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Hydrogenaudio Forum => General Audio => Topic started by: 2tec on 2009-04-16 14:55:18

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-04-16 14:55:18
I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article, or blog, about Michael Fremer, an audio reviewer from Stereophile (http://www.stereophile.com), which clearly goes completely against the grain around here. For instance:

"We play my solid 256kbps VBR MP3 of "Heroes" off my iPod; it sounds like shit. Free of pops and crackles, yes, but completely lifeless, flat in every way. This is the detail that matters: Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air. It's crazy and I've never experienced anything like it." ~ Why we need audiophiles (http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-04-16 15:29:20
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Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs.


Never heard of it. Really?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nig nig the conqueror on 2009-04-16 15:31:20
I just got through reading that and I HAD to come to HA to find out what you guys thought.  I had to stop reading, there was so much BS I couldn't stand it.

Moderation: Removed useless full quotation of the first post.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Fandango on 2009-04-16 15:44:06
Hey , nig nig! How can you say that! They use logarithmic scales to measure the awesomeness of Framer's gear, pure science man!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bodhi on 2009-04-16 16:03:13
If I had a $350,000 stereo system I wouldn't probably listen to any lossy codec. Since I'm not that well equiped, my lame 3.98.2 v3 files do the job!

Anyway, what is an audiophile without a $350,000 stereo system? A guy (or a girl) with two ears, that's about it.

...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-16 16:16:10
Sad to read how many commenters there thought it was a 'great article' and 'real in-depth journalism'.
   


Nice to see a few skeptics, though.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-16 16:32:19
Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.

To put this into perspective, my 16 year old son died of a brain hemhorrage about 10 years ago. By most accounts I can talk about that pretty calmly. Compared to matters of life and death, there's nothing about ABX or even all of high end audio thaat is as all-fired important as Fremer seems to think that one day back in the early 1990s was.  All the other people I know who were directly involved with it have pretty well forgotten about it. And well they should. That wsa then and this is now.

To say that Fremer is a little tightly wound would be IMO an understatement. :-(

IMO, the only way to understand Fremer is to consider the meaning of the word hyperbole. Fremer seems to live in a world of hyperbole where nothing is anything like what it seems. For example, the Gizmodo article http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles (http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles) mentions Fremer's alleged $350,000 audio system.

My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?

I'm sure the truth about Fremer will never be reliably known. Why should we even care?

Pardon me while I go and listen to some music... ;-)

Moderation: Removed useless full quotation of the first post.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nig nig the conqueror on 2009-04-16 16:39:57
Sad to read how many commenters there thought it was a 'great article' and 'real in-depth journalism'.
   


Nice to see a few skeptics, though.


I couldn't even read through the whole article, much less all the comments.  It's frustrating how much misinformation is out there.  I'm a frequent visitor to Gizmodo, but all this week has been devoted to "audio" and really, you should see some of the atrocious things they've talked about.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: skelly831 on 2009-04-16 16:41:35
I've been a Gizmodo reader for a while, but all their recent "articles" (all tagged with 'Gizmodo Listening Test', lol) about expensive audio gear are starting to get bothersome. This one about Fremer made me realize the guys at Gizmodo really have no interest in objective criticism. They just want to put as many dollar signs under as many pictures of turntables and amps as possible. I skimmed a few pages of comments, it's nice to see a few smart people in there trying to call thir BS.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-16 16:44:29
I don't think it's that bad. If you want to listen to music from decades ago, you will find (much of the time; not all) that a copy of the original vinyl pressing will sound better than a modern remastered CD of the same material.

I know the article was trying to say more than that (i.e. vinyl is better than CD) but anyone who says "256kbps VBR MP3" doesn't actually know what they're talking about, do they?

So it's typical journalistic sloppiness, and probably getting carried away in the moment.

And let's face it - we do need people wanting better quality than can be heard on 99% of pop releases in the 21st century. Does anyone think CDs (as actually sold, rather than as theoretically possible) sound that good in the pop world in 2009?


Where the article is really wrong is in the last paragraph...
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we need someone like Fremer up on that wall, a preservationist of archival recordings and an ombudsman for new recording techniques, because one day you'll want to hear it, and it'll be there because of audiophiles.

These guardians in and outside of the recording industry ensure that, whether it's in a movie theater tomorrow or in your own home listening room on some far off future date, you'll be able always get back to a recording that expresses every frequency, every ounce of warmth and life, of the original performance. Because if you can hear, it, if you ever get to live in that 3D space, you'll be glad Fremer helped defend it.
We won't be able to hear music properly in the future because the "?best?" music will continue to be recorded by small labels who release over compressed CDs, and lose the master recordings. It'll be the 1930s and 1960s over again - lose the masters and leave the future with whatever consumer format was issued at the time. The only hope (and I feel like a traitor saying this!) is that large labels buy small labels and preserve their archive properly.

Plus I've heard lots of this hi-end stuff - not $330k, admittedly, but $100k systems with various sources. Some are great, some are garbage (over blown, mental, noise making rather than music reproducing systems) - but the biggest quality improvement I ever heard was 6.0 surround sound with four speakers at the front. And guess what? It's the audiophiles that hate surround sound the most, and keep this most significant advance from getting a foothold.

So much for helping us to hear things better.

Cheers,
David.

EDIT: Interesting post Arny - didn't see it before writing this. I'd probably need physically restraining if I found someone burning The Beatles master tapes or something, but no, not about this!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nig nig the conqueror on 2009-04-16 16:50:41
So it's typical journalistic sloppiness, and probably getting carried away in the moment.

And let's face it - we do need people wanting better quality than can be heard on 99% of pop releases in the 21st century. Does anyone think CDs (as actually sold, rather than as theoretically possible) sound that good in the pop world in 2009?



Good point.  Fremer's still a douche, though.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-16 16:54:26
My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?

It's not that hard for the manufacturers of "$350,000 worth" of audio equipment to donate it to Fremer, because the actual manufacturing cost was probably only a few thousand, if that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-16 17:02:57
IIRC (and I may not) in his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-16 17:04:41
If I had a $350,000 stereo system I wouldn't probably listen to any lossy codec. Since I'm not that well equiped, my lame 3.98.2 v3 files do the job!

I would.

I've come to a very definitive conclusion regarding my ears' abilities to resolve sonic information: there's a finite limit. Investing $350,000 in an ultra-high-end stereo isn't going to suddenly grant my ears the ability to hear atoms bonding or to be able to resolve the sound of a mosquito sucking blood from an elephant in Zimbabwe. To me, it's more about trying damn hard to be realistic about the capabilities of my physical (and mental) self and trying damn hard not to get caught up in a tailspin of perceptions I can't attribute to a known reality.

I have a strict policy of listening to whatever format contains music I enjoy. If that means 128kbps CBR FhG MP3s circa 2001, if that's all I have, then great! If that happens to be 24/96 FLAC, that's better because I know it's better, but it's still just as great as listening to the admittedly less-than-stellar MP3s. To me, there's no major difference in terms of my being able to enjoy listening to music -- even when there are obvious artifacts or other problems that can be attributed to lossy compression. I just do my best to enjoy what I have available.

Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh...After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.

I couldn't say this is all that surprising. There's a certain part of me that sees modern "audiophilism" as some sort of mental disease. Unfortunately, Fremer would probably feel similarly about anyone who subscribes to the notion of audio objectivism: that we are not only wrong but that we're indeed knee-deep in some sort of circle of madness. Thankfully, logic dictates that objective thinking is not only rational but quite comfortably sane, so I can (generally) rest easy
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-16 18:03:34
I've come to a very definitive conclusion regarding my ears' abilities to resolve sonic information: there's a finite limit. Investing $350,000 in an ultra-high-end stereo isn't going to suddenly grant my ears the ability to hear atoms bonding or to be able to resolve the sound of a mosquito sucking blood from an elephant in Zimbabwe.


Indeed. Fremer's pricey system didn't restore his ability to hear the LP hiss that the reporter heard.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-16 18:04:40
They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air.



This made me laugh a lot.  I didn't bother reading the whole article as there is no need to.  However, I didn't realize that audiophiles had a third eye allowing them to actually see sound waves in three dimensions (possibly four?) just pouring out of $350,000 speakers.  Hell, I would go crazy if I actually saw my music rather than listening to it.  All those sound waves going everywhere would drive me insane.  I guess I would hold myself up on a high horse too if I could actually see music.  I guess 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the rest of us will just have to be fine with listening to music instead of trying to pear into the fourth dimension.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: caligae on 2009-04-16 18:35:57
This might finally give some insight to their objection to blind listening tests. If they are not allowed to use their third eye during a test, it must be seriously flawed!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-16 18:41:25
But good systems with excellently matched speakers (with excellent time and frequency domain responses) do "image" spectacularly better than lower quality stuff. The front/back depth of the sound stage is increased, the location of (say) the singer is focussed more tightly etc etc. You can also put the speakers further apart before the sound stage falls apart. It's not what the record producer intended (usually), but it's very impressive. Stereo is supposed to work with 60 degree speaker angle. I've heard it work stunningly well with 110 speaker angle - but only with very good speakers.

The photographs of that particular listening room are not impressive unless they misrepresent the reality - from what it looks like, I'd want the speakers much further away from the walls, and from everything else. The kind of early reflections I'd expect in that room would seriously damage the magical 3-d sound stage that's claimed to exist.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-16 19:06:28
In the context of synesthesia the 3D metaphor is really amiss (like about 99% of anything audio related in the context of Fremer). But it's not complete bull. About 5 years ago I did extensive ABX tests (128kbit/s ABR AAC) with my brother-in-law, who was studying Jazz back then. Out of 20 random Jazz tracks (modern recordings from the 90's and 00's) he could differentiate 19 (myself 3). And he always explained that he heard differences within the spatial image in his head.

PS: We later repeated the tests with Nero 1.0.7.0 at q .5 (~200kb/s) and stopped after 5 tries, because he said that the differences he had originally heard were completely gone.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: zipr on 2009-04-16 19:30:10
Has there ever been any studies where vinyl, CD, and file-based formats are tested against an album master? If someone thinks a vinyl album sounds 'better' than a CD, does that mean that it's closer to the source material -- or the creator's intentions?

Do musicians listen to their own stuff on $350,000 equipment?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Nick.C on 2009-04-16 19:46:15
They use logarithmic scales to measure the awesomeness of Framer's gear, pure science man!
i.e. Awesomeness = Log10(Cost in USD) + 4
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: timcupery on 2009-04-16 20:22:52
synesthesia is a real thing, and the comparison may be valid in some case; thanks to rpp3po for providing the kind of example that I was hypothesizing after I read kornchild's post.
Of course, whether or not a person's senses can actually take in data that their brain can differentiate, is separate from synesthesia. A synesthesiac who can't hear "soundstage" differences like rpp3po's brother-in-law won't be able to visualize those soundstage differences either.

Which is why blind-testing will stay important.

One of the most interesting cases where synesthesia seems related to impressive mental abilities is the case of Daniel Tammet, a British autistic savant who is very high-functioning and can describe how stuff feels and works in his mid. He can do amazing math calculations in his head, like the square root of a prime number to 30 decimal places, or the like. His autobiography is called Born on a Blue Day and there's a fair bit of stuff about him on line if people are interested.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: HotshotGG on 2009-04-16 21:17:24
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I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article, or blog, about Michael Fremer, an audio reviewer from Stereophile, which clearly goes completely against the grain around here.


If I had a quarter for every B.S article that Stereophile publishes I would be a rich man. Some of John Atkins articles give me a good laugh. I like it when he tried to compare sound quality with so called "graphs" to make it look like it was half-assed pseudo-scientific. People actually listen to these boneheads though. My friend actually thought monster cables could make a difference in sound quality once. I was appauled and questioned him were that information came from he told me he read it in "some magazine", but couldn't remember the name of it. I just rolled my eyes and told him it was B.S. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-16 21:24:30
I'm not really sure Fremer and Mahoney actually doing much damage with this piece, besides priming young iPod people to buy megabuck systems later in life. I'm not sure if I can get much bent out of shape about convincing people to go lossless, buy a decent home system, etc.

But some of the Gizmodo commenters are asking if Fremer could provide a low end recommended system. He is the absolute last person you should ask for that. It's more important than ever to maintain an objective eye with the low end, and Fremer is likely to just run off into the weeds and choose some horifically underperforming system because it provides a better match for his ears alone.

Sad to read how many commenters there thought it was a 'great article' and 'real in-depth journalism'.
I'm sure it's better journalism as far as Gizmodo is concerned. Maybe someday they'll grow enough to hire people with actual journalism degrees and such.

Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.
That wasn't the infamous "cable" test, was it?

There are a few stories like that about Fremer's attitude. Salvatore's exchange (http://www.high-endaudio.com/RR-FREMER.html)with him is pretty fun (although Salvatore is easily just as much of a pompous windbag as Fremer is). There's also that long-standing alleged fight between Fremer and the NYT over vinyl coverage...

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My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?
No, only Steve Hoffman does that. *rimshot*

I'm no longer thinking malice on Stereophile's part in the context of loans and reviewers' pricing. I think it's plain to see that the economic status of its editors and reviewers is substantially less than the audience it is actually gearing its reviews too. Long term loans and preferred pricing are more justifiable in such a situation.

IN his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.
Fremer is a psychiatrist? That joke writes itself. Multiple times over actually. Heh.

Indeed. Fremer's pricey system didn't restore his ability to hear the LP hiss that the reporter heard.
Nor does it guarentee that his LPs play back with a speed tolerance of any less than 0.6%, as I observed a few days ago with some needledrops he posted.

Next time you hear an audiophile claim that high-mass turntables do not have speed issues, pour that into their cornflakes and shove it up their ass.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-16 21:24:33
Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.


  I am totally speechless. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at such ignorance.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-16 21:49:40
But good systems with excellently matched speakers (with excellent time and frequency domain responses) do "image" spectacularly better than lower quality stuff.


The frequency domain part I'll agee with, but the time domain part - well numerous counter-examples exist. For example, one of the major innovations of the last 20 years in crossover design has been the so-called "Linkwistz-Riley" configuration. However Linkswitz-Riley agressively time domain response for improved frequency-domain response.

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The front/back depth of the sound stage is increased, the location of (say) the singer is focussed more tightly etc etc.


That kind of poetry slides off the lips so gracefully...

Quote
You can also put the speakers further apart before the sound stage falls apart.


Whatever that means. The means by whioh it was verified by means of a DBT seem to be unknown...

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It's not what the record producer intended (usually), but it's very impressive. Stereo is supposed to work with 60 degree speaker angle. I've heard it work stunningly well with 110 speaker angle - but only with very good speakers.


Most home speakers are non-directional enough that +/- 25degrees of toe shouldn't mean that much.

Quote
The photographs of that particular listening room are not impressive unless they misrepresent the reality - from what it looks like, I'd want the speakers much further away from the walls, and from everything else. The kind of early reflections I'd expect in that room would seriously damage the magical 3-d sound stage that's claimed to exist.



Looks like one of those too-small Manhattan apartments...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-16 21:51:52
Nope. According to Mejias, Fremer's a Jersey man.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: SnTholiday on 2009-04-16 22:05:03
Do you think Fremer really gets into the music with his "$350,000 system", or does he dwell on what can be tweaked or repositioned or even replaced/upgraded. You can't really enjoy the music if you are constantly critiqing the equipment it is playing on. It's a hard habit to break.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: DVDdoug on 2009-04-16 23:08:47
2tec,
Thanks for that post & link.  Good stuff!!!   

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...on his $350,000 stereo system. It sounds excellent.
I would freekin' hope so!!!!

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I hear the needle drop...  I hear a hiss. And yes, while the record was playing, I heard a pop, a crackle or two.... off my iPod; it sounds like s***. Free of pops and crackles, yes, but completely lifeless, flat in every way.
  I grew-up with vinyl, and I hated the noise.  Most of my friends didn't even notice it, but it used to drive me crazy!  I find it strange that it doesn't bother these "audiophiles"...  Any idiot can tell you that my CDs sound better than my scratchy old records.

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It's like when you go to the symphony, and the old men are coughing—same thing," Fremer says. Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world.
  I disagree!  When the noise comes from the sound system, it's more annoying, at least to me.  I think our directional hearing ability helps us to tune-out and ignore ambient noises.  Even in a movie theater, I can ignore "candy-wrapper noises", etc. (talking is more annoying).  But, if I hear a click or a buzz (or distortion) from the sound system, I'll take notice.

If you've ever made a "live" recording... even a recoding of a meeting, there are usually annoying/distracting noises on the "tape" that you didn't notice during the event.  Sometimes when I see that an event is being recorded,  I start listening-to and noticing ambient noises that I wasn't really aware of before. 

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Do musicians listen to their own stuff on $350,000 equipment?
A lot of musicians and music lovers enjoy the underlying music without regard to audio quality.  I think that's true of most people!  They like a "good song" no matter what it's played on.

Unfortunately, some of us can't appreciate good music on a lousy or mediocre system...  A lot of us are cursed with the desire for a good musical performance and good quality sound reproduction.  I call us true audiophiles (lovers of good audio).    I don't know what the "audiophile community" & the audiophile publications are cursed with! 


  BTW - Most musicians don't listen to their own stuff, except perhaps while practicing, performing, and during the recording & production process, and by that time they are probably sick of it!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-16 23:31:16
But it's not complete bull. About 5 years ago I did extensive ABX tests (128kbit/s ABR AAC) with my brother-in-law, who was studying Jazz back then. Out of 20 random Jazz tracks (modern recordings from the 90's and 00's) he could differentiate 19 (myself 3). And he always explained that he heard differences within the spatial image in his head.


I was actually making fun of being able to see sound waves coming out of the speakers in the fourth dimension.  I can understand if some people are able to piece together a spatial image in their head.  I have this ability when it comes to pip networks, wells, forces acting on objects, etc.  I can pictures these things in three dimensions in my head.  It is just that the quote kind of came off like he has the ability to actually see sound waves with a third eye or something.  That and the whole 3D aspect is just way too "out there" to ignore.  That is why I made such an obscene comment about using a third eye to see in the fourth dimension and that someone's vision would constantly be clouded with sound waves (since nearly everything makes noise).  Just trying to poke fun at something which is kind of correct but mostly bull crap.

Do you think Fremer really gets into the music with his "$350,000 system", or does he dwell on what can be tweaked or repositioned or even replaced/upgraded. You can't really enjoy the music if you are constantly critiqing the equipment it is playing on. It's a hard habit to break.


That is a good question.  Does he always listen for what can be changed or does he actually sit down and enjoy music?  As previously stated, most people can still enjoy music regardless of what it is played on.  They start listening to the actual song and stop trying to judge it for quality.  I know that many musicians actually burn rough copies of their songs and listen to them in the car and at home on their systems (both of which probably weren't $350,000).  I couldn't stand listening to music always judging its quality rather than actually enjoying what was coming out.  Additionally, if I were extremely anal about these things, I would never be able to fully enjoy music unless I was sitting at home listening to my $350,000 sound system.  I imagine that I would even have a hard time enjoying concerts.  I know I wouldn't be able to enjoy concerts dealing with metal as everyone tries to push the volume up to obscene levels with clarity often taking a backseat.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-16 23:45:15
I think it's abundantly clear that Fremer is all about emotion rather than audio quality in any meaningful sense (that we are concerned about). That vinyl has such noises doesn't matter, because he asserts it evokes emotion that CDs do not.

More generally, many audiophiles believe that audio quality is intrinsically tied to emotional responses. The two concepts are more or less inseperable to them. That such and such component has a terrible frequency response or high distortion may not matter to them, because quite simply, the "sound quality" is still top class. Just look at the emotions it conveys! And look at Fremer's comments on the first CD listening - "it made me feel horrible!". And Atkinson's comments on the emotions experienced with different amps that ABX'd the same.

There's a really subtle logical fallacy at play here, that, truth be told, I first saw popped by Ayn Rand (!). I forget the exact quote, but it was to the effect that, while happiness is a measure of human success, it cannot be optimized as a parameter. That is, making decisions based on how happy they will make you can lead to short-sighted or counterproductive results, because happiness is simply too complex and inscrutable to be reduced down to mere buying decisions. (Anybody who's actually read her crap knows that "optimized" isn't even in her vocabulary IIRC so I'm probably getting something wrong).

Applied here: there are significant gaps in our knowledge of music and emotion; emotion can feed back upon itself in positive feedback loops; all of this is being ignored by audiophiles. While we listen to music for entirely emotional reasons, concluding that equipment should be evaluated on an emotional basis - that is, the best equipment lets the user experience the "best" emotions - presupposes a kind of simplistic "filter" model of emotion, where flaws in the component prevent the full emotion of the music to be experienced by the listener. That presupposition, and that whole notion of evaluating equipment in such a fashion, is illogical.

I think that us ABXers and skeptics are also arguing fallaciously when we decry all high end audio as placebo, and/or highly corrupted by observer bias due to price/shiny knobs/etc. I think audiophiles can toss those sorts of things aside rather easily and it makes us look bad. Really, we don't have a very good scientific understanding of how sighted testing actually works. If we did, we could predict it. And we can't! We can make educated guesses, based on all sorts of sighted factors like cost etc, but nobody's actually argued these correlations with any degree of accuracy whatsoever. The guesses are plausible to us but laughably hypothetical to others.

Rather, the problem here is that the whole notion of trusting some touchy psychiatrist fourty/fiftysomething's emotions when it comes to your music purchase decisions, or even your audio worldview, is batshit crazy - golden ears or not. And that's even before we get to the problem of trusting one's own emotions on the matter. I mean no offense to Mikey on professional grounds, insofar as his "profession" is concerned - he's not crazy, not evil, and not stupid - but he is elitist. I do believe he is grossly disrespectful to how normal people in this country listen to their music, and how they should be listening to their music. And taking him at his word on a great many topics will not save you money and will not make you a happier or better person. It only lets you perceive yourself as of a higher class for entirely specious reasons.

--

That said, he is a passionate promoter of music as something that is to be studied with interest and full attention. I think that's really important, really positive, and not elitist. If that requires people to junk their CDs and listen to vinyl on f*cking Regas, I'll shed a few tears, but they will be bittersweet.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: benski on 2009-04-17 00:40:55
I was actually making fun of being able to see sound waves coming out of the speakers in the fourth dimension.  I can understand if some people are able to piece together a spatial image in their head.  I have this ability when it comes to pip networks, wells, forces acting on objects, etc.  I can pictures these things in three dimensions in my head.  It is just that the quote kind of came off like he has the ability to actually see sound waves with a third eye or something.  That and the whole 3D aspect is just way too "out there" to ignore.  That is why I made such an obscene comment about using a third eye to see in the fourth dimension and that someone's vision would constantly be clouded with sound waves (since nearly everything makes noise).  Just trying to poke fun at something which is kind of correct but mostly bull crap.

It doesn't really work like that.  I have synaesthesia and it can be a bit hard to explain.  The response is automatic and fairly repeatedly - you don't have to "peice together" anything.  The 4D viewpoint makes perfect sense to me
Also, I know you meant it as tongue-in-cheek, but the disorder does help sometimes with ABX testing, although it can be distracting at other times. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-17 00:56:39
From what I have read , I have to say I see no problem at all with anything Fremer stands for.

He is a well respected pro in his field , & I feel he fights for what he believes in ,
That Good music deserves the respect of us all by being played back with the highest
fidelity possible.

On the other hand, I would be very suspicious of opinions of anyone spending most of his listening time with lossy music, ( judging by some of the comments posted above ).

Even artifacts are something one can get accustomed to as a reality baseline.

When a classical musician listens to synthetic strings & identifies them from 10 miles away ,
he can do it because they lived with the true sounds for a LONG time.

& No, no skeptics can/will prevail in this case.

Taking their ipod LAME pumped headphones to post their "skeptic" illusions based on zero idea of what true sound is,
the maximum youll get from this classical musician ,
is the pity in his eyes staring at you in his rear view mirror.
No one in insane enough to argue this scenario.

So you see, you will not able to hear what he hears NOW.
Put in time & effort , & .. maybe you will.


I still remember the first time I got a decent system.

It took me a whole 6 months to get used to it.
I did notice the sound was better . Hell yeah.
But I just could not accept how far from acceptable a lot of my music's sound was.

Taking off your shades, can be a painful experience.

& remember: Some of the best known Audiophiles recorded/played/mastered all your Music.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-17 01:11:33
Calm down B0RK. (B0RK B0RK.) None of us are arguing against good sound or for "bad" sound, either explicitly or implicitly.

What we are saying is that Mikey - like most if not all audio reviewrs - is simply not a good arbiter of audio. In fact, his opinions are even controversial in some audiophile circles, to say nothing of skeptic's circles. That he has a drool-worthy rig, and makes some very good points about a person's relationship to music, is besides the point. He has very specific biases, which in our opinion are not supported by the facts, which can and will lead his readers to make poor buying decisions.

If I may state things boldly, it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, by helping ensure it is most available at lowest cost. That people like you have excellent systems - and put them to good use with excellent lossyWAV testing! - obviously convinces skeptics that differences can exist in audio. But the notion of skeptics with iPod earbuds is a straw man. Most of us have much higher end equipment (and in my case are acutely aware of its flaws).

And that classical musician you so proudly uphold is, I'm sure, listening to classical music 128k AACs on her iPod as we speak. You'd be surprised at how lo-fi classical musicians can be.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-17 01:18:48
Like the suggestion that an expensive hi-fi system automagically blesses it's listeners with golden ears, the notion that musicians have some instant leg-up on distinguishing lossy artifacts is completely absurd.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: /mnt on 2009-04-17 02:01:43
So if I upgrade my crappy PC speakers and my cheapo Goodmans CD player that cant even play CDs gaplessly  and ABX a LAME V0 Mp3 for the thousandth time; I might be able to see the music .

And that old MTV vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR7227_ndqQ), at 2:30 sounds like a typical comment from Dave Mustaine  .

There's a really subtle logical fallacy at play here, that, truth be told, I first saw popped by Ayn Rand (!). I forget the exact quote, but it was to the effect that, while happiness is a measure of human success, it cannot be optimized as a parameter. That is, making decisions based on how happy they will make you can lead to short-sighted or counterproductive results, because happiness is simply too complex and inscrutable to be reduced down to mere buying decisions. (Anybody who's actually read her crap knows that "optimized" isn't even in her vocabulary IIRC so I'm probably getting something wrong).


"I hate Ayn Rand" Francis from Left 4 Dead.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-17 02:38:22
He is a well respected pro in his field , & I feel he fights for what he believes in , That Good music deserves the respect of us all by being played back with the highest fidelity possible.

I might believe that if he didn't shun digital recordings in favor of vinyl. I'm not a vinyl hater by any stretch, but it most certainly isn't the consumer format that ensures the highest-fidelity playback possible. The idea of having a $300,000+ hi-fi playback system that revolves around a record player is, to me, completely counter-intuitive.

On the other hand, I would be very suspicious of opinions of anyone spending most of his listening time with lossy music, ( judging by some of the comments posted above ).

I don't spend most of my time listening to lossily-compressed music, though certainly I do spend a good deal of time doing so. For the most part, lossy exists for my iPhone and for my machine at work, to be played back via the stock Dell-branded Altec Lansing speakers the machine in my office came bundled with. Those speakers don't sound good to me, but they do emit something that passably approximates the original recordings (in other words, I can discern music from, say, pink noise with them). At home, I generally try to stick with lossless, but I certainly don't obsess over the details. If I don't have lossless, for whatever reason, I'll happily listen to lossy (and enjoy it all the same).

To fear the idea of listening to lossy music is quite silly to me.

So you see, you will not able to hear what he hears NOW. Put in time & effort , & .. maybe you will.

Unfortunately, you and I have no idea what he hears. He may perceive a difference from a $2600 power cable to a $4000 cable, but that doesn't mean there's a real difference: that a difference exists that's within the boundaries of the ear's/brain's ability to resolve information. That difference may exist only in the place between his ears by no particular choice of his own. It may even exist entirely in his own crooked imagination: he may very well lie about things that he hears because it makes him seem like a more reputable audio reviewer. We have absolutely no idea.

I can switch one power cable for another and say that the second sounds "warmer" and has "more detail". I can do Fermen's job with astonishing ease. As can anyone.

& remember: Some of the best known Audiophiles recorded/played mastered all your Music.

Then do remind me to give most of them a good punch in the face

If I may state things boldly, it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, by helping ensure it is most available at lowest cost.

Bingo.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-17 04:13:45
The 4D viewpoint makes perfect sense to me


Yep, that is exactly how I saw it.  I understand how synaesthesia can help in some circumstances.  I know my ability to "view" things in my mind has helped me out a lot over the years.  When I worked as an undergrad intern, I was able to actually spot an error in the system as the engineer wanted a check valve on the influent end of a water system.  There should have been a foot valve instead.  So yeah, I can perfectly understand how some people can see certain things/aspects in their minds while other people can't.

On the other hand, I would be very suspicious of opinions of anyone spending most of his listening time with lossy music, ( judging by some of the comments posted above ).


What is so bad about doing that?  Seriously, I don't see why that is such a big deal.  It just means that the lossy encoder is doing its job.  It doesn't mean that the people listening to these lossy files are deaf, crazy, can't hear anything, shady people who want to take children, or anything else like that.  It just means that they can't hear the artifacts produced by lossy encoding.  Is that really such a big deal that you have to be "very suspicious" of them?  I would be very suspicious of someone who turns down the opinions of these people simply because they listen to lossy music a lot.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-17 05:12:01
We need audiophools about as much as we need AIDS.

Synesthesiacs isn't just a matter of visualizing sound, it actually thinking that you see sound. The odds of being an actual synesthesiac of any form are very rare. The odds of seeing visual artifacts as a result of an audible stimuli is an especially pretty dubious claim; most synesthesiacs result in stimuli from our more acute senses to our less acute senses (e.g. you can taste a color). But when you've rejected any form of bias control I guess you can pretty much claim whatever you want. I personally ride across rainbows on unicorns when I am listening to grindcore and hitting five-irons at a driving range.

I hope he was just using synesthesiacs as a metaphor, but who honestly knows.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-17 05:13:12
Well fine thoughts expressed indeed .

But I still think the other side of the coin deserves some thread space ,so there I go:

I Still feel too many people are a bit light on the trigger regarding
Fremer's view , & audiophiles in general .. (Wait a minute .. Arent we some breed of Audiophiles as well ? )

If I may state things boldly, it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, ..

But the notion of skeptics with iPod earbuds is a straw man.


I have nothing but utter respect & gratitude to all the amazing people here & elsewhere that push great audio forward, with Engineers way high in the ranks, but I wouldn't bundle Engineers & innovators with skeptics , if you know what I mean.

So I fear in the global scheme of things ,Skeptics with iPod earbuds (Hey sounds like a good title for a punk band  ) are a tad thicker then a straw ..

Lossy Audio has mutated from it's specialty niche economy playback format into the defacto standard & changed the music world ,& probably MUSIC forever, & not for the better.

I feel that people like Fremer ,try in their own way & methods, to preach this sermon,
I am hopeful it will turn around, maybe the HD trend will help.

it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, by helping ensure it is most available at lowest cost.Bingo.


While you may feel that is true , & we are talking lossy audio here ..
that's a half truth to say the least.

At least regarding lossy audio.
If Lossy audio had an effect on cost (aside from 'Free' Music)
is it made what should have been considered standard, respectable audio gear by (way back) yesterday's standard ,wear a HIGH END PRODUCT sticker, killing the part of the industry we consumers need the most , the mid priced gear , by having shot it's right to exist with a generation of music lovers growing up with a veiled reference of what true sound is, essentially causing the prices for decent gear to go UP, not down.

The idea of having a $300,000+ hi-fi playback system that revolves around a record player is, to me, completely counter-intuitive.


For those who missed this era , here's some background.

Fremer, Like Some of us , has been through the big promise of Digital & the move to CDs.
I have been through it too.
The PROMISE.
The bunch of pure lies that surrounded the CD launch.
The arguments with friends about the first heard cd versions in comparison with the LPs & even tapes of the material still echo in my head.

Oh & Let's not forget the Greatest Audio Marketing Line / Joke Of All Time ,
that never wears off in trigerring my blood pressureon so many of our cds:

"The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape."

If you have been there , you know what I mean ,& it worked.
Lol at some stage everyone was getting rid of their Records like the plague.

Fremer won't forgive.
Many of us that lost their record collection because of it & rebought their record Collection on CDs, only to find out the jittery truth afterwards, still feel the pain, now more then ever.

When the 'New' Change Came ,& people were told:
"You know , we have done some research, turns out CDs are just not as good as we assumed,  Here's a SACD for ya , now give me your credit card"
they were shown the door instead.

So I sure get it.
for All these people, like Fremer, only NOW, true HD recordings can compete, but maybe too little too late.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-17 05:29:05
I Still feel too many people are a bit light on the trigger regarding
Fremer's view , & audiophiles in general ..


I am just skeptical about anyone who refuses to back up their claims with blind testing.

(Wait a minute .. Arent we some breed of Audiophiles as well ? )


I know a lot of people who just call themselves "audio lover" to distance themselves from the faith based voodoo common in the audiophile world.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-17 05:32:52
So I fear in the global scheme of things ,Skeptics with iPod earbuds (Hey sounds like a good title for a punk band  ) are a tad thicker then a straw ..

Lossy Audio has mutated from it's specialty niche economy playback format into the defacto standard & changed the music world ,& probably MUSIC forever, & not for the better.


People with iPods using the stock earbuds represent the majority market here (not here in hydrogenaudio but the general audio community).  It doesn't mean they are right, it just means they are the majority.  Again, I fail to see what is wrong with that.  Additionally, lossy encoding has changed things for the better.  Why?  Because it allows people to carry around their entire libraries on devices with a small amount of storage (4-16GB, yes, I think that is small), it allows people to get the most out of their storage, and it has given music artists a whole new distribution method for their content.  There are many artists that are starting off as nothing but become rather large due to a fanbase that grows on MySpace, last.fm, and other various forms of online communication.  These artists then record their first album and put it up on the iTunes Store.  More money comes in for the artist, they get further recognition, and their fanbase grows even further.  NONE of this would be possible without lossy encoding.

Again, what is wrong with lossy encoding?  There are many people throughout the world (and many respected members here) who cannot properly differentiate between lossy files and lossless ones.  What is so wrong with that?  They are still enjoying the same music at the same quality (at least they perceive it to be the same quality).  I would hate to know what you think of people who actually pay for lossy music.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-17 06:35:16
Oh & Let's not forget the Greatest Audio Marketing Line / Joke Of All Time ,
that never wears off in trigerring my blood pressureon so many of our cds:

It's a shame to see your blood pressure rise over what appears to be a misunderstanding on your part.

We've been through this thousands of times already, 16-bit delivers more than adequate dynamic range; more than the vinyl you seem to hold dear.  The sample rate of a CD delivers a frequency response that is more than adequate as well; certainly more than what you can hear.  I see you mentioned something of jitter.  Are you just regurgitating something you read elsewhere or do you actually know what it is?  Please, indulge us by explaining in your own words what jitter is and how it is responsible for making a typical CD player sound inferior compared to even the most expensive turntable.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-17 06:40:35
Many of us that lost their record collection because of it & rebought their record Collection on CDs, only to find out the jittery truth afterwards, still feel the pain, now more then ever.

What truth? As I see it, the only "shortcoming" inherent in the Redbook compact disc is that it's capable of containing, and almost encourages on a technical basis (but let's not get into that here), excessively loud recordings. Unlike with the vinyl record, engineers needn't sacrifice playback length to cram in loud, so-called "radio-friendly" masters on a compact disc. In such cases where the LP of a given album isn't as hot as its CD counterpart, the LP can "win out" in that respect -- but that really says nothing of the media itself or the capabilities of that media with respect to maintaining source fidelity.

As a consumer format, Redbook 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio leaves nothing to be desired. With the wealth of precise digital processing available to us, the obscenely low cost of modern, transparent and practically noise-free converters, and the major advances made with psychoacoustic dithering techniques, the compact disc, and indeed 16/44.1 PCM audio in general, have never been more attractive as a high-end consumer format. The CD itself may not have changed, but the technology responsible for retaining the fidelity of the original recordings prior to them being delivered on CDs has improved considerably.

MP3/AAC/OGG/etc. can be just as attractive to any given person from a sound quality perspective if it's perceptually transparent to that person on their playback equipment. I can certainly understand the hesitancy to adopt and adapt to what is, from every technical basis, inferior to CD audio, but I certainly can't understand the vitriol I sometimes see toward lossy compression. Audiophiles typically cast it aside as being universally "flat" and "lifeless" without any kind of blind testing to verify such perceptions. The more unruly audiophiles attempt to justify their decision to cast lossy compression aside by claiming it causes listening fatigue, or, more hysterically, muscle fatigue, without any real evidence to back up such radical claims.

When the 'New' Change Came ,& people were told: "You know , we have done some research, turns out CDs are just not as good as we assumed,  Here's a SACD for ya , now give me your credit card" they were shown the door instead.

SACD was marketed toward audiophiles -- to a niche market -- as a technologically superior format, but I don't recall any analysts predicting that it would in any way overtake the venerable compact disc. It's only natural that SACD was marketed as being superior to CDs: it's unlikely they could have sold any otherwise!

On the subject of SACD, its supposed superiority to Redbook audio is actually still a subject of debate to this very day. For a myriad of reasons, I myself lean toward the "CD is better" side of the argument, if that surprises you (or doesn't).

So I sure get it. for All these people, like Fremer, only NOW, true HD recordings can compete, but maybe too little too late.

The real competition actually seems to be taking place between CD audio and the so-called "HD" audio. We're struggling to find verifiable cases of audible differences between the two. I know of only a single sample of typical program material that's been ABX'ed to a somewhat-correctly dithered downrezzed version, but not with a desirably strong degree of consistency. I know of no tests undergone which have demonstrated clear data either way. That being said, when you utilize the best sample rate conversion techniques and the best dither available, I truly do not believe any listener, using any playback system on the planet, could discern a difference.

As far as "HD" PCM competing with vinyl, I would say there is no competition. From a purely technical, fidelity-oriented perspective, the former is favored
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-17 07:18:02
I Still feel too many people are a bit light on the trigger regarding Fremer's view , & audiophiles in general .. (Wait a minute .. Arent we some breed of Audiophiles as well ? )
Quite true. Really, in the grand scheme of things, if you are ever not happy with the sound coming out of a clock radio or car stereo, you are an audiophile.

Quote
it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, by helping ensure it is most available at lowest cost.
While you may feel that is true , & we are talking lossy audio here .. that's a half truth to say the least. At least regarding lossy audio. If Lossy audio had an effect on cost (aside from 'Free' Music) is it made what should have been considered standard, respectable audio gear by (way back) yesterday's standard ,wear a HIGH END PRODUCT sticker, killing the part of the industry we consumers need the most , the mid priced gear , by having shot it's right to exist with a generation of music lovers growing up with a veiled reference of what true sound is, essentially causing the prices for decent gear to go UP, not down.
Another way of looking at it is that the ongoing computer revolution (Moore's Law) eliminated the market for a mid-fi in the first place. Today's "low end" transports and headphone amplifiers - iPods - are now, by almost all accounts, audiophile quality devices. When driven with lossless audio, their noise and distortion levels are scandalously, ludicrously low - compared to how far that kind of money would take you 20 or 30 years ago. Several audiophile demos have used iPods as analog sources! That a mid-fi market largely does not exist for sources largely reflects that the people who disdain the low-end tend to disdain numeric measurements and blind testing in general, and are going to spring for the high end anyway.

Quote
Fremer, Like Some of us , has been through the big promise of Digital & the move to CDs. I have been through it too. The PROMISE. The bunch of pure lies that surrounded the CD launch. The arguments with friends about the first heard cd versions in comparison with the LPs & even tapes of the material still echo in my head.

Oh & Let's not forget the Greatest Audio Marketing Line / Joke Of All Time ,  that never wears off in trigerring my blood pressureon so many of our cds: "The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape." If you have been there , you know what I mean ,& it worked. Lol at some stage everyone was getting rid of their Records like the plague.
While I can see where you're coming from - they did remaster these releases, the tape hiss was also audible on the vinyl, peoples' dumping of vinyl was remarkably shortsighted and lemminglike, etc - how is that statement actually wrong? CDs really do have lower noise levels than tape, and the existence of newer recordings that did not have any of this tape hiss means that some listeners really do wonder why that hiss is still around. I mean, come on - many casual listeners wonder why their 80s CDs are so much quieter than their modern CDs, and that level of compression on the 80s CDs' remasters is objectionable to you? There is a cottage industry in the audiophile world nowadays (or at least on sh.tv) around hunting down the earlier 80s remasters of many albums because they are considered higher quality than their 90s/00s remasters. The alleged problems with oversampling, reconstruction, jitter, etc in the early 80s equipment, I recall, have not been legitimately tied to any major levels of distortion in the CDs of that era. While mastering processes needed to change for digital (and perhaps did so too late), I think history has smiled on the early 80s CD releases.

That said: Ron's still wrong. If there is any use for a $300,000 2-channel personal sound system, it sure as hell better be for vinyl - a notoriously flaky and expensive format to get absolutely right in all its technical aspects. Actually building a turntable for objective "perfection" is still going to set you back several tens of thousands of dollars.

Quote
Fremer won't forgive. Many of us that lost their record collection because of it & rebought their record Collection on CDs, only to find out the jittery truth afterwards, still feel the pain, now more then ever.

When the 'New' Change Came ,& people were told: "You know , we have done some research, turns out CDs are just not as good as we assumed,  Here's a SACD for ya , now give me your credit card" they were shown the door instead.

So I sure get it. for All these people, like Fremer, only NOW, true HD recordings can compete, but maybe too little too late.
What makes you think HD is anybody's savior, in appearance or reality?

Many people - you and Mikey included - hammer repeatedly on the lossy encoding issue, and on the high res audio issue, with the notion that these are huge issues to audio quality and that the pervasiveness of lossy encoding is a cause of poor sound quality, and a lack of emotion in music, etc, in society. Nobody here is disagreeing that lossless is a good idea, but we strongly disagree with the whole matter being all that important in the first place.

Lossless audio and high res audio are considered intrinsically important to high quality sound to audiophiles, but as many discussions here have illustrated, there are far more important issues out there. Mastering and recording quality, and listening environment quality, being easily the most important. You can fix those things, and get much improved, extremely audiophile-quality sound, even if you're still using MP3s! And yet, most discussions with music stores, formats etc have revolved around lossless this, highres that, high bitrate MP3, etc. With increased costs (and fatter profit margins) to boot.

Quite simply, high res/lossless is not going to solve a damn thing about audio quality, except to make music more expensive, and make a few people sleep better at night. The money and effort being spent to solve that particular issue could be put to far better use by solving other issues. But Fremer stands in opposition to that.

More generally, I am in favor of the commoditization of music, as a force of good. I think Fremer would disagree strongly.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Dracaena on 2009-04-17 07:36:40
Hilarious. For $350k you could spend a good few years doing nothing but travelling the world seeing live performances. You know, where even non-synesthesiacs can see the stage, and the musicians to boot!
I'm told the front/back depth of the sound stage, and the location of (say) the singer is focused pretty tightly at a live show. I'm a bit skeptical though, maybe a DBT or two is in order.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: carpman on 2009-04-17 08:30:39
Quote
It's like when you go to the symphony, and the old men are coughing—same thing," Fremer says. Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world.

<RANT>

Well this is precisely why they should ban old people who can't control themselves and/or ill people from live performances of classical music which are going to be recorded. Sometimes the coughing is so well timed to coincide with the quiet passages that the cynical part of me wonders if these old farts aren't simply trying to get a part of them immortalised prior to their final exit.

I listened to the Koln Concert by Jarrett (a live recording of jazz solo piano), noticeable for the lack of coughing and spluttering common on many live classical recordings, I assume because the audience was a little younger, and I realised how some of the great Mahler recordings could have been without the audio Chinese water torture of irregular respiratory explosions. Furthermore, if someone's going to have a coughing fit, if they weren't so selfish they could remove themselves from the concert until they've recovered, but no, they mustn't miss the opportunity to be recorded spewing phlegm and/or snot into a hanky.

The thing is Richter's chair, or Glenn Gould's creaky chair and humming along don't bother me in the slightest because it's part of them making music, what bothers me about the Fremer's so-called "Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world" is how necessary are they really?

Likewise, since CD got rid of all of those UNNECESSARY clicks and pops, why romanticise them - it's like romanticising horse flies or mosquitos.

</RANT>

C.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-04-17 09:11:24
@carpman
One day you'll be old, fat, and in the way too--or you may still be young and beautiful, but have a cold on the night of an important concert  At least you can't smell the farts on a recording.

But, as a geezer myself, I can remember starting to love music played on a record player--remember them? Hardboard suitcase, auto-changer and ceramic cartridge and one speaker you wouldn't put in a cheap car these days. But that was what most people really had when rock was young and Klemperer was still gigging. Through various stages since, including quite good vinyl equipment, and now I listen mostly on an iPod, though with Sennheiser earbuds. And now I hear more interplay of lines in instrumental music, and more of the lyrics, than I ever did with any previous equipment, despite the fact that my hearing equipment is old and flabby. But I could tell that the first Joan Baez album was perfect, of its kind, on that horrible old set.

I have no doubt there are quite a lot of people who can tell the difference between moderate bitrate lossy and lossless/PCM, but they're probably mostly youngish women, whilst the people complaining that MP3 has stolen music's soul are mostly middle-aged men. Meanwhile, my friend the musicologist (doctorate from Paris, professional training as a singer) still keeps her old mid-level domestic Pioneer set up, though she's added a CD player to the turntable and double cassette desk.

One probably needs to take an anthropology of religion line on audiophilia. The object of the cult is a mystical presence as though at the actual coming into existence of the music (or even better than the physical actuality--the acoustic sound-stage of some venues ain't all that precise). The equipment is a sort of idol, icon, image, worship before which produces the moment of oneness. And, like all religious images, the worshipper wants to adorn it with interconnects made of precious metals, and precious woods, and pretty pebbles, and constantly tend its needs.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: carpman on 2009-04-17 09:57:37
One day you'll be old, fat, and in the way too--or you may still be young and beautiful, but have a cold on the night of an important concert

Well, for all you know I may be a beautiful old lady who can control herself (both in terms of what she eats and when she's too ill to attend even that "important concert").    I didn't respond to the "how old are you survey", it's fun to let others assume  .

