Testing audiophile claims and myths

[amirm]

Google auditory masking, champ. Read the tests using tones. Think about how that might apply to music. What sort of frequencies might exhibit the biggest effect? Then try it for yourself.

My yellow highlighter has gone dry I’m afraid. You’re going to have to do your own test. I’m not your personal geek squad.

Have you googled auditory masking? Seems like you don't even have the benefit that much education. It has nothing to do what you are describing. It is a phrase you have heard about and thought it is the explanation for what is a poorly implemented EQ.

Really it is no different than what subjectivists do in attaching technical attributes to stuff that makes no sense. "This USB cable sounds better because it has lower EMI." Yes, there is such a thing as EMI. No, it doesn't make your USB cable sound any better.

What you seem to be saying is that you can say whatever you want on a technical topic but when asked to demonstrate its correctness you are going to refuse to do so. What kind of science discussion is this???

If there is science, point it out. Just give a link and a quote. Not hard. Certainly a lot less work than writing these posts.

As I noted before, this test requires a calibrated system. I could give you an audio file to demonstrate it, but if your system is unbalanced, it would likely be muddled up. The demonstration I heard was shared with me by a professional sound mixer on his own reference system. If your system isn’t flat, I would recommend finding an AV monkey in the yellow pages to calibrate your system for you. He might even be able to explain auditory masking to your satisfaction.[

I ask again: how do you know his system was "balanced" and "flat?" You do understand that it takes herculean effort to even get to +- 3db in room response. Yes? Your friend's room is likely to be way, way outside of this range.

Genelec (top 3 manufacturer of professional/studio monitors) published this great AES paper, showing a survey of different recording rooms that used their speakers. This was the result:

And these are with speakers that pre-calibrated prior to leaving the factory. As you see, there is no such thing as "flat." So no, your friend did not have such a room. You are just assuming it did, or trying to say that now after the fact.

Going along with your argument anyway, if this requires a flat system, and nobody has it, why is it of any concern in these discussions?

Bottom line, this is a fish story. We all have them. But let's not confuse fantastical ones with reality. You are totally confused by what auditory masking is.

Has anyone else heard what Bigshot is talking about here? Who here is convinced of this and wants to explain why it is true?

 

[castleofargh]

KeithEmo, I'm the one that said "because it was still busy making the last sound when the new one arrived to be played" (paraphrased), and I've left this discussion behind due to pinnahertz's know-it-all attitude and his comment about "considering the audience", as well as bigshot calling people that prefer not to equalize "audiophools". You will not get your point across with these people. I do respect and enjoy your contributions to this forum, though.

to EQ or not isn't the matter. you do whatever you like and listen to music however you enjoy it most. nobody but bigots would try to force you to do what you don't want to do with your music.
on the other hand when you present EQ as being wrong in general and claim it to be factual, now that's not something anybody should let pass. because this time you're pushing your reality onto others so it better be correct.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

That is an incredible archive of blind tests performed in OP! Well done.

It is missing this ABX test of amplifiers which I unearthed a few years ago, by advocates of ABX testing: https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ts-did-show-amplifiers-to-sound-different.23/

There is another thread for testing which did show a positive result.

 

[pinnahertz]

I ask again: how do you know his system was "balanced" and "flat?" You do understand that it takes herculean effort to even get to +- 3db in room response. Yes? Your friend's room is likely to be way, way outside of this range.

Strikes me that while it certainly was possible, even likely, the room was outside +/- 3dB, none of us actually know that. Lack of actual data doesn't necessarily prove anything wrong.

Genelec (top 3 manufacturer of professional/studio monitors) published this great AES paper, showing a survey of different recording rooms that used their speakers. This was the result:

And these are with speakers that pre-calibrated prior to leaving the factory. As you see, there is no such thing as "flat." So no, your friend did not have such a room. You are just assuming it did, or trying to say that now after the fact.

Interesting...got a link to the paper?

So no, your friend did not have such a room. You are just assuming it did, or trying to say that now after the fact.

Seems like assumptions are flying here. Nobody really knows what the room did. But, did you notice what the "median" response was in the Genelec graph? Who's to say the room in question wasn't in there somewhere? This whole line of argument seems more like a p---ing contest than a scientific discussion.

Going along with your argument anyway, if this requires a flat system, and nobody has it, why is it of any concern in these discussions?

Bottom line, this is a fish story. We all have them. But let's not confuse fantastical ones with reality. You are totally confused by what auditory masking is.

Has anyone else heard what Bigshot is talking about here? Who here is convinced of this and wants to explain why it is true?

Sort of, though in much more general terms. Altering one area of spectrum does change the way the rest of the spectrum is perceived. Very generally speaking as an example, taking off some bass makes things sound brighter, etc. I'm not sure that dipping out some area of the spectrum might not swing the general balance in some way, but we have no specifics as to frequency, Q, etc., so Bigshot's anecdote is just that. But can't you just leave it at that? You can't really prove or disprove an anecdote with no specifics, can you?

