In the world of audio, the word 'subjective' has two meaning:
a] in the pro audio world, it's an ears only description, rating or preference.
b] in the audiophile world, it's whatever the audiophile says, becomes true.
Hmmm, I don't entirely agree with meaning [a]. Firstly, a "
description, rating or preference" cannot be "
ears only" because these determinations do not occur in the ears, they occur in the brain and are an outcome of perception. I believe it's important to make this distinction when audiophiles maybe about, because some/many false audiophile claims ultimately rely on this distinction not existing. Secondly, the meaning of "subjective" can vary significantly within different parts of the pro audio world. Music and sound engineers for example commonly use "subjective" to mean their own personal perception, as opposed to "objective" which means the perception of others (consumers), and one of the great challenges of music and sound engineers is maintaining this "objectivity". Of course, strictly/scientifically speaking and to the rest of the pro audio world, both of these are subjective.
[1] Subjective evaluation is a large part of my work and a large part of the audio industry a la Sean Olive and Floyd Toole. It is done in controlled settings and always has a hypothesis driving. We use subjective evaluation for many things in audio. We try to correlate findings to objective measures.
[2] But some things you can't put a microphone or an analyzer on. So you use humans.
Thanks for posting! It raises some interesting points that have been discussed in this subforum previously but are routinely ignored or misinterpreted/misapplied by other subforums here and the wider audiophile community.
1. The audiophile community tends to make an absolute division between "objective" and "subjective" which assumes they are polar opposites that never meet. This is a patently false assumption. While there is an absolute division between the two, we (science) can and do objectively measure at least some subjective determinations. More precisely, we apply the scientific method as far as is practical, for example: We control listening tests as far as is practical (which varies depending on what we're testing), have as large a sample size as is practical, apply scientific data analysis to the results and thereby end-up with an objective conclusion of a subjective perception. Albeit, an objective conclusion that represents a level of confidence, rather than absolute certainty.
2. Agreed, although again, it's important to note here on head-fi that those "
some things" are all perceptual. Some/Many audiophiles falsely believe that "
some things" includes objective properties of sound/audio (that can't be measured).
For consumers listening to music in the home for pleasure, transparency is the ultimate goal. You don't need anything better than that. And the best way to judge the threshold of transparency is with ears, not measurements.
That last sentence is not entirely true. Firstly, whose ears? For our own personal purposes all we need to be concerned about are our own ears but of course this isn't the "Our Personal Purposes" forum. Here in the sound science forum we are obviously concerned about the science, rather than one person's purposes or ears and therefore: We sometimes/often don't need to involve our own ears, we can rely on measurements derived from others' ears in scientific studies. Secondly, there are some situations where the best (most reliable) way to judge audible transparency is purely with measurements of objective audio/sound properties. Because, this completely eliminates the ever present possibility of some faulty procedure or statistical anomaly that can produce an erroneous result with all listening tests, even scientific studies. An obvious example of such a situation is where the measured difference is below the ability of a sound system/listening environment to reproduce.
I don't know if anyone here has read a biography of Thomas Edison, but it is interesting how different scientists were in the past than today. Edison had very little interest in pure science. He was entirely focused on solving the problem. When he invented the light bulb, he wasn't interested in the science behind the materials he used for the filament, he just tried everything he could think of until he found something that worked... he used horse hair, wires of various types, fabric, weird things he found in the bottom of kitchen drawers... it didn't matter. He was looking for a solution, and he would keep looking until he found it. This is a totally different mindset from today. Now we experiment to try to figure out things in theory and then try to think of a way to apply it. Edison turned that around and developed the practical application first, and then he thought about the theory. With that approach he created all kinds of technology, from recording to movies to electricity to light bulbs... even building structures with reinforced concrete! In his time, he was hailed as a genius of science, but if he was alive today, he would have mainstream science poo-pooing him, telling him that he was doing it all wrong. Food for thought!
Although maybe a common narrative, it's not really true.
Firstly, Edison did not invent the light bulb or the recording of movies (but I don't know about reinforced concrete). Edison must have been interested in the existing science/technology because he took that science and developed it further. The incandescent light bulb was invented 40 years before Edison's light bulb and used a carbon filament, which is where Edison started before going round the houses of trying other materials before ultimately returning to carbon again. If incandescence light produced by passing a current through a strip of metal hadn't already been demonstrated by science (80 years earlier by Davy) then obviously, Edison wouldn't have been looking to solve a problem he couldn't have known even existed! Similarly with movies, he took the existing work of others (Friese-Greene for example), but unlike his development of the light bulb, his "invention" of the movie camera was strongly disputed and his patent (only granted in the US) was acquired by some (allegedly) very unethical means. He was more a contributor to the invention of the movie camera rather than "The Inventor". But, just like today, science is often reported/presented with a political or commercial bias!
Secondly, for at least a couple of centuries, scientists have always been broadly been split into two camps, theorists and experimental scientists, and the same is true today. For example, Faraday is one of history's most important scientists who epitomises the experimental scientist, he (reportedly) had a rather poor understanding of theory/mathematics. It wasn't until Maxwell (one of the greatest theoreticians) took Faraday's work and formulated some of the most seminal scientific theories. Mainstream science didn't "poo-poo" Faraday in his day and doesn't today. A more recent example would be the work of the theorist Peter Higgs and the work of the experimental scientists (at CERN), and the fact that Higgs was not awarded the Nobel prize until the experimentalists had proven it, 50 years later. No one "poo poos" the experimentalists, although in my limited experience there is sometimes some friendly jibes between the two camps.
The "mindset" is not different today. Ironically, Edison's first successful light bulb test occurred a couple of weeks before the death of James Clerk Maxwell, the great theoretician, many of whose theories had little/no practical application at the time but from which practical applications were derived, wireless communications being just one of many examples. And, much of the science of audio/sound we have today is due to the pioneering work of commercial entities, whose R&D departments are looking for solutions to practical problems.
G