C.

ps. Just realised "old people who can't control themselves" is a little ambiguous: I meant the subset of old people who can't control themselves rather than all old people because all old people cannot control themselves. Big difference.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shenzi on 2009-04-17 11:47:58
Elsewhere on the site someone posted a link to an entertaining wire coat hanger vs audiophile loudspeaker cable ABX test ...

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showp...mp;postcount=28 (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15412&postcount=28)

I wonder of Guru Fremer's ears would pass?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-17 13:16:54
The frequency domain part I'll agee with, but the time domain part - well numerous counter-examples exist. For example, one of the major innovations of the last 20 years in crossover design has been the so-called "Linkwistz-Riley" configuration. However Linkswitz-Riley agressively time domain response for improved frequency-domain response.
True.

However, in a digital world it's possible to make both excellent. I see no reason to compromise the time domain even if it's 100x less important. You don't need to make any trade off with digital cross overs, i.e. better time domain response doesn't implicitly make the frequency domain response worse. Of course, in both domains, it's what the errors are that matters, not just whether there are any - and in both cases, it is a real skill to correlate measurements with what you can or cannot hear. I don't have that skill - I'd do measurements and double-blind listening tests to try to understand the correlation. I think I've already reported passes and fails of such tests in both domains.

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The front/back depth of the sound stage is increased, the location of (say) the singer is focussed more tightly etc etc.
That kind of poetry slides off the lips so gracefully...
Well, you have to describe what you hear somehow. Spatial width, depth, and source position uncertainty are real repeatable subjective quantities associated with audio. I made a psychoacoustic model that could measure some of them once. I make no claims of accuracy for it, but it was a start.

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You can also put the speakers further apart before the sound stage falls apart.
Whatever that means. The means by which it was verified by means of a DBT seem to be unknown...
I don't have Harman's nice speaker test room to enable genuine double-blind testing of speakers.

However, I've tested many virtual surround sound algorithms, both via headphones and speakers. These tests were by necessity double blind - the listener can't see or know what algorithm they are listening to, and the PC doesn't know the contents of the files it is presenting. The qualities which you described as "poetic" are the exact kinds of details I was interested in, and reliably garnered from listeners. "It's further away" "It's closer" "It's over there" "It's not really anywhere" etc are the kinds of things that people say!


Let me be clear what I meant (though I'm convinced you know all this better than me): the stereo "trick" works when the perception of most listeners is that the singers, instruments etc which are present on both channels, sound like they are in the space between the speakers. The stereo "trick" can be said to be failing when that doesn't happen, and the perception of most listeners is that those same singers, instruments etc are difficult to locate - they're diffuse, or not particularly anywhere, or are clearly coming from the location of the speakers (rather than between them).

If you take a pair of speakers, and move them further and further apart, so increasing the angle at the listener, there comes a point where the stereo trick stops working. I'm not talking about toe-in (to keep a single variable in this test, you've got to keep the speakers pointing directly at the listener).

My experience is that the stereo trick keeps working at a greater angle for some speakers than for others. My guess is that this has something to do with the accuracy of the speakers, and something to do with how closely they approximate a point source, but I never had the chance to investigate further.


No, I have no ABX tests to back this up. Maybe Sean at Harman can do some.

However, there comes a point when is reasonable to assume that someone really does hear a difference, even without an ABX test. I suggest that moving the things that are actually making the sound by several feet is beyond the point where ABX tests are necessary - especially as there is already well-documented psychoacoustic data proving that humans can detect the location of something down to a few cm!


OTOH, I have evidence to prove that what people see affects their perception of sound location - putting an unconnected speaker at the location of a virtual source (whether the virtual source is presented via headphones or speakers!) changes the perception of that virtual source dramatically. However, having speakers visible which are well away from the virtual source has no detectable effect on localisation perception.

You could blindfold people to check this (I did) - but then if there was an interaction, you'd want people to be able to see the speakers, as that's how they usually listen.

Which is hilarious, and you'll hate it, but it's one example of where an audible difference isn't "placebo" in the traditional sense - it's due to a specific way in which our ears and eyes work together. When you see a speaker somewhere, you expect the sound to come from that location. You don't want to remove this effect from the test, so much as quantify it.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: HotshotGG on 2009-04-17 13:58:06
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There is a cottage industry in the audiophile world nowadays (or at least on sh.tv) around hunting down the earlier 80s remasters of many albums because they are considered higher quality than their 90s/00s remasters. The alleged problems with oversampling, reconstruction, jitter, etc in the early 80s equipment, I recall, have not been legitimately tied to any major levels of distortion in the CDs of that era. While mastering processes needed to change for digital (and perhaps did so too late), I think history has smiled on the early 80s CD releases.


I have a small collection of original 80's recordings they sound about 10x better then modern masterings with a lot of headroom! I also have K2 24-bit remasters of a few 80's records that were transferred to digital that aren't even butchered as bad as some modern recordings are! I call it the "golden age" that period between 85-90 when they were using ambient miking with natural studio reverberation for recording and mastering CD's extremely well. They sound perfect to me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-17 14:38:53
I have a small collection of original 80's recordings they sound about 10x better then modern masterings with a lot of headroom!


Very true. Most CDs these days are casualties of the loudness war. Sigh...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-17 16:32:49
Elsewhere on the site someone posted a link to an entertaining wire coat hanger vs audiophile loudspeaker cable ABX test ...

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showp...mp;postcount=28 (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15412&postcount=28)

I wonder of Guru Fremer's ears would pass?


The chances of Fremer actually doing a proper ABX test are about zero.

Remember that Fremer went to an AES demo of ABX back in the very early 1990s, but the simple thought of it triggered a major public meltdown by him in 2005.

IME Fremer clearly belongs to the same school of scientific crticism as Pope Urban VIII (1568 – 1644):  Any finding that disagrees with closely-held tradition and personal anecdote must be false. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-17 16:45:38
Has there ever been any studies where vinyl, CD, and file-based formats are tested against an album master? If someone thinks a vinyl album sounds 'better' than a CD, does that mean that it's closer to the source material -- or the creator's intentions?



James Boyk (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/) claims to have done one between CD and vinyl, long ago, but never published it in any detail (he says vinyl 'won').  I can't find any links to it, but he did release a 'demonstration' recording of sorts:

http://www.performancerecordings.com/albums.html (http://www.performancerecordings.com/albums.html)

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pr7lp (LP), pr7cd (CD):  Boyk plays Mussorgsky          1991
Mussorgsky: "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Performer / Co-engineer / Producer / Album Notes

World's only comparison of (a) pure digital, (b) digital-from-analog, and © pure analog recordings, made at the same time from the same microphones; (a) and (b) on the CD, © on the LP. The analog master tape was the first tape made on MagnesaurusTM.  From the album notes: "Interested listeners may use this double release of LP and CD to investigate some timely questions: Given an analog master tape, which medium preserves its virtues better, LP or CD? (Compare the LP with the analog half of the CD.) Does a CD sound better made from digital or analog master tape? (Compare the two versions on the CD.) And most important, which preserves the emotional impact of the music better, purely analog or purely digital recording? (Compare the LP with the digital half of the CD.)"





He also records with a modified tubed Ampex deck....

btw could someone translate the following into a dynamic range figure I can understand? It would appear to set an 'audiophile' bound for analog:


http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/rep-int.htm (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/rep-int.htm)


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REP:  How does the noise measure out?

JB:  Noise measurements are enough to drive anybody nuts. I can't come up with anything meaningful. What I want to do is the CCIR/ARM measurement that Dolby has promulgated, but I don't have the proper filter for that. My guess is that it's 67dB below 250n/W.  (Complete specifications.)  I'll tell you what I've learned, and I've looked into each of these questions elaborately: The most meaningful thing you can say about measuring noise is that with blank tape on the machine and the tape stopped, you read the noise off the playback electronics. Then you run the blank, unmodulated tape. Your tape-stop noise, playback electronics only, should be better than 10dB below the silent tape run noise at every point in the spectrum, looking at it with an FFT analyzer.
      That's the goal. Then you turn on Record with the level pot down all the way. Now you have bias noise on there, and the record electronics, of course, and ideally it should not go up more than 4dB or 5dB above the blank tape playback noise.


REP:  And that's mostly bias and tape modulation?

JB:  Yes. Now that's the ideal. The theoretical is that it goes up 3dB. If you get 4dB or 5dB, you're doing great. But let's talk about dynamic range for a moment. The stock, factory 351 gives you a signal-to-noise of 60dB, very roughly. When you go to 1/2-inch tape, you gain 5dB. You ought to gain only 3dB because you've doubled the tape width. But the relevant thing is not the width of the tape; it's the width of the track. The 1/2-inch, 2-track tape uses the tape very effectively; 1/4inch, 2-track does not. When you compare track width instead of tape width, you see that 5 dB is what you should expect.

REP:  What is the dynamic range of the machine?

JB:  Using a peak meter at the Mastering Lab, we actually measured transients off tape, which are 14.6dB above 250n/W, clean. Absolutely not getting into the tape. Nobody would listen to it and say it was overmodulated, compressed. 14.6 above 250, which means it's 16.6 above 200, or 17.2 above 185n/W. That's almost unbelievable, and frankly a level that I didn't think tape could take. It's hot! With piano transients! I think part of that possibility, that advantage, is tube electronics, much more headroom and much more transient capabilities. It sounds marvelous.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-17 17:02:33
IN his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.
Fremer is a psychiatrist? That joke writes itself. Multiple times over actually. Heh.


For some reason I thought he was...but looking him up online, I'm not finding any substantiation.  I do see he helped with the sound design of "Tron" in the 80s  ;>

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Kees de Visser on 2009-04-17 17:09:27
Has there ever been any studies where vinyl, CD, and file-based formats are tested against an album master? If someone thinks a vinyl album sounds 'better' than a CD, does that mean that it's closer to the source material -- or the creator's intentions?
James Boyk (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/) claims to have done one between CD and vinyl, long ago, but never published it in any detail (he says vinyl 'won').

Not a study but this message was posted today in a ProAudio mailinglist, FWIW:
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...we recently produced a vinyl disc and a DVD and a CD. All of the same 24/96 master.
The vinyl was closer to the master than the CD regarding the over all impression of depth and detail. Yes it was maybe a little colored, very little. But The CD compared to that couldn´t represent the 24/96 master as goog as vinyl. The DVD-Audio of course was exactly like the master.

Roland Storch
Adebar Acoustics
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-17 17:14:07
I think it's abundantly clear that Fremer is all about emotion rather than audio quality in any meaningful sense (that we are concerned about). That vinyl has such noises doesn't matter, because he asserts it evokes emotion that CDs do not.

More generally, many audiophiles believe that audio quality is intrinsically tied to emotional responses. The two concepts are more or less inseperable to them. That such and such component has a terrible frequency response or high distortion may not matter to them, because quite simply, the "sound quality" is still top class. Just look at the emotions it conveys! And look at Fremer's comments on the first CD listening - "it made me feel horrible!". And Atkinson's comments on the emotions experienced with different amps that ABX'd the same.



As if these dbags never grooved to a song playing in their cars.

Most of them probably fell in love with music listening to crappy transistor radios.

A great thing about music is that it can evoke strong emotions with little relation to its (re)production quality.



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I think that us ABXers and skeptics are also arguing fallaciously when we decry all high end audio as placebo, and/or highly corrupted by observer bias due to price/shiny knobs/etc. I think audiophiles can toss those sorts of things aside rather easily and it makes us look bad.


I don't.  I see no reason to believe audiophiles are any less suspectible to them , than non-audiophiles. 

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Really, we don't have a very good scientific understanding of how sighted testing actually works. If we did, we could predict it. And we can't! We can make educated guesses, based on all sorts of sighted factors like cost etc, but nobody's actually argued these correlations with any degree of accuracy whatsoever. The guesses are plausible to us but laughably hypothetical to others.


Sure we do --are you suggesting there have been no studies of factors influencing customer choice?  There are whole INDUSTRIES devoted to that.

No, it doesn't mean we have perfect predictors....but science doesn't require that to dub a model 'good'.

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Rather, the problem here is that the whole notion of trusting some touchy psychiatrist fourty/fiftysomething's emotions when it comes to your music purchase decisions, or even your audio worldview, is batshit crazy - golden ears or not. And that's even before we get to the problem of trusting one's own emotions on the matter. I mean no offense to Mikey on professional grounds, insofar as his "profession" is concerned - he's not crazy, not evil, and not stupid - but he is elitist. I do believe he is grossly disrespectful to how normal people in this country listen to their music, and how they should be listening to their music. And taking him at his word on a great many topics will not save you money and will not make you a happier or better person. It only lets you perceive yourself as of a higher class for entirely specious reasons.


IMO he's a ranting, hair-triggered, ignorant (re digital) gasbag, on top of being 'elitist'. 

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-17 17:16:44
From what I have read , I have to say I see no problem at all with anything Fremer stands for.

He is a well respected pro in his field , & I feel he fights for what he believes in ,


His 'field' is intellectually and scientifically  bogus, so to be 'well respected' there is like being a 'well respected' ghost hunter.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-17 17:24:51
Oh & Let's not forget the Greatest Audio Marketing Line / Joke Of All Time ,
that never wears off in trigerring my blood pressureon so many of our cds:

"The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape."

If you have been there , you know what I mean ,& it worked.


Perhaps because it was true.  CD audio *could* and *did* reveal tape hiss that was obscured by LP surface noise.  Not to mention that if LP production tapes were used to make the CD, you'd hear things that would have been appropriate for LP playback, but no so much for more accurate playback.


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Lol at some stage everyone was getting rid of their Records like the plague.

Fremer won't forgive.


So?  Fuck 'im.

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Many of us that lost their record collection because of it & rebought their record Collection on CDs, only to find out the jittery truth afterwards, still feel the pain, now more then ever.


uh, oh *the jittery truth*, I sense a flood of handwaving coming on.  You guys always resort to 'jitter' as the villain eventually.


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When the 'New' Change Came ,& people were told:
"You know , we have done some research, turns out CDs are just not as good as we assumed,  Here's a SACD for ya , now give me your credit card"
they were shown the door instead.


Right, and audiofools like the writing staff of Stereophile fully bought into that....the rest of us bought SACDs in the hopes that 1) the mastering wasn't loudness wars-driven and 2)the  multichannel mixes were cool.


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So I sure get it.


I don't think you do.  Your bitterness is misplaced and perhaps misinformed.


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for All these people, like Fremer, only NOW, true HD recordings can compete, but maybe too little too late.


There is no evidence that HD itself is audibly different from Redbook, at normal listening levels,  so you're just buying into more shuck there.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-17 17:37:09
Let me be clear what I meant (though I'm convinced you know all this better than me): the stereo "trick" works when the perception of most listeners is that the singers, instruments etc which are present on both channels, sound like they are in the space between the speakers. The stereo "trick" can be said to be failing when that doesn't happen, and the perception of most listeners is that those same singers, instruments etc are difficult to locate - they're diffuse, or not particularly anywhere, or are clearly coming from the location of the speakers (rather than between them).



Following Floyd Toole, I'd say it really works when the soundstage is apparently divorced from the speakers  -- that is, there is wide 'apparent source width' extending *beyond* the speakers, where appropriate (like a symphony orchestra) , as well as 'sound objects ' in between them, as well as a sense of 'listener envelopment'  that replaces the actual listening room with the illusion of another space; finally, there is also front-to back depth in the placement of instruments.

With a *two channel*  system I've only ever experienced something like this in near-field listening...though the soundstage width was compromised.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-17 20:16:59
The frequency domain part I'll agee with, but the time domain part - well numerous counter-examples exist. For example, one of the major innovations of the last 20 years in crossover design has been the so-called "Linkwistz-Riley" configuration. However Linkswitz-Riley agressively time domain response for improved frequency-domain response.
True.

However, in a digital world it's possible to make both excellent.


Not in any universe that I'm familiar with. Perhaps its my high standards for flat and smooth frequency response - deviations less than a few tenths of a dB from 20-20 KHz.

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I see no reason to compromise the time domain even if it's 100x less important. You don't need to make any trade off with digital cross overs, i.e. better time domain response doesn't implicitly make the frequency domain response worse. Of course, in both domains, it's what the errors are that matters, not just whether there are any - and in both cases, it is a real skill to correlate measurements with what you can or cannot hear. I don't have that skill - I'd do measurements and double-blind listening tests to try to understand the correlation. I think I've already reported passes and fails of such tests in both domains.


In the universe that I inhabit, digital techology is often proudly used to implement Linkwitz-Riley crossovers... 

Take a speaker system and equalize it within a few tenths and then move your measurement location a few inches. There went your claimed precise performance! ;-)


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-17 21:14:36
First,
@2Bdecided ,Thanks you for bringing some much needed finer angles to this discussion, thanks.


@
Following Floyd Toole, I'd say it really works when the soundstage is apparently divorced from the speakers  -- that is, there is wide 'apparent source width' extending *beyond* the speakers, .... finally, there is also front-to back depth in the placement of instruments.

With a *two channel*  system I've only ever experienced something like this in near-field listening...though the soundstage width was compromised.


That's interesting , I still could not figure what hat you were wearing as some your posts suggested you read some of the studies about analog gear & subscribed to the findings , but then you go & say things like Fuck Fremer.. dbags etc ..

Feel free to ignore that tip, but for those that might read it & try to get the effect happenning  on their system, I find it quite interesting you experienced something like this in near field listening, as the effect does not materialize without some distance from the speakers to your ears, for bass to flesh out & create a good weighty Center.

for all of the 'technical'  posts about vinyl ... right ..
I am far from a vinyl expert, but saying stuff like
.." a $350,000 system is wasted on a Record player as a source".... O-K.

All I can say is : Please do your homework & read some measurements & analysis about what's possible with vinyl & Tape, then reconsider your statements.

People with iPods using the stock earbuds represent the majority market here (not here in hydrogenaudio but the general audio community).  It doesn't mean they are right, it just means they are the majority.

Again, what is wrong with lossy encoding?  There are many people throughout the world (and many respected members here) who cannot properly differentiate between lossy files and lossless ones.  What is so wrong with that? 

I would hate to know what you think of people who actually pay for lossy music.


Hmm looks like I did not did not get my point across as well as I hoped .

Wrong is a big Word.
My view of lossy audio is not in the wrong or right perspective per se.

But, the misuse & promotion of lossy audio as a worthy Product, is indeed wrong.

I have been working with & around musicians all my life.
There's nothing in common with all of them, apart from being musicians of course.

Many musicians I have met , did not give a Rat's ass about their playback system.
But they had some fine excuses.

Some just are busy making it & hearing the real thing all the time,
they can see quite well for their reference use , even through a dirty window,
& some have all their money spent on their music performing gear.

But that changes, when they start recording music.
Even the Most Lo Fi guys I have met ,do  realize that some effort has to be made,
to get the recording right.

I can tell you I have seen many people go from zero interest in it ,
to go all out & move from studio to studio , recording the same song,
to get something else in the sound.

Can you see where Im going with this ?
You see, Now they cared.

How many of you have sat with someone downloading some bad Lame mp3 rip of his own album, remembering the sound he had in the mixing stage, how disappointed he was from the mastering stage, & then seeing the horror in his eyes when he actually dares to play it.

You know what the saddest part is ? Some people will only know his song sounding like That.

Lossy Audio , as a downsized pointer to the real thing , I have no problem with.
I even signed up to help the LossyWav project.

Fm Radio is one great example, it can point you all day long to everything.
for some it was all that was needed, I know.

But it was never the real thing , never something you could own, buy, or god forbid , transcode.

It has served the Real product.
It has served the Real Experience.

Some views expressed here (I am disappointed to say), may lead the inexperienced music lover, that it is OK, if that's all he will ever know.

If Kids (or adults too actually .. )
want to claim something is Indistinguishable from the real thing- they must KNOW the real thing.
it does NOT mean you can claim so without a long & serious affair with the Real thing.

So I Do not have $4000 Power cables, & most of my LPs are scratched to death & never get played anymore.
& Yes ,Id LOVE to have a $350,000 System .. who wouldn't ?

Regardless , I Do believe that Itunes ( or anyone else !) saying buy the Lossy Album - & your'e done ! You Got the album  ! , is an Insult to both their clients , & additional spit in the face of the musicians that make them.

When what should have been a low end marketing tool, becomes the Reference Product,
then Yes, We , Music lovers, at least here at Hydrogen , should have a problem with it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-17 21:40:56
This is very disappointing. Year after year the members of HA study the issue of sound reproduction and how to improve it. They do tests and research the literature in the quest for the truth. Then someone like BORK comes along with lots of wild, unsubstantiated claims that I'm sure he will be quite unwilling to back up. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-17 21:53:58
A post's length often inversely correlates with the lack of sufficient data to backup ones claims. There is no scientifically valid reason to turn up one's nose at modern lossy encoders (quality wise).

But quality isn't everything. Alone knowing that bits were stolen from your source (in the believe that you cannot hear them anyway) may seriously harm an audiophile's listening experience. After having spent quite some time over the years with some of the very rare problem samples I know this feeling, you can have it without believing that it is justified.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-17 23:12:20
Some views expressed here (I am disappointed to say), may lead the inexperienced music lover, that it is OK, if that's all he will ever know.


Again, I fail to see anything wrong with that.  Audio is recorded, mastered in the studio, pressed to CD, and then encoded by the end user for personal use (whether the process is lossy or lossless or both).  The lossy encoder is doing its job if people cannot differentiate between it and the source CD.  Who cares what anyone else thinks?  The people listening to the lossy file are getting the full experience of what the artist has to offer.  So yes, it is alright if people will only ever listen to lossy encoded files.  Again, I fail to see what is so "wrong" with this.  Feel free to post your blind ABX tests results (I won't hold my breath) and disagree.  My point is that you have someone who fails numerous blind ABX test results comparing the lossless source material and the lossy version.  These people will have the same listening experience with the lossy files as they sound exactly the same as the source lossless files.

I also don't see why you bring up music artists as you do.  It has been shown here a countless number of times that musicians are just like everyone else except they can play an instrument (or sing).  They can fail blind ABX tests comparing 128kbps lossy material to source lossless files.

I think rpp3po summed it up.  There is absolutely no reason why someone should look down upon lossy encoding when results are different for everyone.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-17 23:23:00
for all of the 'technical'  posts about vinyl ... right ..
I am far from a vinyl expert, but saying stuff like.." a $350,000 system is wasted on a Record player as a source".... O-K.

All I can say is : Please do your homework & read some measurements & analysis about what's possible with vinyl & Tape, then reconsider your statements.

I'm pretty familiar with the limitations offered by analog tape and familiar enough with vinyl to understand its inferiority to analog tape with respect to its ability to preserve fidelity. I mean, that's just a given. I've also tracked projects to tape: it's kind of neat, kind of interesting, but nothing all that desirable from a technical perspective. I mean, I could sit here and list all of the problems you can encounter in the studio when you track to tape, but it's a fairly exhausting list of issues. I mean, in 2009, I can't even imagine having to actually worry about bleedthrough, print-through and a tape machine's constantly-wavering bias. Then there's the constant degradation and...well, just count me out.

Based on all the information (real technical data) I've come to know and understand, I wouldn't particularly welcome the opportunity to record any source to analog tape -- not even to 1/2". I might choose to utilize tape saturation and/or tape delay as an effect, but my main interest is primarily in high bit depth, high sample rate digital recording as it affords me the greatest possible opportunity to maintain fidelity. I can mimic the effects of tape saturation with DSP if I want to with satisfactory results.

In any case, what specifically does tape offer me as an engineer and as a consumer that LPCM does not? What specifically does the vinyl record offer to consumers that Redbook CD audio does not? Purely from the perspective of technical specifications and the technical limitations with respect to noise, dynamic range, linearity and lack of distortion, what does vinyl offer me that PCM and 1-bit DSM (DSD) do not? Throw some links at me if you have some time and I'll work through them. Tell me what I need to be reading.

want to claim something is Indistinguishable from the real thing- they must KNOW the real thing. it does NOT mean you can claim so without a long & serious affair with the Real thing.

I've never understood the "real thing" angle. When I record something, I'm not at all concerned with its "real thing" score: I just want it to sound good. A mixer is going to intentionally de-"real thing" every track on the mixer. If the heavily-processed sound is what that engineer craves, that's what's going to go into the mix.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-17 23:47:36
Has there ever been any studies where vinyl, CD, and file-based formats are tested against an album master? If someone thinks a vinyl album sounds 'better' than a CD, does that mean that it's closer to the source material -- or the creator's intentions?



James Boyk (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/) claims to have done one between CD and vinyl, long ago, but never published it in any detail (he says vinyl 'won').  I can't find any links to it, but he did release a 'demonstration' recording of sorts:

http://www.performancerecordings.com/albums.html (http://www.performancerecordings.com/albums.html)

Quote
pr7lp (LP), pr7cd (CD):  Boyk plays Mussorgsky          1991
Mussorgsky: "Pictures at an Exhibition"
Performer / Co-engineer / Producer / Album Notes

World's only comparison of (a) pure digital, (b) digital-from-analog, and © pure analog recordings, made at the same time from the same microphones; (a) and (b) on the CD, © on the LP. The analog master tape was the first tape made on MagnesaurusTM.  From the album notes: "Interested listeners may use this double release of LP and CD to investigate some timely questions: Given an analog master tape, which medium preserves its virtues better, LP or CD? (Compare the LP with the analog half of the CD.) Does a CD sound better made from digital or analog master tape? (Compare the two versions on the CD.) And most important, which preserves the emotional impact of the music better, purely analog or purely digital recording? (Compare the LP with the digital half of the CD.)"




How uncertain abd overstated can this be? Let me count the ways!

The criteria that Boyk is promoting is "Emotional Impact". It turns out that emotional impact is a combination of sensation, memory, and glandular chemistry. Of the three, only sensation can be directly traced to technical influences like accuracy of reproduced sound. So, where science tries to factor out irrelvant evidence, Boyk is trying to add-in factors that are next to impossible to control.

Recording is neither a reliable, repeatable nor predictable process. I wasn't at any of Boyks recording sessions, so I can only guess at the work flow that was used.

The most important element of recording is the choice of microphones and their deployment. Typically one records a portion of the rehearsal and then plays back the recording to see how the existing choice and deploument of microphones is working out. Microphones are added, removed, or re-deployed, and iterate. The means by which the reocording is auditioned is critical as it colors the perceptions of how the process is proceeding. In the case of Boyk's recording, it would appear that there was one performances or set of performances that was recorded using the same set of microphones. Since analog and digital recording are generally distinguishable from each other, which recording was used to audition becomes a controlling parameter.

IOW, if you make an analog and a digital recording of a musical performance, the whole scene and setup will be inherently biased towards analog or digital depending on which method of recording dominated the audition process.

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He also records with a modified tubed Ampex deck....


I guess we don't have to think for very long to decide which recording format biased his recordings. ;-)


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btw could someone translate the following into a dynamic range figure I can understand? It would appear to set an 'audiophile' bound for analog:


http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/rep-int.htm (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/rep-int.htm)


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REP:  How does the noise measure out?

JB:  Noise measurements are enough to drive anybody nuts. I can't come up with anything meaningful. What I want to do is the CCIR/ARM measurement that Dolby has promulgated, but I don't have the proper filter for that. My guess is that it's 67dB below 250n/W.  (Complete specifications.)  I'll tell you what I've learned, and I've looked into each of these questions elaborately: The most meaningful thing you can say about measuring noise is that with blank tape on the machine and the tape stopped, you read the noise off the playback electronics. Then you run the blank, unmodulated tape. Your tape-stop noise, playback electronics only, should be better than 10dB below the silent tape run noise at every point in the spectrum, looking at it with an FFT analyzer.
      That's the goal. Then you turn on Record with the level pot down all the way. Now you have bias noise on there, and the record electronics, of course, and ideally it should not go up more than 4dB or 5dB above the blank tape playback noise.

REP:  And that's mostly bias and tape modulation?

JB:  Yes. Now that's the ideal. The theoretical is that it goes up 3dB. If you get 4dB or 5dB, you're doing great. But let's talk about dynamic range for a moment. The stock, factory 351 gives you a signal-to-noise of 60dB, very roughly. When you go to 1/2-inch tape, you gain 5dB. You ought to gain only 3dB because you've doubled the tape width. But the relevant thing is not the width of the tape; it's the width of the track. The 1/2-inch, 2-track tape uses the tape very effectively; 1/4inch, 2-track does not. When you compare track width instead of tape width, you see that 5 dB is what you should expect.

REP:  What is the dynamic range of the machine?

JB:  Using a peak meter at the Mastering Lab, we actually measured transients off tape, which are 14.6dB above 250n/W, clean. Absolutely not getting into the tape. Nobody would listen to it and say it was overmodulated, compressed. 14.6 above 250, which means it's 16.6 above 200, or 17.2 above 185n/W. That's almost unbelievable, and frankly a level that I didn't think tape could take. It's hot! With piano transients! I think part of that possibility, that advantage, is tube electronics, much more headroom and much more transient capabilities. It sounds marvelous.



I get 60 dB for the basic 350 recorder, plus 5 dB for the extra wide tracks, plus as much as 17.2 dB for the alleged dynamic range above 0 dB.  Maybe 82.2 dB @ 3 % THD.  Pretty bad by even 16 bit digital standards, but not bad by standard analog tape standards.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-18 04:22:34
IME Fremer clearly belongs to the same school of scientific crticism as Pope Urban VIII (1568 – 1644):  Any finding that disagrees with closely-held tradition and personal anecdote must be false. ;-)
Heh... I don't think that is a good comparison to make.

There was very little scientific evidence that strongly advocated the heliocentric worldview specifically. Geo-heliocentrism was equivalent from a mathematical standpoint and was rather widely used. Without Keplerian orbital mechanics, heliocentrism was arguably no "cleaner" than Ptolmaic astronomy, and certainly no more accurate - but note that Galileo never actually acknowledged Kepler's work.

The churches' opposition to heliocentrism revolved entirely around the notion of centrism. (No pun intended.) The irony of this, of course, is that Galileo and the churches were both wrong, and the universe is certainly not centered around either the sun or the earth in any meaningful sense.

Urban VIII actually encouraged Galileo in heliocentric discussions early on (if only as a hypothesis). That Galileo was persecuted as much as he was, was not entirely because of his beliefs: much of it had to do with the (widely documented) fact that he was something of a dick. Writing a book where the theories of your opponents are represented by the character named "Simplicio" is just begging to get your ass kicked, in both the 17th or the 21st centuries.

Urban's role in all of this is almost entirely political in nature. Theologians had no problem with non-traditional theories as long as they were geocentric. None of Galileo's observations were being challenged.

Has there  ever been any studies where vinyl, CD, and file-based formats are  tested against an album master? If someone thinks a vinyl album sounds  'better' than a CD, does that mean that it's closer to the source  material -- or the creator's intentions?


Stockfisch has released a few direct-to-disc LPs with a parallel SACD recording path, bundling the LP and the SACD in the same (80 EUR!!) bundle. I think this is going to be as close of a valid comparison as you are ever likely to get.

http://www.stockfisch-records.de/stckff/sf...sfaceCP_pu.html (http://www.stockfisch-records.de/stckff/sf_popup_wdws/bassfaceCP_pu.html)

For some reason I thought he was...but looking him up online, I'm not finding any substantiation.  I do see he helped with the sound design of "Tron" in the 80s  ;>
Heh. Thanks for the clarification, that might have gotten ugly if I actually trotted that out in a debate.

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I don't.  I see no reason to believe audiophiles are any less suspectible to them , than non-audiophiles.
Me neither - all I'm saying is that the "it's all placebo" argument is extremely easy to dismiss. It can even be dismissed on thoroughly logical and sensible grounds. Therefore, don't argue it in the first place.

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Sure we do --are you suggesting there have been no studies of factors influencing customer choice?  There are whole INDUSTRIES devoted to that. No, it doesn't mean we have perfect predictors....but science doesn't require that to dub a model 'good'.
Customer choice research has never been studied in the audio field with the intensity that exists in other industries.

Science it does require predictors of some sort. I think "science" is only content with indirectly demonstrated predictors for mostly dead or inscrutable fields where more directly proven, accurate prediction is not useful. That these biases are inferred from human psychology or anecdotally related as a result of blind testing does nto make them "demonstrated" in any statistical sense.

And I really think there is a huge use for more accurate prediction. A better knowledge of the mechanics of sighted listening bias - to the point of statistical meaning - could drastically improve the persuasiveness of the blind testing position. It could inform customers on what to look out for when performing sighted evaluations of speakers, when blind testing is for whatever reason unavailable, so that they can adjust their perceptions accordingly.

That's interesting , I still could not figure what hat you were wearing as some your posts suggested you read some of the studies about analog gear & subscribed to the findings , but then you go & say things like Fuck Fremer.. dbags etc .. Feel free to ignore that tip, but for those that might read it & try to get the effect happenning  on their system, I find it quite interesting you experienced something like this in near field listening, as the effect does not materialize without some distance from the speakers to your ears, for bass to flesh out & create a good weighty Center.
Blind testing is all about subjective evaluation. Few of us dispute that such small soundstage differences can and do exist. Krab's problem is that these differences can also be explained by sighted listening biases. Additionally, much of our problem with Fremer is that he simply does not accept negative blind test results as having any valid interpretation, which most of us disagree with. Finally, he's on the whole not as knowledgable as you think about audio engineering, and he does get important facts wrong.

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But it was never the real thing , never something you could own, buy, or god forbid , transcode. It has served the Real product. It has served the Real Experience. Some views expressed here (I am disappointed to say), may lead the inexperienced music lover, that it is OK, if that's all he will ever know.

If Kids (or adults too actually .. ) want to claim something is Indistinguishable from the real thing- they must KNOW the real thing. it does NOT mean you can claim so without a long & serious affair with the Real thing.
So, to agree with Ron here, I am of the opinion that the whole notion of "the Real Thing" is a pernicious idea. Of course lossless exists as a reference against lossy - but what exactly makes lossless any more of a "real" "thing" compared to lossy, besides a) distortions which are rarely or never audible in some cases, and b) warm fuzzies? The distortions present in high bitrate MP3 etc are astonishingly minor compared to any number of effects in mastering, recording, etc. To say that a lossy encode is compromising the ability to "know the real thing" is just as false as saying that listening to a transcribed score compromises the ability to "know the real thing" as the original score of a classical work. Justifying a statement like that requires delving down specifically to what is lost in translation, and by that time, you have no need to refer to "The Real Thing" to begin with.

This is not a pro-MP3 argument. I am in total agreement with you about how a listener should purchase their music, especially in regards to iTunes. What I'm saying is, frankly, the crux of the issue is not based on intrinsic qualities of a recording, like its authenticity etc. And it may have very little to do with audio quality, except for corner cases like transcoding, small risks of encoder failures in iTMS-purchased music, etc. Rather, it has to do with a) the specific, testable qualities of the medium, and b) the larger philosophies surrounding music listening, which often have very little to do with audio quality per se. In other words, I don't like FM becuse it is "not the real thing", I don't like it because of massive amounts of its dynamic range compression and amplitude and phase eq - and also because of non-audio things, like the fact that I don't like the inflexibility of broadcast music, etc.

This is very disappointing. Year after year the members of HA study the issue of sound reproduction and how to improve it. They do tests and research the literature in the quest for the truth. Then someone like BORK comes along with lots of wild, unsubstantiated claims that I'm sure he will be quite unwilling to back up. 
I don't think he's making anything of the sort - I suspect he is trying to articulate an audio philosophy that is more or less the same as ours, combined with a music philosophy that is much different. Both are quite defensible, but I do believe they are using a poor choice of words.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-18 05:50:01
The distortions present in high bitrate MP3 etc are astonishingly minor compared to any number of effects in mastering, recording, etc.

Yep. Engineers routinely squeeze the fidelity out of everything that gets tracked with obscene amounts of equalization, massive compression, fake reverberation, multiple layers of intentional harmonic distortion (through the use of tube amplifiers and analog tape saturation/saturation emulation) and so on, and so on, and so on. Everything we do after we record something -- everything -- is reducing fidelity by increasing noise and distortion. We can never get any closer to the original instrument's sound, only further away. Each click on a rotary knob is just that much more degradation. Every time a fader's moved from unity, it's pure destruction (at least in the  analog world, anyway)

One engineer I studied under told me a pretty hilarious (and revealing) story about how a mixer he had worked with achieved his "signature verb". The process was fairly straightforward: the mixer would have a prestigious L.A. studio set up a speakerphone in one of the live rooms and mic one of the room's corners. The mixer then set up his own speakerphone in his control room in his own studio. He'd call the phone in the live room miles away, blast the track he wanted wet into his phone's receiver with the control room monitors and have the studio at the receiving end record the speakerphone (with the room mic). He'd then go out to the studio, pick up the tape with the phone recording and drop it into his mix. He didn't use an advanced convolution reverb; he didn't mic his own live room; he recorded a God damn speakerphone. That was his signature sound.

These kinds of practices, nonsensical as they seem to the pursuit of achieving "good sound", aren't likely to change. Engineers are going to utilize wild and sometimes unbelievable techniques to get the sound they want, and that routinely includes processes that utterly decimate the fidelity of the original recording. And here's where audiophiles sit, thinking they're listening to recordings intended to mimic reality!? Hardly
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-18 06:15:53
@Ron Jones
well ...Now in your post you switched to looking from the Recording chair angle ...

So first let me clarify what I meant with the "Real Thing":
It was from a consumer / end user, playback point of view ,as the real product, I never mentioned anything about an engineer being faithful to the recorded event .. as it's totally off topic (& as you said not that popular nowadays anyway).
If your'e a recording engineer , no further words are needed.

You'd know how hard it can be to squeeze the tracks in the mix , & you'd know that getting a 16 bit 2 track to shine as it did with the full hi res track count played in the studio is no small feat by any mastering guru's standards.

So after all that effort, having companies & people implying that even the (Downscaled CD) is not a mandatory experience cause it's "indistinguishable" & they can prove (lol) they cannot hear the differnece by failing their foobar ABX tests , & make people pay for lossy music claiming that is the product , is just outrageous really.

You know what I mean  ?

This is where we are at now ..:
Every time the word Audiophile is being thrown anywhere nowadays,
you get a bunch of Trolls, waving their Ipods in fury, taking a break from doing spectrals of their transcodes,
& pointing un/ (& sometimes over) educated fingers at analog purists like Fremer.

I am just trying to make a case for why he is a purist.
& How being as close (or even surpassing the experience in a way) to the recorded event and product should be admired & desired by all music lovers, without looking at it only through my angle.


Now about the Recording angle of it:

If I would have taken that seat, Id say the exact words you just used , we are dead on the same page about that.

But Fremer  ..Im sure you noticed,  is on the Playback side of things ....

You mentioned you know the pain of getting a pure analog recording system setup right.

so I figure on 2nd thought ,even though you implied his $350,000 system is wasted on a Record player source, you'd agree getting a setup like his to tick is not easier ... if not harder.

Looking from the recording angle - I agree , I would never make the effort , & I'd never have the patience, to go the pure analog route today (excluding summing).

As for me, & I think I am not totally alone on this, I cannot help but admire the man for perfecting a purist Analog playback system like his nowadays.

sometimes I wish I would see half that devotion to sonics from the studios.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-18 12:35:36
Just thought I'd throw in a couple of observations.

We all love music or we wouldn't be here. I can't speak for everyone but I assume that most of us love music because of the emotional response it triggers. So, why are we surprised if some people let their emotions "tell" them things that are probably not true. Isn't it just a difference between individuals of where the emotional stops and the logical takes over?

Do musicians have better ears than the rest of us? Probably not. However, they (and engineers, producers etc) are more habituated to sound as they spend more time exposed to music even when not deliberately listening to it. If they play an acoustic instrument and perhaps play in a band or ensemble of some kind they have a much better idea than the rest of us what their instrument and other "real" instruments sound like before any engineering has been done on them. I'm willing to accept that some professional musicians are more sensitive to deviances from "true" as a result.

There is an inconsistency with the collective HA position (maybe that's just because it is collective). On the one hand we're happy to accept that while most lossy encoders are able produce results that are transparent to most people, most of the time, there are problem samples for every codec that some people can easily identify. This doesn't surprise us as we know a lossy copy is different to the original and some people are more sensitive to these differences than others. On the other hand if somebody claims to be able to hear a difference in two items that we know are measurably different - cables or 24/96 vs 16/44 perhaps - we say that they must be wrong as the differences are too small to detect. Again, I'm willing to accept that some people have better ears than others and maybe they can hear things that I can't. Having said that they should be able to demonstrate their ability reliably and repeatably in a blind test
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-18 13:40:54
I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article, or blog, about Michael Fremer, an audio reviewer from Stereophile (http://www.stereophile.com), which clearly goes completely against the grain around here.

Fremer is the guy who wrote a glowing review about a recent vinyl reissue of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but then a few days later was informed that it was cut from a digital tape, and thus surreptitiously took down his old review, and replaced it with one complaining that the album sounds too digital.

This is exactly what I expect from people who push nonsense as if it is an ideological agenda. The less said about him the better.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: [JAZ] on 2009-04-18 16:14:21
On the one hand we're happy to accept that while most lossy encoders are able produce results that are transparent to most people, most of the time, there are problem samples for every codec that some people can easily identify.
[...]
On the other hand if somebody claims to be able to hear a difference in two items that we know are measurably different - cables or 24/96 vs 16/44 perhaps - we say that they must be wrong as the differences are too small to detect.


I believe you got that wrong. Let me show you why:

First, what we accept is that lossy encoders, most of the time, do what they are designed to do, which is reproduce an encoded audio signal(*1) which is indistinguishable(*2) from the original, and using much less bits to store that signal compared to the original.

Problem (aka killer) samples define either an error in the implementation, or a deficiency of the format or methods used by that format. Some people are more sensitive to some types of artifacts, but that doesn't mean we accept they to tell us so without an accepted methodology.

Then, you throw in that we don't accept that a measurable (by hardware or software) difference could be heard by someone.

Well, of course, we do not accept that, if it is not proven by accepted methods, just like we would do with one person throwing in a killer sample.

In other words, the importance, for us, is to ensure that when talking about audio, only the audible differences are taken in consideration.

That's the corner stone of it all. 


(*1) audio signal, specifically one in the range of the human perception
(*2) indistinguishable, not able to tell the difference, using accepted methods ( ABX/DBT )
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-18 17:13:24
I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article, or blog, about Michael Fremer, an audio reviewer from Stereophile (http://www.stereophile.com), which clearly goes completely against the grain around here.

Fremer is the guy who wrote a glowing review about a recent vinyl reissue of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but then a few days later was informed that it was cut from a digital tape, and thus surreptitiously took down his old review, and replaced it with one complaining that the album sounds too digital.

This is exactly what I expect from people who push nonsense as if it is an ideological agenda. The less said about him the better.


Wow! I didn't hear this story. Have a link?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-18 17:22:16
What I find ridiculous about this article is the continued and elitist notion that those of us who prefer digital, even in compressed formats, are somehow sacrificing quality on the altar of convenience.  I just went through a crapload of trouble in the last couple of months to make sure that I wasn't sacrificing anything in the quality department by reripping virtually my entire collection.  If I can't reliably distinguish the AAC files on my iPod from the lossless files on my hard drives (and I haven't found any that I can do so with yet) then what, precisely, have I sacrificed?  If anything I would argue that I have made vast improvements in my ability to access and enjoy my music while giving up nothing.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-18 17:39:56
So after all that effort, having companies & people implying that even the (Downscaled CD) is not a mandatory experience cause it's "indistinguishable" & they can prove (lol) they cannot hear the differnece by failing their foobar ABX tests , & make people pay for lossy music claiming that is the product , is just outrageous really.

You know what I mean  ?

This is where we are at now ..:
Every time the word Audiophile is being thrown anywhere nowadays,
you get a bunch of Trolls, waving their Ipods in fury, taking a break from doing spectrals of their transcodes,
& pointing un/ (& sometimes over) educated fingers at analog purists like Fremer.


You really aren't getting your point across.  Are people who listen to lossy music through an iPod uneducated?  Does conducting a blind ABX test in foobar2000 prove nothing (for that person)?  I have absolutely no idea what you mean.  No one here is a troll.  In fact, someone like Fremer would be perceived as a troll as they often have outrageous ideas without any proof to back them up and their opinion on quality changes based on what they know about the source material (like in ShowsOn's example).  They will then go against what we know by posting a whole bunch of nonsense.  That is a troll.  Someone who listens to lossy music on their iPod and fails a blind ABX test between a lossy and lossless encoder is not a troll.  Someone asking for a true blind test so that someone can backup their claims is not a troll.

Lastly, there are big differences between audiophiles and audiophools.  An audiophile is someone who cares about sound quality.  They are willing to take the time to conduct blind ABX tests to determine what lossy encoder and setting is right for them (or if they should go the lossless route).  Audiophools are people who will change their opinions based on what they know about the source material, they look down on blind testing methods because they know that they probably will fail them, and they preach what they think and aren't willing to even look at the other side of the coin.  No one has problems with audiophiles here.  In fact, nearly everyone here is an audiophile as they care about their music (yes, someone can be an audiophile and listen to lossy music despite what you may think).  We just don't like it when the audiophools come along and post nonsense.

B0RK, you continue to step around my question regarding blind ABX testing (which Frumious B asked again).  What is so wrong/incorrect/punishable by death when someone listens to lossy music on an iPod knowing that they cannot properly ABX the differences between that lossy music and the source lossy files?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Fandango on 2009-04-18 17:43:54
Fremer is the guy who wrote a glowing review about a recent vinyl reissue of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but then a few days later was informed that it was cut from a digital tape, and thus surreptitiously took down his old review, and replaced it with one complaining that the album sounds too digital.

This is exactly what I expect from people who push nonsense as if it is an ideological agenda. The less said about him the better.
Isn't this the center around which the so-called audiophiles rotate? They want to know such details. They want to know that the casing of their speakers is from a special wood that doesn't suck up the livelyness of the sound or that the music was produced and delivered all analog and that their friends all think feel the same about how a human being has to listen to music properly.