 

[amirm]

Strikes me that while it certainly was possible, even likely, the room was outside +/- 3dB, none of us actually know that. Lack of actual data doesn't necessarily prove anything wrong.

Lack of data didn't stop bigshot from saying his friend's room had flat response. Knowing that a flat response room is a pink elephant, we can certainly say his information is wrong and made up.

 

[amirm]

Interesting...got a link to the paper?

This paper has the same research (AES convention paper): A Survey Study Of In-Situ Stereo And Multi-Channel Monitoring Conditions
Aki V. Mäkivirta and Christophe Anet
Genelec OY
Olvitie 5, Iisalmi, Finland

My graph is in color and the one in there is in black and white so I think I got mine out of another paper but can't find it in the quick search.

 

[amirm]

Sort of, though in much more general terms. Altering one area of spectrum does change the way the rest of the spectrum is perceived. Very generally speaking as an example, taking off some bass makes things sound brighter, etc. I'm not sure that dipping out some area of the spectrum might not swing the general balance in some way, but we have no specifics as to frequency, Q, etc., so Bigshot's anecdote is just that. But can't you just leave it at that? You can't really prove or disprove an anecdote with no specifics, can you?

Huh? He is saying that the effect is caused by auditory masking. This is one of the most important principles in psychoacoustics. You want some random story which has nothing to do with that left alone as fact? You are not the least bothered by us bastardizing audio science to that degree?

What you describe is not at all what he is saying. Of course we change the tonal emphasis of music when we EQ it that way. That goes without saying. Seems like you are trying hard to defend him no matter what. Whose side are we on, science or person???

 

[bigshot]

You should really see all the PMs I get about your posts.

 

[pinnahertz]

Lack of data didn't stop bigshot from saying his friend's room had flat response. Knowing that a flat response room is a pink elephant, we can certainly say his information is wrong and made up.

I don't believe we can actually say anything definitively. Yes, it's unlikely it was flat, but as the Genelec graphs show, not one of them is really "flat" so it's a question of degree. Because of that alone, we can't say much about the unknown room. If it were even sort of flat in the 500 - 5K range, there could still have been some audible effect. Of course I don't need to tell you that real engineering usually includes variables. That's why I hesitate to say definitively "wrong" or "made up" without more data. If you want to extrapolate from one data point...well, go nuts then.

 

[pinnahertz]

Huh? He is saying that the effect is caused by auditory masking. This is one of the most important principles in psychoacoustics. You want some random story which has nothing to do with that left alone as fact? You are not the least bothered by us bastardizing audio science to that degree?

No, it's not masking, I think we know that. But let's not blow this into something nuclear either. Just fix it, and move on.

What you describe is not at all what he is saying. Of course we change the tonal emphasis of music when we EQ it that way. That goes without saying.

I read between lines. He's in production, I believe, and what I described is most likely what he was trying to relate. He'll put us right if it matters. I kind of think the anecdote is without enough data to really try to reverse-engineer.

Seems like you are trying hard to defend him no matter what. Whose side are we on, science or person???

Do I have to pick? Sheesh. I pick science with a strong attempt to understand the person and the situation. This in deference to blasting with no insight. I think you're being difficult without understanding the case well. Figure out what actually happened and it will align with science. All you've done is tell him he's full of hahaha and relate scientific principles without probing for more info.

 

[pinnahertz]

This paper has the same research (AES convention paper): A Survey Study Of In-Situ Stereo And Multi-Channel Monitoring Conditions
Aki V. Mäkivirta and Christophe Anet
Genelec OY
Olvitie 5, Iisalmi, Finland

My graph is in color and the one in there is in black and white so I think I got mine out of another paper but can't find it in the quick search.

Thanks, got it. Fig. 27 showing median, median variation, and German Surround Forum proposed limits doesn't tend to support your conclusion that the room in question couldn't be reasonably flat.

 

[bigshot]

If you really need to know Amir, my friend is a professional sound mixer who is currently working on a project that involves being able to achieve a remarkably flat frequency response from 20 to 20 under a variety of conditions. He did the demonstration for me on his reference system in his shop. He had just spent hours precisely calibrating it to test some prototype speaker designs. He was explaining to me why a flat response is so important, and one part of that explanation was a demonstration of auditory masking using cymbals in a recording. I suppose he used cymbals because they have a lot of energy in a range of upper octaves, which I would imagine would make them easier to mask. He's been designing equipment, mixing music and tuning professional sound systems for nearly 40 years. I seriously doubt that his equalizers have a spill that spans multiple octaves. If they did, I'm sure he would be aware of it. Feel free to believe whatever you want. Go ahead and post a bunch of cut and paste text with yellow highlighter creating artificial contexts to prop up your ego. I really don't care. I don't think you'd last ten minutes with my friend. But I'm not as knowledgeable as he is... I gave you the benefit of the doubt for a week or two before I gave up on you.

 

[KeithEmo]

Sheeeeesh!

1)
Enough already with the statistics.
Nothing that talks about "most studios" in any way proves that a specific room in a specific studio, or in someone's basement, is or is not flat.

