, nearly everyone understood it as the latter.
 
As someone who may be interested in customs (not anytime soon), I am also interested in the customs vs. universals discussion - but I think it's far more useful to ask someone, "What do you like more about this custom over this universal?" than to ask, "What percentage improvement did you experience?"

By isolation i was thinking in how diferents tips change the sound of a universal, and so the 2nd question was to understand how much sound improvement is due to better shape or whatever, rather than the performance of the drivers.
 
about the first, i wanted to change the question "What do you like more about this custom over this universal" to "how much do you like more about this custom over this universal". Obviously customs are better, but more important is to know if "that better" is sufficient for you. And the only way i see of understanding that is comparing to a previosly experience, like the improvement you felt from a entry class to a high.

 

[yumigator]

But how is a user supposed objectively measure this? I can say "this fits better" or "this sounds better," but I can't say "the improvement is sound is 30% due to improvements in fit and 70% due to improvements in the drivers." We cannot know why the improvement occurs, only that it does.
 
What makes this more pointless is that we're asked to compare universals vs. customs in general. Obviously, each universal and each custom has different shape, fit, and drivers, and to lump them all into two groups for comparison's sake just doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter how many statistics you calculate and how many statistical tests you perform - irrelevant data leads to irrelevant results.