Hence the refusal to do blind tests, and the weird 180°-turn of Fremer regarding the Pet Sounds pressing. I believe him when he says that the recording sounds like crap. Once he know it wasn't all analog, he probably got all jittery and sweaty again when listening to it.

For audiophiles it's all about the magical act of listening to music and enjoying it, not about listening to magical music and enjoying it. Actually that's very very sad.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: chelgrian on 2009-04-18 17:48:26
B0RK, you continue to step around my question regarding blind ABX testing (which Frumious B asked again).  What is so wrong/incorrect/punishable by death when someone listens to lossy music on an iPod knowing that they cannot properly ABX the differences between that lossy music and the source lossy files?


Or indeed listen to lossy music on an iPhone that you know full well you can ABX...but only on headphones that you couldn't possibly carry around with you.

Or indeed trading quality for space so you can get your entire collection on an iPhone (I'm currently listening to organ music compressed at 96Kbit/s AAC as if I'd encoded everything at 128Kbit/s it wouldn't fit...

Someone should take these people from Stereophile round the recording studios that their music came from, even the highest end places don't engage in the kind of silliness that the audiofools do.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Fandango on 2009-04-18 17:50:21
Someone should take these people from Stereophile round the recording studios that their music came from, even the highest end places don't engage in the kind of silliness that the audiofools do.

Do they actually care what happens outside of their music rooms?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-18 19:07:24
Isn't this the center around which the so-called audiophiles rotate? They want to know such details


Yes.  Many self-proclaimed audiophiles want to know all the information regarding the source music (CD, vinyl, tape, etc.), how it was recorded, and everything about what equipment is being used to play it back.  Their perception will change based on what information they know.  Blind testing "exposes" these type of audiophiles (audiophools) as everyday people especially when they fail blind tests between high end cables and coat hangers, digitally recorded audio and analog recordings, lossless "high resolution" content and lossy files, etc.

It is apparent that Fremer wants to know what happens before the content is sent his way but only for the sake of boosting his ego.  I am sure that many other audiophools are like this as they want to come off like they know what they are talking about.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-18 20:17:21
You'd know how hard it can be to squeeze the tracks in the mix , & you'd know that getting a 16 bit 2 track to shine as it did with the full hi res track count played in the studio is no small feat by any mastering guru's standards.

I'm not sure I'd really agree with this, to be honest. The mix itself is the complicated bit: getting each track, each instrument, to slide into its own little "spot" in the mix -- ensuring no individual track is easily buried by another. If a mix engineer is working with, say, a 16 track session, he's going to be predominantly monitoring the master buss during mixdown, so he's hearing mostly only the stereo mix. Trying to mix by soloing tracks is, well, pretty tough. So, the engineer's monitoring what is essentially a raw version of what's going to the CD. Once a mix is complete, it's passed off to a mastering engineer for slight tonal refinements and, typically, a whole boatload of compression.

With the right sample rate conversion and appropriate dither, that "raw" mix is completely CD-ready. The mastering process is, especially today, a particularly desirable process to put your mixes through, but certainly not required to produce duplication-ready discs. You can bypass that stage if desired, and the final CD may not necessarily be worse for the wear. The CD itself, and its limitations on paper, certainly isn't the real limiting factor.

So after all that effort, having companies & people implying that even the (Downscaled CD) is not a mandatory experience cause it's "indistinguishable" & they can prove (lol) they cannot hear the differnece by failing their foobar ABX tests , & make people pay for lossy music claiming that is the product , is just outrageous really.

I think you've gotten us, and record companies in general, quite a bit wrong. Few of us desire for lossy to be "it" as far as consumer options go. Personally, I want everything: I want people to be able to buy CDs, vinyl records, 1/2" reels, MP3s, 24/96 FLAC...everything. Any format anyone could ever want or desire. If I ran a label, you'd better believe I'd put out vinyl albums in addition to CDs and digital downloads. I like vinyl, and it's certainly a different experience than listening to a CD even if it doesn't necessarily sound any differently.

Labels are still pumping out CDs and vinyl by the truckload. A few are getting into the so-called "HD" movement as well, and I for one think that's fantastic. I'll buy that stuff if it's relatively affordable even knowing full well I haven't ever been able to discern anything extra out of it. I'm by no means on the side of "I have the MP3 of it so I'm done", but I am on the side that, for most of the music-listening public, a well-encoded MP3 offers more fidelity than strictly necessary.

& pointing un/ (& sometimes over) educated fingers at analog purists like Fremer.

I think some of us likely point fingers because the data out there suggests that the common, ordinary compact disc is as pure if not more pure than the vinyl record. Ergo, his analog-centric pursuit is neither purity nor fidelity but instead a specific coloration he finds more pleasing. His job is, in a nutshell, to take his sighted observations and his biased opinions and review products almost entirely on them under the guise that his reviews are in some way objective: that this product he's reviewing is truly better than a similar product he reviewed before.

I am just trying to make a case for why he is a purist. & How being as close (or even surpassing the experience in a way) to the recorded event and product should be admired & desired by all music lovers

I understand entirely where you're coming from, but, from my perspective, using a record player as a playback source isn't how one achieves the greatest possible fidelity. As such, what he's doing is admiring something that isn't what we call fidelity and resolution but instead admiring noise and distortion. If that's the way he likes his music, I have absolutely no issue with that, but his pursuits are misguided if he believes he's achieving purity by entirely shunning digital. His disgust for digital is patently ridiculous.

As for me, & I think I am not totally alone on this, I cannot help but admire the man for perfecting a purist Analog playback system like his nowadays. sometimes I wish I would see half that devotion to sonics from the studios.

I think that, for the most part, making studios "audiophile grade" is unnecessary. If the money's readily available, well, okay, but that's rarely going to be the case, especially in these times. Would doing so lead to perceptibly better recordings and better mixes? To be entirely honest, I'm not so sure.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Linux Zealot Troll on 2009-04-18 22:29:01
They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air.



This made me laugh a lot.  I didn't bother reading the whole article as there is no need to.  However, I didn't realize that audiophiles had a third eye allowing them to actually see sound waves in three dimensions (possibly four?) just pouring out of $350,000 speakers.  Hell, I would go crazy if I actually saw my music rather than listening to it.  All those sound waves going everywhere would drive me insane.  I guess I would hold myself up on a high horse too if I could actually see music.  I guess 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the rest of us will just have to be fine with listening to music instead of trying to pear into the fourth dimension.


Well, maybe not that high a percentage. Assuming a global population of 6 billion, if it were Framer vs the rest of the world it would be 99.9999999999% of the rest of us

Sadly I suspect the percentage to be substantially less ...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-18 23:42:29
I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article, or blog, about Michael Fremer, an audio reviewer from Stereophile (http://www.stereophile.com), which clearly goes completely against the grain around here.

Fremer is the guy who wrote a glowing review about a recent vinyl reissue of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but then a few days later was informed that it was cut from a digital tape, and thus surreptitiously took down his old review, and replaced it with one complaining that the album sounds too digital.

This is exactly what I expect from people who push nonsense as if it is an ideological agenda. The less said about him the better.


Wow! I didn't hear this story. Have a link?


I did a little searching around and found what appears to be two different versions of the same article with two different endings:

http://forum.rollingstone.de/showthread.php?t=33778 (http://forum.rollingstone.de/showthread.php?t=33778)

Post by "atom" dated 09.10.2008, 08:58

This appears to be the *origional* ending of the review:

"Switching to the DCC Compact Classic Edition, you get a superb combination of clarity, spectacular detail, a big sonic space, great reverb “hang time,” depth, visceral instrumental textures and depth-charge bass that’s not overdone and extremely well-controlled but perhaps a bit rounder and fuller than Wilson originally intended but that’s pure speculation.

"So while I’d bet Capitol’s new LP issue was sourced from digital, it does sound very good and better than the CD version. Perhaps it was sourced from high resolution digital or perhaps the LP cutting process adds just the right amount of “coloration” to make it sound richer, fuller and more sonically satisfying.

"If it was cut from digital do I wish it had been cut from analog? Of course. If it was cut from analog and I’m just wanking, well, if I find that out after the fact, I’ll let you know! So since the DCC Compact Classic version is OOP and probably expensive if you can locate a copy and since the Carl and the Passions—So Tough/Pet Sounds twofer and the WB single edition from 1972 is rare, this new Capitol issue is a good choice, particularly since the 180 gram pressing is absolutely perfect. My copy was dead quiet, flat perfection. My source at Capitol says Rainbo in L.A. pressed it. I hope all of their current 180 gram output is this good!

The revised ending is here:

http://www.musicangle.com/album.php?id=703 (http://www.musicangle.com/album.php?id=703)

Review dated: 2009-04-01

"Switching to the DCC Compact Classic Edition, you get a superb combination of clarity, spectacular detail, a big sonic space, great reverb 'hang time,' depth, visceral instrumental textures and depth-charge bass that's not overdone and extremely well-controlled but perhaps a bit rounder and fuller than Wilson originally intended but that's pure speculation.

"So while I'd bet Capitol's new LP issue was sourced from digital, it does sound very good and better than the CD version. Perhaps it was sourced from high resolution digital or perhaps the LP cutting process adds just the right amount of 'coloration' to make it sound richer, fuller and more sonically satisfying, which it is. Still, it's a pale, thin and flat edition compared to the ones that are definitely analog.

"If it was cut from digital do I wish it had been cut from analog? Of course. If it was cut from analog and I'm just wanking, well, if I find that out after the fact, I'll let you know! So since the DCC Compact Classic version is OOP and probably expensive if you can locate a copy and since the Carl and the Passions—So Tough/Pet Sounds twofer and the WB single edition from 1972 is rare, this new Capitol issue is a good choice, particularly since the 180 gram pressing is absolutely perfect. My copy was dead quiet, flat perfection. My source at Capitol says Rainbo in L.A. pressed it. I hope all of their current 180 gram output is this good in terms of pressing quality.

"I just wish Capitol had used an analog master tape because this "clean, pristine" reissue will most likely bore the shit out of you the way CDs usually do.

"Yes, it's better sounding than the CD version but it shares all of CD's worst qualities: flat, dimensionless, tinny, textureless and emotionally stunted.

"Anyone who's bought this and thinks it sounds good can only think so because they haven't heard one of the good reissues.

"Capitol had an opportunity to produce sonic greatness and instead insults one of Brian Wilson's greatest recordings.



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-19 01:41:55
Quote
(kornchild2002 @ Apr 18 2009, 10:39)
B0RK, you continue to step around my question regarding blind ABX testing (which Frumious B asked again). What is so wrong/incorrect/punishable by death when someone listens to lossy music on an iPod knowing that they cannot properly ABX the differences between that lossy music and the source lossy files?


What's wrong with it is that I truly find it hard to believe they know what they CAN abx or not at all,
& definitely do not understand that they can get Better at it.

To truly ABX something, anything, in my experience anyway, you'll have to experience it for quite a lengthier time , then these tests usually allow for.
I have been in, & conducted many real life AB tests.
I have even been exposed to & worked with the common standard here, the Foobar ABX,(in the LossyWav development thread if you are interested ).

So to give an analogy to the process, it's like when sometimes you have to walk with a pair of shoes for a while,
before you know that they're not as good for your intended use as you might have hoped for.

Then ,you try to use that experience on your next shoe purchase,
realizing that the next time you are truly testing cowboy boots ,
you'd better make sure you have a horse & a ranch around,
cause cruising the hood just won't give you quite the input you're looking for...


Quote
(kornchild2002 @ Apr 18 2009, 10:39)
You really aren't getting your point across. Are people who listen to lossy music through an iPod uneducated?


Maybe you're right, maybe I am not getting it across as well as I thought I did ...
I am trying, & Id be the first to say that nothing is in pure Black & White.
Not even ABX tests.

What I am saying is, it's GREAT if you love & enjoy your lossy music on your portable !.
(& please Do tell me ,after some serious thought about it, if you find any sense in what I explain)

It sad , if you know nothing else , or even the source product, on a deeper level.

but it Really stinks, when based on practically zero experience with analog gear (This in itself is not an accusation as it's not that accessible nowadays),
& more then likely zero experience with any High end gear at all, you still keep hearing the same Anti-Audiophile BS again & again.

No, they do not have a problem with wine taster's getting paid to sniff around worse then an Ex Hollywood Lifestyle bygone, with his powdery habits still intact ,as that's a real profession, that demands expertise.

Even Diamond Studded luxury water bottles don't rattle their cage too much.

Its Audiophiles, that they have some 'Real' Hard 'No ABX proof' evidence against ..

You see ,the Truth of the matter is ,that people with experience ,
will never make such comments. They remember (sometimes painfully I must say) that some audio systems, can truly change your whole view of things around, & many of those who heard a superb analog setup , will just do their best to forget it if they cannot afford it.

So, when this anti audiophile BS is being expressed by a .. you guessed it, a Lame version Comparing iPod waving Troll, most of us who know how far he is from knowing the half of it, as we know what the damn truth is :

That we'd trade our iPods (or a tiny bit more ..) for Fremer's system anytime.

So we sit on the fence, & say nothing you see, & we have our reasons ....
& who is We exactly ??
Anyone that's been through it, & would like to keep minding his own business & see how it plays out.

Its engineers (were working on a new portable ..hmm)
pro musicians (now that I'm on Itunes , I think I am gonna zip it)
Recording Technicians (If Ill defend it I am facing yet another ABX test ..I think NOT),
audio industry guys (we Finally HAVE a Profitable MODEL - no way I am talking now)
Audio programmers (Well I am working in an audio compression startup),
& your neighbourly plastic surgeon (Hehehe, you're just jealous you can't afford it, Loser)

You can find some of them right here in HA.
We live off it one way or another, so Fence it is for us.

Some though, are not just sitting on the fence with it, they are taking notes.

While watching the kids play ,some douchebag marketing guy, comes out with an idea ..
If the kids like their lossy audio that much , let's gift wrap it & sell it to them.

Another guy thinks: "Hell man , these kids will never buy these damn nice speakers, just for playing these mp3s , they just don't know any better.. "
calls China & changes his order to Earbuds, the same factory make the headphones as well you see.

I can go on & on ,but I won't, If these words are not enough to get the point across, consider thes quick facts:

The STANDARD - is always the IN DEMAND PRODUCT.
The In Demand product quickly gets competitive.
When the standard lowers, anything above it becomes Luxury.
When that happens, eventually, that means a bigger hole in your pocket ,for the same or lower quality.

Now I Hear you ask : "Well surely at least in the Audio Societies, Someone Must have made Some Effort to keep the Audio Standard High right  ??"

well I think You can still find some of them under the pile of portables they were stoned with.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-19 04:05:27
That we'd trade our iPods (or a tiny bit more ..) for Fremer's system anytime



I actually would trade my iPod for Fremer's system, but it would just be so that I could pull it apart and sell it off bit by bit.  I am skeptical of the $350,000 figure, but I might be able to pocket enough from the sale to pay off my mortgage, throw some money into my savings and buy another iPod.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-19 04:55:25
To truly ABX something, anything, in my experience anyway, you'll have to experience it for quite a lengthier time , then these tests usually allow for.

It truly amazes me every time someone is unable to back up his/her statments by ABX testing, the excuses they give for why it is the fault of ABX testing and not any kind of disproof of their position.

In case you hadn't heard, there is no time limit in ABX testing. Sometimes people take several days when it is particularly difficult to ABX something.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-19 04:58:57
What I find ridiculous about this article is the continued and elitist notion that those of us who prefer digital, even in compressed formats, are somehow sacrificing quality on the altar of convenience.

Yes, the entire article is an elaborate 'argument from personal incredulity'. He is effectively saying "I don't believe that any lossy audio file can ever be transparent from its source, therefore no lossy audio file is transparent from its source." There is no evidence, or reasoning to be seen, he has just assumed a belief and 'backed it up' by saying that that is his belief! It really is that vacuous when you get down to it.

This is a classic example of the nonsense perpetuated by parts of the audiophile community, they start from the belief that humans have PERFECT hearing in every regard, which forces them to disregard psycho-acoustics as an entire discipline.
If anything I would argue that I have made vast improvements in my ability to access and enjoy my music while giving up nothing.

See you were willing to put yourself on the line and actually test the quality of your hearing, and the quality of state of the art lossy encoders.

The "it can't be so, therefore it isn't so" crowd simply don't want to challenge the inflated estimation of their own perceptual capabilities.

It isn't just me who claims this, look at what the founder of Stereophile said in 2007 when reflecting on the 45th anniversary of the publication he started but had retired the editorship of in 1986:
Quote
...high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me...

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-19 06:07:05
This is where we are at now ..:
Every time the word Audiophile is being thrown anywhere nowadays,
you get a bunch of Trolls, waving their Ipods in fury, taking a break from doing spectrals of their transcodes,
& pointing un/ (& sometimes over) educated fingers at analog purists like Fremer.


That's not where we are now.  Only the clueless would use a 'spectral' of a lossy transcode to prove that mp3s sound fine. The whole goal of perceptual encodes is to make the measurable differences --including 'spectrals' -- between the source and the encode audibly irrelevant.

On the contrary, I've only ever seen anyone point to spectral evidence when they were cluelessly trying to prove why mp3 *can't* sound as good as source.

Quote
I am just trying to make a case for why he is a purist.

& How being as close (or even surpassing the experience in a way) to the recorded event and product should be admired & desired by all music lovers, without looking at it only through my angle.


His purism is more akin to fundamentalism. Fremer's dogmatic and technically dubious stance on the means by which this experience can and cannot be achieved, makes him a ranting, pretentious audiophool. 

He claims it simply can't be achieved by listening to mp3s,...and if you disagree, you can't be a 'real' audiophile.

So fuck 'im.  I've seen no evidence that he has undergone training to hear mp3 artifacts particularly.  So chances are good that he could not tell a good mp3 from source in a well-controlled listening comparison, even though he writes as if it would be child's play.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-19 06:22:55
It truly amazes me every time someone is unable to back up his/her statments by ABX testing, the excuses they give for why it is the fault of ABX testing and not any kind of disproof of their position.


I was not discrediting it as another tool to hear differences ,
I WAS discrediting it in regards to many people using it as a way to prove to themselves they cannot hear the any difference, & once they have done that , they take That as the complete & utter truth & act accordingly.

Vice versa applies as well.

In case you hadn't heard, there is no time limit in ABX testing. Sometimes people take several days when it is particularly difficult to ABX something.


No ,you cannot do it for for several days , O-K ? ....
What you CAN do is do many testing sessions.

& they need to be spread over time to keep the results reliable.
That's the nature of these tests , nothing you can do about it.

But We are not talking about me now are we ?
Cause if you are , you could easily have had a taste of my ABXing in the LossyWav thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-19 06:36:03
What's wrong with it is that I truly find it hard to believe they know what they CAN abx or not at all,
& definitely do not understand that they can get Better at it.


It is true that people can train themselves to audibly identify encoding artifacts.  These people often train themselves for a long period of time with songs they are very familiar with.  However, these same people also admit that it is extremely difficult to spot encoding artifacts when casually listening to music.  Most people don't want to train themselves to hear encoding artifacts.  They would rather conduct a few ABX tests and enjoy their music instead of spending months trying to pick out flaws that they may never hear.  They stop enjoying the music and start scrutinizing every little aspect.  I will again ask this question: what is so wrong with this?

To truly ABX something, anything, in my experience anyway, you'll have to experience it for quite a lengthier time , then these tests usually allow for.
I have been in, & conducted many real life AB tests.
I have even been exposed to & worked with the common standard here, the Foobar ABX,(in the LossyWav development thread if you are interested ).


Nonsense.  I have seen people ABX tracks that they are very unfamiliar with.  /mnt will often post samples in which Lame struggles even at 320kbps CBR.  He will use metal, industrial, industrial metal, etc. samples.  People will conduct blind ABX tests with these samples even though they have never previously heard the song.  They can still pick out encoding artifacts.

So to give an analogy to the process, it's like when sometimes you have to walk with a pair of shoes for a while,
before you know that they're not as good for your intended use as you might have hoped for.


Shoes != Audio

What I am saying is, it's GREAT if you love & enjoy your lossy music on your portable !.
(& please Do tell me ,after some serious thought about it, if you find any sense in what I explain)

It sad , if you know nothing else , or even the source product, on a deeper level.


You still haven't explained what is so wrong with knowing nothing but the lossy versions of songs.  What are people missing out on if they can't properly hear the differences between the lossy versions and lossless versions?  Seriously, what are they missing out on?  You keep saying that it is sad and you keep frowning upon lossy encoding (at least anything that isn't lossywav) yet you haven't provided any blind ABX tests to backup your claims and your arguments don't make any sense.

...you still keep hearing the same Anti-Audiophile BS again & again.


No, you hear anti audiophool statements over and over again.  These statements are not BS either.  You should try reading them instead of just falling in line while the audiphools preach their false prophecy.

No, they do not have a problem with wine taster's getting paid to sniff around worse then an Ex Hollywood Lifestyle bygone, with his powdery habits still intact ,as that's a real profession, that demands expertise.

Even Diamond Studded luxury water bottles don't rattle their cage too much.

Its Audiophiles, that they have some 'Real' Hard 'No ABX proof' evidence against ..


Hell, why stop there?  You are complaining about people getting annoyed by these audiophools yet you are using the same amount of energy trying to shoot down facts and claims.  Why not put your energy towards solving world hunger, formulating means to deliver clean water to people while decreasing costs and using less energy (this is what I do for a living), solve the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and so on?  We are not here to discuss issues facing the world today.  hydrogenaudio != solve the world's problems.  It is simply a place where people can gather, try to help each other out, and give insight into the world of audio.

So, when this anti audiophile BS is being expressed by a .. you guessed it, a Lame version Comparing iPod waving Troll, most of us who know how far he is from knowing the half of it, as we know what the damn truth is :

That we'd trade our iPods (or a tiny bit more ..) for Fremer's system anytime.


Sure, I would gladly give up my 120GB iPod classic for Fremer's sytem.  I would then tear it apart and sell it peace by peace to idiots thinking that they need such outrageous equipment.  I would use the money to pay off my college loans, pay off my house, give a little money back to my Mom since she paid my expenses while I was in college, buy a new iPod, buy a new computer, and then save the rest (which would come out to about $100k).  Your "Lame" pun wasn't needed either.  Still waiting for those blind ABX tests...

While watching the kids play ,some douchebag marketing guy, comes out with an idea ..
If the kids like their lossy audio that much , let's gift wrap it & sell it to them.


Yeah, that guy really is a "douchebag."  What a-hole would come along and revolutionize the music industry as we know it?  That dumbass allowed for thousands of bands to get their music out in multiple forms, what an ass!  How dare he come up with an idea to help musicians and change music as we know it!

Another guy thinks: "Hell man , these kids will never buy these damn nice speakers, just for playing these mp3s , they just don't know any better.. "
calls China & changes his order to Earbuds, the same factory make the headphones as well you see.


I didn't realize that you actually worked for Apple, Microsoft, SanDisk, Creative, Archos, and all those other companies offering DAPs.  Thank you for your insightful knowledge that wasn't backed up by anything other than your opinions.

well I think You can still find some of them under the pile of portables they were stoned with.


Again, what is so wrong with portable players?  I feel like a broken record here (oh, I must be teh ultraz clearest soundings!).  You weave around the questions and topics being brought up here only to spew testimony given to you by some audiophools (please go back and read what the differences are between audiophiles and audiophools).  I am done with this topic.  I have stated my opinion and tried to give you information regarding what your misconceptions are.  I have asked for further explanation and have received very little of it.  Others and I have asked for proof backing up your claims yet we haven't seen it.  Feel free to think what you want.  Just to go around preaching it here on hydrogenaudio and audiophool testimony has no place here.  Please don't take my posts as me being negative either.  Just stating my opinion and facts regarding lossy audio encoding.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-19 06:42:38
But We are not talking about me now are we ?
Cause if you are , you could easily have had a taste of my ABXing in the LossyWav thread.


yeah, I see where you say you don't believe a 14/20 ABX run can be due to luck.

14/20 (p=.058) doesn't even break the 'standard' p<.05 threshold for a Type I error, much less an arguably more appropriate p<0.01 threshold.

Regardless of what you believe, a marginal run like that virtually begs for a re-test to see if indeed it WAS just luck.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-19 10:10:58
I think that us ABXers and skeptics are also arguing fallaciously when we decry all high end audio as placebo, and/or highly corrupted by observer bias due to price/shiny knobs/etc. I think audiophiles can toss those sorts of things aside rather easily and it makes us look bad. Really, we don't have a very good scientific understanding of how sighted testing actually works. If we did, we could predict it. And we can't! We can make educated guesses, based on all sorts of sighted factors like cost etc, but nobody's actually argued these correlations with any degree of accuracy whatsoever. The guesses are plausible to us but laughably hypothetical to others.


If you look at the Harman listening test quoted elsewhere on this forum, there's a graph displaying the differences in loudspeaker grading in a sighted vs blind listening test. They showed mostly the same general rating (the same speakers where the best, I think with one exception) - but in the sighted test the listeners rated the loudspeakers much higher. So there you have it, the guy who're embracing the fact that he is listening to "high end" components actually enjoy higher quality audio (imagined or not).  I think the most dedicated sceptics on this forum (and I know they'll disagree) that scoff at anything resembling high end (as all correctly designed [insert audio component] sound the same anyway) are missing out on some of the listening experience.

I consider myself a sceptic, I know I can't really tell the difference between 192kbps MP3 and FLAC, or between two loudspeaker cables.  Still, I know I enjoy music more on a high end system.

Is this actually negative, as "other people" have the same enjoyment on a low end system? or have I possibly added something(percieved audio quality, pride in ownership, appreciation of high quality craftmanship, etc) to the experience that the regular listener don't have? Music is all about feelings and emotions, and the hobby of being an audiophile is too.

It's like enjoying cognac from an expensive, carefully crafted glass sitting in a large leather chair. Does it make the cognac taste better? Maybe a little bit. Does it add something to the total experience? Most certainly. 

EDIT: To clarify - I don't think it's anything wrong with enjoying music on a lower end system, just wanted to state that high end equipment isn't necessarily totally pointless (and I'm not talking 350,000 dollar stuff)  - it will actually add something to the experience
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-19 12:01:10
Is this actually negative, as "other people" have the same enjoyment on a low end system? or have I possibly added something(percieved audio quality, pride in ownership, appreciation of high quality craftmanship, etc) to the experience that the regular listener don't have? Music is all about feelings and emotions, and the hobby of being an audiophile is too.

It's like enjoying cognac from an expensive, carefully crafted glass sitting in a large leather chair. Does it make the cognac taste better? Maybe a little bit. Does it add something to the total experience? Most certainly. 


In a previous career path, I managed fine dining rooms (originally Swiss trained) and I am well aware that presentation and price affects the total experience, However, even in the ex-industry that I was in, we are well aware that blind testing is the only way to assess the true quality of food and drinks.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-19 12:21:49
To truly ABX something, anything, in my experience anyway, you'll have to experience it for quite a lengthier time , then these tests usually allow for.


Straw man, because none of these people are walking cold into the ABX tests.

As a rule, everybody has  experienced the thing being tested for  a far lengthier time , thea just what these tests usually allow for.

You're basically asking us to believe people are doing ABX tests of MP3s, having never heard a MP3 in their life.

Yup, a big straw man. :-(

Quote
I have even been exposed to & worked with the common standard here, the Foobar ABX,(in the LossyWav development thread if you are interested ).


So, are you saying that you did your Foobar tests having never listened to a MP3 in your life?  Can't be true!

Quote
I am trying, & I'd be the first to say that nothing is in pure Black & White.


You're not the first to say that nothing is black and white, you're the last. If you think your are first, your ego is way ahead of your intellect.

Quote
What I am saying is, it's GREAT if you love & enjoy your lossy music on your portable !.


Dismissive attitude noted. :-(

Quote
It sad , if you know nothing else , or even the source product, on a deeper level.


Do you seriously think that people are comparing MP3s to MP3's? That's what you just said. You said that we know nothing of the source product. Boy, do you have your head tucked where the sun shines not!

Just for the record, people are compaing MP3s to .wav files much of the time.  That's the source product, right? Where do you get these wild ideas from? Your buddy Fremer?

Quote
& more then likely zero experience with any High end gear at all,


Dismissive attitude noted, for the zillionth time.

Do you seriously think that none of us ever listen to high end gear?  I';ve been listening to various people's high end gear for decades. I might even have had a little of it myself.

What you don't seem to realize that some of us were held hostige in an analog-only world for many decades of painful love of music. Painful, because all we had to listen to was analog. I had to wait until I was in my l mid-20s berfore there was any good SS to buy. I had to wait until I was in my late 30s before there was any digital to buy. So, I spent about 25 years in a pure analog world. I had nothing but vinyl and tubes to listen to for all of that time. Not good. Not fun.

Quote
you still keep hearing the same Anti-Audiophile BS again & again.


It's not anti=audiophile BS that is going on here at HA. What's going on is anti-BS, pro-science, pro honest experiences and fair evaluations.

Quote
You see , the Truth of the matter is ,that people with experience , will never make such comments. They remember (sometimes painfully I must say) that some audio systems, can truly change your whole view of things around, & many of those who heard a superb analog setup , will just do their best to forget it if they cannot afford it.


You don't know how many times people have tried to spring that BS on me.

You don't get it. People like myself and my good friend Tom Nousaine (and a lot of HA-ers) can spend days at these high end exibitions like the CES and HE200n, and come away with a bad taste in our mouth. We can come away with a profound desire to get back home and listen to our home systems because our home systems sound better. We moved past the water-filled interconnects the size of garden hoses. We've moved past the magic capacitors and glowing bottles. We've been cured of anti-digital hysteria. We've leaned how to do good listening tests.

Quote
So, when this anti audiophile BS is being expressed by a .. you guessed it, a Lame version Comparing iPod waving Troll, most of us who know how far he is from knowing the half of it, as we know what the damn truth is :


Except you obvioiusly don't know the truth. As digital playback devices go, there's nothing wrong with an iPod or somthing like it playing uncompressed or losslessly compressed .wav files. Now the ear buds that come with the iPod are another story but that is easy enough to fix, even though you might feel a little strange paying as much for the earphones as the iPod. As far as lossy-compression goes, get the bitrates up, use a good encoder, and there is no problem.

There's a reason why high enders are so hysterical with their flames at lossy files - that lossy compression works at all shows that they've been spouting BS for decades. They've been saying that good digital recordings don't have enough information in them, and lossy compression shows that you can take 1/2, 3/4, maybe 7/8 or more of the information out of a .wav file and the ear is totally fooled.

Quote
That we'd trade our iPods (or a tiny bit more ..) for Fremer's system anytime.


Not at all. I can pack a good portable music player and some nice earphones out into the woods and sit on a backwoods hillside overlooking a pristene lake that I just paddled across and ate some fish out of and have my good tunes, all at the same time.  Fremer's sytem is about 99.9% BS, cost-wise.  Rememer that for 0.1% of $350,000 you can buy some good headphones and a good digital music player and have sound that is no worse, and probably even better than Fremer's system because you've taken the tubes and vinyl out of the equation.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-19 12:43:36

It's like enjoying cognac from an expensive, carefully crafted glass sitting in a large leather chair. Does it make the cognac taste better? Maybe a little bit. Does it add something to the total experience? Most certainly. 


In a previous career path, I managed fine dining rooms (originally Swiss trained) and I am well aware that presentation and price affects the total experience, However, even in the ex-industry that I was in, we are well aware that blind testing is the only way to assess the true quality of food and drinks.


I agree. But my point was that I would like to enjoy the entire experience. Eating great food blindfolded in a basement isn't as much fun as in a fine dining room.  And at least for me the main part of this hobby is actually listening to and enjoying music, not assessing differences between components.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-19 13:15:57
It truly amazes me every time someone is unable to back up his/her statments by ABX testing, the excuses they give for why it is the fault of ABX testing and not any kind of disproof of their position.


I was not discrediting it as another tool to hear differences ,
I WAS discrediting it in regards to many people using it as a way to prove to themselves they cannot hear the any difference, & once they have done that , they take That as the complete & utter truth & act accordingly.

Vice versa applies as well.

I would hope that nobody is using this tool as you suggest, to convice anyone that there is no audible difference. On the contrary, the function of this tool is to apply standardized testing when one is convinced that one can hear a difference. The results of ABX testing are then used to show either that there is a high probability that that person is able to hear that difference, or else that there is insufficient evidence that the difference can be heard. These results apply to that one person with that particular material at that particular time, nothing more.

Your implication that ABX testing is being misused in the way that you suggest here at HA is quite absurd. On the other hand, the more people that claim to hear a difference, then fail to prove it by ABX testing, the greater the evidence that the difference is not audible to nearly as many people as had been claimed. In particular, the claim that a difference is so obvious that anybody with half-decent hearing could hear it, then the person making the claim is themselves not able to hear it as they thought, happens so often here that it has become the generally expected outcome.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-19 13:20:01
Eating great food blindfolded in a basement isn't as much fun as in a fine dining room.  And at least for me the main part of this hobby is actually listening to and enjoying music, not assessing differences between components.


True. However, style and quality should go hand in hand. Bar brandy poured from a Louis XIII decanter into a lead crystal sniffer is still bar brandy.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-19 14:10:13
Fremer's sytem is about 99.9% BS, cost-wise.  Rememer that for 0.1% of $350,000 you can buy some good headphones and a good digital music player and have sound that is no worse, and probably even better than Fremer's system because you've taken the tubes and vinyl out of the equation.


Fremer's system just seems so woefully inefficient to me.  I bet the thing has to be warmed up for 45 minutes before you can even listen to a scrap of music.  Then you have to get up every fifteen to twenty-five minutes to change the record and you're also limited to listening to one album by one artist at a time.  Of course this is coming from a guy whose relationship with vinyl is roughly equivalent to his relationship with Edison cylinders. 

When I started out buying music in the early eighties I was buying cassette tapes and then moved on to CDs around 1987.  I got into mp3 around 2004, but did a crap job of ripping my music to 128kbps because I didn't know any better.  I loved the ease of the technology, but I also lamented the thought that I was cheating myself in my listening.  I only just got around to rectifying that, hopefully, once and for all.  There would have been some truth to the point of view that I was trading convenience for quality six months ago, but not today. 

It wasn't as bad as I feared because I figured out that mp3 actually hits transparency around 160kbps for me in the overwhelming majority of cases.  I did the whole shebang to lossless and then converted to Nero AAC.  I've lived with the AAC files for a couple of weeks now and I must say that I am uniformly thrilled with the results and my whole library still fits on an iPod 120GB with about 8GB to spare.  All this activity on my part is a direct result of knowledge I've gained by lurking on this forum and then registering to ask a few questions. 

You can learn way more here than sitting at the feet on some supposed audio guru like Fremer or in some audiophile hellhole like the Hoffman forum.  For the way that I and a lot of people live a dedicated listening space where one can lock the door and spend hours and hours isn't an option because we have lives and stuff to do.  Fremer's system wouldn't be a good fit for us even if we had the money to burn.  It's far better to take the thing that you know is the best fit and make it as good as you can possibly make it instead of trying to shoehorn yourself into something that doesn't really suit you out some misplaced sense of rightness that might not even be rooted in anything factual anyway.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-19 18:55:58
Eating great food blindfolded in a basement isn't as much fun as in a fine dining room.  And at least for me the main part of this hobby is actually listening to and enjoying music, not assessing differences between components.


True. However, style and quality should go hand in hand. Bar brandy poured from a Louis XIII decanter into a lead crystal sniffer is still bar brandy.


I completely agree.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-19 21:21:54
But We are not talking about me now are we ?
Cause if you are , you could easily have had a taste of my ABXing in the LossyWav thread.


yeah, I see where you say you don't believe a 14/20 ABX run can be due to luck.

14/20 (p=.058) doesn't even break the 'standard' p<.05 threshold for a Type I error, much less an arguably more appropriate p<0.01 threshold.

Regardless of what you believe, a marginal run like that virtually begs for a re-test to see if indeed it WAS just luck.


Well there we have it don't we.
This is what people like yourself do all the time.

You are not looking for ABX Tests .. now are you ?

Let's face it What you are Really looking for was FAILED ABX tests.

When The Foobar ABX test result is negative , you just get all rosy & cherish the moment.

But when Foobars own stats system says when you guess 14/20 (%5.8 chance of guessing) that is just not good enough for you , & you dismiss it altogether.

You are so quick to dismiss it , that you didn't even notice I included more then one test result &  got the chance to test a casual listener & posted the results, please do try & have another half a look before you post.

@kornchild2002 - I Have no problem with your poinion, youre entitled to it,
but last time I checked , you were not HA spokesman , so you can drop the WE when you have something to say.

I am stating my opinion like everyone else, not getting all touchy & personal against any other member ,& not shutting anyone up.

If what I had to say doesn't make ANY sense to you , why are you still reading this ?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-19 21:41:22
So, are you saying that you did your Foobar tests having never listened to a MP3 in your life?  Can't be true!


Of course I did ,


Quote
It sad , if you know nothing else , or even the source product, on a deeper level.


Do you seriously think that people are comparing MP3s to MP3's? That's what you just said.

Just for the record, people are compaing MP3s to .wav files much of the time.  That's the source product, right? Where do you get these wild ideas from? Your buddy Fremer?

Really ? You PROMISE ? gee I had no idea ..

I';ve been listening to various people's high end gear for decades. I might even have had a little of it myself.

What you don't seem to realize that some of us were held hostige in an analog-only world for many decades of painful love of music. Painful, because all we had to listen to was analog. I had to wait until I was in my l mid-20s berfore there was any good SS to buy. I had to wait until I was in my late 30s before there was any digital to buy. So, I spent about 25 years in a pure analog world. I had nothing but vinyl and tubes to listen to for all of that time. Not good. Not fun.


Ill ignore the other pearls you just threw my way, & Let me ask you a more respectful , serious questions then you offered me ok,

-In your opinion , considering current trends, how many iTunes clients have your experience in audio & know their lossy CD sources & Analog gear sound as well as you do ?

-Knowing what you know, Would you ever give that experience up , going straight to an iPod-iTunes combo ?

-Do you agree that you when choosing that path , that's right for you,  after lengthy experiences with both,
made your decision clearer & more independent & more immune to whatever the new/old fixation might be ?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: [JAZ] on 2009-04-19 22:49:11
I agree. But my point was that I would like to enjoy the entire experience. Eating great food blindfolded in a basement isn't as much fun as in a fine dining room.  And at least for me the main part of this hobby is actually listening to and enjoying music, not assessing differences between components.


The problem is when one compares an average meal in a luxury restaurant versus a good meal in a bathroom.
This is why blind is important. It should make sense to anyone that if you want to compare colours, you don't worry about forms, and if you want to compare parfums, you don't worry about the size of the bottle.

Our interest in hydrogenaudio is scientific, not commercial. We don't care if a white laptop with a white apple in it sells better than a grey laptop with two letters in it.  We would care if a task A is better done on laptop 1 or on laptop 2.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-19 23:48:22

Our interest in hydrogenaudio is scientific, not commercial. We don't care if a white laptop with a white apple in it sells better than a grey laptop with two letters in it.  We would care if a task A is better done on laptop 1 or on laptop 2.


JAZ, Team pride aside, While what you say is indeed true in many parts of HA,
IN THIS CASE, this is inaccurate to say the least.

scientific interest , usually ,is not the opposite of commercial ,they are unrelated terms.

Now in THIS CASE, If you meant purely Scientific VS Subjective .. then that's not true as well I'm afraid.

ABX tests , Are Subjecive tests.

If the debate here was truly conducted from a scientific point of view,
then You don't need HA debates, ABX or any subjective experience at all,
as Scientifically, Any lossy audio , is an inferior , More Corrupted audio version,of the original, where even , The Original itself, is an inferior corrupted Audio Format (Digital Audio in this case).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-20 00:51:29
Would showing off prototypic traits of personality disorder qualify as scientific contribution to this thread?

....The Original itself, is an inferior corrupted Audio Format (Digital Audio in this case).


Congrats! You have just proven your authority to evaluate the scientific nature of audio related questions. I'm really interested to hear more.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-20 00:58:25
ABX tests , Are Subjecive tests.

Hearing is subjective. ABX is a technique for evaluating hearing objectively.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-20 02:17:32
Subjective (adjective): taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias
Objective (adjective): undistorted by emotion or personal bias; based on observable phenomena

Hmm...I wonder which one ABX tests are! Certainly not the latter!

The Original itself, is an inferior corrupted Audio Format (Digital Audio in this case).

"Corrupted". Interesting word choice. Corrupted in what way?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-20 02:27:49
-In your opinion , considering current trends, how many iTunes clients have your experience in audio & know their lossy CD sources & Analog gear sound as well as you do ?


Umm problem with the question - in general commerical CDs are not lossy. Therefore the phrase "lossy CD" is an oxymoron. I can't answer questions about things that in general, don't exist.

Quote
-Knowing what you know, Would you ever give that experience up , going straight to an iPod-iTunes combo ?


Irrelevant question - while the number of people who have only ever heard music reproduced via an iPod-iTunes combo must be increasing, at this time it represents a miniscule fraction of all music lovers.

There is no general lack of opportunity for young people to hear live acoustic music - as long as most high schools offer band, orchestra, and chorus.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Emon on 2009-04-20 05:03:33
This is the detail that matters: Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space.


No they fucking don't. He doesn't even really know what synesthesia is, he just read the Wikipedia article, diagnosed himself and uses it to justify his bullshit hobby.

I should clarify. Certainly there can be audiophiles who are synesthesiacs, but the claim that all or most audiophiles are synesthesiacs and therefore have some heightened sense or perception and need better equipment is a damn lie. As I recall, synesthesia doesn't have anything to do with sensory resolution, just perceptual methods. A synesthesiac who "sees" numbers when doing a calculus problem does not "see the numbers better" on paper, they perceive them differently.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-20 07:24:03
....The Original itself, is an inferior corrupted Audio Format (Digital Audio in this case).


Please enlighten us with your "superior" knowledge of digital audio. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-04-20 09:27:29
as Scientifically, Any lossy audio , is an inferior , More Corrupted audio version,of the original, where even , The Original itself, is an inferior corrupted Audio Format (Digital Audio in this case).

a) Please define "original". Did you know that air "corrupts" sound waves too? You will never hear the "original" unless you put your head in the instrument.
b) In a scientific sense there is no problem with comparing "A" and "B" using an ABX test. As long as you formulate your hypothesis correctly, of course.

[edit]By the way, very funny this BS about audiophiles being synesthesiacs. My girlfriend is a synesthesiac, and she's very happy with her portable player full of 128 kbs MP3s...  [/edit]
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-20 10:25:25
I would have thought that the number of synesthetes within the audiophile community to be in proportion to the number of synesthetes in the wider population. If anything, I'd even make a wild guess that the number of those with sound->colour synesthesia that own audio equipment would be slightly lower than the wider population, because if I had an in-head visualizer permanently switched on, I'd be more editorial in my listening.

That audiophiles can hear a three-dimensional 'soundstage' would suggest one of three things:

1. They are making stuff up
2. They all have OCD when it comes to setting up their systems, and this is the pay-off
3. They are making stuff up again

I know #1 and #3 are similar, but it's such an important point, it's worth repeating.

I suspect this 3D stuff is smoke and mirrors, especially as whenever I attend an unamplified classical concert, I struggle to identify the point in space where the second violinist sits if I close my eyes. But perhaps what they are describing is their brain over-compensating because supposed distance cues are being artificially rebuilt from something a fraction of that distance away in reality. The fact that the instrument may have been less than a foot from the microphone and the only mechanism for stereo positioning at the engineer's desk is a pan-pot is irrelevant - if you have an instrument that you anticipate being 20 feet away, your brain will attempt to locate it 20 feet away. If the loudspeakers are giving precise HRTF cues to the distance of that instrument, but that places the instrument six feet away instead of 20, your brain might conceivably struggle with the dichotomy and over-compensate by making you think stereo is more three-dimensional. This over-compensation could potentially be more noticeable if the loudspeakers are in very precise placement relative to the listener and the loudspeaker-room interaction was particularly favourable. And if there's one thing most audiophiles have in common, it's precise placement of loudspeakers and listener.

That's a whole lot of 'ifs' and 'maybes', though. Trouble is, we'll never know for sure, 'ifs' and 'maybes' seem to be all part of the audiophile magical mystery tour. If you ask 'why', chances are you'll get a Yoda-like response: Disturbance there is in the dark side of the cables. Phase is what you seek, yesssss.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-20 10:29:31
The distortions present in high bitrate MP3 etc are astonishingly minor compared to any number of effects in mastering, recording, etc.
I liked the rest of your argument, but that part doesn't hold water. We could debate how you quantify "distortions" - but I think it's more helpful to separate "distortions" from "differences"...

If you move the microphone two feet, the signal may be dramatically different - but you can move your ears two feet too, and get a similar amount of difference. That's not a distortion.

If you EQ something, it's a change from the ideal, and maybe a kind of distortion, but it's similar to what you experience by listening on different speakers, or at a different distance from a real instrument, or listening in a different room etc. It's a change, but it's comparable to changes that you can easily experience in real life. Sometimes!

Dynamic range compression is different - that is a kind of distortion.

The very process of capturing a live sound via a microphone is a terrible distortion of the original sound field. That's probably an order of magnitude worse than anything else we do to it subsequently.


Those last two aside, I think it's simply wrong to equate distortions in the recording and mastering process with those of high bitrate mp3. Measurably, high bitrate mp3 does huge damage to the signal. Any non-psychoacoustic based process doing a similar level of RMS damage to the signal would be completely unacceptable - like bad AM radio!


Of course it doesn't sound bad. It often sounds perfect. But in terms of measurable quantity of distortion, it's not a small factor.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-20 10:59:43
Can we stop treating BORK like he's the devil please?

Thank you.