2)
I don't quite understand why so many people seem to take such exception to this idea.....
We all know that audible making is real - and it has been quite thoroughly documented.
And, based on well known masking theory, this claim does NOT seem to me to in any way conflict with the science.
Masking often occurs at a frequency or frequency range above the frequency that causes it.
And cymbals have a spectral distribution somewhat similar to white noise - with a lot of semi-random high frequency energy spread over a relatively wide spectrum.
Therefore, I would EXPECT a tone played at an upper midrange frequency to have a masking effect on part of the spectrum produced by a cymbal.
And that masking effect is going to alter the perceived tonal balance of what you hear.
If you play a tone added to white noise, you will hear the tone, and what you perceive of the white noise will be altered because some frequencies in it will be masked or partially masked by the tone.
If you then use an equalizer to alter the level of that tone, the masking effect produced by the tone will change accordingly, and I would also expect that change to be audible.
I see no reason to doubt that, by a careful choice of frequencies and levels, you could produce a demonstration where the sound of the cymbals might be changed drastically by using an EQ to alter the level of the masking tone.

3)
And, at a more general level, I see nothing whatsoever questionable about the claim that "the flatness of the overall frequency response will significantly AFFECT masking - which may produce unexpected interactions when you change that response using EQ"

While I doubt that, by doing so, you could "make the cymbals entirely disappear".....
It seems quite reasonable that you might alter their overall tonal balance enough to make them more or less noticeable...
Or even to cause them to become less obviously distinguishable than the rest of the mix (so the cymbals might "disappear into the mix")

I haven't heard this specific demonstration, so I can't confirm that it actually works or not.....
But I find nothing that makes it IMPLAUSIBLE, or that causes me to consider it unlikely to be true.

If you really need to know Amir, my friend is a professional sound mixer who is currently working on a project that involves being able to achieve a remarkably flat frequency response from 20 to 20 under a variety of conditions. He did the demonstration for me on his reference system in his shop. He had just spent hours precisely calibrating it to test some prototype speaker designs. He was explaining to me why a flat response is so important, and one part of that explanation was a demonstration of auditory masking using cymbals in a recording. I suppose he used cymbals because they have a lot of energy in a range of upper octaves, which I would imagine would make them easier to mask. He's been designing equipment, mixing music and tuning professional sound systems for nearly 40 years. I seriously doubt that his equalizers have a spill that spans multiple octaves. If they did, I'm sure he would be aware of it. Feel free to believe whatever you want. Go ahead and post a bunch of cut and paste text with yellow highlighter creating artificial contexts to prop up your ego. I really don't care. I don't think you'd last ten minutes with my friend. But I'm not as knowledgeable as he is... I gave you the benefit of the doubt for a week or two before I gave up on you.

 

[castleofargh]

I remembered a very simplified video and google was nice enough to show it to me immediately. watching it again, it's even more simplified than I remembered and despite him mentioning it, those really interested in this should go look for a paper or 2 on the subject. but as a starting point, it gets the main ideas across very clearly IMO.

 

[amirm]

I don't believe we can actually say anything definitively. Yes, it's unlikely it was flat, but as the Genelec graphs show, not one of them is really "flat" so it's a question of degree. Because of that alone, we can't say much about the unknown room. If it were even sort of flat in the 500 - 5K range, there could still have been some audible effect. Of course I don't need to tell you that real engineering usually includes variables. That's why I hesitate to say definitively "wrong" or "made up" without more data. If you want to extrapolate from one data point...well, go nuts then.

Yet he is insisting in post after post that to hear the same effect, the room must be "flat."

* EDIT: I just thought of something that is important. You have to have a perfectly calibrated flat playback response for this demonstration to be clear. If you have imbalances in around the frequencies you're working with, or in even octaves above or below them, the effect can get muddled.

That he doesn't know there is no such thing as a "perfectly flat" means is a crime in its own, no?

Bottom line is what I said: he heard and EQ where if you modified the mid-range, the highs changed. This is easily characteristic of poorly designed equalizers. It could have low Q, distortion, etc.

It certainly is NOT the type of EQ we encourage people to use. The best and main use of EQ in acoustics is to reduce resonances in low frequencies. The modal bandwidth there can be as low as half a hertz! As such, you need an ultra-narrow, high-Q parametric EQ to correct those. No way, no how you want to use the poorly made EQ bigshot is talking about.

What to make of the fact that he has never tried to duplicate that results? Not in his system or for us here? It is all OK to say this is a scientific "fact" and we should just accept it??? Is that how it works?

If we are going to accept any and all anecdotal stories, what sets us apart from subjectivists? You are picking on any and all people on the other side but want to give a pass to Bigshot because he is on our camp? Where does that leave our credibility?

Bottom line is that you seem to be defending him just because. That is not helpful. What is helpful is to explain in plain language that what he describe has no relevance, includes serious mistake about room conditions even in best rooms, and has nothing whatsoever to do with "auditory masking."[/QUOTE]