Sound Science is Dangerous to our Enjoyment of Music!

[ClieOS]

   
Yeah that's win-win. And it'll be also win for me to buy what I like without getting complaints from people who have no business about my ears and money.
 
Regards,
Windows X

 
..or as the Chinese will say, you've lost when you start to care.

 

[WindowsX]

Well said, do you best in defending your audio science. Good luck.
 
Regards,
Windows X

 

[castleofargh]

  Art of audiophile is to find happiness and pleasure in your own way for this kind of hobby. Some are happy in making a fool of others being gullible into buying snake oil products.
 
Regards,
Windows X 

while it's not ok on headfi, I personally find a great interest in making fun of someone who got tricked. for educational purpose. for the guy who will think twice before being gullible again, or bragging about something he doesn't know anything about, simply because he really didn't have much fun last time he tried

.
but most of all, for everybody else watching. what better way to develop skepticism toward something than to see someone getting trolled for believing anything he's told. if I see such a situation, I will think, wow I don't want to ever get myself in that position!!!! it will certainly make me think twice (for a while at least, because boys will be boys) before trusting extraordinary things said to me without asking for evidence.
 
and we see this with kids at school. at a certain age it's all about, "I can do this" and another kid will go "I can do that stuff+something", and soon enough one has a dad who can break the moon with one punch. it's cool for creativity, but that's about it.
a little older it becomes a battle of "you lie", "no it's true" with nobody winning.
with kids still a little older when one comes saying he can fly like superman, the other kids now know enough of the world to understand it's very very very unlikely, and they just laugh at him. the other kids around, not too sure about the superman thing will get that the guy probably can't fly, and that going around telling BS isn't the best way to become the cool kid of the playground anymore.
IMO it has a purpose, and soon enough the kids become better at lying and do so about smaller things, or just give up on claiming nonsense. no more battle about who's got the most powerful laser cat.  the level of conversation improves from lucid dreams to more down to earth boasting. it might become boring, but reality wins! the group as a whole reduced the level of BS.
if people on headfi were trashed when they claim absolute nonsense, instead of "but sir, let me tell you that while I respect and love you, I have a different opinion". maybe less people would feel entitled to make idiotic claims 10 times a day?
 
again, this is in no way the position of headfi or something I would enforce as a quasimodo, it's only my personal opinion. people don't stop doing things because they're reasonable, they stop doing things when the price for doing it outweighs their will of doing it. and shame, in a social system, it weights a lot.

 

[jcx]

I'm still wanting to see these posts by "sound science" "objectivists" that ever told anyone "you didn't enjoy that cuz AB/X sez..."
 
for me the arguments begin when "subjectivists" start evangelizing naive "just listen" as the sole arbiter of reality, start claiming their sighted, uncontrolled, "I heard it at a meet/show" "referenced" perceptions are authoritative refutations of physical aspects of audio, EE, or well established Psychoacoustics, that all that is soo far behind their Golden Ears' resolution
 
in line with the above - I frequently point out that some subjectivist' claims do seem to reflect a comic book superhero view of human limitations of conscious perception vs external stimulus reality - as demonstrated, explored in illusions, logic failures, perceptual limits all humans share
 
Science is non-intuitive, took a long time to develop because we have to impose formalities on our natural reasoning shortcuts, particularly when using conscious reported sense perceptions to tease out what's "real"

 

[Ruben123]

  I'm still wanting to see these posts by "sound science" "objectivists" that ever told anyone "you didn't enjoy that cuz AB/X sez..."
 
for me the arguments begin when "subjectivists" start evangelizing naive "just listen" as the sole arbiter of reality, start claiming their sighted, uncontrolled, "I heard it at a meet/show" perceptual referenced perceptions are authoritative refutations of physical aspects of audio, EE, or well established Psychoacoustics, that all that is soo far behind their Golden Ears' resolution

But did you hear all the gear theyre talking about? Boutique amps, mp3-players for the prices of a cheap car etc.... I dont have a public opinion on them anymore because well, maube there is some DSD or applied EQ going on in the firmware which does make them sound different than say a good mobile phone. Saying an iPhone sounds as good as an AK380 without having ABXed it, is a bit ignorance too. Now, I dont believe the AK sounds better or even different at all (even more so if the measurements show a flat FR), but if there is some DSD applied... we objectivists are the strangers then because the audible differences exist!
 
To be fair I dont think any DSD is applied and it is just 99% psycho acoustics. Having a happy time reading which AK firmware sounds better. It really is fun. Having only one or two people getting the new update and everybody waiting for the comparisons to the older firmware. "yeah I think.... that the last firmware sounded a bit crispier.... cant precisely put my finger on it... better bass for sure and better instrument placing....." lol

 

[WindowsX]

Yesterday I fine-tuned Calyx M firmware optimizing storage in various fields. It looks like adjusting request, cache size and block size affect sound performance in greater degree more than I expected. I let my friend auditioned the first firmware and he said bass is good but it's too veiled lacking treble extension. I flashed another firmware with some small changes in firmware, he told me it's too bright and aggressive.
 
I have rough idea how tuning affect system process like this size is about right and that would be excessive for bandwidth/throughput of I/O performance. But I can't explain how it affects audio performance lol. Maybe I'm one of those gullible people but I'm happy in tweaking firmware to find the right sound I like and share it with fellow audiophiles.
 