Many of the individual ABX test runs in the lossyWAV thread (and also the 16-bit thread) were inconclusive on their own, but if added together and treated as one big run, became more conclusive. I'm not sure how statistically valid this is, but it makes some kind of sense: if you do lots and lots of tests, and you don't cherry pick them, then overall if there's no real effect you should converge on a 50/50 distribution of correct vs incorrect answers. A 55/45 distribution might be meaningless in a few tests, but over lots and lots of tests, the stats tell you that it's very unlikely to happen by chance. The high number of mistakes shows it's very hard to correctly identify the problem, but the fact there are more correct answers than mistakes shows there's something real there.


In that scenario, I think it's worth listening to those listeners, and what they say about their experience of ABX testing.


I think there's a huge tendency developing here to jump in with a knee jerk reaction when ever people perceive that someone might have some sympathy with a subjectivist mindset.

This causes people to over state things:

There's endless praise for lossy audio in this thread, despite there being many successful ABX results of 320kbps mp3 documented right here on HA!

There's complete scorn at the idea that an "expensive" system is any better than in iPod, despite the obvious advantages of hearing music over good speakers driven by capable amplifiers.


You know the kind of subjectivist rant that we all go and have a good laugh at? Well, this thread is turning into an objectivist rant that is straying so far beyond the boundaries of reality that any subjectivist could drop in and have a justifiable laugh at it!

I think some people are getting carried away, and it's not pretty.

IMO!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cliveb on 2009-04-20 11:32:15
That audiophiles can hear a three-dimensional 'soundstage' would suggest one of three things:

1. They are making stuff up
...

What exactly do you mean by "making stuff up"? Are you saying that they are lying, or that there's something going on in the brain that generates the 3D experience? I believe it's the latter.

I've been listening to audio systems for over 40 years, and can recall one time - just ONCE - when I heard an absolutely solid, holographic image of a band playing before me[1]. This was about 20 years ago, playing a vinyl LP through a pair of Linn Isobarik DMS loudspeakers - famous for their *lack* of imaging capability. I have since played the same track on the same system, and the same track from CD through better systems, and never again did I hear that 3D soundstage. I conclude that the perception of 3D soundstages from audio systems must be something to do with the listener's state of mind rather than anything to do with the capabilities of the equipment.

I tell you one thing, though: the experience of hearing that holographic soundstage was simply breathtaking. If I was able to repeat it on a regular basis, I'd be a very happy bunny indeed. Maybe audiophiles who routinely hear a 3D soundstage are somehow able to get themselves into the right frame of mind. I am extremely envious.

[1] If anyone's interested, the track in question was "The Lord is Listenin' To Ya, Hallelujah" from "Carla Bley Live".
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-20 11:51:27
What exactly do you mean by "making stuff up"? Are you saying that they are lying, or that there's something going on in the brain that generates the 3D experience? I believe it's the latter.


Well, potentially both.

I don't think 'lying' is the right term, though. I suspect audiophiles (make that 'most' audiophiles) are sincere in their belief that they can hear in 3D, but whether that is merely self-delusion or the result of some psychoacoustic processes is unclear. What would be interesting, however, is if you could 'deprogram' an audiophile, would they stop with the 'holographic imagery' too? Some of the less febrile are starting to question the audiophile articles of faith... will 'soundstaging' disappear along with the need to spend crazy cable cash?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-20 12:10:59
There's complete scorn at the idea that an "expensive" system is any better than in iPod, despite the obvious advantages of hearing music over good speakers driven by capable amplifiers.


No, there isn't. The debate is not cheap vs. expensive but against putting money into the absolutely wrong end of the chain. As horrifying this may sound to people, who conceive audio gear as part of their ego: technology has advanced up to a point where perfect (in terms of a given FR and SNR) reproduction of recorded material has become possible with commodity parts. With one exception: speakers. This is where money still can make a huge difference, this is where the biggest deviations (several db) from a flat FR happen. Compared to that the differences between iPods and high end CD players or Foobar with a vinyl saturation plugin and an actual vinyl records are laughably small if at all existent. And when people like B0RK let off blunt bullshit it must be allowed to react bluntly. He didn't refrain from personally attacking other forum members himself.

I own a DAC that was more expensive than necessary myself, also an amp that could have been cheaper without the 'look'. That doesn't keep me from playing AAC files from my portable computer and and enjoying a mind blowing musical experience. Sometimes I go the extra route and reimport lossless files from my archive. But that's pure fancy. I would never try to convince people that not doing the same would necessarily lead to an inferior experience.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-20 12:30:43
Now there's a blind test I'd like to see (!) - an iPod vs a Linn CD12.

Both sides of this debate find that idea laughable for opposite reasons. So it's a great test case.

The practicalities of such a DBT are a headache, but not insurmountable.



This "sound stage" thing - do people really not hear instruments spread out between their two speakers? Or do you simply not hear any depth / height? I certainly hear left/right locations, and sometimes some depth. I've only heard height once with 2-channel, and that was a dummy head recording. (unless you mean bass at the bottom, and treble at the top - which is easy with oversized speakers!)

Obviously you can get reliable height, and fantastic depth, with more channels - though you can fake depth with 2-channel stereo somewhat reliably.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-20 12:54:54

It would be interesting to see how the results were interpreted by the audiophiles, although the CD12 is long gone now. Someone would likely cry foul just because it's out of production. A new Wadia player would be all-round interesting, though... just because the company has that iPod 'transport' thing, too. That would make it 'audiophile approved', and would mean you could run CD and iPod through the same DAC.


As to loudspeakers: I hear instruments spread out between the speakers, and sometimes beyond if the engineer has gone mad with the pan-pots. But I've not experienced a hologram appear in front of me between the loudspeakers. If I did, I'd have a larger collection of bad 70s funk with wah-wah pedals.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-04-20 13:04:24
I'm interested, without any knowledge, in the soundstage phenomenon.

Like Gagg Halfrunt, I often listen to orchestral concerts in rooms that give me very little acoustic sense of the location of performers; sometimes that's just auditory image overwhelmed by visual cues, I guess, but I deliberately tested this during a performance of a Handel Oratorio, and I specifically heard the voices of the quite small choir coming from all around me--very much delocalised. And, of course, in a rock concert we know where the sound is coming from: those banks and banks of speakers (at a Bob Dylan concert I attended in 1978, at Blackbushe Aerodrome, I was lucky enough to get a position just in front of the second row of PA towers: Bob looked very small that far away).

So I suspect that the spatial location thing may be fairly specific to the reproduction of music, rather than being in the audience of a live performance (it's probably interestingly different if you're actually in the middle of the performers).

One of the things on which all flavours of listeners seem to be agreed on is that it is a mark of really, really good, and probably cripplingly expensive, speakers that they give a good soundstage. So much so that I wonder if this is the chief difference between speakers that are merely good, and those that are superb--which would be a consolation, since that kind of precision of placement wouldn't be important to me, even if I could afford it, because it doesn't match my live experience.

Lastly, cliveb's experience of hearing, once only, a full 3D soundstage reminds me of an optical trick that might be comparable. Stereo pictures are made with a pair of photographs, made from slightly different points of view. Normally you use a stereo viewer to feed the appropriate image to each eye, but it is possible to learn to see them without a viewer, and apparently reconnaissance photo interpreters learned to do this routinely. I once set myself to acquire the trick, and I could manage it with some difficulty, but the knack vanished if I didn't practice. This makes me think that it is quite possible that some listeners do construct a soundstage for themselves, but that this is a legitimate construction based on real cues in the signal, and intersubjectively verifiable. It would account for the reported finding that professional listeners are most sensitive to soundstage.

Sorry to ramble on, but it might be good for peace to focus on an area where there might be common ground.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-20 14:06:31
I'm finding this discussion of imaging, hearing in 3D etc very interesting. I "see" a 3D image all the time when I actually listen to music; rather than it simply being on the background. It only happens when listening via speakers. Headphones seem to just squeeze the sound into your head. It's completely different - as is live music. Anyway what I'm finding interesting is that I thought everybody heard stereo that way. Otherwise why do engineers bother trying to create a sound stage? Why doesn't everybody listen in mono? Incidentally, it makes no difference whether I am listening to a digital or analogue source.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-20 14:52:01
I'm interested, without any knowledge, in the soundstage phenomenon.

Like Gagg Halfrunt, I often listen to orchestral concerts in rooms that give me very little acoustic sense of the location of performers; sometimes that's just auditory image overwhelmed by visual cues, I guess, but I deliberately tested this during a performance of a Handel Oratorio, and I specifically heard the voices of the quite small choir coming from all around me--very much delocalised. And, of course, in a rock concert we know where the sound is coming from: those banks and banks of speakers (at a Bob Dylan concert I attended in 1978, at Blackbushe Aerodrome, I was lucky enough to get a position just in front of the second row of PA towers: Bob looked very small that far away).


I think that everybody who goes to live performances and listens carefully notices that the sound field becomes highly diffuse, even when you sit pretty close to the source.

I recall that Bose early on said that the ratio of reverb to driect at a typical set in a concert  hall was 8:1.

If we call the direct sound the desired signal, then when the reverb/direct ratio is 8:1 the signal-to-noise ratio is *negative*.  The ear can reliably perceive signals when the SNR is negative, but under these conditions intelligibilty is highly degraded.

Of interest is the 1:1 region which we call the critcial distance. IME that might be on stage or just a few rows of seats back, depending on the type of room.

I don't begudge audiophiles their favorite recordings with readily-discernable imaging. However, they aren't talking about recreating the concert hall experience. They're talking about a listening experience that has few if any real-world equivalents.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-20 15:11:52
you could run CD and iPod through the same DAC.
Oh, I wasn't going to go that far - I was going to use the standard analogue outputs of each piece of equipment.

Cheers,
David.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-20 15:12:17
I'm finding this discussion of imaging, hearing in 3D etc very interesting. I "see" a 3D image all the time when I actually listen to music; rather than it simply being on the background. It only happens when listening via speakers. Headphones seem to just squeeze the sound into your head. It's completely different - as is live music. Anyway what I'm finding interesting is that I thought everybody heard stereo that way. Otherwise why do engineers bother trying to create a sound stage? Why doesn't everybody listen in mono? Incidentally, it makes no difference whether I am listening to a digital or analogue source.


Most (all?) people are able to derive a seamless stereo from two identical - or near identical - loudspeakers. Record producers have a great tool on hand for this - it's called a 'studio engineer'. They in turn have an array of tools they can call upon to simulate the effect of a stage sitting in front of you, in between your loudspeakers. By using panning, phase, reverberation and a stereo ambiance recording (as well as gentle massage of some original sources - adding vibrato to a guitar sound, for example), a producer can effectively build a good simulacrum of a live event. Producers T-Bone Burnett and Ethan Johns are particularly good at this.

This can be extremely effective in creating stereophonic sound, instead of a separate left channel and a right channel as heard on early stereo pop recordings (where the singer is in the right channel, the band is in the left and nothing in between). But, no matter how good, it is a simulacrum. What I question is those who think it's a Holodeck.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-20 15:18:46
I don't begudge audiophiles their favorite recordings with readily-discernable imaging. However, they aren't talking about recreating the concert hall experience. They're talking about a listening experience that has few if any real-world equivalents.
As someone who gets most of their most from recordings (most of my favourite artists are dead) and broadcasts, I'm always surprised by how quiet and distant classical music sounds from most seats in a typical concert hall.

However, an intimate chamber music venue, or sometimes just sitting very close to the front, actually delivers something very close to the kind of audiophile experience I think you're describing.

And I like it. Being just a few metres away from a singer or acoustic instrument (though not brass - too loud!) is magical. Takes my breath away.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-20 15:27:06
Oh, I wasn't going to go that far - I was going to use the standard analogue outputs of each piece of equipment.

Cheers,
David.


My thoughts on this were to limit the damage to the delicate sensibilities of that audiophile. If they think the musical magic can go away by introducing anything antagonistic to their ethos, then limit the antagonism, especially as it shouldn't change the end result.

That being said, someone would end up ascribing special powers to the Wadia iPod dock.

A pity none of the magazines have the stones to do this, as they could assemble the products and even the test subjects easier than we could. And for them, it would probably be more than just sport and academic interest. I guess advertisers trump inquiry.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cliveb on 2009-04-20 15:49:03
Lastly, cliveb's experience of hearing, once only, a full 3D soundstage reminds me of an optical trick that might be comparable. Stereo pictures are made with a pair of photographs, made from slightly different points of view. Normally you use a stereo viewer to feed the appropriate image to each eye, but it is possible to learn to see them without a viewer, and apparently reconnaissance photo interpreters learned to do this routinely.

The difference though, is that I wasn't trying to hear that holographic sound. I just put on a record that I already knew well, on my normal stereo system, and for some inexplicable reason that particular night I heard a soundstage that was utterly different and more convincing than any I've heard before or since. I'm not talking about width, depth (and to a certain extent height) - which can be discerned on many recordings. The best word I can use is "focus": everything just snapped into place with a solidity that was unnerving - and supremely enjoyable. Not only can I remember it happening all those years ago, I can also remember the times I put the same LP on hoping to hear the effect again, only to be disappointed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-20 16:25:38
I have heard that in the US evil hippies sometimes contaminate drinking water with LSD. Now take into account that evil hippies, when they get older and come into money, often turn into subjectivistic audiophiles. I am pretty sure that some audiophile wannabe synesthesiac tried to recruit followers through the local waterworks on that day. Who knows, maybe it was even F. himself.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-04-20 16:57:50
Lastly, cliveb's experience of hearing, once only, a full 3D soundstage reminds me of an optical trick that might be comparable. Stereo pictures <etc. etc.>

The difference though, is that I wasn't trying to hear that holographic sound. <SNIP>


That's interesting. I wasn't pushing a close analogy--apart from sight and hearing being different, there are also physical factors in stereo vision you have to control, especially decoupling focus and convergence. What I was suggesting was that a lot of our perception is in the brain/mind, and that soundstage might be a mind trick, conscious or unconscious.

For me, the virtue of stereo (which I noticed the first time I actually played a stereo record on a stereo set) is that I can hear different lines or voices in the music with greater clarity; spatial location is not a big deal. Though, when I once misconnected my speakers, it was surprisingly disturbing to hear the double basses in my left ear.

cliveb, a pity it only happened once, but at least it happened and made an obviously lasting impression: maybe you should write a sequel to Flanders and Swann's "High Fidelity" about "The Lost Soundstage."

Edit: fixed punctuation.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-20 17:32:10
I think the best experiences of live music I've experienced has always been in churches, both amped an un-amped. You'd probably need a multichannel system to reproduce something like that due to the amount of reverb and feeling of being "in the middle of the sound". I think it sounds great - often enhanced by the  fact that you are listening to talented female voices (solo or chorus) either on their own or with a single instrument, making for a very puristic listening experience.







Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-20 18:14:42
Now there's a blind test I'd like to see (!) - an iPod vs a Linn CD12.

Both sides of this debate find that idea laughable for opposite reasons. So it's a great test case.


Do you expect them to sound different?

Quote
The practicalities of such a DBT are a headache, but not insurmountable.


It's just another test where time-synching is the hard part.

Quote
This "sound stage" thing - do people really not hear instruments spread out between their two speakers?


To me most audiophiles talk about "sound stage" as if it was a holoistic representation of their overall listening experience. It means nothing in particular to them. It most definately is not limited to imaging or spatial presentaion.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-20 18:17:59
It means nothing in particular to them. It most definately is not limited to imaging or spatial presentaion.
Par for the course, really. Ignorance feeds on generalization.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-20 18:26:48
If you EQ something, it's a change from the ideal, and maybe a kind of distortion, but it's similar to what you experience by listening on different speakers, or at a different distance from a real instrument, or listening in a different room etc.

I think the point is that equalization is damaging to the "purity" of the original signal. Running a signal through an analog equalizer, even when not making any boosts or cuts or utilizing any filters, is still going to degrade the signal somewhat by introducing noise. Doing the same thing in the digital realm, if we run a 24-bit recording through a 32-bit float DAW and a 64-bit float EQ plug-in (a common thing for one to do), the plug-in has to dither down to 32-bit to get injected back in the DAW's 32-bit mixer and we then have to dither once again to get the file back down to 24-bit. This again is signal degradation -- even if we don't so much as touch any of the "knobs" on the EQ.

So, it's the from the "departure from purity" standpoint that equalization is distortion: distortion that is, more often than not, relevant to our perceptions. Psychoacoustic lossy encoding is distortion that is specifically designed to be irrelevant to our perceptions.

The very process of capturing a live sound via a microphone is a terrible distortion of the original sound field. That's probably an order of magnitude worse than anything else we do to it subsequently.

There's no question of that. It's hard to describe how abysmal even the best mic is at accurately capturing the sound of an any instrument.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-20 18:42:57
If you EQ something, it's a change from the ideal, and maybe a kind of distortion, but it's similar to what you experience by listening on different speakers, or at a different distance from a real instrument, or listening in a different room etc.


The original purpose of equalization was to add back in the sonic balance that existed in the original source, but was lost due to non-ideal frequency response of the equipment along the way.

In the original context the most damaging of all the equipment commonly used related to recording and playing back optical sound, which makes the LP and all of its faults look (and sound) pretty good.

So lets do a little mind experiment. A record/playback chain happens to have some component in it that rolls off the bass below 100 Hz, which makes many natural sounds seem thin. All I have is a recording processed using that chain of equipment with no recourse to any orginal. If I whip out a parametric equalizer and tweak back in a reasonable semblance of natural bass response, have I forever damaged the overall sound quality?

Quote
I think the point is that equalization is damaging to the "purity" of the original signal. Running a signal through an analog equalizer, even when not making any boosts or cuts or utilizing any filters, is still going to degrade the signal somewhat by introducing noise.


Counterpoint - the dynamic range of some of the better but not exceptional analog equalizers is in excess of 110 dB. A 24 bit digital equalizer has more than 140 dB dynamic range. Exactly what is the effect of using such a device on even the finest recordings with dynamic range on the order of 80 dB?


Quote
Doing the same thing in the digital realm, if we run a 24-bit recording through a 32-bit float DAW and a 64-bit float EQ plug-in (a common thing for one to do), the plug-in has to dither down to 32-bit to get injected back in the DAW's 32-bit mixer and we then have to dither once again to get the file back down to 24-bit. This again is signal degradation -- even if we don't so much as touch any of the "knobs" on the EQ.


Ever do the math and figure out how much degradation an equalizer like this inflicts on anything recorded in 16 bits?

If memory serves, and if you presume that the noise spectrum of the equalizer and the music source are the same, passing  music with xx dB dynamic range through something that has dynamic range equal to xx+10 dB, hurts the finished product by about 0.1 dB. 


Quote
So, it's the from the "departure from purity" standpoint that equalization is distortion: distortion that is, more often than not, relevant to our perceptions. Psychoacoustic lossy encoding is distortion that is specifically designed to be irrelevant to our perceptions.


Like many such claims, the above claim does not suffer the test of real-world quantification. Sure there is some theoretical loss, but back in the real world... ;-)

Quote
The very process of capturing a live sound via a microphone is a terrible distortion of the original sound field. That's probably an order of magnitude worse than anything else we do to it subsequently.


Any experienced recordist should be able to confirm that.

Quote
There's no question of that. It's hard to describe how abysmal even the best mic is at accurately capturing the sound of an any instrument.


It has to be that way, because mics transform a 3 dimensional sound field into a 2 dimensional signal.  Linear algebra says that there might be an infinite number of 3 dimensional sound fields that a mic would tranform into the same 2 dimensional signal.  Therefore, we are very limited in terms of what we can deduce about the original sound field from the output of a single microphone.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-20 18:52:47
Now there's a blind test I'd like to see (!) - an iPod vs a Linn CD12.

Both sides of this debate find that idea laughable for opposite reasons. So it's a great test case.


Do you expect them to sound different?


That's immaterial.

I suspect this is the kind of thing that needs to be repeatedly run and re-run to 'demonstrate whether there is - or is not - a difference'. The problem with challenging dogma is that it doesn't crumble at the first challenge. 

If we come on strong with 'been there, seen it, done it' to a bunch of people who not only haven't, haven't and haven't, but think they have... you just run up against the faith. You have to keep challenging this to get the message across. Gradually, you overturn the previous mind-set.

Or we just keep drawing up the same battle lines.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-20 19:05:23
Now there's a blind test I'd like to see (!) - an iPod vs a Linn CD12.

Both sides of this debate find that idea laughable for opposite reasons. So it's a great test case.
Do you expect them to sound different?
If they don't, then very little does.

Hence it's a good test. Either way.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-20 20:12:53
Stereophile's own test measurements of the CD12 show that it doesn't add any color, but that it works exactly as expected from any properly designed DAC. Any artifacts are way below 100db. So it should not be ABXable against an iPod unless you can hear a needle drop beside a jet engine at full thrust (literally).

The CD12 has only two extra features:

1. Complete source jitter immunity by employing an asynchronous sample rate converter. So the whole mechanical overkill for its transport is eye candy.

2. Optional dithering.


Part costs to add 1. to a modern DAC are single digit $. 2. really should be done at the studio and probably does more harm than good for most records.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-20 20:42:37
If I whip out a parametric equalizer and tweak back in a reasonable semblance of natural bass response, have I forever damaged the overall sound quality?

Technically, I feel you have. The sound quality, as I define sound quality, has technically been "damaged". If you used another word, like "desirable tonality" in place of "sound quality", then I would say the subjective quality of the signal has improved, much like how a recording can be subjectively "improved" by adding in even-order harmonic distortion. Not every listener will necessarily prefer the distorted signal, but it may appear more pleasing on some level to a moderate or large percentage of listeners (for whatever reason that may be).

You may feel differently, but I've always hated the idea of using the term "sound quality" to describe anything that could be thought of as subjective. To me, sound quality is a metric of the level of adherence to a recording. A concept that is purely technical and not in any way tied to our particular preferences for what sound should be.

Counterpoint - the dynamic range of some of the better but not exceptional analog equalizers is in excess of 110 dB. A 24 bit digital equalizer has more than 140 dB dynamic range. Exactly what is the effect of using such a device on even the finest recordings with dynamic range on the order of 80 dB?

Nothing in practical terms, but that's not quite what we're discussing.

Ever do the math and figure out how much degradation an equalizer like this inflicts on anything recorded in 16 bits? If memory serves, and if you presume that the noise spectrum of the equalizer and the music source are the same, passing  music with xx dB dynamic range through something that has dynamic range equal to xx+10 dB, hurts the finished product by about 0.1 dB.

I'd say that sounds about right to me. The point, however, is not the severity of degradation but the mere act of degrading. I use the example of a zeroed equalizer only to demonstrate that anything we do to a signal -- even if our intent is to not really do anything "productive" at all, but to merely route it through some device -- is degradation due to the introduction of noise and/or other anomalies (some subjectively desirable to some; others typically not). We are of course talking about barely measurable changes in the original signal when we shoot something through an analog equalizer or a DAW, but that's not really the point.

In the real world, when we're tweaking knobs and moving faders in both the analog and digital realms, we're utilizing what are, in all reality, tools of destruction to shape sound to our liking. We do it because the subjective qualities are for the most part enhanced by doing so.

B0RK gave myself and others the impression that an audiophile like Fremer is someone who utilizes an often expensive playback system to attempt to achieve purity with respect to the originally recorded event; that purity to the originally recorded instrument is, in some way, the goal (and that vinyl is somehow central to achieving that, for some undefined reason). That he and others like him should be admired for that. I said it was ridiculous given the fact that engineers intelligently destroy such purity, even if, as you said, the idea is to approximate the original sound of the instrument due to deficiencies in recording gear or techniques. In that way, their pursuits are nonsensical given what engineers do to recordings.

Quote
So, it's the from the "departure from purity" standpoint that equalization is distortion: distortion that is, more often than not, relevant to our perceptions. Psychoacoustic lossy encoding is distortion that is specifically designed to be irrelevant to our perceptions.


Like many such claims, the above claim does not suffer the test of real-world quantification. Sure there is some theoretical loss, but back in the real world... ;-)

We're talking two different things here. You're seem to be making the case for the intentional manipulation and specific degradation of a recording to achieve subjective desirability, while I'm arguing purely on a scale of black and white: that the post-processing of a recording is, from a purely technical perspective, degrading in almost every scenario even if the effect is barely measurable. If the effects of that on the original are the introduction of broadband noise, harmonic distortion or what have you, they are still distortions. A so-called "departure from purity".

Like I said before, don't get me wrong. I'm all for this stuff. I'm for equalization, low- and high-pass filtering, compression, harmonic excitation, noise reduction...all of that stuff. They're tools we can use to achieve certain results we like -- results we tend to find more pleasing. I use most of these tools daily, though some sparingly. That's not to say that they're beneficial to a given signal on a technical level, however, because they aren't, but I'm not arguing for this concept of so-called purity: the idea that listening to a recording of a cello should always seem like listening to a real cellist. I don't think that should be the pursuit of engineering nor the pursuit of listening.

Linear algebra says that there might be an infinite number of 3 dimensional sound fields that a mic would tranform into the same 2 dimensional signal. Therefore, we are very limited in terms of what we can deduce about the original sound field from the output of a single microphone.

I'm not debating this. A mic is only as effective at recording an event as its technical limitations allow.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-20 20:58:35
A so-called "departure from purity".


This purity is not achievable when you look at the whole chain. In the end air has to be moved for what mass has to be moved. Mass is at least subject to inertia and resonance. The endpoint of your chain will always act as a filter. For "purity" you have to eliminate these effects by inversion, either physically (e. g. damping), digitally, or analog. All three are not free from the universal tradeoff between phase and frequency accuracy, but the only way to go for maximum "purity".

So neglecting equalizing elements, that have practically no side effects (<0.1db impact), within the signal path for purely theoretical reasons does not make sense in a world were considerable amounts of mass necessarily have to be moved very accurately at some point.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-20 21:33:31
Linear algebra says that there might be an infinite number of 3 dimensional sound fields that a mic would tranform into the same 2 dimensional signal. Therefore, we are very limited in terms of what we can deduce about the original sound field from the output of a single microphone.

I'm not debating this. A mic is only as effective at recording an event as its technical limitations allow.

That's not a technical limitation, it's a theoretical one.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-04-20 22:25:40
Hm. My own experiences with the iPod are that it's a touch on the noisy side...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-20 22:36:46
This purity is not achievable when you look at the whole chain.

I suppose "departure from purity" isn't really a fitting phrase since it would seem to indicate that "purity" is a destination that one could realistically reach. A more appropriate phrase, I guess, would be "deviation from purity". I'm not suggesting what I refer to as "purity" is ever achievable nor would it be particularly desirable.

So neglecting equalizing elements, that have practically no side effects (<0.1db impact), within the signal path for purely theoretical reasons does not make sense in a world were considerable amounts of mass necessarily have to be moved very accurately at some point.

Agreed.

I'm not debating this. A mic is only as effective at recording an event as its technical limitations allow.

That's not a technical limitation, it's a theoretical one.

I'm actually fairly happy with the way I worded that. Technical restrictions often revolve around theoretical ones
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-20 23:26:53
I agree with Canar, the SNR of an iPod is great, but it is finite, and I can hear the noise with ER-4Ps in a quiet room. One of the most substantial mods I've encoutered at a Head-Fi meet (... and that's not saying much)  is the RWA iMod, which rips out the output buffer on the iPod's DAC, which requires you to use a (presumably lower noise) outboard headphone amp.  (Sighted evaluation, grain of salt, TOS8 etc etc.) There was a pretty substantial noise improvement with the iMod compared to an unmodded iPod of the same vintage, with several different amps in use.

That said, the ambient noise levels in a speaker listening test might not be low enough for that to be an issue...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-20 23:27:49
Quote
Well there we have it don't we.
This is what people like yourself do all the time.

You are not looking for ABX Tests .. now are you ?


Yes, I am...I'm always on the look out for good ones.

Quote
Let's face it What you are Really looking for was FAILED ABX tests.


No, I looked for the ABX test you reported, and found that your interpretation of it was statistically flawed.


Quote
When The Foobar ABX test result is negative , you just get all rosy & cherish the moment.


No but it has been known to happen when I see a fool prove his mettle, in public.

Quote
But when Foobars own stats system says when you guess 14/20 (%5.8 chance of guessing) that is just not good enough for you , & you dismiss it altogether.


This only means that you don't know how to interpret the Foobar 'stats system'.  If you did, you'd know that that nothing I wrote contradicts the 'Foobar stats system's report... indeed, they both indicate that the
results did not pass the p<0.05  (that's  < 5%) threshold.

Quote
You are so quick to dismiss it , that you didn't even notice I included more then one test result &  got the chance to test a casual listener & posted the results, please do try & have another half a look before you post.



I am quick to dismiss your belief that a '5.8% chance of guessing'  -- that's better than 1 in 20 chance of guessing, btw -- means it couldn't have been due to chance.

2bdecided, please explain again why I should treat this guy  with respect?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-20 23:34:59
There's a difference between respecting someone and being respectful of a discussion. None of us have to respect anyone here, though we should try to have respectful discussions and generally try to treat people in a respectful manner nonetheless.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-20 23:44:59
Can we stop treating BORK like he's the devil please?

Thank you.


The devil makes ignorant claims about ABX stats and digital audio?  Who would have thought it?

Quote
Many of the individual ABX test runs in the lossyWAV thread (and also the 16-bit thread) were inconclusive on their own, but if added together and treated as one big run, became more conclusive. I'm not sure how statistically valid this is, but it makes some kind of sense: if you do lots and lots of tests, and you don't cherry pick them, then overall if there's no real effect you should converge on a 50/50 distribution of correct vs incorrect answers. A 55/45 distribution might be meaningless in a few tests, but over lots and lots of tests, the stats tell you that it's very unlikely to happen by chance. The high number of mistakes shows it's very hard to correctly identify the problem, but the fact there are more correct answers than mistakes shows there's something real there.


You're not sure how statistically valid it is...well, that's what statistics are for, eh?  It becomes important at some point to crunch the actual numbers, rather than rely on impressions that 'lots and lots' of tests have supported the difference.  I also made reference to a p<0.1 for good reason...heck, Pio even discusses it in the HA sticky on ABX.


Quote
In that scenario, I think it's worth listening to those listeners, and what they say about their experience of ABX testing.


We were all challenged to get 'a taste' of BORK's ABXing....so I did. 

Quote
I think there's a huge tendency developing here to jump in with a knee jerk reaction when ever people perceive that someone might have some sympathy with a subjectivist mindset.

This causes people to over state things:


OK, you've got us sussed, now what explains BORK?   

Quote
There's endless praise for lossy audio in this thread, despite there being many successful ABX results of 320kbps mp3 documented right here on HA!


Yes, and please put that in context: very few can consistently 'succeed' at that, and very few find it anything like 'easy' in the first place.  And often some training to hear mp3 artifacts specifically is involved. That points to mp3 technology being pretty fucking amazing these days.  But does it point to the self-proclaimed 'audiophile'  being RIGHT when they claim they can always tell any mp3 from source.. as they often do?

Quote
There's complete scorn at the idea that an "expensive" system is any better than in iPod, despite the obvious advantages of hearing music over good speakers driven by capable amplifiers.


Oh, come on, *that's* an overstatement.  The scorn is for those who say an iPod *connected* to the expensive system (including its capable amps), playing good mp3s,  would be obviously inferior to their high-end digital player playing SACDs or HD or whateverthehell flavor of the week 'hi rez' is presenting itself as today.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-20 23:47:42
Btw, I always thought audio synaesthesia referred to seeing sound as colors, a la the composer Scriabin, who wrote a treatise on the matter.  'Holographic' audio reproduction on the other hand is a matter of things like room acoustics, channel configuration, and recording quality, not some amazing mental quirk.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-20 23:55:45
Stereophile's own test measurements of the CD12 show that it doesn't add any color, but that it works exactly as expected from any properly designed DAC. Any artifacts are way below 100db. So it should not be ABXable against an iPod unless you can hear a needle drop beside a jet engine at full thrust (literally).

The CD12 has only two extra features:

1. Complete source jitter immunity by employing an asynchronous sample rate converter. So the whole mechanical overkill for its transport is eye candy.

2. Optional dithering.


Part costs to add 1. to a modern DAC are single digit $. 2. really should be done at the studio and probably does more harm than good for most records.



Stereophile also tested the 2003-vintage iPod.  And it performed rather well.

http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/934/index5.html (http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/934/index5.html)

Quote
The iPod's measured behavior is better than many CD players—ironic, considering that most of the time it will be used to play MP3 and AAC files, which will not immediately benefit from such good performance. But if you're willing to trade off maximum playing time against the ability to play uncompressed AIFF or WAV files, the iPod will do an excellent job of decoding them. Excellent, cost-effective audio engineering from an unexpected source.—John Atkinson
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 00:02:21
There's a difference between respecting someone and being respectful of a discussion. None of us have to respect anyone here, though we should try to have respectful discussions and generally try to treat people in a respectful manner nonetheless.


Hmm, well, I took BORK up on his offer to check out his 'ABXing', and reported a clear misunderstanding on his part, of his own 'ABXing'.  He responded with free psychoanalysis.  !respect!

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ScottM on 2009-04-21 00:20:15
Do musicians have better ears than the rest of us? Probably not.


Probably so, some of them.

I sell audio gear as a side line (I won't get into what gear to avoid the whole question of advertising), but it's enough to say that I've had a goodly number of people into my home, listening to music. Because it's an audiophile speaker line, but not atmospheric in price, I get everything from the wealthy looking for shiny toys, to music lovers and musicians, to full-out audiofools who come with their own power cords.

It's the musicians, of all the customers I've had, who I've come to respect. Most of them don't give a soaked clam about graphs, wires and components, but they can pick out a lifeless passage, a loss of clarity or a depressed frequency without effort. Some of them don't care that much, because they listen to recordings from the 30s and 40s when recording techniques were often poor anyway. But by and large it's the musical folk who can listen carefully, and accurately pick out very fine detail.

I have no idea if it's the keen ear'd folk who become musicians, or if it's that a lifetime of music trains the mind to greater perceptiveness and accuracy. I'd guess the latter; I have good ears but I'm no musician.

One of my customers went through absolute misery with a piano he owned. He'd sunk a considerable sum of money into getting a high end piano, and again I'll leave out brand names. It was a good piano, and he liked it. All but one note. That one note sounded harsh to him. It didn't sound harsh to him on other pianos, even of the same type. It wasn't a room effect, because I worked him through tricks like moving the piano around, and adding absorption in the room. It was just a slight harshness on one note, and the chief engineer the company sent out couldn't hear the problem, even though he was risking having the piano returned by being unable to fix it.

I was sent a recording of a scale played on that piano, and I picked the harsh note out on the first listen - not very bothersome to me, but, yeah, noticeable if I paid attention, something wrong with the overtones. For him it was little short of glaring misery. And to that professional piano engineer - completely inaudible.

So, yeah. We don't all have ears that work the same, and some people's really are just plain better than others. I don't know if we "need audiophiles", but there are people out there that can hear things you and I can't, and I can hear things you can't, and most likely vice versa. And there are people who simply aren't very perceptive at all. So when I hear people categorically claim that the difference between an .mp3 and a .wav is inaudible, or that no one can pick out the directionality of a tone under y Hz, any other such claim, I roll my eyes. Some people are simply capable of surprising things, and if you want to find the keen-eared, I'd suggest starting with musicians.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cliveb on 2009-04-21 08:34:31
'Holographic' audio reproduction on the other hand is a matter of things like room acoustics, channel configuration, and recording quality, not some amazing mental quirk.

The personal anecdote I posted earlier in this thread was an attempt to demonstrate that hearing a "holographic" soundstage most probably *is* a mental quirk.

Playing the same LP on the same system in the same room, just one time out of many I happened to hear a "holographic" image. The fact that it only happened once, was from an LP (with all that medium's known flaws), using speakers well known for their *lack* of imaging ability, strongly suggests to me that it's nothing to do with the reproduced soundfield, but in the mind.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-21 10:31:13
Do musicians have better ears than the rest of us? Probably not.


Probably so, some of them.



I'd argue the reverse. A musician is more likely to have suffered work-related hearing damage than, say, a typical office worker. That's not just rock musicians who spend too long next to a Marshall stack - the sound pressure levels coming from a violin (for example) are enough to impair the hearing mechanism of the player long before they get good enough to consider themselves a musician. The same applies right through the orchestra... not forgetting the damage caused by rehearsing and performing with a large orchestra itself.

However, a musician's listening skills should be distinctly better at determining changes in music than most non-musicians, because it's an ongoing part of the training process for any working musician. Even the ones who don't spend hours and hours formally training their ears to spot different musical intervals, chords, rhythms and developing relative pitch learn these things on an ad hoc basis. It's a different training process than might be used to develop good audio listeners (a musician needs to be able to spot the difference between a Maj7 and a 7sus4 chord, where an audio listener needs to learn to be able to spot the prospective artifacts from a poor codec or a badly-designed crossover) but it seems possible that the development of critical listening skills in one musical sector is, at least in part, transferable to others.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-21 12:03:29
Let´s face it: people buy new techniques when they are cheap & convenient. If they offer good sound quality it is a side-effect, nothing more (there are exceptions). So many people are happy with their original iPod earphones though they sound like crap. Adding to this, they can´t hear any difference between a CD and a MP3 from that CD - but they don´t even bother because they have other things to do (caring for the kids, going to work, painting pictures... I don´t know). They want their music fast and good sounding - MP3 offers exactly that.

Basically the techniques used in modern systems is chosen for the customers, they don´t choose themselves. It´s like fashion. Did you ever see "The Devil wears Prada"? Meryl Streep says some very true (if not cynical) sentences. One of them basically says that the fashion the "normal" people are wearing today was chosen for them by some high-flying designers years before. This fashion used the years to be downgraded to mainstream. I believe that with Audio it is the same, the techniques we are using today were chosen for us by engineers, designers and marketing people - all of them with the desire to make loads and loads of money with us. Audiophiles used some of these techniques years before they were introduced to the mass market. As an example I would like to take Sony. They produced some special CD drive for their High-End-players in the mid 90s´.  A few years later they downgraded this special drive to the mass market.

Another example: MP3. Developed by the Fraunhofer institute it rose to prominence in the late 90s´ - but some people are actually forgetting that lossy formats were introduced in 1992 with MiniDisc & DCC. They didn´t sound like the original but good enough to be transparent to the casual listener. MiniDisc still exists. Why? Because it is fast and convenient. DCC died very soon because it was slow. Eventually even MiniDisc will die simply because MP3 is more convenient and offers the same sound quality.

As for objectivity vs. subjectivity: I myself am a mixture of both. I´m buying expensive cables, I do paint the edges of my CDs, I upsample, I believe in 24/96 being superior and in the Hypersonic effect. I know that MP3 can sound transparent, still I´m using WavPack lossy. I also know that the whole Jitter discussion is overblown, still I do a lot of stuff in order to suppress it. On the other hand I never believed in tubes or vinyl. I´m sure that for some people I´m counting as an Audiophile (or a mad person) though I´m not considering myself actually being one. Anyway, I´m convinced that the techniques used by audiophiles today (not Vinyl) will be used 20 years from now for the mainstream market. I´m sure we will have for example 24/96 on every medium with most of the music. Not because of the reason that it may offer a sound improvement but it just will be as convenient as the techniques used today, it will be the standard (the mainstream won´t hear anything - but they wouldn´t hear the difference between 16/44.1 to 12/32 simply because they are not interested) MP3 will be dead by then, only to be replaced by something else. Also in 20 years from now the audiophile will have something new to promote...

And so the cycle starts again.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 12:06:50
Many of the individual ABX test runs in the lossyWAV thread (and also the 16-bit thread) were inconclusive on their own, but if added together and treated as one big run, became more conclusive. I'm not sure how statistically valid this is... (snip)
You're not sure how statistically valid it is...well, that's what statistics are for, eh?  It becomes important at some point to crunch the actual numbers, rather than rely on impressions that 'lots and lots' of tests have supported the difference.  I also made reference to a p<0.1 for good reason...heck, Pio even discusses it in the HA sticky on ABX.
I've used the statistics. I've downloaded the spread sheet. I've studied the discussions on the difference between ABXing a pre-selected number of trials vs ABXing until the "probability of guessing" indicator goes below 5% (which breaks the stats - the displayed "5%" is wrong in this use case).

My comment, "I'm not sure how statistically valid this is", is raising cautious concern over whether the apparently innocent practice of adding together the results from multiple ABX runs of the same codec with the same settings with (sometimes) different samples is also breaking the statistics. I suspect it is - like the "ABX until you hit 5%" case, I think the "add together all the results from samples that show a problem" case means you haven't actually hit 5% when the stats say you have. Why? Because there's an element of self-selection - if you can ABX a sample, it goes in, while if you can't, it doesn't. That innocent act, unavoidable when testing codecs, breaks the stats if you simply add all the results together. The only way to make it right is to keep the results separate (and remember they weren't statistically significant separately), or to get other users to repeat the results (for some samples, people did - for others, they did not).


Now, you have just proven my earlier point: I was hinting at a rather complex point of ABX statistics, but you assumed I was hand waving, and hadn't even tried the stats.


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There's endless praise for lossy audio in this thread, despite there being many successful ABX results of 320kbps mp3 documented right here on HA!

Yes, and please put that in context: very few can consistently 'succeed' at that, and very few find it anything like 'easy' in the first place.  And often some training to hear mp3 artifacts specifically is involved. That points to mp3 technology being pretty fucking amazing these days.  But does it point to the self-proclaimed 'audiophile'  being RIGHT when they claim they can always tell any mp3 from source.. as they often do?

OK, so here's what I really think: In the audiophile world, just as in the lossy audio world, there are a very few people with good and/or trained ears, who can actually hear subtle problems - and can hear the absence of subtle problems.

However, the vast majority of people in the audiophile world, just as in the lossy audio world, aren't nearly so sensitive. With the vast majority, there's no difference between the Emperor's new clothes, and a genuine, subtle, audible improvement. They cannot differentiate. They can't really hear either of them, but to appear that they know what they're hearing, they pretend to hear both. "The MAD mp3 decoder sounds so much better". "fb2k sounds so much clearer". "the red speakers sound punchier". etc etc etc. A lot of people are reporting that they hear differences where no such difference exists.

But that doesn't mean that no difference exists. 320kbps mp3s can be ABXed. The Emperor has clothes in this case - but very few people can see them!

And, importantly, throughout large swathes of the industry, I suspect many of the really smart people know damn well when the Emperor has clothes and when he's naked - but for various reasons it would do them do good at all to shout out "the kind is in the altogether!" so they keep quiet. But note that: the sensible people keep quiet. The people who can really hear keep very quiet about the things that make no difference. I guess I've seen this more from inside academia, talking quietly to bright people away from commercial pressures - but also talking o people in the commercial world when they've taken their "marketing hat" off. What you see printed in the audiofool press, or spoken at shows sponsored by cable manufacturers, has no bearing on what people who really "get it" think and hear.


What other holy cows can and cannot be ABXed? I don't know. But I've had discussions with Arny on here before, and he's pointed to the results at http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx.htm (http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx.htm) to show something couldn't be ABXed, and I just look in derision at http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_md.htm (http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_md.htm) which shows that first generation minidisc couldn't be ABXed. First generation minidisc!.


It's interesting to me that I point to 320kbps mp3, and you come straight back at me with a reason why that example doesn't really matter. What was the name of this arguing technique - it cropped up in another thread with creationism vs Dawkins - how you can never prove something true/false if the other side keep moving the goal posts.

And then we've had several posts laughing at the idea that an iPod is ABXable from a CD12, and then a sensible member quietly mentions that you can hear the background noise.

The absolutely rabid anti-audiophile attitude growing on this board is terrible.


I'm 100% convinced that any real difference should be reproducible in a DBT given a sufficient time scale. I'm convinced that when people report hearing the difference during a DBT, but the results are actually random, it proves placebo / self delusion.

However, to go from this basic science, to dismissing the audibility of things where an ABX has never been attempted, and concluding that an iPod with high bitrate mp3s is the peak of audio perfection, or at least more than good enough, when there's clear ABX data and objective data disproving this - this is worse than nonsense. Where is the scientific basis for these statements? What on earth are people doing on HA making statements that are completely disproven by ABX results?! The fact that people will happily trot this nonsense out in an argument discredits them and this site.


Cheers,
David.

P.S. I know most people can't hear anything wrong with 128kbps mp3. These people are equally welcome on HA, but their failed ABX tests do not invalidate other people's successful ABX attempts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 12:33:11
Now there's a blind test I'd like to see (!) - an iPod vs a Linn CD12.

Both sides of this debate find that idea laughable for opposite reasons. So it's a great test case.


Do you expect them to sound different?


That's immaterial.

I suspect this is the kind of thing that needs to be repeatedly run and re-run to 'demonstrate whether there is - or is not - a difference'. The problem with challenging dogma is that it doesn't crumble at the first challenge.


AFAIK the first CD player versus CD player DBT was done by my associates and myself for a feature article in Stereo Review in the late 1980s. We compared the much-maligned CDP 101 to Sony's latest-greatest and other players and found trivial to non-existent audible differences.  Tom Nousaine did a similar test about 14 years later, with similar results.

The recent JAES article comparing so-called hi-rez to CDP audio produced similar results.

For about 8 years I owned and operated a web site known as www.pcabx.com that allowed people to hear or not hear differnces like these.

Sooner or later people have to stop expecting people to re-invent the wheel for them!

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If we come on strong with 'been there, seen it, done it' to a bunch of people who not only haven't, haven't and haven't, but think they have... you just run up against the faith. You have to keep challenging this to get the message across. Gradually, you overturn the previous mind-set.


How many times do we need to open Lincoln's grave before we believe that his body is still in it?

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Or we just keep drawing up the same battle lines.


The ability of greedy and/or poorly-educated  audiophiles, salesmen, and journalists to mislead people again and again seems to be unending.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-21 12:41:39
2Bdecided. ABX is not the last resort for everything. It is a fantastic tool to evaluate non linear or psycho acoustical processes like lossy compression or the non-impact of audio voodoo. ABXing, although hard to implement, is also a great tool to for speaker evaluation, were still not enough purely objective metrics exist.

