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Thank you for the high-quality post. Will you, on your blog, explain to readers the correlations between various technical measurements and sound quality? For example, when listening to typical music, what is the minimum amount of channel separation required for a neutral sound? What is the maximum amount of total harmonic distortion that can be allowed while still achieving a neutral sound?
Which intermodulation-distortion standard should be used? What is the maximum amount of intermodulation distortion that can be allowed while still achieving a neutral sound? Etc. The vast majority of audiophile websites and magazines are subjective and appear to be more interested in helping vendors sell their products than trying to help and educate audiophiles so that they can get the best value for their money.
Yes, I hope to at least try and help with correlating measurements with sound quality and I welcome input from others. This thread was essentially started asking just that question. And it's a very good question. Right now, the
RMAA and
Impedance posts on nwavguy.com have lots of information about what measurements matter and why. But I certainly plan to provide more and will soon post reviews of 3 popular portable players.
The good news is there's some solid research into psychoacoustics to allow correlating certain objective measurements with sound quality. If we're talking about fairly big differences, as appear in some portable players, it's relatively easy to declare an obvious winner in terms of perceived sound quality. Many audiophile subjectivists will still dispute some of it I'm sure, but when you look at their positions within audio as a whole, their other choices are rather grim. It would be a massive paradigm shift to stop defending the usual myths. I doubt I'll change their mind. But those like the person who started this thread are likely looking for some answers I might be able to help with.
What happened when oenophiles picked a $3 bottle of wine over some of the expensive top choices of critics in a blind tasting? Did it completely change their wine buying habits? No. What did happen is most of them now refuse to participate in similar tastings for rather vague or questionable reasons. It's safe to assume the main reason is they don't want to be humiliated again. Their heads are firmly in the sand to justify their expensive taste in wine.
The way I see it, it comes down to "pleasure for your dollar". If drinking more expensive wine puts a bigger smile on your face, that's a valid reason to spend more money. The same can be said of some audiophile gear but it's certainly not true for everyone. Many would rather save all that money and spend it on something else that will bring them even more enjoyment.
The bad news is others who have come before me have generally been attacked and various attempts made to discredit them. There is simply too much money behind selling gear based on a lot of the myths, hype and misinformation. It's like trying to get Congress to enact campaign finance reform in the US. Lots of them know deep down they should, but they probably never will as they don't want to cut off the hand that feeds them. And, in the audiophile world, agreeing to a more objective critique of gear would mean the justification for huge amounts of money already spent would be removed. An audiophile who accepted the objective side would never look at his $5000 CD player the same way again.
Guys like Sean Olive (
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/ ) and Peter Aczel (
http://theaudiocritic.com/cwo/Our_Philosophy/ ) dared to step in front of the train and they didn't have a very pleasant time of it. But their work is still out there and just as valid as its always been. And some in this thread have already linked to some great information at
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org where the "signal to noise" ratio is better than on most sites.
Some are bravely applying the latest technology to this problem. I particularly respect the work of Bill Waslo at Liberty Instruments. He presented a fascinating paper at the Audio Engineering Society a few years ago. Like me, he was frustrated with all the myth, hype and misinformation out there. So he developed the Audio DiffMaker which is capable of evaluating many parts of the audio signal chain under real world conditions rather than test signals. His method overcomes a lot of the issues that have been endlessly debated between the subjectivists and objectivists. You can even download the free tool along with pre-made difference files. The files shatter several myths promoted by the audiophile community. Check out
http://www.libinst.com/Audio%20DiffMaker.htm for more information.
The other bad news is some things are still open to debate even among the objective community. The right research can go a long way to resolving some of the debate. But who's going to pay for it? Certainly anyone with a financial interest in the audiophile industry will not fund the research unless they're sure the outcome will support their cause or they can otherwise control the results. It does happen--such as some of the work by Sean Olive being funded by Harmon International (that owns lots of audio brands)--but it's rare.
A lot of engineers subscribe to the "most gear meeting some minimum level of specs sounds the same" mantra. The audiophile in me knows that's not always true and the engineer in me wants to know why. I want to evaluate gear as objectively as possible and even find new methods and perhaps reasons why there are audible differences that might not be caught by the traditional basic measurements. I also want to expose more of the snake oil, myths and hype that lead to people spending more money than they need to.
But, just like funding research, how do you fund an audio related site that becomes really popular? It's easy to start a small personal blog like I have. But most popular sites eventually need some revenue or other justification for their expenses, time and resources. The ones that manage to avoid conflicts of interest are rare. Even Hydrogenaudio has Google ads on it but I think they do a better job than most at not letting the ads affect their content. So I can see the other side of it. Why try and swim upstream, invest time and money, and get attacked, without being paid?
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