Regards,
Windows X

 

[krismusic]

Yeah that's win-win. And it'll be also win for me to buy what I like without getting complaints from people who have no business about my ears and money.

Regards,
Windows X

I only have any interest in what people spend their money on when they post on here encouraging me to spend mine!

But did you hear all the gear theyre talking about? Boutique amps, mp3-players for the prices of a cheap car etc.... I dont have a public opinion on them anymore because well, maube there is some DSD or applied EQ going on in the firmware which does make them sound different than say a good mobile phone. Saying an iPhone sounds as good as an AK380 without having ABXed it, is a bit ignorance too. Now, I dont believe the AK sounds better or even different at all (even more so if the measurements show a flat FR), but if there is some DSD applied... we objectivists are the strangers then because the audible differences exist!

To be fair I dont think any DSD is applied and it is just 99% psycho acoustics. Having a happy time reading which AK firmware sounds better. It really is fun. Having only one or two people getting the new update and everybody waiting for the comparisons to the older firmware. "yeah I think.... that the last firmware sounded a bit crispier.... cant precisely put my finger on it... better bass for sure and better instrument placing....." lol

V

But did you hear all the gear theyre talking about? Boutique amps, mp3-players for the prices of a cheap car etc.... I dont have a public opinion on them anymore because well, maube there is some DSD or applied EQ going on in the firmware which does make them sound different than say a good mobile phone. Saying an iPhone sounds as good as an AK380 without having ABXed it, is a bit ignorance too. Now, I dont believe the AK sounds better or even different at all (even more so if the measurements show a flat FR), but if there is some DSD applied... we objectivists are the strangers then because the audible differences exist!

To be fair I dont think any DSD is applied and it is just 99% psycho acoustics. Having a happy time reading which AK firmware sounds better. It really is fun. Having only one or two people getting the new update and everybody waiting for the comparisons to the older firmware. "yeah I think.... that the last firmware sounded a bit crispier.... cant precisely put my finger on it... better bass for sure and better instrument placing....." lol

A very sane approach to a subject that seems to raise great emotion.
FWIW I am fairly sure that the reason that I prefer the sound of my Onkyo DAC/amp to my iPhone is down to DSP. Or placebo!

 

[cel4145]

Yeah that's win-win. And it'll be also win for me to buy what I like without getting complaints from people who have no business about my ears and money.

I only have any interest in what people spend their money on when they post on here encouraging me to spend mine!

+1

But I also have a problem when some people encourage newbies who aren't familiar with both perspectives to spend their money on things that even many subjectivists would agree are not a great choice for price/performance in terms of audio quality.

 

[krismusic]

+1

But I also have a problem when some people encourage newbies who aren't familiar with both perspectives to spend their money on things that even many subjectivists would agree are not a great choice for price/performance in terms of audio quality.

Very much so.

 

[gregorio]

Is sound science dangerous to our enjoyment of music?
 
Are we talking just science or audio knowledge in general? If it's knowledge in general then my answer would be "yes". There are certainly songs and recordings I enjoyed before I knew much about recording, mixing and mastering which I then liked far less once I realised how poor the production was. On the other hand, I gained a new found respect for some songs and an even deeper respect for others which I already liked.
 
I'm not an audiophile in the sense that many here are though. I get my enjoyment out of listening to (and working with) sound and music, not from constantly trying to tweak my system. So I use science to help me to create my system/listening environment in the first place and then pretty much leave it alone and enjoy the listening. So no, sound science is not dangerous to my enjoyment of music, quite the reverse in fact, it gets me the best bang for my buck to start with, so I can enjoy without having to second guess myself.
 
G

 

[catspaw]

If you spend too much time testing, maybe you like it .

 

[castleofargh]

  If you spend too much time testing, maybe you like it .

can only talk for myself, but I really have very little fun doing any sort of test. it's just that I have a question, look for answers, and if I can't find it, I sometimes reach a point where not knowing annoys me more than doing the test myself. it's really but a pro vs con situation.  most people would just decide they don't care enough to bother, I do just that for plenty of things in my life. but when a question keeps coming back on the forum, at some point I usually end up "F it I'll do it myself!!!!".
I reluctantly got a switch a few years ago, because it felt stupid to give feedbacks of DAPs and amps without at least having a rapid switching solution. kind of an integrity motive.
then I started to get more kinds of interconnects to test new stuff as the questions came to me, then I bought 3 resistor adapters to test some impedance things with multidriver IEMs, then I got a better ADC because my soundcard couldn't measure anything below -50db, then I got a little mic, a multimeter, a breadboard and some components... aaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

 

[krismusic]

can only talk for myself, but I really have very little fun doing any sort of test. it's just that I have a question, look for answers, and if I can't find it, I sometimes reach a point where not knowing annoys me more than doing the test myself. it's really but a pro vs con situation.  most people would just decide they don't care enough to bother, I do just that for plenty of things in my life. but when a question keeps coming back on the forum, at some point I usually end up "F it I'll do it myself!!!!".
I reluctantly got a switch a few years ago, because it felt stupid to give feedbacks of DAPs and amps without at least having a rapid switching solution. kind of an integrity motive.
then I started to get more kinds of interconnects to test new stuff as the questions came to me, then I bought 3 resistor adapters to test some impedance things with multidriver IEMs, then I got a better ADC because my soundcard couldn't measure anything below -50db, then I got a little mic, a multimeter, a breadboard and some components... aaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

I wish more people were as rigorous before posting "impressions" on here!