But DACs and output stages are different. There only mission is to do their job while staying completely out of the signal path. It is not hard to built them as completely linear, neutral elements until far above (any) humans' hearing capabilities. And this is perfectly measurable for any given pair of frequency range and signal to noise ratio. You can't measure wether a unit's colorization (speaker, tube saturation) is sounding good or bad, but you can measure wether there is any colorization at all.

The only problem is that many people don't have enough background knowledge to interpret the results. The iPod has certainly an acceptable frequency response and signal to noise ratio. But the latter is a ratio and no absolute statement about noise. A sensible enough headphone may pick up noise, wether from the iPod or the best DAC in the world. This does not matter when feeding an external amplifier (where you can turn the iPod's volume up until it can play within it's full range without perceivable noise) and less sensitive headphones.

So you may not get happy with an iPod when you only have very sensible headphones and listen to very low volumes. But this doesn't say anything about it's capabilities to drive a high end system (high impedance, adaptive sensitivity = volume knob) perfectly within its full measured signal to noise ratio.

So it is good to have people prove that units are actually not ABXable, but I have seen enough to completely trust measurements as long as we are speaking about supposedly linear and non colorizing elements, for example DACs and output stages in general. Speakers still do have some not accurately definable color, lossy compression is non-linear and psycho acoustical, so here this does not apply.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 12:54:58
If I whip out a parametric equalizer and tweak back in a reasonable semblance of natural bass response, have I forever damaged the overall sound quality?

Technically, I feel you have.


If you want to worry about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, I've got nothing for you.

You obviously have no compelling clue about the practicalities of doing real world audio, while right now that is very much of my life.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 13:06:41
Hm. My own experiences with the iPod are that it's a touch on the noisy side...


The first question is: "Is your Ipod operating within spec, or is it somehow broken"?

The second question is, "Have you found anything that is actually quieter when doing a comparison that is fully apples-to-apples"?

Seems to me like you are a good candidate for the following simple "Tweak":

Get an in-line attenuator and adjust the effective sensitivity of your earphones to suit your needs for noise-free listening. Or, obtain earphones that are simply less acoustically efficient.

The basic problem that you are worrying about has been around for at least 50 years that I know of. It is very easy to set up a monitoring system that will have an audible noise floor with virtually any piece of equipment.

I think I first experienced with my own equipment  using a pair of Telex headphones and an Eico ST-70 back in 1962 or so. But I worked for an audio store and I had encountered it with the store's equipment before that.

The effective solution that I  found way back then was to build an in-line attenuator and adjust the effective sensitivity of my earphones to suit my needs for relatively noise-free listening.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 13:10:33
Now there's a blind test I'd like to see (!) - an iPod vs a Linn CD12.

Both sides of this debate find that idea laughable for opposite reasons. So it's a great test case.


Do you expect them to sound different?
If they don't, then very little does.


I don't know of any reason why an iPod playing a given audio file would sound different from a CD12 playing the same basic file (obviouisly reformatted), all other things being equal.  Do you?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: HotshotGG on 2009-04-21 13:27:42
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The ability of greedy and/or poorly-educated audiophiles, salesmen, and journalists to mislead people again and again seems to be unending.


I am in complete agreement with you. I would say all three contribute poorly to the lack of understanding in the field. Audiophiles "think" they know what they are talking about and sell a sales pitch to the advertisers and ignorant journalists pick up the stories from these "experts" and report them to the greater public without ever questioning the validity of the story they are writing about! That's we see enough of these stories on the internet.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-21 13:28:24
Reminds me of Homer Simpson wearing a poncho and riding through Springfield while listening to "Uptown girl" through a bullhorn. When people tell him that he ain't a hippie and that's not hippie music he always responds: "but, but the poncho!".

It's probably about the same with the CD12 sounding the same.

"but, but the separated power supplies"
"but, but the massive enclosure"
"but, but the the lathe shaped tray"
"but, but the optional dither"
"but, but the price tag"
....
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-04-21 13:32:25
Do musicians have better ears than the rest of us? Probably not.


Probably so, some of them.



I'd argue the reverse. A musician is more likely to have suffered work-related hearing damage than, say, a typical office worker.
<snip>

However, a musician's listening skills should be distinctly better at determining changes in music than most non-musicians
<snip>

My own anecdotal experience supports this.  My musician/teacher friend and I were discussing how he couldn't hear the mosquito tone the kids sometimes use on their cellphones.  He couldn't hear it.  I whipped out the laptop and we found one online.  He couldn't hear it, but i could... barely.  I'm ~3 years older than him (37).  We then used a signal generator to informally test his hearing threshold.  Turned out he was right around 13KHz.  A tone at ~13K which was very loud to me, was just barely perceptable to him.  He was shocked.  His immediate response:  "I'm wearing earplugs when we jam from now on."

His skills at listening to and picking out subtleties in music are far superior to mine, which supports what's been said previously.

When we have some time, i'll have to see how he is at picking out lossy codec artifacts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 13:56:35
But DACs and output stages are different. There only mission is to do their job while staying completely out of the signal path. It is not hard to built them as completely linear, neutral elements until far above (any) humans' hearing capabilities. And this is perfectly measurable for any given pair of frequency range and signal to noise ratio. You can't measure wether a unit's colorization (speaker, tube saturation) is sounding good or bad, but you can measure wether there is any colorization at all.
But the history of audio is that we have a measurement, we make it perfect, and then someone invents a new way to wreck the audio which is invisible on that measurement. So we invent a new measurement that catches the new problem, and go round again.

The point of ABX (or similar - e.g. ABC as used in psychoacoustics) is to know where "inaudible" is on a given measurement scale, and/or whether the measurement misses something entirely.


I think we can get all known problems "inaudible" for a relatively modest outlay, but the idea that this happens routinely on most audio equipment is just fiction. Designers are ignorant, or just don't bother - it's not like most people can hear the difference anyway.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 14:02:46
Test of absolute hearing threshold, and tests of the ability to hear one sound in the presence of another (i.e. masking) can give quite different results.

Some people trash their ears but learn (and/or have an innate ability) to listen carefully.
Other people have ears which work very well, but apparently can't listen.

You can train people on various listening tasks (e.g. noise masking tone), but all equally (highly) trained listeners with identical absolute hearing thresholds will have very different masked threshold levels, and quite different spectral shapes to the masking curves.

Psychoacoustic codecs use general models; individual listeners vary greatly.


In my (limited!) experience, musicians and DJs often measure above average for masking thresholds - I don't know if they hear/listen well because they are musicians or DJs - or if they are musicians or DJs because they already hear/listen well.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 14:11:55
My own anecdotal experience supports this.  My musician/teacher friend and I were discussing how he couldn't hear the mosquito tone the kids sometimes use on their cellphones.  He couldn't hear it.  I whipped out the laptop and we found one online.  He couldn't hear it, but i could... barely.  I'm ~3 years older than him (37).  We then used a signal generator to informally test his hearing threshold.  Turned out he was right around 13KHz.  A tone at ~13K which was very loud to me, was just barely perceptable to him.  He was shocked.  His immediate response:  "I'm wearing earplugs when we jam from now on."

His skills at listening to and picking out subtleties in music are far superior to mine, which supports what's been said previously


Exactly my experience. Severe ear damage is rampant and endemic among both classical and rock musicans. 

Most of the musicans I know listen to pimary home audio systems that would be an embarassment to me if they were the system in my car.

Good musicans are about musical values and the better informed audiophiles are about sound quality values. Occasionally you find both in the same place, but that's just the statistics of intersecting sets doing their job.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-21 14:24:08
AFAIK the first CD player versus CD player DBT was done by my associates and myself for a feature article in Stereo Review in the late 1980s. We compared the much-maligned CDP 101 to Sony's latest-greatest and other players and found trivial to non-existent audible differences.  Tom Nousaine did a similar test about 14 years later, with similar results.

The recent JAES article comparing so-called hi-rez to CDP audio produced similar results.

For about 8 years I owned and operated a web site known as www.pcabx.com that allowed people to hear or not hear differnces like these.


The problem is that Stereo Review is no more, 'real' people don't read the JAES and you talk of your website in the past tense. The Audio Critic struggles to put out more than one review every three months. So the audiophile sites and mags have the upper hand, now. If non-audiophile audio concepts are presented with off-hand belligerence, some of those who seek an alternative to high-priced woo will simply go away dissatisfied. Or, they go to the likes of SoundStage and Stereophile, which both present a thin veneer of objective credibility by publishing measurements alongside their subjective psychobabble.

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The ability of greedy and/or poorly-educated  audiophiles, salesmen, and journalists to mislead people again and again seems to be unending.


'Greedy' - there's nothing you can do about. 'Poorly educated' is a different matter... and that's what you singularly fail to address. You seem to conflate genuine ignorance with with willful ignorance. It's beholden on those who present an objective alternative to the subjective reviews to re-educate and deprogram those who are willing to be re-educated and deprogrammed. That's an ongoing concern... otherwise, step aside and let the subjective types 'win'.

What you present is akin to a high-school science teacher who says 'Why bother teaching this stuff... I did all this in high-school'. You won't teach everyone; you'll be lucky to teach a tiny fraction. But it's the only way to chip away, and make the unending, ending.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 14:25:41
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But the history of audio is that we have a measurement, we make it perfect, and then someone invents a new way to wreck the audio which is invisible on that measurement. So we invent a new measurement that catches the new problem, and go round again.


There have been basically two kinds of basic measurements - frequency response and nonlinear distoriton, and they have remained inviolate for over 75 years.  The techniques for measuring them and characterizing the results of those measurements has been completely evolutionary. The meausrement thresholds have improved dramatically, but we've been able to measure them at or below the audible threaholds for at least 40 years.

For example, TIM was just high frequency nonlinear distortion misidentified as being something new when it wasn't. Jitter is just flutter and wow revisited.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-21 14:31:48
But the history of audio is that we have a measurement, we make it perfect, and then someone invents a new way to wreck the audio which is invisible on that measurement. So we invent a new measurement that catches the new problem, and go round again.


What would be an example in the last 20-30 years?

Regarding pure reproduction for stereo things are pretty much solved (ex speakers). The only thing remaining is spatial capture/reconstruction, reverbation, etc., but that's neither a question of DACs, nor storage, nor output circuitry, nor amplification.

Edit: ABK was faster.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 14:41:08

The ability of greedy and/or poorly-educated  audiophiles, salesmen, and journalists to mislead people again and again seems to be unending.


'Greedy' - there's nothing you can do about. 'Poorly educated' is a different matter... and that's what you singularly fail to address.

If I fail to properly educate people, if I have failed to do so in the past, then you are not even a blip on the most sensitive radar. Just judge me by the stadards of your own performance.

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You seem to conflate genuine ignorance with with willful ignorance.


How so?

I've been giving relevant and reliable information for decades - possibly since before you were born. ;-)

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It's beholden on those who present an objective alternative to the subjective reviews to re-educate and deprogram those who are willing to be re-educated and deprogrammed.


Which is why I am ever more selective about where I focus my efforts these days.

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That's an ongoing concern... otherwise, step aside and let the subjective types 'win'.


You misundersand me greatly, and this is just another example. I *am* a subjective type - only my subjectivism is tempered with the concept of reliablity.

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What you present is akin to a high-school science teacher who says 'Why bother teaching this stuff... I did all this in high-school'.


And onward steadily for the next 45 years.

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You won't teach everyone; you'll be lucky to teach a tiny fraction. But it's the only way to chip away, and make the unending, ending.


You simply don't know who you are castigating.

Is that ignorance willful? ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 14:53:45
But that doesn't mean that no difference exists. 320kbps mp3s can be ABXed. The Emperor has clothes in this case - but very few people can see them!


Don't count me into that. My digital music players are loaded with .wav files whereever possible.

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And then we've had several posts laughing at the idea that an iPod is ABXable from a CD12, and then a sensible member quietly mentions that you can hear the background noise.


I can put enough amplification downstream of a CD12 so that its background noise can be heard. I'm sure of that as long as I have even one functional mic preamp in my possession! ;-) 

AFAIK, nobody has actually produced evidence that the background noise of a CD12 is any different from that of an iPod, all other things being equal, particualrly when identical recorded media is actually playing.

If people are whining about a slight noise heard under sitautions that are rare in the real world, a faint noise that is completely masked by the noise floor of any real-world recording of music, then there is IMO nothing to talk about. That would be yet another discussion about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 15:08:20
Quote
But the history of audio is that we have a measurement, we make it perfect, and then someone invents a new way to wreck the audio which is invisible on that measurement. So we invent a new measurement that catches the new problem, and go round again.

There have been basically two kinds of basic measurements - frequency response and nonlinear distoriton, and they have remained inviolate for over 75 years.  The techniques for measuring them and characterizing the results of those measurements has been completely evolutionary. The meausrement thresholds have improved dramatically, but we've been able to measure them at or below the audible threaholds for at least 40 years.

For example, TIM was just high frequency nonlinear distortion misidentified as being something new when it wasn't. Jitter is just flutter and wow revisited.
But you've just defined (or categorised) the world to suit your argument (and FWIW inter-channel cross-talk fits neither of your categories).

Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you? From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).


And as for "we've been able to measure them at or below the audible threaholds for at least 40 years" - subscribe to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America for a few years (it need not be 40!) and see how many new auditory thresholds are discovered in that time!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 15:08:20
deleted - I need a delete post button
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-21 15:21:56
(and FWIW inter-channel cross-talk fits neither of your categories).


Tell me one device in the last 20-30 years where this audibly mattered.

Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you? From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).


It was measurable from day one by comparing input data to output data after D-A-D conversion, just the cause for differences wasn't known - or justifiably cared about. You don't need to know the cause of every equivalent of a needle drop (100m away) in your sub 100db noise floor.

and see how many new auditory thresholds are discovered in that time!


Thresholds that anywhere matter in the domain of digital to analog conversion and output circuitry? That would be news to me. Who cares about a newly discovered masking threshold when even the masked components of a signal are perfectly captured and reproduced by commodity gear (exclude lossy codecs)?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-21 15:48:14
If I fail to properly educate people, if I have failed to do so in the past, then you are not even a blip on the most sensitive radar. Just judge me by the stadards of your own performance.


Ok, I was using my new form of pluralis majesticus - the Royal 'You'. Probably should have been 'one'... my bad.

Quote
Quote
You seem to conflate genuine ignorance with with willful ignorance.


How so?

I've been giving relevant and reliable information for decades - possibly since before you were born. ;-)


A proportion of audiophiles are scientific illiterates, these are genuinely ignorant people who simply lack education in the subject. However, a proportion of audiophiles are not scientifically illiterate, but choose to bury their knowledge in pursuit of odd-ball audiophile claims, They I class as willfully ignorant.

If someone says "my cables sound have more microdynamics when they are used in the right direction", can you tell whether that person is genuinely or willfully ignorant? 

The fact that you have been giving reliable information for decades is entirely irrelevant to this. This might be the putative "microdynamics" person's first encounter with anyone involved in audio who didn't take such a claim at face value. The surviving mags and websites certainly make those claims (because they have pages to fill and adverts to sell). The surviving dealers support the idea that cables sound different (they have cables to make money from) and the audiophile forums believe that too (because they are run by the faithful). If they are then treated like a dolt for simply holding a position that they genuinely thought to be a valid one, without any attempt at explaining why their position lacks validity, what would you expect as an outcome?


Quote
You simply don't know who you are castigating.

Is that ignorance willful? ;-)


No, it's a position of genuine ignorance. Or rather it was. I did some looking around. You have 'form' and I can see why trying to win people over might seem like throwing a brick at a curtain. My point is that you should never stop trying.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-21 16:56:53
If you want to worry about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, I've got nothing for you.

Read the rest of my post, please. I never said anything about "worrying" about any signal undergoing these processes. Anyone who would have actually read the entire post would have known that.

You obviously have no compelling clue about the practicalities of doing real world audio, while right now that is very much of my life.

This feels like a pretty blatant personal attack. This is entirely unwarranted, unnecessary and unappreciated (not to mention completely baseless). I've never even so much as attempted to attack you or anything that you may or may not hold dear, so I don't understand where the animosity is coming from. We don't even seem to have any differing opinions, for Christ's sake!

If you want me to clarify anything that I've said, I'd be happy to do that. I feel I've been clear, but I'm either A) wrong or B) being deliberately misinterpreted. The former I can understand. The latter I most certainly cannot -- especially here of all places.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 17:54:19
(and FWIW inter-channel cross-talk fits neither of your categories).
Tell me one device in the last 20-30 years where this audibly mattered.
Cartridges. FM car radios fighting a weak signal. Intensity stereo in audio codecs.

Anyway, that's irrelevant. Arny put forward a refined argument against my "we invent new measurements to explain audible problems" suggestion, saying there were only two types of measurement. I mentioned a measurement that doesn't fit into either of his types. That's all.

Quote
Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you? From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).
It was measurable from day one by comparing input data to output data after D-A-D conversion, just the cause for differences wasn't known - or justifiably cared about.
What, there were A>D converters with jitter an order of magnitude less than that found in the best D>A of the day, and systems available for analysing the resulting recordings? In 1983?! I wasn't very old then, but I'm fairly sure this is nonsense.

Even today you'd struggle to make that experiment work - record two different CD players using an analogue input and try syncing the result so you can catch errors 60dB down (or much less). It's not easy.

Quote
and see how many new auditory thresholds are discovered in that time!
Thresholds that anywhere matter in the domain of digital to analog conversion and output circuitry? That would be news to me. Who cares about a newly discovered masking threshold when even the masked components of a signal are perfectly captured and reproduced by commodity gear (exclude lossy codecs)?
That's a fair point. Most of it is irrelevant for precisely that reason. All of it? Not sure.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 18:51:16
Quote
But the history of audio is that we have a measurement, we make it perfect, and then someone invents a new way to wreck the audio which is invisible on that measurement. So we invent a new measurement that catches the new problem, and go round again.


There have been basically two kinds of basic measurements - frequency response and nonlinear distoriton, and they have remained inviolate for over 75 years.  The techniques for measuring them and characterizing the results of those measurements has been completely evolutionary. The meausrement thresholds have improved dramatically, but we've been able to measure them at or below the audible threaholds for at least 40 years.

For example, TIM was just high frequency nonlinear distortion misidentified as being something new when it wasn't. Jitter is just flutter and wow revisited.


But you've just defined (or categorised) the world to suit your argument


No, I'm using categories (actually known to scholars as linear distortion and nonlinear distortion) that have been widely used by knowlegeable people for decades. For example the JAES had an article using exactly that terminology in the middle 1970s. (Pries, JAES, June 1976) That article cites earlier papers on the same topic. The categories come of of the surpporting math which goes back to Fourier in the 18-19th centuries.

Quote
(and FWIW inter-channel cross-talk fits neither of your categories).


Cross talk is the frequency response of a channel that is not receiving a test signal. It is typically measured using identical equipment and procedures as frequency response. It is cusomary to show the frequency response of the driven channel and the undriven channel side-by-side. That's a good cross-talk report.  Clearly, it is a kind of frequency response measurement!


Quote
Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you?


You've changed the topic from  invention of new measurements to whether or not they were used in a way that was visible to you.

In fact it was well-known at the time of introduction of the CD (and even much before) that as compared to analog tape and the LP, this kind of distortion was vanishingly small in even the first digital gear on the market.  If you look at the currently established thresholds for FM distortion (the category to which both wow, flutter, and jitter all belong), very few even moderate-priced digital audio gear actually has audible jitter. It has bee well known all along that jitter could be easily removed from a digital data stream. In fact every CD player ever made includes a fairly elaborate and effective means for reducing jitter to any desired low level.


Quote
From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).


You've changed the topic from  invention of new measurements to how they were reported.

In fact a CD player's jitter is so low that it could not be measured using traditionalanalog  wow and flutter meters. However, the small amounts of jitter that was actually there was readily measurable with different equipment that existed at the time.

I've tested a number of still-operational exacmples of very early CD players including the CDP-101 and they all had very low jitter, even by modern standards.  Jitter became more of a problem when the golden ears started building CD players and started incompetently implementing the slighly trickier problem of putting the CD transport and DAC in separate boxes.


Quote
And as for "we've been able to measure them at or below the audible threaholds for at least 40 years" - subscribe to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America for a few years (it need not be 40!) and see how many new auditory thresholds are discovered in that time!


AFAIK, the answer is none. I'll leave the citing and quoting of candidate articles to people who are willing to risk arguing the affirmative.  I have far less interest in proving myself wrong than right than would be appropriate for someone claiming to argue for the affirmative. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 18:51:38
'Holographic' audio reproduction on the other hand is a matter of things like room acoustics, channel configuration, and recording quality, not some amazing mental quirk.

The personal anecdote I posted earlier in this thread was an attempt to demonstrate that hearing a "holographic" soundstage most probably *is* a mental quirk.

Playing the same LP on the same system in the same room, just one time out of many I happened to hear a "holographic" image. The fact that it only happened once, was from an LP (with all that medium's known flaws), using speakers well known for their *lack* of imaging ability, strongly suggests to me that it's nothing to do with the reproduced soundfield, but in the mind.


It needn't be either/or.  Some 'holographic' experiences may be more purely subjective, while others (like the repeatable, multiple ones I had using a nearfield setup)  are  really due to the configuration.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 19:01:47
I'd argue the reverse. A musician is more likely to have suffered work-related hearing damage than, say, a typical office worker. That's not just rock musicians who spend too long next to a Marshall stack - the sound pressure levels coming from a violin (for example) are enough to impair the hearing mechanism of the player long before they get good enough to consider themselves a musician. The same applies right through the orchestra... not forgetting the damage caused by rehearsing and performing with a large orchestra itself.


Floyd Toole in his 'Sound Reproduction' book reports two broad categories of listener preference for home sound reproduction, from extant research.  The larger group tends to want a wide 'apparent source width' (ASW) and the experience of 'listener envelopment'.  The smaller group tends to include audio engineers, musicians and (perhaps) acousticians,  who look for things like pinpoint imaging.  (He doesn't explicity say that these must be contradictory goals or that a happy medium couldn't be achieved.  I would also expect that different kinds of music might suit different goals....organ music recorded in a church really shouldn't exhibit 'pinpoint imaging' unless the producer is going for a highly unnatural 'reproduction' )
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 19:08:47

Quote

(and FWIW inter-channel cross-talk fits neither of your categories).


Tell me one device in the last 20-30 years where this audibly mattered.


Cartridges. FM car radios fighting a weak signal. Intensity stereo in audio codecs.


I don't know what currently accepted thresholds for the audibility of channel separation are, but I've done null listening tests that involved reducing separation to as little as 6 dB @ 1 Khz.

Quote

Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you? From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).


It was measurable from day one by comparing input data to output data after D-A-D conversion, just the cause for differences wasn't known - or justifiably cared about.


That's not the only way to measure jitter.

Jitter was a known problem before digital audio was even a twinkle in any audiophile's eye. It was a known problem in ca. ww II pulse-based technologies like RADAR. I measured jitter in computer tape drives as part of my maintenance chores in the late 1960s.  Word clocks were old news by then, and wherever you have a clock, you have the potential for jitter.

Quote
What, there were A>D converters with jitter an order of magnitude less than that found in the best D>A of the day, and systems available for analysing the resulting recordings? In 1983?!


Yes. In 1980 high performance 16 bit 200 KHz ADCs and DACs were products. Unfortunately they were very expensive, but I had one "to play with" as part of my undergraduate courses in hybrid computing.

Quote
Even today you'd struggle to make that experiment work - record two different CD players using an analogue input and try syncing the result so you can catch errors 60dB down (or much less). It's not easy.


Actually, its easy to synch digital recordings of the outputs of two different CD players. Been there, done that. For example, one can upsample both recordings to a  10 MHz sample rate, and synch them within +/- 50 nSec. Been there, done that and it worked!

Jitter  errors aren't 60 dB down in anything but totally junk CD players. 100+ dB down is more like it.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-21 19:17:01
No, I'm using categories (actually known to scholars as linear distortion and nonlinear distortion) that have been widely used by knowlegeable people for decades.
I know.

I love your debating style. The quietly superior "I actually know everything" tone.

It doesn't wash. Not when you didn't know what the word "linear" meant only three months ago...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=608041 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=66612&view=findpost&p=608041)


Quote
Cross talk is the frequency response of a channel that is not receiving a test signal. It is typically measured using identical equipment and procedures as frequency response. It is cusomary to show the frequency response of the driven channel and the undriven channel side-by-side. That's a good cross-talk report.  Clearly, it is a kind of frequency response measurement!
All true, though it's a strange argument that something appearing that shouldn't be there at all is a frequency response phenomenon.

There's also an obvious argument as to why gain is also a frequency response phenomenon, and I think that's probably a silly argument too. True, but silly. IMO. YMMV!


Quote
Quote
Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you?


You've changed the topic from  invention of new measurements to whether or not they were used in a way that was visible to you.

In fact it was well-known at the time of introduction of the CD (and even much before) that as compared to analog tape and the LP, this kind of distortion was vanishingly small in even the first digital gear on the market.  If you look at the currently established thresholds for FM distortion (the category to which both wow, flutter, and jitter all belong), very few even moderate-priced digital audio gear actually has audible jitter. It has bee well known all along that jitter could be easily removed from a digital data stream. In fact every CD player ever made includes a fairly elaborate and effective means for reducing jitter to any desired low level.


Quote
From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).


You've changed the topic from  invention of new measurements to how they were reported.

In fact a CD player's jitter is so low that it could not be measured using traditionalanalog  wow and flutter meters. However, the small amounts of jitter that was actually there was readily measurable with different equipment that existed at the time.
How? And did people? I'm genuinely interested.

Quote
I've tested a number of still-operational exacmples of very early CD players including the CDP-101 and they all had very low jitter, even by modern standards.  Jitter became more of a problem when the golden ears started building CD players and started incompetently implementing the slighly trickier problem of putting the CD transport and DAC in separate boxes.
Using SPDIF. Teaching my Grandmother here though.

So what do you believe the audible threshold for jitter to be?

I don't think it's a single number, but maybe you have one in mind?

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 20:08:26
2bedecided,

You wrote that the lossyWAV cumulative ABX runs 'became more conclusive' but at the same time weren't sure the conclusion was statisically valid.  Me neither.  It did, however, seem to me that you were according the first possibility more weight than the latter, and for that I apologize, because apparently we agree more than not on this.  We also agreed in correcting BORK's assumption that his subject's single '5.8%' run could not have been due to chance (you did it on the lossyWAV thread, I did it here). 


But:

NO ONE here is saying 320 mp3 is the perceptual apex of audio, everywhere and always, just as NO ONE here actually says 'all amps sound the same' or 'all CDPs sound the same' , tout court, without qualification.  NO ONE says that a 'no difference' 128mp3 ABX invalidates others' successful ABX of same.

NO ONE, , including me, is saying that ABXable 320mp3 differences 'doesn't really matter'.  I'm saying it may matter in some contexts, and not others.  (An analogous example would be Meyer and Moran's finding that DSD could be ABXed from Redbooks, under *certain conditions*).  That's not moving the goalposts, that's keeping the perspective 'normal' rather than skewed -- IMHO.

As for iPods and boutique CDPs, Axon was careful to qualify his post...even providing some speculation on what contexts may make the noise level *matter* or not.  Again, the horselaughs tend to come at the expense of those who claim an immediate, obvious difference, based on 'common sense' -- the 'audiophool' stance -- not the careful qualified claims of the Axon, the type of reporter for whom' I'd like to reclaim the term audio *phile*.

Hysterical misrepresentation and overstatement of 'objectivists' stance, is what I've come to expect from the 'audiophools', not you.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 20:13:53
It doesn't wash. Not when you didn't know what the word "linear" meant only three months ago...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=608041 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=66612&view=findpost&p=608041)


A single (incorrect) post in Hydrogen Audio falls well far short of proving that I don't know what  linear means.  I let it drop because it wasn't worth the effort to cure the young man of his foolishment.

Actually, proving that I don't know what linear means would require mind reading. If you wish to claim to be able to read my mind, well feel free to discredit yourself that way! ;-)

Quote
Quote

Cross talk is the frequency response of a channel that is not receiving a test signal. It is typically measured using identical equipment and procedures as frequency response. It is cusomary to show the frequency response of the driven channel and the undriven channel side-by-side. That's a good cross-talk report.  Clearly, it is a kind of frequency response measurement!


All true, though it's a strange argument that something appearing that shouldn't be there at all is a frequency response phenomenon.


No stranger than measuring a distortion that shouldn't be there...

Quote
Quote

Jitter may just be wow and flutter revisited, but I didn't see any wow and flutter measurements catching it early on, did you?


You've changed the topic from  invention of new measurements to whether or not they were used in a way that was visible to you.

In fact it was well-known at the time of introduction of the CD (and even much before) that as compared to analog tape and the LP, this kind of distortion was vanishingly small in even the first digital gear on the market.  If you look at the currently established thresholds for FM distortion (the category to which both wow, flutter, and jitter all belong), very few even moderate-priced digital audio gear actually has audible jitter. It has bee well known all along that jitter could be easily removed from a digital data stream. In fact every CD player ever made includes a fairly elaborate and effective means for reducing jitter to any desired low level.


Quote
Quote

From the first CD player onwards, wow and flutter was "unmeasurable" (quote from many a spec sheet!).


In fact a CD player's jitter is so low that it could not be measured using traditional analog  wow and flutter meters. However, the small amounts of jitter that was actually there was readily measurable with different equipment that existed at the time.


Quote
How? And did people? I'm genuinely interested.


Relatively small amounts of jitter can be measured with a good expanded sweep oscillioscpe.

Quote
So what do you believe the audible threshold for jitter to be?


It is generally agreed by most scientific researchers that any artifact or spurious response that is > 100 dB below FS can be safely ignored.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 20:13:55
2Bdecided. ABX is not the last resort for everything. It is a fantastic tool to evaluate non linear or psycho acoustical processes like lossy compression or the non-impact of audio voodoo. ABXing, although hard to implement, is also a great tool to for speaker evaluation, were still not enough purely objective metrics exist.


I'd have to revisit the methods sections to verify, but I don't think NRC/Harman/Olive actuallly used an ABX protocol per se -- though it was double-blind.  ABX isn't well suited for preference ranking, which is what the extant loudspeaker listening literature is about.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-21 20:24:13
2Bdecided. ABX is not the last resort for everything. It is a fantastic tool to evaluate non linear or psycho acoustical processes like lossy compression or the non-impact of audio voodoo. ABXing, although hard to implement, is also a great tool to for speaker evaluation, were still not enough purely objective metrics exist.


I'd have to revisit the methods sections to verify, but I don't think NRC/Harman/Olive actuallly used an ABX protocol per se -- though it was double-blind.  ABX isn't well suited for preference ranking, which is what the extant loudspeaker listening literature is about.


Correct. Questions involving ranking led to things like ABC/hr
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-21 22:02:56
ABX tests , Are Subjecive tests.

Hearing is subjective. ABX is a technique for evaluating hearing objectively.


Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this.
You just put the last nail in whatever it was you were trying to say all by yourself.
Don't be all that surprised you did not get some further clarification demands about this , as it is just  too embarassing to even read it posted in this place.
(Oh actually you did by Ron Jones , Thanks)

There's complete scorn at the idea that an "expensive" system is any better than in iPod, despite the obvious advantages of hearing music over good speakers driven by capable amplifiers.

No, there isn't. The debate is not cheap vs. expensive but against putting money into the absolutely wrong end of the chain. As horrifying this may sound to people, who conceive audio gear as part of their ego: technology has advanced up to a point where perfect (in terms of a given FR and SNR) reproduction of recorded material has become possible with commodity parts. With one exception: speakers. This is where money still can make a huge difference, this is where the biggest deviations (several db) from a flat FR happen. Compared to that the differences between iPods and high end CD players or Foobar with a vinyl saturation plugin and an actual vinyl records are laughably small if at all existent.


Ask anyone that upgraded their speakers , & many will tell you that it led to revealing weakness in their source components as well.

Good speakers are not that Selective you see.
They will reveal more from the music yes, but they will also reveal more of the noise , artifacts etc etc.

I own a DAC that was more expensive than necessary myself, also an amp that could have been cheaper without the 'look'. That doesn't keep me from playing AAC files from my portable computer and and enjoying a mind blowing musical experience. Sometimes I go the extra route and reimport lossless files from my archive. But that's pure fancy. I would never try to convince people that not doing the same would necessarily lead to an inferior experience.


But you do not seem to have a problem to try to convince people ,
That Starting with a Purer Source Material ,
& not a non debatable , scientifically proven (!) inferior lossy one,
in their case ,assuming they do not have Your ears (judging by your own definition, obviously cannot tell the difference),
IS scientifically, fact backed, more likely to lead to a Superior one !
Let's hear you say that.

The fact that when it suits you, you do have a problem conforming to the Real currently available Science of it, & ONLY to your own subjective ABX tests results, that is truly disturbing.

The debate is not cheap vs. expensive ...

I have heard that in the US evil hippies sometimes contaminate drinking water with LSD. Now take into account that evil hippies, when they get older and come into money, often turn into subjectivistic audiophiles. I am pretty sure that some audiophile wannabe synesthesiac tried to recruit followers through the local waterworks on that day. Who knows, maybe it was even F. himself.


God alimghty ..
What are you saying now ?

Maybe we should go ahead & hunt down the Hippies now, just in case some of them ,
according to your delusional mind , will get enough money &/or become Audiophiles ?

OK .that does it , I have tried to ignore your misinformed & offending posts , but this is too much .. not this time.

I suggest you stop tagging people with your beloved "Audiophool" insults as well,
just get a mirror to meet one in the flesh.

Your angle of things is most certainly not Audio related , & it verges on Hate Spewing Propaganda.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-21 22:19:43
Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this. Don't be all that surprised you did not get some further clarification demands about this , as it is just  too embarassing to even read it posted in this place. (Oh actually you did by Ron Jones , Thanks)

My ears are burning. I guess my sarcasm in that post wasn't as obvious as I intended.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-21 22:34:23
Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this.


Don't worry, many of us feel the exact same way when reading your posts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-21 22:37:14
@Ron Jones

Yep , & that's coming from the ABX flag waving, & supposedly Stats expert himself  .

That comment is Only equalled / topped by rpp3po's pathetic anti Hippie/Audiophile, conspiracy theory.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 22:40:08
Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this. Don't be all that surprised you did not get some further clarification demands about this , as it is just  too embarassing to even read it posted in this place. (Oh actually you did by Ron Jones , Thanks)

My ears are burning. I guess my sarcasm in that post wasn't as obvious as I intended.



It was, don't worry.  The problem here is not at the broadcast end. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-21 22:40:14
ABX tests , Are Subjecive tests.

Hearing is subjective. ABX is a technique for evaluating hearing objectively.


Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this.
You just put the last nail in whatever it was you were trying to say all by yourself.
Don't be all that surprised you did not get some further clarification demands about this , as it is just  too embarassing to even read it posted in this place.
(Oh actually you did by Ron Jones , Thanks)


Huh, how is this incorrect. This is like blind wine tasting. Taste is subjective, blind wine tasting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting)

is a technique for evaluating the nose (smell) and palate (taste) objectively. This is well understood in the F&B industry. It might not be what you want to hear, but it is correct.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-21 22:47:48
Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this.
You just put the last nail in whatever it was you were trying to say all by yourself.
Don't be all that surprised you did not get some further clarification demands about this , as it is just  too embarassing to even read it posted in this place.
(Oh actually you did by Ron Jones , Thanks)


Huh, how is this incorrect. This is like blind wine tasting. Taste is subjective, blind wine tasting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting)

is a technique for evaluating the nose (smell) and palate (taste) objectively. This is well understood in the F&B industry. It might not be what you want to hear, but it is correct.



Yup. ABX testing isn''t *just* subjective -- it's the post-trial comparison of the subjective component (the perceived/reported identity of X) to the objective fact (the actual identity of X) that makes it objective.  Oh, and the statistics that tell how likely the matchup between subjective impression and fact was due to chance.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-21 23:20:15
My ears are burning. I guess my sarcasm in that post wasn't as obvious as I intended.

It was, don't worry.  The problem here is not at the broadcast end.

Excellent. Good to know
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-22 00:55:44
Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this.


Don't worry, many of us feel the exact same way when reading your posts.


You don't say ..
Again, Let me ask just who exactly is the 'WE' you crowned yourself the spokesman for.
"Many of us" ...yeah right.

What ,youre gonna hunt me down with rpp3po after you kill all the Hippies before they become Audiophiles ? ... right

Not surprisingly, you have zero problems with the pure BS posted by some here,
but you do have a problem with me for some reason.

Assuming you are referring to your AudioPhile Hating / Lossy Forever / If I Can't Hear it -  No One Will / crusader buddies :

If reading any of my personal views causes any of you any discomfort , I truly am sorry , I am only stating my opinion, based on MY Life's experience.

I did not think such narrow minded & hatred infused flaming attitude against Audiophiles,
or any & music lover that makes an effort for better audio, belongs here in HA.


So maybe Slowly , but Surely though ,You'll have to change your mind about what I said.

Cause what you got from me, is nothing in comparison to what you will, one day, get from Your Kids & grandkids.

They will be sitting there , grinning at you with their 'Low End' 100 Terrabyte portables
playing & creating their own rough mixes of their 192 khz 24 bit Multichannel master transfers,
playing them on wireless high bandwidth transducers,
giving you a bored but worried yawn when you tell them about your lossy audio dark ages, how 'they don't need it', & how 'they can't tell the difference anyway', & finally how "you can save them all that space', if only you could find your 'vintage' .XXX encoder ..
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-22 01:33:06
thunder in April --
audiophile lashes out --
side of barn intact




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-22 02:05:10
ABX tests , Are Subjecive tests.

Hearing is subjective. ABX is a technique for evaluating hearing objectively.


Honestly ..I just cannot belive I am reading this.
You just put the last nail in whatever it was you were trying to say all by yourself.
Don't be all that surprised you did not get some further clarification demands about this , as it is just  too embarassing to even read it posted in this place.
So basically you have no idea how science works...

All science begins as subjective observation and through the scientific method and control (in this case, bias control), objective conclusions are made.

B0RK, you are seriously making quite an ass of yourself.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-22 02:22:17
[
All science begins as subjective observation and through the scientific method and control (in this case, bias control), objective conclusions are made.

B0RK, you are seriously making quite an ass of yourself.



Yet Another contender for dumbass of the year award.

Science , Fool , begins with Questions.

As you seem to know my science background all so well ...
& it is no match for your Scientific prowess ,
Please, Enlighten Me , with your scientific knowledge about the matters at hand Oh Almighty Snake.

Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-22 02:52:18
Man, what a fuckin' nightmare...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-22 03:19:15
Man, what a fuckin' nightmare...


I wonder if perhaps BORK is really a time traveler from an earlier, simpler time...when the rules of capitalization hadn't stabilized,  and snarky humor (like rppo's riff on hippies, acid, and audiophiles) could only be taken at face value.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-22 03:45:41
God alimghty ..
What are you saying now ?

Maybe we should go ahead & hunt down the Hippies now, just in case some of them ,
according to your delusional mind , will get enough money &/or become Audiophiles ?

OK .that does it , I have tried to ignore your misinformed & offending posts , but this is too much .. not this time.


God almighty, how could I forget the <irony> tags!

Thanks for the tremendous laugh!

WE ARE THE BORK, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-22 04:23:57
Not to go off topic (or insult someone who has been dealing out the insults throughout this thread) but I read the "WE ARE THE BORK, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!" statement in my head using the robot voice that the character J.P. does in the movie Grandma's Boy.

I am not sure this thread is going anywhere since B0RK refuses to acknowledge some points, refuses to acknowledge common sense, and still has yet to show us anything backing up their claims.  Might as well go have this discussion with a brick wall.  At least they won't defend audiophools (yes, I said it!) who go against science and testing.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-22 04:35:49
Dear brother Bork, I beg your deepest consent, I cannot wait to herald our one and true message to the unknowing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZEJ4OJTgg8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZEJ4OJTgg8)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: lunkhead on 2009-04-22 05:14:15
[
All science begins as subjective observation and through the scientific method and control (in this case, bias control), objective conclusions are made.

B0RK, you are seriously making quite an ass of yourself.



Yet Another contender for dumbass of the year award.

Science , Fool , begins with Questions.

As you seem to know my science background all so well ...
& it is no match for your Scientific prowess ,
Please, Enlighten Me , with your scientific knowledge about the matters at hand Oh Almighty Snake.

Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.

your Punctuation , and Capitalization could use some Work .
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-22 05:30:32
Science , Fool , begins with Questions.
Please formulate a meaningful question that is not somehow based on observation.


Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.

"Audiophiles" are not evil, rather they are harmless. They are harmless because they are ignorant.
The problem is that when ignorance has enough money, it creates an industry that is apathetic to progressing, because that industry can get rich by simply exploiting ignorance.  Fortunately this situation isn't sustainable, not because the ignorant ever become learned, but because they die off.

[blockquote]e.g. If soccer ever takes off in my country, it won't be because black and white people quit playing football and baseball, it'll be because there's more Latinos.[/blockquote]
Basically, I'm waiting for you and people like you to die  so I can get better, cheaper speakers. That may sound rude, but it's a position you've chosen to put yourself in, not me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 06:16:31
"Audiophiles" are not evil, rather they are harmless. They are harmless because they are ignorant.
The problem is that when ignorance has enough money, it creates an industry that is apathetic to progressing, because that industry can get rich by simply exploiting ignorance.


Very true. I bet all of these products

http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html (http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html)

are in his cube.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Nick.C on 2009-04-22 07:30:25
The blind wine tasting analogy was an excellent one - if you remove the sighted element (price tag) then people's perceptions change. Wait a minute....
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Soap on 2009-04-22 09:58:13
Ok, this has gone from discussion to discussion laced with a touch of anger and some occasional logical fallacies on all sides to an out-right ad hominem fest.

Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-22 10:35:41
Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
More to the point, I must compliment the ability of this forum to chase off its own testers. Clap. Clap. Clap.

I must apologize to David and Arny, because they did raise some good replies to my comments, but for some reason, my mind is just completely blown on all of this. After reading pages 3-6 my only coherent response is that you f*ckers owe me 20 minutes of my life back.

Maybe I'll feel better about all of this in a few days, but until then, I'm happily going to listen to some Merzbow. Very, very loudly.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-22 11:25:35
Science , Fool , begins with Questions.


Questions invite explanations. And scientific method demands that those explanations include reliable and robust empirical data derived from experiments that can be investigated and replicated by others. The words 'reliable and robust' preclude "because I say so" proclamations, no matter how right or trustworthy such statements may appear.

Long-standing scientific theories can be overturned in the light of new hypothesis and experiment, but that's not what's happening in the audiophile world. There's no Michelson-Morley moment. Instead, faced with data that refutes concepts that audiophiles take as self-evident, they have invented a counter world view through logic-chopping.

Unfortunately, the state of understanding in the wider community is woefully poor, so many cannot spot the difference between good scientific method and glib argument, peppered with 'the science bit' to give the argument truthiness. This is no different from the beauty industry inventing new horrors of aging skin and then making up pseudo-scientific names for the beauty cream they use to help.

"Skin loses plumpiocity as we age, and tests show [five women tested, 60% agreed - written in very small letters] our new super Re-Plumpenizing facial balm with Mega-Oxyhydrolipporide 5 [translation - even more fat and sugar in water, then whisked to make it airy. We tried it four times before, but the stuff either looked like sperm or a raspberry pavlova] reverses this key sign of aging [that you never heard of until this advert]"

The audiophile version of this is:

"Skin effect alters the resistance of a cable with frequency [when dealing with frequencies in excess of 1GHz, but we'll skip that little factoid for now]. Our special selection process [page 28 of the cable company catalog] chooses cables less likely to exhibit skin effect problems [the nice looking red one half way down the page] and utilizes six layers of PTFC shielding [that's what the catalog says, at least] to depolarize the outer region of the cable [I think Geordi said that in that episode of Star Trek TNG with the big space manta ray] and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow [I loved Tom Baker as Dr Who, didn't you?]. The result is 'smoother highs, increased inter-transient silence, more pellucidity in the midrange and enhanced temporal accuracy in the upper-lower mid-bass', according to the noted reviewer Grunthos the Flatulent [who had 1,000 words to make up about a cable]."


Quote
Ill give you an easy one , just ask your buddies , Explain why Audiophiles are Evil.


Hmm, let's see. An industry that tries to get gullible people to spend absurd and unnecessary amounts of money on things that they can buy for peanuts, by gift-wrapping the things in psychobabble. A press that keeps the gullible people gullible by refusing to entertain any notion other than FIGJAM. A community so enraptured by that press and that industry that to even whisper that some of its articles of faith are built on shaky foundations is met with demands that you be burned at the stake for such heresy. Yes, I think 'Evil' gets close to summing that all up.

Of course, evil is when they get you to drink the Kool-Aid. Trouble is, I think you'd drink it, if you thought it would lead to those limpid pools of pellucidity.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-22 12:07:46
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-22 12:26:44
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me


You got it all wrong. 

The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests.

The subjective guys know what they hear, period.




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-22 13:13:40
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me

I would hope that objectivists believe that we will never know the final answer, and when we stop looking for it we have become subjectivists.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-22 13:49:53
Relatively small amounts of jitter can be measured with a good expanded sweep oscillioscpe.
I've seen people do that - but did they back in the early 1980s?

Quote
It is generally agreed by most scientific researchers that any artifact or spurious response that is > 100 dB below FS can be safely ignored.
My back of an envelope calculation suggests that a 227ps timing error gives a -100dB FS artefact (distortion) for a worst case signal. For typical music, the artefact (distortion) will be far lower.

In the standard tests, with a somewhat easier than worse case signal, -100dB artefacts arise from ~ 500ps of jitter.

As you indirectly said, it's SPDIF which added timing errors above this magnitude - normal single box "good" CD players should be fine.


There is a well known warning that correlated distortion can be more audible than uncorrelated noise. You can call it a general myth in audio, but it's also born out by psychoacoustics, e.g. co-modulation masking release. It means that the masking that you might expect to happen, doesn't: things that should be inaudible, become audible. I don't think it reaches down 100dB though  (I know full well that it doesn't!).

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-22 13:51:32
After reading pages 3-6 my only coherent response is that you f*ckers owe me 20 minutes of my life back.
LOL! You poor chap

Quote
Maybe I'll feel better about all of this in a few days, but until then, I'm happily going to listen to some Merzbow. Very, very loudly.
Oh heck, that bad?  Run it through lossyWAV first at quality --bad - it's specially designed to enhance noise music!  (cheaper than special cables, too).

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-22 14:43:16
I would hope that objectivists believe that we will never know the final answer, and when we stop looking for it we have become subjectivists.


Depends what you call the final answer.

In the case of things like amplifiers and music players we have already heard the consequences music reproduced electrically, as good as it is going to get.

Today's provisional answer is that the rest of the final answer is someplace else, besides amps and music players.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-22 15:32:41
The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests.

The subjective guys know what they hear, period.


Yow about this: the subjective guys believe they know what they hear, PERIOD!

Soap, you are right about some HA members (including myself) not showing our best faces in this thread.  That is what happens when someone who won't budge and doesn't fully understand reasoning goes against the grain.  Many people (again, including myself) get frustrated by this type of behavior as we have seen it over and over again.  People say that blind ABX tests don't prove anything, sighted tests are needed, frequency plots tell us everything we need to know, a tube amp is far superior to anything digital, vinyl is still the way to go due to the music being "warmer," and so on.  It just gets frustrating having to discuss these topics over and over again with some people being thickheaded and not willing to change their outlook despite common knowledge and detailed explanations.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-22 16:23:55
Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
More to the point, I must compliment the ability of this forum to chase off its own testers. Clap. Clap. Clap.



BORK. BORK. BORK.


Is he really gone? I'm not missing him yet, sorry.    I don't understand the lamentation for him; perhaps you and David might address some of the remarkable posts he's made in the last few days on this thread, explaining why sarcasm is better directed at those of us who 'chased him off' rather than at the BORK himself?  Heck, even translating them into coherent English prose would be a start.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-22 16:25:15
It just gets frustrating having to discuss these topics over and over again...
With that list at least, you don't have to discuss these topics again - they're in the FAQ.

Cheers,
David.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-04-22 16:26:37
The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests. The subjective guys know what they hear, period.

While what you say seems quite sensible, I wonder however, whether or not this translates through to actual common human experience. For instance, don't the people who are listening to an expensive stereo, or drinking an expensive wine, enjoy the experience more, even if scientific testing clearly demonstrates no actual difference? In other words, doesn't the presentation enhance the experience, for some, despite the facts? It seems to me that if the goal is the experience, then often the facts are deliberately diminished or suspended in order to elevate the experience. Therefore, aren't those who garner experience in seeing through to the facts, risking a failure to achieve the experience that others are enjoying?

Please, rest assured, personally, I'm in no way, against double-blind testing. As well, for anyone dismissive of the value of double-blind testing in particular, or the scientific method in general, personally, I would remind them that everything in audio, and technology, has come from science. 

I'd also like to say that it seems a real crime to me that it's so difficult to find meaningful audio product comparison information.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-22 16:50:51
The objective guys know what they hear (or more often than not - don't) as they have proved it through ABX tests. The subjective guys know what they hear, period.

While what you say seems quite sensible, I wonder however, whether or not this translates through to actual common human experience. For instance, don't the people who are listening to an expensive stereo, or drinking an expensive wine, enjoy the experience more, even if scientific testing clearly demonstrates no actual difference? In other words, doesn't the presentation enhance the experience, for some, despite the facts? It seems to me that if the goal is the experience, then often the facts are deliberately diminished or suspended in order to elevate the experience. Therefore, aren't those who garner experience in seeing through to the facts, risking a failure to achieve the experience that others are enjoying?


Those who 'think' they're drinking an expensive wine enjoy that wine more than those who know it's not expensive.  However, that doesn't necessarily mean the second group doesn't enjoy the wine (though 'cheapness' can work against the perception just as 'priceyness' can work for it) -- just not as much as the first group.  And possibly it works both ways (I know of no studies of this) -- the skeptical audiophile may get more pleasure-center activation from the low-priced gear (and the 'knowledge' that he's getting sound just as good as that pricey stuff), than the 'golden ear' does.  In this case, the golden ear is the one missing out -- both in terms of pleasure and in the wallet.

It all comes down, really, to what you claim afterwards.  If you claim you enjoyed the expensive wine more than the cheap stuff, great -- you're reporting your inner state; if you claim the difference was in the wine, you've made a claim about the object itself.  It's a really easy mistake to make, and people make it all the time; most people would make the natural --but logically flawed -- inference that the enjoyment must have been due to the quality of the wine, which , by inference, must be better if the price is higher.  A recurring theme even on this thread is that people don't want to acknowledge their own biases.  Few people are going to report 'Well, I loved that $10,000 Margaux, but maybe what I was loving most was the price."

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-22 17:47:56
Let me complete the expensive wine analogy.

Vincent Klink is a famous cook in my country. He holds a Michelin star for over 30 years. His palate is respected world wide. In a recent interview he disclosed that some of his favorite wines cost only 8 Euros a bottle, and that he would prefer them any time over many expensive wines his customers demand.

It is the same with audio. If you are more into actual quality than packaging, you can get very high quality audio gear for a relatively moderate price. But if you are subscribed to Wine Magazine and can't get happy without paying hefty price tags for all kinds of curiosities and blown up brand names, then feel free to go that route. The cook won't stop you.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-04-22 18:09:00
In a recent interview he disclosed that some of his favorite wines cost only 8 Euros a bottle, and that he would prefer them any time over many expensive wines his customers demand.

To extend the analogy even further, clearly, the rest of his favorite wines cost more, maybe much more. Indeed, who knows how expensive his most favored wine would be in terms of cost? Would I, or most others, pay as much? Not bloody likely, but then again most people aren't considered wine aficionados. Furthermore, his favorites might not be the same as his customers' favorites anyways.

Is there really any difference between say a connoisseur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connoisseur) and an audiophile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophiles), other than one is interested in the palate and the other the ear? It seems to me that the more you know about something, the more likely you'd be in to spending time and money in that regard. Personally, I see no good reason to criticize how others spend money on audio equipment, if indeed that brings them enjoyment. However, that's not to say that spending money, in any way guarantees good sound. There seems to be no end of those who misrepresent facts for profit.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-22 18:26:06
I don't think anyone here would deny that there is one element of audio reproduction, the speaker, that makes a major difference to the sound. I hesitate to say sound quality because some people may prefer the coloration of a particular speaker, be it expensive or not so much.

The problem is that some of the claims of audible difference are about the equivalent of saying that it makes a difference what quality of glue was used to apply the label to the wine bottle.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 19:03:46
Is this really the side of HA.org we want shown?
More to the point, I must compliment the ability of this forum to chase off its own testers. Clap. Clap. Clap.


I am first to admit that I went off the kilter a little bit and for that I apologise. I was fine with the thread until Bork went off the deep end with this rant: 

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry628826 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245&st=175&p=628826&#entry628826)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 19:10:58
Questions invite explanations. And scientific method demands that those explanations include reliable and robust empirical data derived from experiments that can be investigated and replicated by others. The words 'reliable and robust' preclude "because I say so" proclamations, no matter how right or trustworthy such statements may appear.

Long-standing scientific theories can be overturned in the light of new hypothesis and experiment, but that's not what's happening in the audiophile world. There's no Michelson-Morley moment. Instead, faced with data that refutes concepts that audiophiles take as self-evident, they have invented a counter world view through logic-chopping.


Well said, I totally agree. This is my problem with most audiophiles as well. Of course explanations (answers) will ultimately lead to more questions, but that is besides the point.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: /mnt on 2009-04-22 19:32:52
I have heard that in the US evil hippies sometimes contaminate drinking water with LSD. Now take into account that evil hippies, when they get older and come into money, often turn into subjectivistic audiophiles. I am pretty sure that some audiophile wannabe synesthesiac tried to recruit followers through the local waterworks on that day. Who knows, maybe it was even F. himself.


So thats why most audiophiles don't like Heavy Metal music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_hippie_die) .
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 20:34:07
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.


No, one is based on faith and the other is based on scepticism.

The Typical Audiophile's View
Sample A is better than sample B (or closer to x) to my ears during a sighted test. I have golden ears and I am too much of an expert to let my preconceptions and bias fool me. Therefore, sample A must be better than sample B.

The Sceptic's View
Sample A is better than sample B (or closer to x) to my ears. Is this really true or is my monkey (the mind) playing tricks on me through my preconceptions and bias? Let me eliminate this possibility by performing some blind testing.

Blind and double blind tests seem to be established practices in all field except for the audiophile world. I wonder why.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 20:39:07
In other words, doesn't the presentation enhance the experience, for some, despite the facts? It seems to me that if the goal is the experience, then often the facts are deliberately diminished or suspended in order to elevate the experience.


True. However presentation can be enhanced by other means, such as:



That being said. I have nothing against expensive wines (some of my favourites are rather expensive), as long as the quality justifying it. What I am against is snake oil and over hyped items.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-22 20:44:01
Just imagine how far the pharmaceutical industry would have come if it weren't for those pesky double-blind tests.

<cue add for Prescott Pharmaceuticals (http://www.wikiality.com/Prescott_Pharmaceuticals)>
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 20:46:34
To extend the analogy even further, clearly, the rest of his favorite wines cost more, maybe much more. Indeed, who knows how expensive his most favored wine would be in terms of cost?


I don't think we are really arguing about price here. There are certainly expensive wines (and audio equipment) that justify the price such as a Chateau Pétrus (Bordeaux)  or a Chateau Y'quem (Sauternes) of a good vintage. However, snaked oil and over hyped/priced items are a different matter.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: DocBeard on 2009-04-22 20:50:39
Psst, he's totally a troll.

I mean, I haven't actually run an ABX test to see if I could blindly tell the difference between B0RK's posts and someone who actually cares about the arguments they're putting forth beyond their ability to incite the wrath of others, but I'm pretty sure.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-22 21:03:36
I realize I am dealing here with some kind of an imaginary team pride phenomena as well as some other fads , not quite as positive,
So to all others,  please excuse me when I talk to them in a way they are more likely to appreciate / understand.

Kornchild I am using some quotes from your posts as reference, but not talking only to you directly, as by now your'e not the only one to repeat the same 'found faults' again & again ..

you are right about some HA members (including myself) not showing our best faces in this thread


I think some indeed showed their true face/s.
& just how fragile this weird micro-cosmos you built around yourselves really is.

It showed you don't even understand your own reasons for being in whatever camp it is you assume you are in , & the fact that you, simply cannot read.


"People say that blind ABX tests don't prove anything"


- I never said blind ABX tests don't prove anything, why are you bringing this up , yet again ?
why would I waste my time with them if I did not find them useful as a tool ?
you are jumping to conclusions without even bothering to READ.

Unlike The Lossy Brotherhood (you know who you are) ,instead of just talking crap, I even went the extra mile with bringing an outsider (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=65499&view=findpost&p=614826), a casual inexperienced as a critical listener (but with perfect hearing), to challenge my own previous belief, that experience is a must, but this test proved to me, it's nowhere near as clear cut as I previously believed .

So, instead of just holding on to what I felt was the honest to god utter truth,
I got down to it, testing if a first timer to ABX tests , can have any success at all in this kind of test & if given some help with what to listen for, can have any effect on the outcome.

(So next time you decide to open your mouth anywhere near my direction & accuse me of nonexistant bs, do your homework beforehand.)


"That's what happens when someone who won't budge"
"Many people (again, including myself) get frustrated by this type of behavior as we have seen it over and over again"


Look, Don't bring your own frustration at other debates you have had with other people,
& attempt to lay it at my feet, or punish me for it, assuming youll get away with it,
just because I am the new guy &/Or your Lossy Brotherhood (youre like a small cult you know ?)
will be able to forcefully budge me, or anyone in their right mind, from Their Scientifically Proven Stance.

Note that you are trying to do it as we speak all over and over again.


"thickheaded and not willing to change their outlook despite common knowledge and detailed explanations."


hmm.. you are clearly not as sharp as you'd like to think.
"Thickheaded" , is really something Id be very careful about saying again if I were you.
Just read your own post - all it amounts to is one frustrated rant, making final gasping efforts to justify your own stupidity ... youre blaming me for your bs bursts .. quite amazing you chose that word ..


"Audiophiles" are not evil, rather they are harmless. They are harmless because they are ignorant.

The problem is that when ignorance has enough money, it creates an industry that is apathetic to progressing, because that industry can get rich by simply exploiting ignorance.  Fortunately this situation isn't sustainable, not because the ignorant ever become learned, but because they die off.

Basically, I'm waiting for you and people like you to die  so I can get better, cheaper speakers.


I See.
Thank you snake,  for your 'scientific' input, & for yet another method for the likes of you to finally get better speakers - just kill me & everyone else that you assume are richer then you.

I really hate to go down that low, but If you were not the moron you are , you'd get it by now ,that accepting inferior products as a standard , is what will keep you from getting those damn nice speakers at a better price , not Audiophiles & most certainly not me.
No one can sell us shit, we, as a collective, REFUSE to buy.

Well At least now we know, & can get some input from the pattern forming here.

That's what this 'Lossy Forever / Audiophile Die' is really all about.

It is not derived from the pursuit of science ..
Lossy Audio , is , by design, inferior - scientifically proven ,period.

The sad truth is that you took your own Failed ABX Tests, & abused a development tool , & mutated it into your own crippled version of %100 non scientific, %100 percent Subjective, 'Truth'.

Yet amazingly enough it's you, of all people , that for some misguided reason, have delusions of carrying The Objectivist Flag !

Remember , & print out for safe keeping what I Told you before:

what you got from me, is nothing in comparison to what you will, one day, get from Your Kids & grandkids.

They will be sitting there , grinning at you with their 'Low End' 100 Terrabyte portables
playing & creating their own rough mixes of their 192 khz 24 bit Multichannel master transfers,
playing them on wireless high bandwidth transducers,
giving you a bored but worried yawn when you tell them about your lossy audio dark ages, how they "don't need it", & how "they can't tell the difference anyway", & finally how "you can save them all that space", if only you could find your 'vintage' .XXX encoder ..



If that is still not getting through your system,
Maybe you will find some food for thought in 2BDecided words
A member You Do Know & respect here in HA (that truly knows a 'thing or two' about science , unlike some here ) I think his words summed it up :

I'm 100% convinced that any real difference should be reproducible in a DBT given a sufficient time scale. I'm convinced that when people report hearing the difference during a DBT, but the results are actually random, it proves placebo / self delusion.

However, to go from this basic science, to dismissing the audibility of things where an ABX has never been attempted, and concluding that an iPod with high bitrate mp3s is the peak of audio perfection, or at least more than good enough, when there's clear ABX data and objective data disproving this - this is worse than nonsense. Where is the scientific basis for these statements? What on earth are people doing on HA making statements that are completely disproven by ABX results?! The fact that people will happily trot this nonsense out in an argument discredits them and this site.


Cheers,
David.


There's endless praise for lossy audio in this thread, despite there being many successful ABX results of 320kbps mp3 documented right here on HA!

There's complete scorn at the idea that an "expensive" system is any better than in iPod, despite the obvious advantages of hearing music over good speakers driven by capable amplifiers.


You know the kind of subjectivist rant that we all go and have a good laugh at? Well, this thread is turning into an objectivist rant that is straying so far beyond the boundaries of reality that any subjectivist could drop in and have a justifiable laugh at it!

I think some people are getting carried away, and it's not pretty.


With that said , All the best to you all.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-22 21:03:42
No question, DocBeard.

You'll noticed he's completely shirked like a coward from any and all challenges to demonstrate that he has any technical prowess let alone show a willingness to demonstrate any sort of honesty (and not just to us, but to himself as well).

Still waiting your explanation on the audibility of jitter from the analog output of a run-of-the-mill CD player, or how vinyl is able to produce a more true facsimile of a live performance, B0RK.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-22 21:31:24
I don't think he is a troll, rather something in the direction I mentioned in post #105. That it is either one of both should be clear by now even to those who just recently admonished to not chase off our "testers".

The adequate reaction something like this in a public forum is either ignorance or humor. By no later than tab 3 it was clear that this thread would soon get ugly. When you have a very loud and industrious contributor, who doesn't deliver anything (at least in the direction) of scientifically applicable, but barks "science" in every third sentence, there is not much you can do. Ignore him and watch the thread fly off, because other members feel provoked, or flavor it at least with some humor.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-22 21:45:40
I am done, this is the last time I will reply in this thread as I don't want to be assimilated.

I think some indeed showed their true face/s.
& just how fragile this weird micro-cosmos you built around yourselves really is.

  Maybe you too should take a look in the mirror.

- I never said blind ABX tests don't prove anything, why are you bringing this up , yet again ?
why would I waste my time with them if I did not find them useful as a tool ?
you are jumping to conclusions without even bothering to READ.


Wait, wait, wait, wait.  You said that I am not reading yet you clearly did not read what I said.  I was simply giving arguments that I have previously seen.  I never said "B0RK seems to think that ABX tests prove nothing."  I was giving an example of the type of nonsense I have previously seen.  So please, take your own advice and actually read statements before trying to draw false conclusions from them.


Look, Don't bring your own frustration at other debates you have had with other people,
& attempt to lay it at my feet, or punish me for it, assuming youll get away with it,
just because I am the new guy &/Or your Lossy Brotherhood (youre like a small cult you know ?)
will be able to forcefully budge me, or anyone in their right mind, from Their Scientifically Proven Stance.


It is hard not to bring up past annoyances whenever there are so many and thickheaded people (yes, I said it again!) who preach audiophool nonsense thinking they can get away with it.  greynol has touched up on this in his post prior to this by saying that you haven't proven anything other than your ability to not budge on previous misconceptions from audiophools.

hmm.. you are clearly not as sharp as you'd like to think.
"Thickheaded" , is really something Id be very careful about saying again if I were you.
Just read your own post - all it amounts to is one frustrated rant, making final gasping efforts to justify your own stupidity ... youre blaming me for your bs bursts .. quite amazing you chose that word ..


Wait a minute.  It is OK for you to say throw around terms such as "Lossy Brotherhood" calling them "like a small cult" yet it is not OK for me to call someone thickheaded when they are proving that they fit the definition?  Additionally, you come out and basically call me stupid.  So you can throw all these names out yet my usage of the word thickheaded is wrong and I should be "careful" about using it again?  No, just no.  This is a fine example of hypocrisy.

With that said , All the best to you all.


I guess I have a hard time believing this as my stupid cult brain just can't wrap itself around such a concept.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Tahnru on 2009-04-22 21:53:03
PDF Warning - http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)

Oldie but goodie.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ojdo on 2009-04-22 22:37:28
PDF Warning - The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)]
Oldie but goodie.

Thanks for posting, I didn't know it yet. It summarizes well the main audiophile myths and names them what they are: lies.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-22 22:40:57
PDF Warning - The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)]
Oldie but goodie.

Thanks for posting, I didn't know it yet. It summarizes well the main audiophile myths and names them what they are: lies.


Yes, that is a great article. Thanks for the link.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-22 23:03:33
I'm still curious to read what 2bdecided and Axon actually make of the style and content of BORK's posts. 

Anyway, to try to make lemonade from these sour lemons, I've had 'naive' subjects compare mp3s to source too  -- my method was necessarily roundabout, not rigorous ABX, as this was being done long-distance.  I made a couple of  CDRs containing  a variety of music (rock, classical, jazz)  including both the EAC-ripped wav and mp3 conversion  (using Lame from a circa 2004, using 192 VBR setting, with the mp3s then converted to .wav so that  disc could be burned as 'CD playable').  So each tune was on a disc twice, as a pair, one being a bit-perfect wav copy of the CD track, the other a lossy wav, and the task was to tell for each pair, which was the lossless, and which was the lossy.  The order of lossy/lossless was randomized from pair to pair. People were free to do the test any way they wanted to (but not cheating), over the course of weeks if they needed to, using whatever gear they were comfortable with.  THen report their final identifications back to me by email, and I'd compare their answers to the key I made.

My 'subjects' were 4 people on various forums and one of my personal acquaintance who just couldn't believe that lossy could sound as good as lossless.  Of course it would have been easy to cheat by examining the spectra of the files,  but no one who reported back did, because of the 3 replies I did get, none of them did better than chance (one said he simply 'gave up').  All the respondents reported that it was not nearly as easy as they thought after all, to tell the difference.

Another casual 'conversion' occurred on AVSforum a bit later, where a poster said mp3 always sounded like crap.  I asked him to name some bands or albums he liked; he named one I owned (a King Crimson disc) so encoded a track from it (again, just standard HA-approved LAME at 196kbps VBR) and posted a clip and explained how he could do an ABX using WinABX or F2K.  He reported back that just listening to the clip *sighted*, he was blown away and realize he simply hadn't heard a good mp3 before.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-22 23:31:01
PDF Warning - http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)

Oldie but goodie.


Hmm, while I agree with the sentiments here, it's not really any better than the nonsense published in other hi-fi magazines. All he's saying is "I'm better than the other lot because I have science on my side." I'd like to see him presenting something to support what he says, even if what he says seems sensible.

I also question the motives behind this. He was an uber-subjective reviewer who got discredited by the audiophile magazines - and that takes some doing - for writing a glowing review of a loudspeaker and neglecting to mention that he part-owned the company. He then resurfaced some years later as an objectivist, but one who seemed to take particular pleasure in picking off those 'Black Hats' who called for his removal from the audio business. Perhaps his about-face was through a desire to do right for his former indiscretions (but he never mentions the Fourier speaker brand he was connected to) or maybe his reasons for returning are less altruistic.

There are far less grubby standard-bearers to rally round, IMO.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Tahnru on 2009-04-22 23:43:32
Eh.  I'm not really one to rally around him.  I like the logical simplification he presents for explaining ABX testing:

Quote
Ask (the ABX skeptic) if he believes in any kind of A/B testing at all. He will probably say yes. Then ask him what special insights he gains by (1) not matching levels and (2) peeking at the nameplates.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ScottM on 2009-04-23 00:59:54
Blind and double blind tests seem to be established practices in all field except for the audiophile world. I wonder why.


I'm a big fan of blinded tests, and it's what I turn to when I want to do a comparison between different audio devices.

But let's not deceive ourselves. There is a difference between testing audio, and testing, for example, a new drug. When you test a drug, you can measure results in a specific fashion. If you're testing a new form of insulin, you can do many blinded trials on many people and you can definitively measure what happens to blood sugar. You can be rigorous because, in the end, you're doing things with numbers, not feelings.

Blinded tests with audio simply don't have any equivalent, because in the end you are asking a person to evaluate what they perceive. It's not quantifiable, unless you stick electrodes in their brain, and probably not even then. And not only are you asking a person for an opinion on something their senses tell them, but you're doing it with, of all things, music, which is known to have a really big emotional component. Emotional reactions color perceptions. We know that tiny variations in loudness and frequency response have a disproportionate effect on how we perceive music. We know that the mind gets tired and inattentive when presented with the same stimuli over and over, so I get especially twitchy when any sort of listening test is repeated - but you need repetition to establish statistical significance. We know that minor changes in the orientation between listener and speakers can cause changes in perceived frequency.

There are too many variables in any listening experiment to make it really rigorous, and most of those variables vary between the ears of the listeners, not outside them.

This isn't to say we shouldn't ABX. It's the fairest thing we have. But my sympathies are with those who have become so fed up with attempting to be rigorous in audio tests, that they throw up their hands and start relying on gut instinct.

In the end, the best system for musical reproduction is the one you like best. Not everyone likes the same things. No two sets of ears have the same sensitivities to frequencies and no two brains respond the same way to music. Careful, blinded, ABX testing may filter out the snake-oil products, so we need it, but it doesn't, in my opinion, do much more. Hoping for more is a false belief system, nearly as bad, but ever so much more respectable, as believing in silver power cords.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 01:12:41
PDF Warning - http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)

Oldie but goodie.


Hmm, while I agree with the sentiments here, it's not really any better than the nonsense published in other hi-fi magazines. All he's saying is "I'm better than the other lot because I have science on my side." I'd like to see him presenting something to support what he says, even if what he says seems sensible.

I also question the motives behind this. He was an uber-subjective reviewer who got discredited by the audiophile magazines - and that takes some doing - for writing a glowing review of a loudspeaker and neglecting to mention that he part-owned the company. He then resurfaced some years later as an objectivist, but one who seemed to take particular pleasure in picking off those 'Black Hats' who called for his removal from the audio business. Perhaps his about-face was through a desire to do right for his former indiscretions (but he never mentions the Fourier speaker brand he was connected to) or maybe his reasons for returning are less altruistic.


If the science is on his side ...and it is...it really doesn't matter how 'altruistic' he is, does it?  And there's a lot more substance to TAC than just that one famous summary of '10 lies'.    For awhile PA was giving away a set of back issues with every subscription to the online verison -- one of the better audio bargains I've taken advantage of.

Btw, I hope you didn't lift that version of the Aczel story from a nonobjective source like, say, Audio Asylum....   
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 01:21:10
I'm a big fan of blinded tests, and it's what I turn to when I want to do a comparison between different audio devices.

But let's not deceive ourselves. There is a difference between testing audio, and testing, for example, a new drug. When you test a drug, you can measure results in a specific fashion. If you're testing a new form of insulin, you can do many blinded trials on many people and you can definitively measure what happens to blood sugar. You can be rigorous because, in the end, you're doing things with numbers, not feelings.
 
Blinded tests with audio simply don't have any equivalent,


Actually, you can also test things like acupuncture  and oral analgesics, where you have to rely on subject ratings of their feelings (of pain or relief).  Not so very different from audio DBT.   

And blind tests are also used in evaluating products aimed at taste and smell. 


Quote
This isn't to say we shouldn't ABX. It's the fairest thing we have. But my sympathies are with those who have become so fed up with attempting to be rigorous in audio tests, that they throw up their hands and start relying on gut instinct.


I couldn't care less if people do that, so long as the claims they make are qualified.  The proper reponse to the difficulty of rigorousness , isn't to repeat the mistakes that led you to want the rigor int he first place.
It's to learn to fit your claims to your evidence.  If all you have is sighted evidence, then you should  be willing to admit  that a difference you believe you hear, might be imaginary.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-04-23 05:21:46
I'm still curious to read what 2bdecided and Axon actually make of the style and content of BORK's posts.


Length-wise BORK's posts are more rhetorical vitriol than substance and awfully disrespectful to users of any kind of lossy audio, not to mention rambling and punctuationally-challenged. I'm afraid I have to agree that he has scored points (the only ones he's managed to score!) by getting all these annoyed responses, as they make HA look to the outside world like a sort of hornet's nest.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-23 13:56:22
I'm still curious to read what 2bdecided and Axon actually make of the style and content of BORK's posts.
Obviously BORK is very interested in audio, has just discovered blind testing, and has been willing to do some ABX tests of an audio codec. He's been surprised by the difficulty of passing these tests, but has managed to do so in some cases.

He hasn't yet probed their applicability to the rest of audio, and assumes everything he knows about audio still holds good. He finds the idea that most of the tweaks in the big wide audiophile world are either tiny or inaudible quite baffling - he assumes everyone who thinks this is deaf, or jealous that they can't afford expensive equipment.


Then in the other corner we have Arny who has run and participated in countless ABX tests - and most of these, some with the "best ears" available, proved negative. The vast majority of the big wide audiophile world actually makes no different to the sound quality at all. Much of the tweaks that can ABXed actually make the sound worse. He assumes that anyone who claims otherwise is part of the audiophile con.


It seems obvious to the unbiased observer that there will be at least some things which Arny hasn't seen a positive ABX result for which can be ABXed by someone. It seems equally obvious to the unbiased observer that there will be at least some things which BORK believes sound different / better, which he's never going to pass an ABX test for.


And it seems really obvious to me that, while it's essential to rely on double blind testing, and important to figure out which changes really cause audible improvements, it's actually far more important that we move away from a pre-WWII recording paradigm with the wrong number of channels and the wrong number of speakers!

Even the sighted-with-placebo subjective improvement of most of these tweaks is far smaller than the improvement brought about by extra channels feeding two extra front speakers!


Also Krabapple, I, like you, find that most people who slag off mp3s haven't heard a good one, and actually can't identify artefacts that I would readily ABX. It's like I said earlier - 99% of people who claim to be discerning golden ears can't hear/listen that well at all! There is the 1% who really do hear differences though.


Finally, note what BORK is: an audiophile who has tried and accepted ABX. Look how well we've welcome that(!). No wonder there are so few "converts"!

Of course BORK hasn't applied it to hardware yet. Given the friendly attitude here, do you think he ever will?

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-23 14:30:27
But let's not deceive ourselves. There is a difference between testing audio, and testing, for example, a new drug. When you test a drug, you can measure results in a specific fashion. If you're testing a new form of insulin, you can do many blinded trials on many people and you can definitively measure what happens to blood sugar.


All of medicine is not that simple, in fact little of it actually is, even the matter of controlling blood sugar. Blood sugar is not just one number - many diabetics monitor it numerous times per day. Lots of things naturally affect blood sugar. There are few simple cause-and-effect relationships, which is one reason why so many diabetics have to monitor it so closely.

The opposite extreme might be trying to figure out if an alleged chlorestrol management chemical will reduce heart attacks. The cause and the effect may be separated by decades.

So, I'm just not buying it when you say:

Quote
You can be rigorous because, in the end, you're doing things with numbers, not feelings.


Quote
Blinded tests with audio simply don't have any equivalent, because in the end you are asking a person to evaluate what they perceive.


Yes, we are trying to measure perceptions. In ABX the perception is about as simple as it can get - are A and B the same or different? We introduce X which is either A or B for the purpose of testing. We correctly guessed back in the 70s that a lot of BS was going down about what sounds good and what doesn't. We suspected that a lot of that would go down in flames on the grounds that if you can't reliably hear a difference, then questions of better or worse are moot. We actually underestimated how much BS there was in audio at that time.

Quote
It's not quantifiable, unless you stick electrodes in their brain, and probably not even then.


Say what?

When a person says something sounds better, that is a consicous act. No electrodes needed, right?

Quote
And not only are you asking a person for an opinion on something their senses tell them, but you're doing it with, of all things, music, which is known to have a really big emotional component.


All true but...

You do realize that the logical conclusion of this grotesquely arugment that you are making is that nobody can tell what they like or what they don't like?

A corolary of the fiction that you are purpounding here is that nobody ever consiously knows anything about their emotional state!

Quote
Emotional reactions color perceptions.


And perceptions color emotional states. All true, but what is the cosmic meaning?

Quote
We know that tiny variations in loudness and frequency response have a disproportionate effect on how we perceive music.


That's simple - we make them go away or at least their dependence on which component that you are listening. Or not, depdending on what we are testing. Don't you understand that the effect of frequency response on how we perceive music is one of the common objects that we are in effect testing?

Quote
We know that the mind gets tired and inattentive when presented with the same stimuli over and over, so I get especially twitchy when any sort of listening test is repeated - but you need repetition to establish statistical significance.


If that's true, then any listening test that you do of your own system, a friends system, in store or at a high fidelity show is similarly flawed. Don't be the umpty-thousandth person to mistakenly claim that somehow blind tests are unique in terms of listener fatique!

Quote
We know that minor changes in the orientation between listener and speakers can cause changes in perceived frequency.


But, we can make those variations independent of which amplifier you are listening to, which is just fine when we are comparing amplfiiers.

Quote
There are too many variables in any listening experiment to make it really rigorous, and most of those variables vary between the ears of the listeners, not outside them.


OK, based on what you just said it is resolved that all listening tests are invalid.

Now what?




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-23 14:41:10
Then in the other corner we have Arny who has run and participated in countless ABX tests - and most of these, some with the "best ears" available, proved negative.


Probably not true at this time.  Many examples of ABX tests with positive outcomes could have been found on the now-departed PCABX web site. I think that over 50% of my last year's ABXing had positive outcomes.

Quote
Much of the tweaks that can ABXed actually make the sound worse.


IME, more like merely ineffective.

Quote
He assumes that anyone who claims otherwise is part of the audiophile con.


If by that you mean poorly informed, then yes. If you mean intentionally trying to cheat people, then not so much.

Quote
It seems obvious to the unbiased observer that there will be at least some things which Arny hasn't seen a positive ABX result for which can be ABXed by someone.


No examples come to mind. Got any?

Quote
It seems equally obvious to the unbiased observer that there will be at least
some things which BORK believes sound different / better, which he's never going to pass an ABX test for.


Oh come on, give me the benefit of the doubt. It is very obvious that ther is a monumental gap between what your average newbig-to-the-world-ff-science thinks matters, and what actually does. I was that guy about 30 years ago. I still remember actually thinking that the guys at TAS had something on the ball.

Quote
And it seems really obvious to me that, while it's essential to rely on double blind testing, and important to figure out which changes really cause audible improvements, it's actually far more important that we move away from a pre-WWII recording paradigm with the wrong number of channels and the wrong number of speakers!


What's wrong with modern recordings starts at the microphone(s).  The whole paradigm is wrong from violin body to pinnae.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-23 14:55:13
Quote
It seems obvious to the unbiased observer that there will be at least some things which Arny hasn't seen a positive ABX result for which can be ABXed by someone.
No examples come to mind. Got any?
Well, until a few weeks ago, filter ringing!

Not the kind of example I meant though. You talked about ABXing small, trivial differences. There may be some more of those lying around which people haven't been trained up to ABX properly yet, or which no one has bothered ABXing yet.

Are you saying that there aren't? Wouldn't such a statement be somewhere between brave and stupid?

Quote
Oh come on, give me the benefit of the doubt. It is very obvious that ther is a monumental gap between what your average newbig-to-the-world-ff-science thinks matters, and what actually does. I was that guy about 30 years ago. I still remember actually thinking that the guys at TAS had something on the ball.
How long did it take you to make that journey?

Quote
What's wrong with modern recordings starts at the microphone(s).  The whole paradigm is wrong from violin body to pinnae.
That sounds like a far more interesting discussion: how would you do it?

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 15:58:54
Obviously BORK is very interested in audio, has just discovered blind testing, and has been willing to do some ABX tests of an audio codec. He's been surprised by the difficulty of passing these tests, but has managed to do so in some cases.

He hasn't yet probed their applicability to the rest of audio, and assumes everything he knows about audio still holds good. He finds the idea that most of the tweaks in the big wide audiophile world are either tiny or inaudible quite baffling - he assumes everyone who thinks this is deaf, or jealous that they can't afford expensive equipment.
.
.
.

Finally, note what BORK is: an audiophile who has tried and accepted ABX. Look how well we've welcome that(!). No wonder there are so few "converts"

Of course BORK hasn't applied it to hardware yet. Given the friendly attitude here, do you think he ever will?


As this represents the sum total of your specific response to my request for your view of the *style and content of BORK's posts*  (and in case it wasn't obvious, I meant  *in this thread*), I must say:

You seem to think all the [sarcasm] friendly attitude [\sarcasm] is on our side, and that BORK has been some innocent , inquisitive, and merely *baffled* ABX convert deserving of all our encouragement and praise;  we've heaped scorn on him for no apparent reason. 

Are we reading the same thread? 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 16:02:19
Then in the other corner we have Arny who has run and participated in countless ABX tests - and most of these, some with the "best ears" available, proved negative.


Probably not true at this time.  Many examples of ABX tests with positive outcomes could have been found on the now-departed PCABX web site. I think that over 50% of my last year's ABXing had positive outcomes.


Actually there's still some 'classics' here:


http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_data.htm (http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_data.htm)

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-23 16:16:01
Obviously BORK is very interested in audio, has just discovered blind testing, and has been willing to do some ABX tests of an audio codec. He's been surprised by the difficulty of passing these tests, but has managed to do so in some cases.

He hasn't yet probed their applicability to the rest of audio, and assumes everything he knows about audio still holds good. He finds the idea that most of the tweaks in the big wide audiophile world are either tiny or inaudible quite baffling - he assumes everyone who thinks this is deaf, or jealous that they can't afford expensive equipment.


2Bdecided, I understand you are trying to make a point here, & level it out,
but if that means reducing me into something I am not in the process, then I'll pass.

I am not interested in audio , I make a living from audio
I have discovered blind testing before some kids here were born.
You KNOW that from our work in the LossyWav thread - where did u get that ??

(You all assumed I was a true audiophile (not that I'd mind that), because I stood against moronic narrow minded stereotyping that is spread like the plague in this forum, especially when backed by the Lossy Forever kids, & when the pros here shy away from spanking them when needed.)

so once and for all I will set the record straight if that's ok, READ this.

I have tried to avoid from making the focus of this thread about me, my background, or my abilities.

In the LossyWav thread when I tried to help, & after being 'questioned' about it I clarified
if you recall, I even felt the need to apologize (!), about not being clearer on my background :


I will not let anyone tell that standard is not transparent if I am not 100% sure of his ABXing skills.
standard is a very high quality level IMHO so I need to test by myself. For me, it's either a big problem always hearable by golden heared people or a fake.
I am not telling you are lying, but in this forum the only guy telling me that standard is not transparent that I would blindly trust is Guruboolez.
I am just shocked by a guy that don't know how to ABX but ABX everything at first try, even a musician.
That said, your logs are impressive.



Please let me clarify a few things about myself.

I am here because I saw The LossyWav project - & just had to try it, & thank the author for the great work.

....
I am not a naysayer.

Now about me being new to ABXing ...
nothing can be further from the truth ..
what I AM new to is abxing using apps like Foobar.

To make a long boring story short, I have been in music basically all my life & I make
my living from music, in more then one form
.[/b]

so please ,do not mistake me for a beginner  .. I never said I was.
I am sorry I have not been clearer on my background, I can see now how it might have looked ..


So I hope It's clearer now, No experience or knowledge I gained, comes from this forum.
AB/ABX tests are not something this forum taught me, or exposed me to.
Back when I started, I used mechanical switchers, & then moved on to relay based switching systems .

After getting some more testers lined up & working on a test material collection in the studio, I decided I am putting it on hold because of the work load I had, & the uninspiring direction I felt this was taking.

* You would be interested to know that currently, the same guy that questioned the results, sauvage78 ,
is pretty much the only tester controlling the tuning of LossyWav, & the testing has been reduced to 2 or 3 'hot' samples, meaning, samples that generate noticable artifacts when encoded, as opposed to a wide selection of music material.

coincidence ? you do the math.

But for now,with the way things are, I will not put in any more of my &/or my fellow professionals time in it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 16:35:56
r u Prince?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-23 16:43:01
    
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-23 16:49:30
So I hope It's clearer now, No experience or knowledge I gained, comes from this forum.

That has been obvious from the beginning. We are just saying that that deficiency could be fixed if you are willing.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-04-23 16:57:06
Quote
As for the “tube sound,” there are two possibilities: (1) It’s a figment of the deluded audiophile’s imagination, or (2) it’s a deliberate coloration introduced by the manufacturer to appeal to corrupted tastes, in which case a solid-state design could easily mimic the sound if the designer were perverse enough to want it that way.
~ The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)

Personally, I wonder if the quoted article is completely true in this regard. Are there any actual published tests demonstrating solid state and tube amps cannot be told apart in a double-blind test? As well, if there is a difference, can a solid state amp actually mimic the sound of a tube amp? Furthermore, would fidelity be preserved best by playing older analog audio, which was recorded and mixed on tube based audio equipment, back through an tube based system?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-23 17:06:44
@BORK,

Sorry, I'd forgotten that part.

However, if you have true double-blind test results, from whatever decade, which show positive results with different decent amplifiers, DACs etc, then I'm sure this is the place to report them.

Regards,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-23 17:07:22
If you don't overdrive both and all other circuitry is proper, very sensible measurements don't show any difference. Slight overdrive causes a tube to add saturation  which may sound pleasing to some people (including me but only for a very limited selection of recordings). I have yet to find a digital tube saturation plugin that fits my expectations. Most of the time they just add some even order harmonics and that's it. But there's practically nothing that you cannot do to digital audio but can to analog, so I consider it only a matter of time until I find a suitable implementation.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-23 17:20:22


Quote
It seems obvious to the unbiased observer that there will be at least some things which Arny hasn't seen a positive ABX result for which can be ABXed by someone.


No examples come to mind.
Got any?


Well, until a few weeks ago, filter ringing!

You talked about ABXing small, trivial differences. There may be some more of those lying around which people haven't been trained up to ABX properly yet, or which no one has bothered ABXing yet.

Are you saying that there aren't? Wouldn't such a statement be somewhere between brave and stupid?



No, I'm saying that no examples come to mind. That seems to me to be violently different from saying they don't exist.


Quote
Oh come on, give me the benefit of the doubt. It is very obvious that ther is a monumental gap between what your average newbig-to-the-world-ff-science thinks matters, and what actually does.

Quote

I was that guy about 30 years ago. I still remember actually thinking that the guys at TAS had something on the ball.


How long did it take you to make that journey?



No more than 5 years.  TAS was founded in 1973, and by 1977 I had developed a working ABX comparator and done both individual and group ABX tests.

Quote
Quote
What's wrong with modern recordings starts at the microphone(s).  The whole paradigm is wrong from violin body to pinnae.


That sounds like a far more interesting discussion: how would you do it?


I don't know how to do it right, I only know how to make recordings that sound good enough, all things considered. I favor the use of coincident microphones with spot mics as needed for large ensembles.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-23 17:26:39
Are there any actual published tests demonstrating solid state and tube amps cannot be told apart in a double-blind test?


At least one:

Masters, I. G. and Clark, D. L., "Do All Amplifiers Sound the Same?", Stereo Review, pp. 78-84 (January 1987)

Quote
As well, if there is a difference, can a solid state amp actually mimic the sound of a tube amp?


Depends on the tube amp, if you see the above reference.

Remember, really good tubed equipment can pass a straight wire bypass test, just like a lot of SS equipment can.

Quote
Furthermore, would fidelity be preserved best by playing older analog audio, which was recorded and mixed on tube based audio equipment, back through an tube based system?


Depends.  You might get closer to the sound that the people who produced the recording heard during the production process with the tubed amp.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-23 18:21:18
Remember, really good tubed equipment can pass a straight wire bypass test, just like a lot of SS equipment can.

So, the "better" the tube amp, the more it sounds like a good SS amp? 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-04-23 19:41:27
Are there any actual published tests demonstrating solid state and tube amps cannot be told apart in a double-blind test?

At least one: Masters, I. G. and Clark, D. L., "Do All Amplifiers Sound the Same?", Stereo Review, pp. 78-84 (January 1987)

Can you provide a quote from the source you provided that would clearly summarize the article? As well, do you actually have the article you're quoting or is this simply what you remember? On a related note, are there sources for Stereo Review articles?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: evereux on 2009-04-23 19:47:24
I believe this to be the article in question:

http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf (http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf)

I've saved it, so should it be removed I can host it elsewhere.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 22:55:55
Quote
As for the “tube sound,” there are two possibilities: (1) It’s a figment of the deluded audiophile’s imagination, or (2) it’s a deliberate coloration introduced by the manufacturer to appeal to corrupted tastes, in which case a solid-state design could easily mimic the sound if the designer were perverse enough to want it that way.
~ The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio (http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf)

Personally, I wonder if the quoted article is completely true in this regard. Are there any actual published tests demonstrating solid state and tube amps cannot be told apart in a double-blind test? As well, if there is a difference, can a solid state amp actually mimic the sound of a tube amp? Furthermore, would fidelity be preserved best by playing older analog audio, which was recorded and mixed on tube based audio equipment, back through an tube based system?


He's not saying tube sound doesn't exist -- he's saying where it does, it's corrupted sound.  Others consider it to be warm, 'euphonic' distortion (and out come the explanations involving even-order harmonic distortion....even order harmonics being, like, more NATURAL, and therefore more BETTER ) 

The Carlstrom ABX site I linked to earlier reports results of a 'positive' ABX of tube vs SS amp

As for SS mimicking tube sound , IIIRC the mischievous Bob Carver demonstrated that to the amazement of Stereophile writers, some years ago.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-23 23:03:12
I believe this to be the article in question:

http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf (http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf)

I've saved it, so should it be removed I can host it elsewhere.



The AES Preprint by Clark also cites them  , and puts them in historical context (as of 1991)

Ten years of A/B/X Testing by Clark, David L. (http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=5549)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-24 01:31:35
Remember, really good tubed equipment can pass a straight wire bypass test, just like a lot of SS equipment can.

So, the "better" the tube amp, the more it sounds like a good SS amp? 


That was and is the general impression among well-educated audio professionals since the mid-70s, if not earlier. 

Yes, the first 5 or so years of solid state amps were a little hairy. I did a tube -> ss -> tube -> ss  thing in the late 60s.

Makes, models and dates on request. :-)

It was pretty much everybody's impression until sometime in the 1980s. :-(
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-24 01:37:10
As for SS mimicking tube sound , IIIRC the mischievous Bob Carver demonstrated that to the amazement of Stereophile writers, some years ago.


AFAIK Bob's *secret sauce" for mimicking tube sound was small-value resistors in series with the speaker jacks.

Point being that the most audible aspect of *tube amp sound* is the random nonflat response you get with most speakers and a too-high source impedance.  The built-in nonlinear distortion, poorly-regulated power supply etc, is often window dressing.

There's a Stereophile aritcle by a tube bigot suggesting that the proper value is 3.3 ohms.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-24 10:40:31
Don't you also get some microphonics, and (almost the same thing) some internal self resonance in some valves (tubes!)?

I've certainly heard it on my Leak Stereo 20: if you replace the speaker with a 10 ohm resistor, and you can hear the valves themselves playing the music! Also, with no input signal, if you tap the valves with your finger nail, you can hear it through the speakers.

It's not hard to see how these two features combined mean that the valves can act like mini echo chambers, adding subtle short-term reverb to the music.

I don't know if it's usually directly audible, but I'd be surprised if it was universally inaudible.

(It could just be that the valves in my amp are rubbish, of course!)

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-24 12:15:27
The Carlstrom ABX site I linked to earlier reports results of a 'positive' ABX of tube vs SS amp


If memory serves there was a subsequent retest after the tubed amp had some maintenance done on it, and the results were null.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-24 14:06:47
For what it's worth I did some blind tests around 15 years ago. I couldn't tell valves (vintage Rogers RD Junior) from SS (Ion Systems SAM40). But then I'm the guy who can't tell anlogue from digital either
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-24 14:25:06
On the subject of whether this thread has show HA in a good light or not, I'm definitely of the opinion that it hasn't. I also believe personal insults lower the quality of debate - assuming members are interested in debate. In fact I'd go further and say they should be outlawed by TOS.

When people are attacked they either fight back or run away. I don't see how either can be seen as constructive. Also when under attack it's dificult to remain focussed on the debate in hand so I think it also dilutes the quality of people's contributions. If we removed the insults and retaliations from this thread it would be smaller, easier to follow and consequently much more helpful to an outsider or neutral. Then, there are no doubt people who are frightened to contribute at all in case they draw ridicule or insults. I think there's a real danger that you end up with what effectively becomes a private club for like-minded people. Of course, if that's what HA members want, that's fine. I'd rather see an atmosphere of openness and moderators tepping in as soon as it gets personal.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2009-04-24 15:13:55
I also believe personal insults lower the quality of debate - assuming members are interested in debate. In fact I'd go further and say they should be outlawed by TOS.
This should be covered under TOS #2 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974#entry149474).

As far as warning members for abuse, as you can imagine it is a very fine line, especially when there appears to be a lot of sarcasm and mud-slingling going on in general.  We have received at least one report on this thread, but after reading the recent posts I must admit that I just decided to close the door and let you all get on with it... whatever "it" is.  Perhaps not the best course of action, but I have better things to do than try to decide how much mud is being slung and in what directions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-24 17:49:07
On the subject of whether this thread has show HA in a good light or not, I'm definitely of the opinion that it hasn't. I also believe personal insults lower the quality of debate - assuming members are interested in debate. In fact I'd go further and say they should be outlawed by TOS.

I'm not going to reread the thread to confirm it, but my impression is that BORK was the one who first started shifting things in that direction. Unfortunately, others soon started to respond in kind.

This is not the first time a thread has gone this way, and I am sure that it will not be the last, but let's hope that these occurrences remain as rare as possible.

I would also like to thank Synthetic Soul and the other mods for doing a great job of keeping things on track when needed.

Edit: typos
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 19:39:55
Arnie Krueger is a liar.

I have never behaved as described below.

I have never had to be forcibly restrained by anyone for anything. In my entire life.

What a shame a sad individual like this would make such assertions in a public forum--along with having the gall to  count my money and make baseless insinuations about my integrity and honesty.

Let me answer Mr. Krueger's fantasies:

There was an AES meeting back in the early '90s and an ABX test of amplifiers. I was involved because I claimed that the idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance and I told David Clark to produce an ABX test and I'd be happy to take it.

I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.

So much for "science." 

Now, here's the funny part: among the amps were some steely sounding solid state products including a Crown DC 300 and a very warm sounding VTL tube amp. It was quite easy to hear the difference between those. For one thing, they surely won't measure the same!

However, the average test taker, which included many recording engineers, could not, under blind ABX conditions tell the difference! Having been involved in many such tests, I brought more experience to it and so performed better as did John Atkinson.

I am happy to take such tests and usually do very well taking them...I can show you results of speaker identification blind tests I did at Harman's research center. However, I don't believe they are necessarily the best way to audition audio gear for long term satisfaction and I believe, as that test proved, very different sounding amplifiers can be judged to sound "the same" under what can be confusing ABX type tests.

Now, let's clear up the Gizmodo story. A writer for Gizmodo was assigned to write a story about audiophiles. Gizmodo found me. I did not find Gizmodo. I was not looking for publicity for me. I was happy to try and help promote a hobby and an industry I have loved since I heard my first Dynaco/AR-3 system many years ago.

It was the kid who wrote the story, who wrote about shitty sounding MP3s, not me! He came to write the usual negative story about audiophilia. He came to write a story that said it was stupid to spend a lot of money on an audio system. that there's really not much that can be done except drain your bank account if you spend more than a few thousand dollars on it.

What he heard though, absolutely sent him reeling. That's what's in the story. All I did was sit him down and play some tunes. He did the rest. He wanted to hear the high bit rate MP3 version of something I'd played on vinyl and we hooked his iPod player to my system and he heard just how degraded it was by comparison.....

So if you're an audio enthusiast, and you feel such a story was bad for our hobby, I think you have a few screws loose. I made sure that he understood that one can assemble a great system for not that much money. I told him about my system in the 1980s consisting of a Hafler DH-101 preamp and DH-200 amplfiier built from kits by me and a pair of Spica TC-50s and a used Thorens TD-125 turntable with Luster GST-1 tonearm, all of which cost about $1500 or so. I told him that I enjoyed listening to music as much on that system as I do on the one I OWN now.

Now, let's get to Mr. Krueger's disgraceful insinuation that somehow I am either a "trust fund baby" or I am a crook because how else could I own such an expensive audio system of which he's clearly insanely jealous.

First of all, I am an audio reviewer who actually buys the equipment in his system. This is not something that can be said of all audio reviewers but in my case, that is a fact. I own my system. I have always felt obliged to support the industry I cover by  actually buying the stuff. Over many years I have bought and sold and traded up. I did not go out and buy a $300,000 system.

What's more, I don't pay retail. I get an accommodation price on the gear I own. If you have a problem with that, I can't help you. The price I pay is still steep. For instance, I bought a turntable that costs $150,000. Crazy? Maybe. But you haven't heard it. The people who have and the people who have bought it don't think it's crazy. I talk to them. They think it's the best product they've ever bought...and many have Ferraris in the garage.

When I bought the turntable it cost $80,000. My sample was a cosmetic third. It could never be sold to a retail consumer. But it still cost me as much as a nice car. I borrowed money from the bank and paid it off over two years. It's the best thing I ever bought. It gives me the greatest pleasure of anything I've ever bought including some very nice cars.

As for the rest of my system, I have bought all of it, except for cables, which are on loan and tend to change depending upon the system or the gear under review. I own many cartridges, but have a few also on loan for similar reasons.

Oh, I have produced two very successful DVDs on analog. One is about turntable set-up. It has sold 10,000 copies. It wholesales for $15.00. Do the math Arnie. Everyone loves this DVD. It has been translated into German and Italian and Japanese. It continues to sell well and I continue to get thank you emails from people who buy who have been helped with their analog from it. The second DVD was recently released and it too has already sold thousands of copies. It's about record production (shot at two pressing plants in high definition) and covers record care, cleaning, handling and collecting.  People seem to like it too.

And you know what? People who know me through my writing or through meeting me, like me too.

Have a nice weekend.




Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.

To put this into perspective, my 16 year old son died of a brain hemhorrage about 10 years ago. By most accounts I can talk about that pretty calmly. Compared to matters of life and death, there's nothing about ABX or even all of high end audio thaat is as all-fired important as Fremer seems to think that one day back in the early 1990s was.  All the other people I know who were directly involved with it have pretty well forgotten about it. And well they should. That wsa then and this is now.

To say that Fremer is a little tightly wound would be IMO an understatement. :-(

IMO, the only way to understand Fremer is to consider the meaning of the word hyperbole. Fremer seems to live in a world of hyperbole where nothing is anything like what it seems. For example, the Gizmodo article http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles (http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles) mentions Fremer's alleged $350,000 audio system.

My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?

I'm sure the truth about Fremer will never be reliably known. Why should we even care?

Pardon me while I go and listen to some music... ;-)

Moderation: Removed useless full quotation of the first post.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 19:45:51
My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?

It's not that hard for the manufacturers of "$350,000 worth" of audio equipment to donate it to Fremer, because the actual manufacturing cost was probably only a few thousand, if that.



You are a very foolish person. And irresponsible as well.

-Michael Fremer
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 19:49:01
On the subject of whether this thread has show HA in a good light or not, I'm definitely of the opinion that it hasn't. I also believe personal insults lower the quality of debate - assuming members are interested in debate. In fact I'd go further and say they should be outlawed by TOS.

When people are attacked they either fight back or run away. I don't see how either can be seen as constructive. Also when under attack it's dificult to remain focussed on the debate in hand so I think it also dilutes the quality of people's contributions. If we removed the insults and retaliations from this thread it would be smaller, easier to follow and consequently much more helpful to an outsider or neutral. Then, there are no doubt people who are frightened to contribute at all in case they draw ridicule or insults. I think there's a real danger that you end up with what effectively becomes a private club for like-minded people. Of course, if that's what HA members want, that's fine. I'd rather see an atmosphere of openness and moderators tepping in as soon as it gets personal.


You are quite correct. The things being said about me, all of which are complete fantasy, are abusive and ugly and have nothing whatsoever to do with audio.....

-Michael Fremer
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 19:53:04
Sad to read how many commenters there thought it was a 'great article' and 'real in-depth journalism'.
   


Nice to see a few skeptics, though.


I couldn't even read through the whole article, much less all the comments.  It's frustrating how much misinformation is out there.  I'm a frequent visitor to Gizmodo, but all this week has been devoted to "audio" and really, you should see some of the atrocious things they've talked about.



Tell me about the "misinformation" in the story.--Michael Fremer
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 19:57:56
So it's typical journalistic sloppiness, and probably getting carried away in the moment.

And let's face it - we do need people wanting better quality than can be heard on 99% of pop releases in the 21st century. Does anyone think CDs (as actually sold, rather than as theoretically possible) sound that good in the pop world in 2009?



Good point.  Fremer's still a douche, though.


How would you know? Have you met me?

I usually find that people who post messages like yours--about someone they don't know--are what they accuse others of being.

Are you jealous that I have built a successful career? Have produced two successful DVDs? Have a well read music review website? www.musicangle.com?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 20:00:10
IIRC (and I may not) in his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.


I am not a psychiatrist. But people who spend their time counting other people's money can probably use one.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 20:07:37
Do you think Fremer really gets into the music with his "$350,000 system", or does he dwell on what can be tweaked or repositioned or even replaced/upgraded. You can't really enjoy the music if you are constantly critiqing the equipment it is playing on. It's a hard habit to break.


I suggest you visit my music review website www.musicangle.com and judge for yourself. Above all else I love music. Listening to music is what it's all about. The guy who wrote the story was expecting an audio geek with all that gear and a few hundred records and CDs. That's not me...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 20:11:25
I've come to a very definitive conclusion regarding my ears' abilities to resolve sonic information: there's a finite limit. Investing $350,000 in an ultra-high-end stereo isn't going to suddenly grant my ears the ability to hear atoms bonding or to be able to resolve the sound of a mosquito sucking blood from an elephant in Zimbabwe.


Indeed. Fremer's pricey system didn't restore his ability to hear the LP hiss that the reporter heard.


Indeed I heard the hiss. It doesn't bother me. I have subscription to the New York Philharmonic too. When I sit in a room full of the elderly, there's constant coughing, choking and phlegm spitting from them. I ignore that too. I'm there to listen to the music. That's what I do at home too. If there's hiss who cares? Absence of hiss doesn't necessarily equal good sound....
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 20:15:11
If you want to worry about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, I've got nothing for you.

Read the rest of my post, please. I never said anything about "worrying" about any signal undergoing these processes. Anyone who would have actually read the entire post would have known that.

You obviously have no compelling clue about the practicalities of doing real world audio, while right now that is very much of my life.

This feels like a pretty blatant personal attack. This is entirely unwarranted, unnecessary and unappreciated (not to mention completely baseless). I've never even so much as attempted to attack you or anything that you may or may not hold dear, so I don't understand where the animosity is coming from. We don't even seem to have any differing opinions, for Christ's sake!

If you want me to clarify anything that I've said, I'd be happy to do that. I feel I've been clear, but I'm either A) wrong or B) being deliberately misinterpreted. The former I can understand. The latter I most certainly cannot -- especially here of all places.


Don't you see? Krueger is rational and scientic..until you issue the slighest bit of a challenge to his orthodoxy Then he goes for the personal attack.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-24 20:33:49
My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?

It's not that hard for the manufacturers of "$350,000 worth" of audio equipment to donate it to Fremer, because the actual manufacturing cost was probably only a few thousand, if that.



You are a very foolish person. And irresponsible as well.

-Michael Fremer

You are quite right. I was guilty of using hyperbole.

What I should have said is that in a business where sales volume is very small (and I doubt that $150,000 turntables are sold in the tens of thousands) a high percentage of the sales price of the product goes to support the R&D effort to develop it. The manufacturing cost in this case is a relatively smaller percentage.

The result is that if the manufacturer wanted to, they could sell one or two units at much nearer the actual manufacturing cost, far below the list price. Obviously they don't want to do this generally, but to put it into the hands of someone who has a wide audience and can generate many potential sales, this is a smart thing to do.

So do I believe that they still made money selling you a unit for just over half of the list price? You bet I do.

OTOH I could just be blowing smoke. 

P.S. Thank you for taking the time to add your side to this discussion. Sometimes we forget that we are probably not getting both sides.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 20:35:52
But good systems with excellently matched speakers (with excellent time and frequency domain responses) do "image" spectacularly better than lower quality stuff. The front/back depth of the sound stage is increased, the location of (say) the singer is focussed more tightly etc etc. You can also put the speakers further apart before the sound stage falls apart. It's not what the record producer intended (usually), but it's very impressive. Stereo is supposed to work with 60 degree speaker angle. I've heard it work stunningly well with 110 speaker angle - but only with very good speakers.

The photographs of that particular listening room are not impressive unless they misrepresent the reality - from what it looks like, I'd want the speakers much further away from the walls, and from everything else. The kind of early reflections I'd expect in that room would seriously damage the magical 3-d sound stage that's claimed to exist.

Cheers,
David.


If you're into objective measurements, my room measures quite well thank you. Those photos don't really let you know what's going on. You might want the speakers further from the walls, but the measurements tell a somewhat different story as does the sound. The first reflection is very well taken care of...your "expectations" would be dashed. There's something incredibly condescending about your post...that you'd think that someone with 30 years of doing this wouldn't know how to deal with a first reflection. I mean really....
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-24 20:39:09
Then he goes for the personal attack.

You are a very foolish person. And irresponsible as well.

I am not a psychiatrist. But people who spend their time counting other people's money can probably use one.


...later down the road...
You are beyond crabby but I really enjoy having pushed your buttons so you can throw your little hissy fit and prove that you are incapable of having a discussion without hurling insults and personal attacks. I hope you enjoyed showing that beneath the thin veneer of "objectivity" and "rationality" is a nasty, angry, emotional child.
Pot, meet kettle, black?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-24 20:46:23
good afternoon to you too, Michael..

I must commend you on your responses; I had certainly underestimated you on them. Hope you stick around (and that we try to keep this significantly civil).

Your word vs Arny's on the fight, eh? I'm willing to trust your two words equally. Can either of you find somebody to vouch?

If Lipshitz did not let you or John do additional testing in the amp test, I think that's highly unfortunate, and I disagree with that decision. You're totally right in asserting that if a few people can do 4/5 or 5/5 in a test like that, it makes a lot of sense to bring them in for 16 trials to more firmly establish audibility for individual people like yourself. That said, I believe those results can support the idea that, at most, few people can hear such amplifier differences - and this has importance in and of itself, insofar as people's buying decisions are concerned, but perhaps not for stating whether an audible difference universally exists. And if a longer trial test with an individual listener yielded a similarly negative result, I think that would have been further interpretable....

I have mostly good words to say about your assertiveness about the role music (and good sound) can play in one's life when it is accorded attention. And that many people, like said Gizmodo writer, simply dismiss it the whole notion of good sound out of hand. Some people will always conform the music to the environment - the continued popularity of XM/Sirius does not say much about how the average listener cares about SQ. But others really don't know what they are missing with better speakers, better formats/encodes, etc.

That said... people can still get good sound with 192k MP3s. A lot of people here have put a lot of time into making that happen, with well-performed ABX tests. And iPods (some of which are spectacularly hi-fi devices). And even 128k iTunes store downloads. Hell, nowadays 64k HE-AAC sounds great! Some of my most cherished listening moments have occurred with headphone listening of 96k MP3 encodes of decaying cassette playback of obscure English punk-prog bands. And while I wholeheartedly agree that the quality of that is sh*tty, I often take your opinions as meaning that such listening is emotionally inferior to if it had been in any higher quality of an environment - which frankly strikes me as unjustified elitism. Extrapolating this line of reasoning to vinyl (which I'm well invested into btw) is similarly unflattering.

Put another way... I agree that it's important to one's listening experience to pay good attention to one's surroundings and equipment, like such attention supports the positive emotions of any hobby - but for the love of god, what does that have to do with sound quality?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-24 20:55:18
If you're into objective measurements, my room measures quite well thank you. Those photos don't really let you know what's going on. You might want the speakers further from the walls, but the measurements tell a somewhat different story as does the sound. The first reflection is very well taken care of...your "expectations" would be dashed. There's something incredibly condescending about your post...that you'd think that someone with 30 years of doing this wouldn't know how to deal with a first reflection. I mean really....

Eh, what can I say, your reputation precedes you. A lot of engineers here (myself included) believe you are very wrong about several aspects of audio engineering. 30 years experience doesn't matter when you are wrong. So please forgive us when we put the "ass" in "assume", and I at least to be gracious about our misconstructions about what I already agree with you on. (And vice versa!)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 20:57:11
My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?

It's not that hard for the manufacturers of "$350,000 worth" of audio equipment to donate it to Fremer, because the actual manufacturing cost was probably only a few thousand, if that.



You are a very foolish person. And irresponsible as well.

-Michael Fremer

You are quite right. I was guilty of using hyperbole.

What I should have said is that in a business where sales volume is very small (and I doubt that $150,000 turntables are sold in the tens of thousands) a high percentage of the sales price of the product goes to support the R&D effort to develop it. The manufacturing cost in this case is a relatively smaller percentage.

The result is that if the manufacturer wanted to, they could sell one or two units at much nearer the actual manufacturing cost, far below the list price. Obviously they don't want to do this generally, but to put it into the hands of someone who has a wide audience and can generate many potential sales, this is a smart thing to do.

So do I believe that they still made money selling you a unit for just over half of the list price? You bet I do.

OTOH I could just be blowing smoke. 

P.S. Thank you for taking the time to add your side to this discussion. Sometimes we forget that we are probably not getting both sides.



In the case of that turntable, they obviously don't sell tens of thousands, nor does Ferrari every year. However, it is fabricated from cast magnesium alloy, which is both expensive and difficult to do and it was computer-modeled and designed by serious people, not hobbyists. The R&D cost was quite high. It uses components drawn from the American medical industry that are quite expensive. They do sell all they can make and they have sold far more than the expected to in the first few years. The mark up on exotic audio doesn't come close to watches, for example, but the usual distribution chain has a number of components, each of which gets a 40 to 50 point mark up. It's unfortunate but it's the only way it can work right now...value is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. And in the case of that turntable, made in Australia, in America, for example, they have a technician on call for service anywhere it's needed. The tech's full time job is instrumentation repairs for the military. He's a highly qualified tech. That costs money too. I find this site really interesting for its supposed scientific rigor. In reality I find it orthodox and doctrinaire in a disturbing way..there's a great deal of smugness and a willingness to stereotype (no pun intended) people with whom they disagree. The people I deal with in the "observational" side of this are as intelligent, balanced and experienced as any of the smug "objectivists" here. The vinyl vs. digital debate really is telling: for instance Roy Halee, who engineered  many classical music albums for Columbia in the 1960s and is best known for recording all of the great Simon and Garfunkel albums along with Bob Dylan, The Byrds, The Lovin' Spoonful and many others certainly knows what a master tape sounds like---better than anyone here I'm sure--and what does he prefer? Vinyl. He's an analog guy. He doesn't like CD sound and he's of course dismissive of compressed audio formats. He's to be taken seriously, I assure you. When I read some of the self-satisfied wise guys here, who purport to be "objective," I have to laugh. They are every bit as narcissistic and self-satisfied as they accuse "audiophiles" of being. I think there's a level of self-loathing going on here that's in need of some study! In every field and/or hobby, there are enthusiasts...for cars, wine, watches, whatever. The greater the enthusiasm, the better in those fields. No one tries to "prove" all cars drive alike or "measure the same," yet when it comes to audio, there's this rear guard, as exemplified on this site, that spends it's time mocking enthusiasts, and reducing everything to a very low common denominator. When I read people here actually mocking the idea of a holographic soundstage, I know they have allowed their orthodoxy to deprive them of a really incredible experience. The kid who came to do the Gizmodo story was all set to write a mocking story....then he sat down and I put on a record. That's all I did....it took him two minutes to realize what he was hearing was amazing! It was sensory overload great and not to be denied....so he wrote about it that way and look at some of the responses here. I'm sorry, but there's something wrong when a site about audio throws out such condescension and ugliness about someone else's enthusiasm. He heard what he heard and someone posts it's "misinformation?"  I don't get it.....
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 21:02:47
If you're into objective measurements, my room measures quite well thank you. Those photos don't really let you know what's going on. You might want the speakers further from the walls, but the measurements tell a somewhat different story as does the sound. The first reflection is very well taken care of...your "expectations" would be dashed. There's something incredibly condescending about your post...that you'd think that someone with 30 years of doing this wouldn't know how to deal with a first reflection. I mean really....

Eh, what can I say, your reputation precedes you. A lot of engineers here (myself included) believe you are very wrong about several aspects of audio engineering. 30 years experience doesn't matter when you are wrong. So please forgive us when we put the "ass" in "assume", and I at least to be gracious about our misconstructions about what I already agree with you on. (And vice versa!)


My "reputation"? My reputation is quite good worldwide. What part of my "reputation" are you talking about? Lies spread about me on the internet and on this site? What does that have to do with my room and how it sounds?  What am I "wrong" about? In much of this there is no right or wrong. Am I "wrong" in preferring analog to digital? I'm in very good company with many, many top recording engineers who prefer to record and listen on analog gear...so please tell me where I'm "wrong" as opposed to having an opinion that differs from yours. About what was I not gracious? About having my room judged on the basis of a photo on a website????
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-24 21:02:49
Mr. Fremer,

your anger about many of this thread's posts is understandable. I am happy to see that you take the possibility to set things straight. Up to now I knew most of your views at second hand. Despite your ire your posts seem sensible and even contain much I would agree to, much in contrast to some of your school's followers in this thread. Still I would never see any sense in preferring sighted over blind testing except convenience and I think you do follow that path. And the latter is not a matter of opinion, but widely accepted and necessary scientific methodology.

Arnie Krueger is a liar.

I have never behaved as described below.

I have never had to be forcibly restrained by anyone for anything. In my entire life.

I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.

So much for "science."


It is your word against his. Although many people might have a clear bias whom to believe, we don't know for sure. Why don't you prove your point and agree to a public blind test together with ABK? If you think his methods aren't scientific enough, feel free to propose enhancements for public discussion.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Tahnru on 2009-04-24 21:09:07
Paragraph breaks, please?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 21:26:30
good afternoon to you too, Michael..

I must commend you on your responses; I had certainly underestimated you on them. Hope you stick around (and that we try to keep this significantly civil).

Your word vs Arny's on the fight, eh? I'm willing to trust your two words equally. Can either of you find somebody to vouch?

If Lipshitz did not let you or John do additional testing in the amp test, I think that's highly unfortunate, and I disagree with that decision. You're totally right in asserting that if a few people can do 4/5 or 5/5 in a test like that, it makes a lot of sense to bring them in for 16 trials to more firmly establish audibility for individual people like yourself. That said, I believe those results can support the idea that, at most, few people can hear such amplifier differences - and this has importance in and of itself, insofar as people's buying decisions are concerned, but perhaps not for stating whether an audible difference universally exists. And if a longer trial test with an individual listener yielded a similarly negative result, I think that would have been further interpretable....

I have mostly good words to say about your assertiveness about the role music (and good sound) can play in one's life when it is accorded attention. And that many people, like said Gizmodo writer, simply dismiss it the whole notion of good sound out of hand. Some people will always conform the music to the environment - the continued popularity of XM/Sirius does not say much about how the average listener cares about SQ. But others really don't know what they are missing with better speakers, better formats/encodes, etc.

That said... people can still get good sound with 192k MP3s. A lot of people here have put a lot of time into making that happen, with well-performed ABX tests. And iPods (some of which are spectacularly hi-fi devices). And even 128k iTunes store downloads. Hell, nowadays 64k HE-AAC sounds great! Some of my most cherished listening moments have occurred with headphone listening of 96k MP3 encodes of decaying cassette playback of obscure English punk-prog bands. And while I wholeheartedly agree that the quality of that is sh*tty, I often take your opinions as meaning that such listening is emotionally inferior to if it had been in any higher quality of an environment - which frankly strikes me as unjustified elitism. Extrapolating this line of reasoning to vinyl (which I'm well invested into btw) is similarly unflattering.

Put another way... I agree that it's important to one's listening experience to pay good attention to one's surroundings and equipment, like such attention supports the positive emotions of any hobby - but for the love of god, what does that have to do with sound quality?


There's a certain amount of "stereotyping" going on regarding me. There's the Gizmodo story..so some people assume that's me. Well I have an XM and a Sirius account. I have every iPod Apple has ever made and I love them all. An iPod loaded with lossless can sound great. I have a Sooloos music server and I listen to digital. I prefer analog but if the music's only available that way, that's how I listen.

Sure I have a super expensive, high resolution system. That's what's expected of me after all of these years doing this, and believe me it sounds swell. No one who's visited walks away thinking otherwise. It's a great hi-fi system but I can get in the car and listen to XM on the built in Bose system and enjoy music just the same and I do. And I also review inexpensive gear too.

The Giz writer was shocked (only word to use) by how much degradation the MP3 caused compared to the original vinyl. One of the ironies here is that my understanding of the MP3's development is that it was based on A/B testing and that "useless" data (masked by other information) could be thrown away with no penalty paid until the file was small enough to be easily sent on the Internet or stored on less than huge storage media. So at each A/B, "no difference," but in the end, "huge difference." That's one of the dangers of over-reliance on A/B methodology in my opinion.

My word vs. Arny's? Why bother. I really think his reaction to the Gizmodo story says all that needs to be said. This was not a story about him but he made it about him...it wasn't even a story about me. It was a story about high performance audio. Gizmodo found me. I don't go looking for them. Arny should apologize for his attack (even had I behaved poorly, which I didn't----no one is perfect and everyone has things they wish they could take back and that goes for me but not in that case) and I hope he does.  Life's too short.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-24 21:34:44
My word vs. Arny's? Why bother.

I quite agree. I find the dispute between you and Arny about what did or did not happen the least interesting aspect of this thread. Let's try to focus more on what new insights each of you can bring to these discussions and less on past history.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-24 21:50:03
Mr. Michael Fremer , thank you very much for taking the time to post here & get some of the people here to realize they cannot learn  anything about anyone from one sided internet claims , & cannot learn about audio by just throwing characters in a forum & cranking mp3s.

Please, disregard any ABX/faceoff invitations you saw posted above.

They are unsanctioned & do not represent all of this forum members, I assure you.
These posts are posted by the same people who brought this discussion to it's current low state, so please ignore them.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 21:52:56
Mr. Fremer,

your anger about many of this thread's posts is understandable. I am happy to see that you take the possibility to set things straight. Up to now I knew most of your views at second hand. Despite your ire your posts seem sensible and even contain much I would agree to, much in contrast to some of your school's followers in this thread. Still I would never see any sense in preferring sighted over blind testing except convenience and I think you do follow that path. And the latter is not a matter of opinion, but widely accepted and necessary scientific methodology.

[
It is your word against his. Although many people might have a clear bias whom to believe, we don't know for sure. Why don't you prove your point and agree to a public blind test together with ABK? If you think his methods aren't scientific enough, feel free to propose enhancements for public discussion.


Look what happened the last time. 1) my 5 of 5 correct were tossed and I was declared a "lucky coin" and very different sounding amps produced results that would seem to have proven my point. Most of the people on my side of the fence have found that there's an agenda at work where no matter what, we lose. The goal post gets moved. My 5 of 5 identifications being thrown out and dismissed as a "lucky coin" was proof. It was outrageous. I was declared statistically insignificant..

My contention is that this kind of back and forth testing is not appropriate to judging audio gear...it's the methodology that was used to develop MP3s, wasn't it? Throw away data do A/B and "prove" nothing audible was lost...but in the end compare the final compressed audio to full resolution and the difference is easily heard....it's a kind of death by tiny slices.  What this "methodology" has led to is the death of good audio in the mainstream and the acceptance of junk as being "just as good."  I see little value to that. It's taken us to a dead end. I predicted the CD would kill listening to music and I think I was correct. Most people don't listen anymore. We used to sit and listen to music as an activity. Now it's background or heard while doing other things. Why is that? I'd rather have that explored.

When I have people over who are skeptical about vinyl, I let them choose the material and if I have it on CD and vinyl we compare. The record always ends up winning--and I have a good digital front end (never mind the ridiculous notion  that  all CD players supposedly sound the same). More importantly, when I put on a record, casually, people sit and listen. They close their eyes and drift into it. When I put on a CD, within a few minutes they fidget or they pick something up and look at it or they get up....why is that?

Music and sound elicit emotional responses not a scientific ones. If people want to be trapped in a world of "objective testing" to determine what they listen to, that's fine with me. I let Julian Hirsch years ago take me down that road and I ended up with an audio system that measured better but that sounded much worse. I was told I needed to get used to the lower distortion. It turned out there were other kinds of distortions not being measured. The same happened with 1/3 octave equalizers. I remember a demo with the great Floyd Toole years ago with 1/3 octave EQ....it ended up with flat response.

It was "perfect" but it sounded awful. The "audiofools" didn't like it. Why? They didn't like flat response was the answer. NOT TRUE THOUGH! It turned out the 1/3 octave equalizers were lopping off useful information along with the amplitude peaks that were worth getting rid of. Today we have much better, more accurate EQ possibilities in the digital domain.... the listening was more useful than the measuring.

There's a doctrinaire slavishness to measurements I don't subscribe to. However, measurements are important. When I review speakers I try to predict how they will measure both in-room and quasi-anechoically...because that's a test of my listening acuity and I'm as interested as anyone in knowing how good I am. I write and turn in a review before I see the measurements. I suggest you go to Stereophile's website and read the review and measurement of the Audio Physic Caldera loudspeaker that I wrote before the measurements. And then check the measurements.

I really don't feel I have to prove anything to anyone about my listening abilities. I am very specific in what I write and the readers can go out and listen for themselves, which they do. I think I have a very good reputation for being a good listener...people who read what I write and go out and listen for themselves tend to find me reliable....and I'm not talking about the opinion part of the review. I'm talking about the observational part. My favorite feedback is when someone writes that I describe the sound exactly as they hear it but that if my reaction is that I don't like how it sounds, that they usually know they will, because we have very different tastes and preferences.

I have to go ship out some turntable set up DVDs now....thanks for reading....

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-24 22:10:05
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct.


I am no expert, but I can certainly believe this if one's ears are trained enough to pick up the non-linear clipping and/or higher levels of second-order harmonic distortion of a tube amp.

Edit: Sorry. please disregard this. I misread the original message.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-24 22:12:47
Still I would never see any sense in preferring sighted over blind testing except convenience and I think you do follow that path. And the latter is not a matter of opinion, but widely accepted and necessary scientific methodology.


This I very much agree with.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-24 22:48:37
My contention is that this kind of back and forth testing is not appropriate to judging audio gear...it's the methodology that was used to develop MP3s, wasn't it? Throw away data do A/B and "prove" nothing audible was lost...but in the end compare the final compressed audio to full resolution and the difference is easily heard....it's a kind of death by tiny slices.


Well your rhetoric is great. Just the logic is flawed. Even if MP3 was a flawed technology, one tool used to develop it is not inferentially proven to be flawed. The principle of redundancy isn't flawed either, if both a main power source and its backup fail - a bad application does not invalidate a methodology.

ABX is a great opportunity for an interested individual to differentiate those reviewers, who actually really have excellent ears, from those with average ears but great imagination and rhetoric skills (while in reality they cannot even hear a difference between two products compared). If you are a honest reviewer, you should be lucky to accept the challenge for a public ABX test and show your real skills. Of course 5/5 and better results would have to be counted in your favor. There is nothing wrong with ABX testing, they don't take a single piece of sound away from you, everything you should need is there. What could ever be wrong with that?

You would probably answer again, that you don't have to prove anything. Your votaries like B0RK may accept that blindly. But as a judicious man you will surely understand that it seems highly suspicious, when somebody who should review the sound of a product, insists this wouldn't be possible properly if he wasn't allowed to use his eyes.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 23:05:01
Quote
I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article, or blog, about Michael Fremer, an audio reviewer from Stereophile, which clearly goes completely against the grain around here.


If I had a quarter for every B.S article that Stereophile publishes I would be a rich man. Some of John Atkins articles give me a good laugh. I like it when he tried to compare sound quality with so called "graphs" to make it look like it was half-assed pseudo-scientific. People actually listen to these boneheads though. My friend actually thought monster cables could make a difference in sound quality once. I was appauled and questioned him were that information came from he told me he read it in "some magazine", but couldn't remember the name of it. I just rolled my eyes and told him it was B.S. 


HIs name is "Atkinson" not "Atkins."  Stereophile publishes measurements and you find this amusing? You were "appauled?" Your inability to spell is appalling. Stay in school. lol
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-24 23:05:46
Redundancy ... real intelligent example you chose there .

mp3 does not have any redundancy to fall back on, right or wrong rpp3po ?
what's lost is lost forever.

Btw, Who are you to  challenge anyone,  anyway ?
I heard no one here give you the authority or respect to challenge anyone here to nothing.
Get it into your head kid - No one owes you anything.

Please be so kind & go post some ABX logs you can hear the difference between an mp3 & a Wav file,
then worry about other users capabilities, not to mention challenging professional reviewers ..
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 23:12:00
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct.


I am no expert, but I can certainly believe this if one's ears are trained enough to pick up the non-linear clipping and/or higher levels of second-order harmonic distortion of a tube amp.

Edit: Sorry. please disregard this. I misread the original message.



A tube amp need not clip if it has sufficient power and is driving an appropriate load. I own solid state gear myself but have heard and reviewed many fine sounding tube amplifiers and preamplifiers. I am not doctrinaire in this regard (or in any). Reproduced music is a combination of science and art. It's about the selling of an illusion. When I interviewed Roy Halee, who recorded Simon and Garfunkel, Dylan, The Byrds and a great deal of classical music, he pointed to a solid state system (Mark Levinson electronics, Wilson WATT Puppys) and said it was what he listened to when he needed to hear what he had recorded. He then pointed to a tube electronic based system (Jadis amps, Infinity IRS speakers, Rockport turntable) and said that when he wanted to listen to music for enjoyment he listened to that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 23:15:38
Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.


  I am totally speechless. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at such ignorance.


Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-24 23:22:58
Please be so kind & go post some ABX logs you can hear the difference between an mp3 & a Wav file,


You can start with this (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=67882&view=findpost&p=619558), but I have posted several over time. I'm not a big fan of MP3 myself, but not against lossy encoding in general.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-24 23:25:13
That's no good.
It shows you can hear a difference.
I bet you can't , must be either fake or beginner's luck ... (according to your theories anyway ..)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 23:30:36
I'm not really sure Fremer and Mahoney actually doing much damage with this piece, besides priming young iPod people to buy megabuck systems later in life. I'm not sure if I can get much bent out of shape about convincing people to go lossless, buy a decent home system, etc.

But some of the Gizmodo commenters are asking if Fremer could provide a low end recommended system. He is the absolute last person you should ask for that. It's more important than ever to maintain an objective eye with the low end, and Fremer is likely to just run off into the weeds and choose some horifically underperforming system because it provides a better match for his ears alone.

Sad to read how many commenters there thought it was a 'great article' and 'real in-depth journalism'.
I'm sure it's better journalism as far as Gizmodo is concerned. Maybe someday they'll grow enough to hire people with actual journalism degrees and such.

Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.
That wasn't the infamous "cable" test, was it?

There are a few stories like that about Fremer's attitude. Salvatore's exchange (http://www.high-endaudio.com/RR-FREMER.html)with him is pretty fun (although Salvatore is easily just as much of a pompous windbag as Fremer is). There's also that long-standing alleged fight between Fremer and the NYT over vinyl coverage...

Quote
My first question is who paid $350,000 for the equipment Fremer uses?  It is worth that today?  Is he a trust-fund baby? Does he get paid that much by Stereopihile? Or, has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?
No, only Steve Hoffman does that. *rimshot*

I'm no longer thinking malice on Stereophile's part in the context of loans and reviewers' pricing. I think it's plain to see that the economic status of its editors and reviewers is substantially less than the audience it is actually gearing its reviews too. Long term loans and preferred pricing are more justifiable in such a situation.

IN his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.
Fremer is a psychiatrist? That joke writes itself. Multiple times over actually. Heh.

Indeed. Fremer's pricey system didn't restore his ability to hear the LP hiss that the reporter heard.
Nor does it guarentee that his LPs play back with a speed tolerance of any less than 0.6%, as I observed a few days ago with some needledrops he posted.

Next time you hear an audiophile claim that high-mass turntables do not have speed issues, pour that into their cornflakes and shove it up their ass.


Thanks for posting a compendium of stupidity. It's reassuring that my suggesting that people buy a nice audio system when they can afford one has not done too much "damage." I am relieved.

Your comments about my abilities to offer suggestions on budget gear indicate that your ignorance exceeds your arrogance. Your characterization of my work indicates you don't read what I write. "Observational" reviewing is not about spouting preferences. It's about attempting to describe how something sounds. How one reacts to that particular sound is an opinion. If you don't believe human being are capable of assessing sound quality and only measurements can do that, fine. That's your opinion. But you are claiming all I do is write 'opinions' of what I personally like. And that, my friend is so wrong, that I know you don't read what I write.


Yes, Mr. Salvatore did provoke me with a series of paranoid rants and attacks and I took the bait and sent him a flaming email which he chose to publish. He then continued a bitter string of attacks based upon his paranoia. So go read it and I'm sure everyone here would like to have 20 years of work judged on one screw up.


The psychiatrist line was funny, I have to admit. However I have many in my family and their behavior leaves plenty to desire. As for shoving anything up one's ass, well you should know.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-24 23:45:09
The vinyl vs. digital debate really is telling: for instance Roy Halee, who engineered  many classical music albums for Columbia in the 1960s and is best known for recording all of the great Simon and Garfunkel albums along with Bob Dylan, The Byrds, The Lovin' Spoonful and many others certainly knows what a master tape sounds like---better than anyone here I'm sure--and what does he prefer? Vinyl. He's an analog guy. He doesn't like CD sound and he's of course dismissive of compressed audio formats. He's to be taken seriously, I assure you.


Of course Mr. Engineer From the 60s gets to prefer vinyl, after all, it *does* usually sound different from CD.  So?  Let's leave aside that the guy may have some emotional ties to the medium (d'ya think?).  In terms of signal in/signal out, it's a less accurate medium in the audible band.  But some people like its particular euphonic distortions.  Some people like the 'warmth' of some tube amps too.  Given that, what gives you the yarbles to diss people don't find the supposed 'sound' of mp3s objectionable?    (let's leave aside too, the choice of vinyl as an alternative to the use of heinous amounts of compression on CDs , which of course you know is a production CHOICE, not an inherent part of anything digital. We can leave that aside because you've and your ilk have been blowing your tiresome 'analog' trumpet since the first CDs were released, long before the loudness wars began)

Mr. Fremer, I realize this is the way you roll, and I'm afraid it doesn't fly. I assure you, I couldn't care less about THIS particular argument from authority: "Mr. Famous Recording Engineer says digital just can't match vinyl".  I've seen too many audio 'engineers' make absurd, scientifically *wrong* claims about digital and about comparison methods, to take them at their word *simply on the basis of their jobs as knob-pushers*.  Now, if they also happen to show technical acumen as regards digital --- like, say, Bob Katz -- then I take them waaay more seriously.  And of course there's the strong probability that you couldn't tell a Redbook recording from an LP, from the LP itself, in a fair comparison.  Which kinda blows the whole 'digital can't match an LP ' argument right out of the water.  (And that's even making sure the LP was properly *demagnetized* first.)

Quote
When I read some of the self-satisfied wise guys here, who purport to be "objective," I have to laugh. They are every bit as narcissistic and self-satisfied as they accuse "audiophiles" of being. I think there's a level of self-loathing going on here that's in need of some study!


Pointing and laughing at you is 'self-loathing'...check.

Quote
In every field and/or hobby, there are enthusiasts...for cars, wine, watches, whatever. The greater the enthusiasm, the better in those fields. No one tries to "prove" all cars drive alike or "measure the same," yet when it comes to audio, there's this rear guard, as exemplified on this site, that spends it's time mocking enthusiasts, and reducing everything to a very low common denominator. When I read people here actually mocking the idea of a holographic soundstage, I know they have allowed their orthodoxy to deprive them of a really incredible experience. The kid who came to do the Gizmodo story was all set to write a mocking story....then he sat down and I put on a record. That's all I did....it took him two minutes to realize what he was hearing was amazing! It was sensory overload great and not to be denied....so he wrote about it that way and look at some of the responses here. I'm sorry, but there's something wrong when a site about audio throws out such condescension and ugliness about someone else's enthusiasm. He heard what he heard and someone posts it's "misinformation?"  I don't get it.....



Oh, look, there's the *car* analogy.    It must be *that time* in the debate.   

You're part of what's wrong with this hobby, not what's right.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-24 23:57:42
My contention is that this kind of back and forth testing is not appropriate to judging audio gear...it's the methodology that was used to develop MP3s, wasn't it? Throw away data do A/B and "prove" nothing audible was lost...but in the end compare the final compressed audio to full resolution and the difference is easily heard....it's a kind of death by tiny slices.


Well your rhetoric is great. Just the logic is flawed. Even if MP3 was a flawed technology, one tool used to develop it is not inferentially proven to be flawed. The principle of redundancy isn't flawed either, if both a main power source and its backup fail - a bad application does not invalidate a methodology.

ABX is a great opportunity for an interested individual to differentiate those reviewers, who actually really have excellent ears, from those with average ears but great imagination and rhetoric skills (while in reality they cannot even hear a difference between two products compared). If you are a honest reviewer, you should be lucky to accept the challenge for a public ABX test and show your real skills. Of course 5/5 and better results would have to be counted in your favor. There is nothing wrong with ABX testing, they don't take a single piece of sound away from you, everything you should need is there. What could ever be wrong with that?

You would probably answer again, that you don't have to prove anything. Your votaries like B0RK may accept that blindly. But as a judicious man you will surely understand that it seems highly suspicious, when somebody who should review the sound of a product, insists this wouldn't be possible properly if he wasn't allowed to use his eyes.


I was challenged, I took the challenge, I got 5/5 correct and I was dismissed as a "lucky coin."  I have done other blind ID tests at Harman and did very well. But beyond that, I've been reviewing for 20 plus years. I have a track record that speaks for itself. The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it.

When I write a review, I try to describe how something sounds, not whether or not I like it. Whether or not I like something is meaningless. What something sounds like is what's important. I try to describe it using commonly accepted terms: "bright" or "dark," or "muffled" or whatever. And we measure the gear after the review is written. So if I write that a speaker is bright and it's rolled off, or if I write the speaker has clean, extended bass down to 20Hz and it measures lumpy, with a 50Hz boost and a sharp drop below that, well I won't have much credibility for long. So I've been doing this for 20 plus years and for the most part, the sound I describe with great specificity is what the measurements show.

The point of a review is to give people an indication if something might be a product they would be interested in owning. It's not about telling them what to buy. It's about fairly general sonic character plus of course, what it is, how it's made, etc. And more than that, it's about communicating how one listens and what one listens for. It's also about music and it's also about writing in an entertaining way. Yes, it's about entertainment too.

So I'm not planning on spending time "proving" my listening abilities to people who don't believe observational reviewing has any value in the first place. I know they will find ways to discredit the results should I "pass" their test. That's what's happened before and it won't change.

I suspect the majority of the skeptics here (most of whom sound incredibly bitter) have never really heard a high quality audio rig. The guy from Gizmodo certainly hadn't but he had bought into the  general themes  of this site and was fully expecting to sit down in front of a loud, garish, sonic nightmare. Instead he heard music and to a great degree, an absence of "hi-fi."  It wasn't at all what he was expecting and I think that most of the cynics here would be equally pleasantly surprised.

My favorite posts here are bitter ones about how much "misinformation" was in the Gizmodo story because the guy described a great listening experience. How pathetic to call a writer's enthusiastic response to a listening experience "misinformation."
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-24 23:59:10
Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.


  I am totally speechless. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at such ignorance.


Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.


Michael is correct. The argument between Arny Krueger and Michael Fremer occurred after the debate I organized at HE2005. It concerned the ABX tests in which Michael and I took part at an early 1990s AES Convention in Los Angeles. Mr. Krueger was not present at those tests. While voices were indeed raised, including Mr. Krueger's, no-one had to be forcibly restrained. To be charitable to Mr. Krueger, his memory must be colored. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-25 00:06:21
Absence of hiss doesn't necessarily equal good sound....

Yet if all other factors are equal, does a lower noise floor, and, thus, a greater possible dynamic range, equal good sound, in your opinion? Isn't hiss a detractor to achieving good sound? If so, why is vinyl central to any fidelity-oriented pursuit?

Don't you see? Krueger is rational and scientic..until you issue the slighest bit of a challenge to his orthodoxy Then he goes for the personal attack.

I didn't really challenge his beliefs, or at least I don't feel as if I did. He went for the jugular for reasons I don't fully understand, but I'd prefer he explained why (if he ever intends to do so). I don't mean to be too coarse here, but I'm not particularly interested in your thoughts on the matter.

Am I "wrong" in preferring analog to digital?

Not at all. There's no "wrong" in individual preference. You may very well prefer lying on a bed of nails rather than a memory foam mattress, for instance, and nobody should have any particular issue with that (other than having concern for the well-being of your skin, of course).

The issue, however, is the perpetration of the myth that all forms of analog media, such as the vinyl record, are superior to any form of digital media, such as the CD or the SACD. If such a myth had knees, the proper course of action would be to take a sledgehammer to them: I feel the perpetration of this myth is really that dangerous to the pursuit of "sonic excellence".

I mean, as the article says, you drove around with a bumper sticker that read "COMPACT DISCS SUCK". We're to believe that this was intended to be merely an expression of your own opinion?

I'm in very good company with many, many top recording engineers who prefer to record and listen on analog gear...so please tell me where I'm "wrong" as opposed to having an opinion that differs from yours.

And I can assemble a large number of people who believe the United States faked the Apollo moon landings. That's a "fair" belief, and I won't attack those who hold it (unless they invite me to), but it speaks nothing to the actual historical reality of the Apollo missions and what was accomplished during those years.

This is not a matter of one's opinion but another matter entirely.

Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.

Have you met Krueger, though? Is that much true?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:16:01
The vinyl vs. digital debate really is telling: for instance Roy Halee, who engineered  many classical music albums for Columbia in the 1960s and is best known for recording all of the great Simon and Garfunkel albums along with Bob Dylan, The Byrds, The Lovin' Spoonful and many others certainly knows what a master tape sounds like---better than anyone here I'm sure--and what does he prefer? Vinyl. He's an analog guy. He doesn't like CD sound and he's of course dismissive of compressed audio formats. He's to be taken seriously, I assure you.


Of course Mr. Engineer From the 60s gets to prefer vinyl, after all, it *does* usually sound different from CD.  So?  Let's leave aside that the guy may have some emotional ties to the medium (d'ya think?).  In terms of signal in/signal out, it's a less accurate medium in the audible band.  But some people like its particular euphonic distortions.  Some people like the 'warmth' of some tube amps too.  Given that, what gives you the yarbles to diss people don't find the supposed 'sound' of mp3s objectionable?    (let's leave aside too, the choice of vinyl as an alternative to the use of heinous amounts of compression on CDs , which of course you know is a production CHOICE, not an inherent part of anything digital. We can leave that aside because you've and your ilk have been blowing your tiresome 'analog' trumpet since the first CDs were released, long before the loudness wars began)

Mr. Fremer, I realize this is the way you roll, and I'm afraid it doesn't fly. I assure you, I couldn't care less about THIS particular argument from authority: "Mr. Famous Recording Engineer says digital just can't match vinyl".  I've seen too many audio 'engineers' make absurd, scientifically *wrong* claims about digital and about comparison methods, to take them at their word *simply on the basis of their jobs as knob-pushers*.  Now, if they also happen to show technical acumen as regards digital --- like, say, Bob Katz -- then I take them waaay more seriously.  And of course there's the strong probability that you couldn't tell a Redbook recording from an LP, from the LP itself, in a fair comparison.  Which kinda blows the whole 'digital can't match an LP ' argument right out of the water.  (And that's even making sure the LP was properly *demagnetized* first.)

Quote
When I read some of the self-satisfied wise guys here, who purport to be "objective," I have to laugh. They are every bit as narcissistic and self-satisfied as they accuse "audiophiles" of being. I think there's a level of self-loathing going on here that's in need of some study!


Pointing and laughing at you is 'self-loathing'...check.

Quote
In every field and/or hobby, there are enthusiasts...for cars, wine, watches, whatever. The greater the enthusiasm, the better in those fields. No one tries to "prove" all cars drive alike or "measure the same," yet when it comes to audio, there's this rear guard, as exemplified on this site, that spends it's time mocking enthusiasts, and reducing everything to a very low common denominator. When I read people here actually mocking the idea of a holographic soundstage, I know they have allowed their orthodoxy to deprive them of a really incredible experience. The kid who came to do the Gizmodo story was all set to write a mocking story....then he sat down and I put on a record. That's all I did....it took him two minutes to realize what he was hearing was amazing! It was sensory overload great and not to be denied....so he wrote about it that way and look at some of the responses here. I'm sorry, but there's something wrong when a site about audio throws out such condescension and ugliness about someone else's enthusiasm. He heard what he heard and someone posts it's "misinformation?"  I don't get it.....



Oh, look, there's the *car* analogy.    It must be *that time* in the debate.   

You're part of what's wrong with this hobby, not what's right.


You are beyond crabby but I really enjoy having pushed your buttons so you can throw your little hissy fit and prove that you are incapable of having a discussion without hurling insults and personal attacks. I hope you enjoyed showing that beneath the thin veneer of "objectivity" and "rationality" is a nasty, angry, emotional child.

I never said anything about anyone liking or not liking MP3s other than me. I don't like them. I did not cast any 'yarbles' about anyone else's preferences. That's your projection.

I know Bob Katz pretty well and we are more in agreement about many things than not but when we don't agree it never descends into the kind of tiny minded crap that you're spewing.

In Roy's opinion, the record sounds closer to the master tape than does the CD and of course his opinion doesn't count because he's old and especially because it differs from yours. But I can also point you in the direction of younger engineers with the same opinion and again, you'll have another snippy answer, and then top your "rational" response with a nasty personal insult---like many of the posters here have done. 

Yes, some people do like "euphonic" distortions but that has nothing to do with the fact that CDs aren't transparent to the source and have never been and most of the knowledgeable engineer I know don't claim it is (there I go again citing recording engineers). 

You are what's wrong about this site. You are everything you claim not to be. Buh bye




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 00:38:23
...I have a track record that speaks for itself. The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it...


Well, that all sounds a lot less lunatic than you have been pictured here. Still this simple criticism stays unanswered:

My contention But as a judicious man you will surely understand that it seems highly suspicious, when somebody who should review the sound of a product, insists this wouldn't be possible properly if he wasn't allowed to use his eyes.


There has been so much research about how easily an ear can be fooled by optical anticipation, slight difference of volume, etc. For example, an amp A with 0.6db higher output volume than B will sound richer to most ears (while both can appear to deliver the same volume)... But you will know all that.

The question remains: when it is so easy to apply at least some basic scientific methodology and exclude those influences, why are you still neglecting it?

That is suspicious to any critical observer. Not that I think that there is a great conspiracy or that you intentionally fool your customers - but employing scientific testing approaches would just severely limit your possibilities of "literary expression", and I think that is why you are omitting them.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:50:07
Absence of hiss doesn't necessarily equal good sound....

Yet if all other factors are equal, does a lower noise floor, and, thus, a greater possible dynamic range, equal good sound, in your opinion? Isn't hiss a detractor to achieving good sound? If so, why is vinyl central to any fidelity-oriented pursuit?

I have never said vinyl is "central" to any fidelity-oriented pursuit. It's just my preference and that of many others. Hiss is not a good thing but neither does it destroy good sound. If you remember in the early days of CD engineers were so determined to remove hiss from analog recordings, they took way a good deal of the HF information too. Later remasterings left it in and most observers agreed the results sounded better. Hiss is what it is. Recordings are flawed, regardless of the medium. Choose your poison. A lower noise floor does equal wider dynamic range but so does increasing bits from 20 to 24 and higher resolution digital sounds better than 16 bit/44.1K sampled digital. Look, when the first digital rock recording was issued (Ry Cooder's "Bop 'til you Drop") was issued I was at the record store when it opened. I had every reason to love it. I was well prepped for no hiss, no scrape flutter etc. Unfortunately that record sounded terrible in ways I'd never heard before. Ry Cooder himself ended up thinking the same thing--and it wasn't the microphones...so I waited for the CD and the first demo I heard was awful. It was an album I was very familiar with: Roxy Music's "Avalon." This was an AES demo before there was a real CD player. It sounded awful! I figured it was early in the technology and people would say "ugh, that's bad, but it will get better." Instead, they said "Wow, that's great!"  That's when I made my bumper sticker. I'm not anti-digital and CD technology has improved greatly: better filters, lower jitter, etc. as the technology matured but i still think it's second rate compared to good vinyl...that's my opinion.


Am I "wrong" in preferring analog to digital?

Not at all. There's no "wrong" in individual preference. You may very well prefer lying on a bed of nails rather than a memory foam mattress, for instance, and nobody should have any particular issue with that (other than having concern for the well-being of your skin, of course).

The issue, however, is the perpetration of the myth that all forms of analog media, such as the vinyl record, are superior to any form of digital media, such as the CD or the SACD. If such a myth had knees, the proper course of action would be to take a sledgehammer to them: I feel the perpetration of this myth is really that dangerous to the pursuit of "sonic excellence".

I mean, as the article says, you drove around with a bumper sticker that read "COMPACT DISCS SUCK". We're to believe that this was intended to be merely an expression of your own opinion?

That was 1983! The CDs I heard sounded awful. Worse, the reaction to clearly awful sound was positive. There's always a technological learning curve. I was against bad sound being declared good. I have never said all forms of analog media are superior to any form of digital media. Never! I've been an SACD enthusiast from the beginning. Had CDs been 96/24 from the beginning I would have been supportive but to watch the entire history of recorded sound up until 1984 or so being transferred to an inferior, barely adequate digital format was alarming. The great recording engineer Robert Fine addressed the AES in the 1960s I believe and implored his fellow engineers to not accept a digital format unless and until it could sample 100K...I think he was correct.


I'm in very good company with many, many top recording engineers who prefer to record and listen on analog gear...so please tell me where I'm "wrong" as opposed to having an opinion that differs from yours.

And I can assemble a large number of people who believe the United States faked the Apollo moon landings. That's a "fair" belief, and I won't attack those who hold it (unless they invite me to), but it speaks nothing to the actual historical reality of the Apollo missions and what was accomplished during those years.

This is not a matter of one's opinion but another matter entirely.


I never tell anyone they are "wrong" for preferring anything. I think good vinyl playback sounds far more like live music than good CD playback. That's just my opinion. No one who thinks otherwise is right or wrong...these are subjective opinions. That's all.

Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.

Have you met Krueger, though? Is that much true?


Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 00:56:18
...I have a track record that speaks for itself. The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it...


Well, that all sounds a lot less lunatic than you have been pictured here. Still this simple criticism stays unanswered:

My contention But as a judicious man you will surely understand that it seems highly suspicious, when somebody who should review the sound of a product, insists this wouldn't be possible properly if he wasn't allowed to use his eyes.


I never said it would be impossible! Nor that it might be preferable. It's just not practical.

There has been so much research about how easily an ear can be fooled by optical anticipation, slight difference of volume, etc. For example, an amp A with 0.6db higher output volume than B will sound richer to most ears (while both can appear to deliver the same volume)... But you will know all that.

The question remains: when it is so easy to apply at least some basic scientific methodology and exclude those influences, why are you still neglecting it?

It is not so easy to apply scientific methodology given what we do. We insert a piece of gear into our system and describe what it sounds like. That's the job. If you don't think there's any value to that, fine. Tens of thousand of people do, especially because when they buy something that's what they do! No doubt there are pitfalls to what I do...but when most engineers can't hear the difference between a tube amp and a solid state amp on a double blind test, when the differences are obvious, clearly there are pitfalls there too!

That is suspicious to any critical observer. Not that I think that there is a great conspiracy or that you intentionally fool your customers - but employing scientific testing approaches would just severely limit your possibilities of "literary expression", and I think that is why you are omitting them.



It would be impossible and impractical to employ scientific testing approaches to this or to do "double blind" automobile tests! You know it's a Farrari when you get in to drive it.... THERE I GO AGAIN WITH THE CAR ANALOGIES...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 01:12:36
It would be impossible and impractical to employ scientific testing approaches to this or to do "double blind" automobile tests! You know it's a Farrari when you get in to drive it.... THERE I GO AGAIN WITH THE CAR ANALOGIES...


Volume matching two amps' outputs with either a decibel or volt meter before each test run: 60 seconds of extra effort, more objective results, no other drawbacks.

Not seeing a device while evaluating it requires either a patient intern to assist or a switching device. Stereophile may be able afford both at your discretion.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 01:13:07
It would be impossible and impractical to employ scientific testing approaches to this or to do "double blind" automobile tests! You know it's a Farrari when you get in to drive it.... THERE I GO AGAIN WITH THE CAR ANALOGIES...


I don't buy this argument- a car's performance can indeed be scientifically measured. Or are you advocating style over substance?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 01:19:21
Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.


I don't believe so, Michael. It was David Clark aided by Tom Nousaine, if I remember correctly. Arny Krueger isn't an AES member and doesn't attend the conventions.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 01:27:31
The argument between Arny Krueger and Michael Fremer occurred after the debate I organized at HE2005.


The report on the debate at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/) includes a link to an MP3 of the debate between Mr. Krueger and myself, complete other than the removal of a couple of passages of "dead air." While the recording concludes before the heated discussion between Arny Krueger and Michael Fremer, unfortunately, you can hear Mr. Krueger start screaming at one point, indicating that he was tightly wound up.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-25 01:51:13
It would be impossible and impractical to employ scientific testing approaches to this or to do "double blind" automobile tests! You know it's a Farrari when you get in to drive it.... THERE I GO AGAIN WITH THE CAR ANALOGIES...


A Ferrari would be an absolutely HORRIBLE car for most people even if it were given to them for free.  If someone gave me some audio gear and proudly told me that it was the equivalent of a Ferrari then I would run far, far away.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 01:59:14
Oh, man. There will be blood on the dance floor when Krueger returns and they clash... 

Put on some nice music, get some popcorn, sit back and enjoy reading!

I'm so glad, that the mods have resisted to close this thread, when it fell off a little earlier. What a priceless ending act for this story! Fremer & Atkinson show up to fight back and kick up their heels.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-25 02:05:10
Like your taste in cars has got any relevance to anything in this post ... or interests anyone at all.
not to mention I doubt you had ever driven anything remotely resembling a Ferrari.

But hey ,no worries , I get it, that's the theme song here all along isnt it?
People making self indulgent baseless assumptions, accusations, & rants, about people they never met & gear they have never seen.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: B0RK on 2009-04-25 02:22:29
Oh, man. There will be blood on the dance floor when Krueger returns and they clash...

Put on some nice music, get some popcorn, sit back and enjoy reading!

I'm so glad, that the mods have resisted to close this thread, when it fell off a little earlier. What a priceless ending act for this story! Fremer & Atkinson show up to fight back and kick up their heels.


Yeah I bet youre glad.
for you, it's another relentless flaming thread.

The fact that you & the Lossy Forever crue marked HA as a Hateful bunch of degenerate wackos in front of the entire world means little to you.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 02:26:12
I'm so glad, that the mods have resisted to close this thread, when it fell off a little earlier. What a priceless ending act for this story! Fremer & Atkinson show up to fight back and kick up their heels.


Agreed. This thread is getting interesting.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 02:30:01
for you, it's another relentless flaming thread.

The fact that you & the Lossy Forever crue marked HA as a Hateful bunch of degenerate wackos in front of the entire world means little to you.


So speaks one of the most active flamers of this thread. What do you see, when you look into the mirror?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-25 02:30:28
People making self indulgent baseless assumptions, accusations, & rants, about people they never met & gear they have never seen.


I can smell the irony here...  Again, you might also need to take a look in the mirror.

The fact that you & the Lossy Forever crue marked HA as a Hateful bunch of degenerate wackos in front of the entire world means little to you.


I didn't realize that the "entire world" visits hydrogenaudio on a daily basis.  I also didn't realize that defending lossy audio encoding against someone making claims without proper backup (as agreed upon with the Terms Of Service) was being part of "the Lossy Forever crue."  Then again, us here stupid cult members just don't understand that many big words and get all up and bothered when fancy city folk come in here using fancy vokabularie.

Edit:
rpp3po, you beat me to it by a few seconds.  Damn!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 02:37:25
The fact that you & the Lossy Forever crue marked HA as a Hateful bunch of degenerate wackos in front of the entire world means little to you.


It is you who is calling people this. The members here understand that lossy and lossless both have their uses. We are still waiting for you answer to greynol's questions:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry629029 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245&st=225&p=629029&#entry629029)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-04-25 02:49:07
Yeah, I guess users like rpp3po, guruboolez (look here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=58724&hl=) and here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=38792&hl=)), and a good majority of other people here on hydrogenaudio are nothing but stupid kids part of some cult.  Great way to make your point after complaining about people slinging mud.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-25 03:03:27
Like your taste in cars has got any relevance to anything in this post ... or interests anyone at all. not to mention I doubt you had ever driven anything remotely resembling a Ferrari.

And of what relevance to this thread are your doubts?

If you're still keeping an eye on things Michael, I'll have a response for you once I finish my workout. I've learned my lesson about trying to make long-winded posts in between sets, so I won't bother 'til I'm finished
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 03:04:27
I was challenged, I took the challenge, I got 5/5 correct and I was dismissed as a "lucky coin."  I have done other blind ID tests at Harman and did very well. But beyond that, I've been reviewing for 20 plus years. I have a track record that speaks for itself. The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it.


At Hydrogenaudio, people are reporting ABX results practically every week.  It's interesting how you and Atkinson keep recycling the same one or two rather-less-than-robust tests --  5/5 and 4/5? seriously? That's supposed to bowl us over here?  -- involving a tube amp, no less.  You seem to think these prove that ALL your absurd claims of difference are likely to be accurate.  If you'd ever done it consistently, with more robust stats (like, say, 16 trials), and more different solid-state amps, it might have some traction.  As it stands, it hasn't much...except among the flooby faithful you sell your nonsense to.

In short...your performance was *not good enough* for science, or for HA, Mr. Fremer.

Quote
When I write a review, I try to describe how something sounds, not whether or not I like it. Whether or not I like something is meaningless. What something sounds like is what's important. I try to describe it using commonly accepted terms: "bright" or "dark," or "muffled" or whatever. And we measure the gear after the review is written. So if I write that a speaker is bright and it's rolled off, or if I write the speaker has clean, extended bass down to 20Hz and it measures lumpy, with a 50Hz boost and a sharp drop below that, well I won't have much credibility for long. So I've been doing this for 20 plus years and for the most part, the sound I describe with great specificity is what the measurements show.


No one here is saying different loudspeakers don't have 'sound' of their own, for pity's sake.  'Bright'; and 'dark' certainly should have some measurable meaning for loudspeakers.  But have you seriously tested the correlation between your review reports, and the measurements, over a meaningful sample?  Audio reviewers didn't do notably well in Sean Olive's blind speaker evaluations.  Like 'civilians', they tended to be signficantly influenced by non-audible factors  (appearance, price, hype).  Preferences were all over the map, until the tests were done blind...and then the preference tended towards certain common characteristics

Quote
So I'm not planning on spending time "proving" my listening abilities to people who don't believe observational reviewing has any value in the first place. I know they will find ways to discredit the results should I "pass" their test. That's what's happened before and it won't change.


You'll ignore critiques based on good research practice.  Yes, I understand that, that's why I say you're part of the problem, not the solution. 

Quote
I suspect the majority of the skeptics here (most of whom sound incredibly bitter)


Michael 'angry teapot' Fremer calling us bitter...well, the laffs just keep coming.   


Quote
have never really heard a high quality audio rig.



Ah, blow it out your ass, Fremer (but only within the HA Terms of Service, of course).  I've listened in 'high end' audio rooms.  So have other 'skeptics'.  Your problem is you can't deal with the fact that 'high quality audio' is pretty much a commodity at the electronic delivery end (preamps, amps, CDPs) , the main bottlenecks being, as it has been for decades, the quality/number/setup of loudspeakers, the quality of the recordings, and the acoustics of the room.

Quote
The guy from Gizmodo certainly hadn't but he had bought into the  general themes  of this site and was fully expecting to sit down in front of a loud, garish, sonic nightmare. Instead he heard music and to a great degree, an absence of "hi-fi."  It wasn't at all what he was expecting and I think that most of the cynics here would be equally pleasantly surprised.


No one here -- or at least not I -- says your rig couldn't sound great.  Vinyl can sound great; so can CD; so can mp3s.  Since, as I said above , the main determinants of first-rate sound today are the loudspeakers, the room, and the recording itself, why wouldn't they?  I don't covet your room, or your gear, your recordings, or your inability to read, as witnessed by this outburst:


Quote
My favorite posts here are bitter ones about how much "misinformation" was in the Gizmodo story because the guy described a great listening experience. How pathetic to call a writer's enthusiastic response to a listening experience "misinformation."



The misinformation wasn't in that the guy reported hearing good sound.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-04-25 03:10:21
One of the ironies here is that my understanding of the MP3's development is that it was based on A/B testing and that "useless" data (masked by other information) could be thrown away with no penalty paid until the file was small enough to be easily sent on the Internet or stored on less than huge storage media. So at each A/B, "no difference," but in the end, "huge difference." That's one of the dangers of over-reliance on A/B methodology in my opinion.



No, Michael, that is not how MP3 or any other perceptual audio coder was designed OR implimented.

Please go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and pick up the "perceptual audio coding" tutorial, where you will find 90 or so slides that may help you understand the actual proceed of design of any perceptual coder, MP3, AAC (both of which I had a great part in designing) or otherwise.

What's more, your comment about A/B testing is puzzling, as an A/B test, without it being double-blind or a cognate method, would not be any more useful than any other kind of test. In fact, I'm not even sure of what you mean by 'A/B' test, because the tests used for threshold determination in the 1930's and 1940's, which is what the "psychoacoustic model 2" from MP3 was actually designed from, were done in what is now called "signal detection" testing.  A/B testing, in the rare cases when it is used, is a "same/difference" test.  As any A/B test does not provide a signal anchor, no practitioner would regard it as particularly useless for threshold testing, and in any case, the data that MP3 (and AAC) were designed from was not gathered by that method.

The psychoacoustic models in MP3, etc, are gathered from 100+ years of knowlege on how the human auditory system works, knowlege that has been tested and verified over and over.

Now that does not mean a low-rate MP3 is perfect, of course it is not, BECAUSE A LOW RATE MP3 does not code signals BELOW THE CALCULATED THRESHOLD or anything like that.  In short, the codec knows before it even sends the data that "this is not going to be transparent".  Now, personally, I am very much not fond of using such rates for transmission and storage, but I've lost taht battle long ago, and many people persist in using low rate coding.

For my thoughts on that, read the last few slides in the tutorial I point out above, which say, roughly, "don't use two coders in series" (eww!) and "don't use any coding unless you must".
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 03:26:02
Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.

Have you met Krueger, though? Is that much true?


As John Atkinson wrote, Arny and MF were both certainly at the HE2005 debate (MF in the audience, Arny onstage).  I might add that the atmosphere was notably anti-DBT.  Mr. Atkinson was typically polite, Arny typically made no attempt to endear himself to the audience.  IIRC mine was the only remotely 'challenging' question to the anti-DBT side (Atkinson) -- possibly the only question to him at all; all of the other questionsI recall  were directed at Arny, with varying degrees of condescension, incredulity, or hostility.

I can't say what happened afterwards between AK and MF from personal witness, as I was mainly talking to Tom Nousaine at the other end of the large-ish room.  I did introduce myself to Arny at some point, and do recall MF being in the vicinity then, and later hearing some audience buzz about 'words' having been exchanged between him and MF, but if a physical brawl almost broke out, it was a pretty local and well-damped one ;>
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-25 03:27:36
Like your taste in cars has got any relevance to anything in this post ... or interests anyone at all.
not to mention I doubt you had ever driven anything remotely resembling a Ferrari.

But hey ,no worries , I get it, that's the theme song here all along isnt it?
People making self indulgent baseless assumptions, accusations, & rants, about people they never met & gear they have never seen.


I think this is very relevant because as a metaphor it outlines the different mindsets at play fairly effectively.  What are the things that we can all agree on as being true regarding Ferraris?  They look cool (although I would say they do so in kind of a mid-eighties acid-washed, Bon Jovi cranking, poofy hair kinda way).  They go fast.  They are expensive.  However, if my objective is simply to drive in Atlanta traffic from my house to Target, pick up a bag of dog food, some gray crew socks, Thank You notes, Arm&Hammer toothpaste and the new Prince album and then drive back home then would a Ferrari do a better job accomplishing this objective than the 2003 Honda Civic that I currently own?  Even if you take the retail prices of the two cars entirely out of the equation then the cost to drive, maintain and insure the Ferrari so outstrips that of the Civic that there is really no way the Ferrari is a better choice.  It seems to me that most people who either own or covet such expensive novelty vehicles do not do so for their supreme usefulness and real world functionality, but because of their perceived value as status symbols. 

I feel much the same way about the high end audio market that I do about Ferraris:  expensive toys for people with more money than common sense.  Even if I had the means to indulge in such things, I wouldn't bother because I consider them woefully impractical and wasteful.  I would rather expend my resources on that which meets my needs in the cleanest, most efficient and cost effective way possible.  That doesn't mean I'm willing to skimp, compromise, or settle for less than I really want because that wouldn't constitute "meeting my needs". 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 03:48:49
You are beyond crabby but I really enjoy having pushed your buttons so you can throw your little hissy fit and prove that you are incapable of having a discussion without hurling insults and personal attacks. I hope you enjoyed showing that beneath the thin veneer of "objectivity" and "rationality" is a nasty, angry, emotional child.



You seem to have a habit of interpreting amusement and sarcasm at your expense as 'hissy anger'.  And now I recall too why I thought you fancied yourself a psychiatrist   

To the extent I'm mad, it's that the mainstream media --and now some bloggers -- take the likes of you seriously on audio matters, when there are *real*  experts out there who've done the hard work of separating fact from fancy.  It's like what Gordon Holt said about the high-end:  you and your ilk are more noise than signal, and to that extent, you provide a pointless diversion from real progress in consumer audio.  Fortunately, the people making the real advances there tend not to take you seriously either.


Quote
In Roy's opinion, the record sounds closer to the master tape than does the CD and of course his opinion doesn't count because he's old and especially because it differs from yours. But I can also point you in the direction of younger engineers with the same opinion and again, you'll have another snippy answer, and then top your "rational" response with a nasty personal insult---like many of the posters here have done.


I'm perfectly aware that there are young and old 'engineers' who prefer vinyl. My rational response is that I don't care what they like, I only care what claims they make, as public 'authorities' on my hobby, about why the sound is 'better'...claims that are frequently dubious technically, and which they're making from sighted evaluations, a method researchers young, old, and in between will tell you is useless for distinguishing fact from belief.

Quote
Yes, some people do like "euphonic" distortions but that has nothing to do with the fact that CDs aren't transparent to the source and have never been and most of the knowledgeable engineer I know don't claim it is (there I go again citing recording engineers).

You are what's wrong about this site. You are everything you claim not to be. Buh bye


This is like an creationist telling a biologist he's everything that's wrong with science.  In other words, a badge of honor... thanks!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 03:54:42
I'm so glad, that the mods have resisted to close this thread, when it fell off a little earlier. What a priceless ending act for this story! Fremer & Atkinson show up to fight back and kick up their heels.


I suspect we got 'BORKED' 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 04:01:22
The only proper backup you have is from kids like rpp3po dude , wake up from your nightmare.


No, BORK.  This site has been around for awhile.  There's plenty of documentation of both 'postive' and 'negative' ABX results here.

The fact is, DBT methods *work* for improving audio.

In fact one of the creators of MP3 , who can certainly vouch for what I just wrote, has now contributed to this thread.  His screen name's Woodinville.  You could learn a thing or two from him. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-25 04:32:22
I have never said vinyl is "central" to any fidelity-oriented pursuit. It's just my preference and that of many others.

Fair enough.

Hiss is not a good thing but neither does it destroy good sound. If you remember in the early days of CD engineers were so determined to remove hiss from analog recordings, they took way a good deal of the HF information too.

I wasn't around in any meaningful capacity during the advent of the CD, though I don't doubt engineers probably sought ways to eradicate noise as best they could to exhibit the CD's (near) total lack of noise. Thankfully, the methods we use for noise reduction today are much more intelligent and far less damaging to high frequency information (when used appropriately), but I digress.

...higher resolution digital sounds better than 16 bit/44.1K sampled digital.

I feel this is skirting TOS #8 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974#entry149481) (others may feel you're breaking #8 with this statement).

I'm not anti-digital and CD technology has improved greatly...but i still think it's second rate compared to good vinyl...that's my opinion.

A fair opinion. Now, for a slew of questions you're free to ignore, if you wish: To what qualities do you attribute vinyl's superiority? Similarly, how do you define the CD's "second-rateness" in comparison to vinyl? Do you feel a digital recording of a vinyl record can retain these qualities or that there are technical barriers to that? If so, do you feel that's possible at 16/44.1 or only at higher bit depths and/or sample rates or only with delta-sigma modulation?

You also claimed earlier that CDs "aren't transparent to the source and have never been" (implying 16/44.1 can never achieve transparency to the source, correct?). If by transparency you mean perceptual transparency, do you have appreciable evidence to back up such a claim? The "fact" that other unknown "recording engineers" share a similar mindset is not in any way a valid form of evidence here.

The great recording engineer Robert Fine addressed the AES in the 1960s I believe and implored his fellow engineers to not accept a digital format unless and until it could sample 100K...I think he was correct.

Do you mean sample at 100 kHz or be able to retain audio information up 100 kHz? Do you recall what the reasoning was? (and is that still relevant today?)

Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.

Well, given the nature of these conflicting stories, I can only assume that neither accounts are truly accurate...not that my "position" has any bearing on anything, of course.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 04:34:21
Well fine thoughts expressed indeed .

But I still think the other side of the coin deserves some thread space ,so there I go:

I Still feel too many people are a bit light on the trigger regarding
Fremer's view , & audiophiles in general .. (Wait a minute .. Arent we some breed of Audiophiles as well ? )

If I may state things boldly, it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, ..

But the notion of skeptics with iPod earbuds is a straw man.


I have nothing but utter respect & gratitude to all the amazing people here & elsewhere that push great audio forward, with Engineers way high in the ranks, but I wouldn't bundle Engineers & innovators with skeptics , if you know what I mean.

So I fear in the global scheme of things ,Skeptics with iPod earbuds (Hey sounds like a good title for a punk band  ) are a tad thicker then a straw ..

Lossy Audio has mutated from it's specialty niche economy playback format into the defacto standard & changed the music world ,& probably MUSIC forever, & not for the better.

I feel that people like Fremer ,try in their own way & methods, to preach this sermon,
I am hopeful it will turn around, maybe the HD trend will help.

it is we - the skeptics, audio engineers, and others on this board and elsewhere - who are becoming the true arbiters of good sound, by helping ensure it is most available at lowest cost.Bingo.


While you may feel that is true , & we are talking lossy audio here ..
that's a half truth to say the least.

At least regarding lossy audio.
If Lossy audio had an effect on cost (aside from 'Free' Music)
is it made what should have been considered standard, respectable audio gear by (way back) yesterday's standard ,wear a HIGH END PRODUCT sticker, killing the part of the industry we consumers need the most , the mid priced gear , by having shot it's right to exist with a generation of music lovers growing up with a veiled reference of what true sound is, essentially causing the prices for decent gear to go UP, not down.

The idea of having a $300,000+ hi-fi playback system that revolves around a record player is, to me, completely counter-intuitive.


For those who missed this era , here's some background.

Fremer, Like Some of us , has been through the big promise of Digital & the move to CDs.
I have been through it too.
The PROMISE.
The bunch of pure lies that surrounded the CD launch.
The arguments with friends about the first heard cd versions in comparison with the LPs & even tapes of the material still echo in my head.

Oh & Let's not forget the Greatest Audio Marketing Line / Joke Of All Time ,
that never wears off in trigerring my blood pressureon so many of our cds:

"The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution, however, the Compact Disc can reveal limitations of the source tape."

If you have been there , you know what I mean ,& it worked.
Lol at some stage everyone was getting rid of their Records like the plague.

Fremer won't forgive.
Many of us that lost their record collection because of it & rebought their record Collection on CDs, only to find out the jittery truth afterwards, still feel the pain, now more then ever.

When the 'New' Change Came ,& people were told:
"You know , we have done some research, turns out CDs are just not as good as we assumed,  Here's a SACD for ya , now give me your credit card"
they were shown the door instead.

So I sure get it.
for All these people, like Fremer, only NOW, true HD recordings can compete, but maybe too little too late.



Many good points made here about my position. I was all for digital recording when it was first introduced. Everything about it seemed to be advantageous. Unfortunately the sound wasn't one of them in those early days and letting the sound quality slip in service of high tech struck me as a poor choice. It was a huge step backwards sonically. In fact, it made listening to music unpleasant for me so I spoke up. At that time all I had done was supervised an Academy Award nominated soundtrack but despite being a nobody, I said something.

High resolution digital is a huge improvement. Why people bother with compressed audio when storage is cheap and broadband is fast, is a mystery. It's some kind of dorky electronic 'conservationist' fetish I guess, like listening to vinyl---which for some reason that I understand quite well, is the only format to show any growth last year, particularly among young people...


However, too many people here simply can't read: I have thousands of CDs that I listen to. I have every iPod ever invented. Yet no matter what I say, I am stereotyped as someone who "hates digital," or who "doesn't listen to digital," or whatever, by people who are happier to attack me for something I am not. Whatever. One of the most hilarious aspects of all of this (aside from the romper room mentality that's pervasive here among so-called rationalists) is that unlike video where there is a standard (the ATSC video standard to which all monitors are supposed to be adjusted), there is no audio standard. Every mixing room uses different speakers. Every engineer has his or her particular favorite speaker used for mixing. Every recording sounds different because just about every recording is mixed on a different system and there is no standard.

So a video producer will be using a monitor that's been calibrated to the ATSC standard and hopefully one that can perform up to that standard. All monitors can be tested against that common standard. There's no such thing in audio. Mixing and mastering rooms use whatever speakers the mixers and mastering guys prefer. Results vary. So really, I'm not sure exactly what "standard" is being applied here except for the straightjacket of A/B/X testing. If spending your time doing A/B/X testing is what you like to do, knock yourself out. 

If you think that's leading audio to become better, well I think you're deluding yourself. It's doing just the opposite. If attacking me gives you a thrill, well knock yourselves out. I really couldn't give a shit. I'm outta here. Nice talking with some of you. However, some of you are really among the bitterest, arrogant, condescending  assholes I've ever encountered online or anywhere else....

I'm having too much fun doing what I do to get bogged down here....and I hear from too many people who have found what I write useful for them in their own quest for better sound and an improved musical experience to worry about what's said here....so buh bye! Now talk amongst yourselves...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Light-Fire on 2009-04-25 04:38:15
We all need audiophiles so we can laugh at their absurd comments.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-25 04:40:33
Quote
If attacking me gives you a thrill, well knock yourselves out. I really couldn't give a shit.

I'm actually still interested in picking your brain a bit, but whatever. This forum does have a feature whereby you can selectively ignore other users if you wish to filter out what you perceive to be "noise", so you might rather just utilize that instead of leaving. You can manage ignored users in your user control panel.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-04-25 04:40:35
I'm having too much fun doing what I do to get bogged down here....and I hear from too many people who have found what I write useful for them in their own quest for better sound and an improved musical experience to worry about what's said here....so buh bye! Now talk amongst yourselves...


Well, come back if you actually want to know how DBT tests are actually used, and what they are actually for, ok?

Hint: DBTests are not for determining one's preference. Well, not for most of us.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-25 04:51:31
So really, I'm not sure exactly what "standard" is being applied here except for the straightjacket of A/B/X testing. If spending your time doing A/B/X testing is what you like to do, knock yourself out.

WELCOME To HydrogenAudio.org! 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-04-25 04:54:34
Quote
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.

Now, here's the funny part: among the amps were some steely sounding solid state products including a Crown DC 300 and a very warm sounding VTL tube amp. It was quite easy to hear the difference between those. For one thing, they surely won't measure the same!

So the tube amps coloured (or put less charitably, distorted) the sound, for better or worse depending on taste, and the 5/5 and 4/5 results suggested thus. The question raised earlier on was whether SS amps could be tweaked to simulate tube distortion convincingly enough, but that's a different story.

Quote
What he heard though, absolutely sent him reeling. That's what's in the story. All I did was sit him down and play some tunes. He did the rest. He wanted to hear the high bit rate MP3 version of something I'd played on vinyl and we hooked his iPod player to my system and he heard just how degraded it was by comparison.....

Psychologically, in view of several decades of research into experimenter-induced bias, I'm afraid this doesn't constitute proof at all. Not to mention having to account for different vinyl/CD masterings, MP3 encoders, encoding settings, etc.

Quote
QUOTE (2Bdecided @ Apr 16 2009, 13:41) *
The photographs of that particular listening room are not impressive unless they misrepresent the reality - from what it looks like, I'd want the speakers much further away from the walls, and from everything else. The kind of early reflections I'd expect in that room would seriously damage the magical 3-d sound stage that's claimed to exist.

Cheers,
David.

...There's something incredibly condescending about your post...that you'd think that someone with 30 years of doing this wouldn't know how to deal with a first reflection. I mean really....

"Condescending"? Are we reading the same post, or are you trusting your subjective impressions as usual? (Besides, David R. devised Replaygain and has a doctorate in the field!)

Quote
In the case of that turntable, they obviously don't sell tens of thousands, nor does Ferrari every year. However, it is fabricated from cast magnesium alloy, which is both expensive and difficult to do and it was computer-modeled and designed by serious people, not hobbyists. The R&D cost was quite high. It uses components drawn from the American medical industry that are quite expensive. They do sell all they can make and they have sold far more than the expected to in the first few years. The mark up on exotic audio doesn't come close to watches, for example, but the usual distribution chain has a number of components, each of which gets a 40 to 50 point mark up. It's unfortunate but it's the only way it can work right now...value is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. And in the case of that turntable, made in Australia, in America, for example, they have a technician on call for service anywhere it's needed. The tech's full time job is instrumentation repairs for the military. He's a highly qualified tech. That costs money too. I find this site really

Puffy marketing-speak. See Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" and ask for what "computer-modeled", "designed by serious people, not hobbyists", "uses components drawn from the American medical industry", and "exotic audio" really mean. Just saying the tech works "for the military" (doing what?) doesn't mean anything in itself.

Quote
every field and/or hobby, there are enthusiasts...for cars, wine, watches, whatever. The greater the enthusiasm, the better in those fields. No one tries to "prove" all cars drive alike or "measure the same," yet when it comes to audio, there's this rear guard, as exemplified on this site, that spends it's time mocking enthusiasts, and reducing everything to a very low common denominator.

Apples and oranges. Audio testing is nothing like comparing cars or watches. It relies much more on subjective impressions, which rely on things (emotional state, anticipation, etc) that fluctuate wildly. Speaking of fluctuating wildly, you haven't answered why your review of the Pet Sounds reissue, also one of my favourite albums, changed so much.

Looking at human behaviour and history, we can all agree that humans are profoundly irrational beings who ought not trust our own selves too fully, and should always have some larger frame of reference with which to adjust our bearings. Not all "fields" are equally valid. No less a brain than Isaac Newton spent a few decades later in life exploring alchemy, only to conclude he'd wasted his time.

Quote
being "just as good." I see little value to that. It's taken us to a dead end. I predicted the CD would kill listening to music and I think I was correct. Most people don't listen anymore. We used to sit and listen to music as an activity. Now it's background or heard while doing other things. Why is that? I'd rather have that explored.

So many possible reasons for this. Hypercompression in CD mastering is an obvious one. Also, CDs are less tactile and listeners are less aware of the mechanical nature of playback: no 12" spinning disc, no reminder in the form of pops and clicks. Not to mention being able to play something uninterrupted for far longer than 20-25 min.

Quote
More importantly, when I put on a record, casually, people sit and listen. They close their eyes and drift into it. When I put on a CD, within a few minutes they fidget or they pick something up and look at it or they get up....why is that?

Because of your views, perhaps? They wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of, say, picking one of your many fruity epithets (not bad for a night's work!),
Quote
Thanks for posting a compendium of stupidity.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 05:06:56
Why people bother with compressed audio when storage is cheap


Not when 2-8 GB DAPs are the norm for most people. Both lossy and lossless have their place.

and broadband is fast, is a mystery.


Right , try streaming a lossless file, not everyone have broadband.

I'm having too much fun doing what I do to get bogged down here....and I hear from too many people who have found what I write useful for them in their own quest for better sound and an improved musical experience to worry about what's said here....so buh bye! Now talk amongst yourselves...


I was really looking froward to a civilized debate.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 05:10:29
I wasn't around in any meaningful capacity during the advent of the CD, though I don't doubt engineers probably sought ways to eradicate noise as best they could to exhibit the CD's (near) total lack of noise. Thankfully, the methods we use for noise reduction today are much more intelligent and far less damaging to high frequency information (when used appropriately), but I digress.


As I recall it, in the *early* days of CD, digital NR was virtually nonexistant.  It wasn't until the advent of CEDAR circa 1988 that digital NR began to be widespread -- usually on the first 'remasters' of the original CDs...which ironically were also touted as coming from lower-generation (presumably quieter) source tapes.

Now if, Fremer's saying some cruder means of NR was used from 1983 to the late 80s, it would be interesting to learn what he means, and what releases exemplified the practice.


Quote
...higher resolution digital sounds better than 16 bit/44.1K sampled digital.

I feel this is skirting TOS #8 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974#entry149481) (others may feel you're breaking #8 with this statement).


The least of his posts' problems   

Quote
I'm not anti-digital and CD technology has improved greatly...but i still think it's second rate compared to good vinyl...that's my opinion.

A fair opinion.


A 'fair' opinion? Nope, just sincere.  Unless Fremer has good evidence that Redbook *can't* transparently reproduce the output of *vinyl* playback, he's just blowing smoke.


Quote
The great recording engineer Robert Fine addressed the AES in the 1960s I believe and implored his fellow engineers to not accept a digital format unless and until it could sample 100K...I think he was correct.

Do you mean sample at 100 kHz or be able to retain audio information up 100 kHz? Do you recall what the reasoning was? (and is that still relevant today?)


It was forgivable speculation then, unforgivable science fiction now.  You gonna believe recording engineer Robert Fine in 1960, or DAC designer Dan Lavry in 2004? (http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pdf)


Quote
Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.

Well, given the nature of these conflicting stories, I can only assume that neither accounts are truly accurate...not that my "position" has any bearing on anything, of course.


The truth is that Fremer and Kruger have some history of mutual rancor--mostly online.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 05:33:07
High resolution digital is a huge improvement. Why people bother with compressed audio when storage is cheap and broadband is fast, is a mystery. It's some kind of dorky electronic 'conservationist' fetish I guess, like listening to vinyl---which for some reason that I understand quite well, is the only format to show any growth last year, particularly among young people...


Digital audio downloads --legal and otherwise -- outgrew vinyl by a wide margin.  (Hell, I wonder when downloads of vinyl needledrops will outpace number of LPs actually sold? I can see it happening soon, if it hasn't already) 

Physical formats are becoming a 'boutique' product.  And I have to wonder if today's young vinyl virgins will simply reiterate the cycle of vinyl-to-digital that their (grand)parents went through, as they get older....and vinyl stops being 'new' to them.

Quote
However, too many people here simply can't read: I have thousands of CDs that I listen to. I have every iPod ever invented. Yet no matter what I say, I am stereotyped as someone who "hates digital," or who "doesn't listen to digital," or whatever, by people who are happier to attack me for something I am not. Whatever.


It's fair to say you dismiss CD and lossy encodes and blind testing -- it's also fair to say you don't really understand any of them. At least based on what work I've read of yours over the years.

Quote
One of the most hilarious aspects of all of this (aside from the romper room mentality that's pervasive here among so-called rationalists) is that unlike video where there is a standard (the ATSC video standard to which all monitors are supposed to be adjusted), there is no audio standard. Every mixing room uses different speakers. Every engineer has his or her particular favorite speaker used for mixing. Every recording sounds different because just about every recording is mixed on a different system and there is no standard.


Actually, some of us are well aware of that...it's another problem with the hobby, along with the constant stream of drivel from the high-end.

Quote
So a video producer will be using a monitor that's been calibrated to the ATSC standard and hopefully one that can perform up to that standard. All monitors can be tested against that common standard. There's no such thing in audio. Mixing and mastering rooms use whatever speakers the mixers and mastering guys prefer. Results vary. So really, I'm not sure exactly what "standard" is being applied here except for the straightjacket of A/B/X testing. If spending your time doing A/B/X testing is what you like to do, knock yourself out.


How nice of you to provide more proof that you don't understand what you're talking about!  An ABX test is a test of difference.  The 'standards' in an ABX are A and B; the task is to identify X as either A or B  -- a binary decision, the answer is either 'right' or 'wrong'.  It's not with reference to some outside standard.  There are other tests for quality, not difference, that do employ a reference standard; they've been used here at HA to tune mp3 codecs, for example.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-25 05:36:30
As I recall it, in the *early* days of CD, digital NR was virtually nonexistant.

That was my thought as well.

A 'fair' opinion? Nope, just sincere.

Well, I might guess that it's "fair" if he's weighing in non-audio factors with his judgments. But doing so would be unfair given this discussion is revolving around audio performance and not non-audio-related preferences (e.g. vinyl tastes more analog). I couldn't quite tell what he was referring to specifically when he said he feels vinyl is a superior format.

Unless Fremer has good evidence that Redbook *can't* transparently reproduce the output of *vinyl* playback, he's just blowing smoke.

I asked him for such evidence mere moments before he had his change of heart about posting here. I asked B0RK for essentially the same evidence pages ago. Got nada. Surprising? Nah
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 05:43:41
Unless Fremer has good evidence that Redbook *can't* transparently reproduce the output of *vinyl* playback, he's just blowing smoke.

I asked him for such evidence mere moments before he had his change of heart about posting here. I asked B0RK for essentially the same evidence pages ago. Got nada. Surprising? Nah


To be honest it'd be tough test to set up.  But I don't even see an argument from principles.

(Wait, come to think of it, maybe I pitched him a whiffle ball with that one...he could have said 'HA! WHAT ABOUT A QUADROPHONIC LP CARRIER SIGNAL NEENER NEENER NEENER!" And that reminds that I'm actually impressed that he muted his usual recourse to ALL CAPS.)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Light-Fire on 2009-04-25 06:05:46
...John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Hydrogenaudio.org. The place on the web where all audiophiles come to submit themselves to the reality check of ABX.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2E7AH on 2009-04-25 06:18:14
[edit] Out of topic in almost private thread, sorry
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 07:18:15
The report on the debate at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/) includes a link to an MP3 of the debate between Mr. Krueger and myself,


Does anyone else find it ironic that for people who are so against lossy codecs that they are offering a mp3 for download on their site? I expected an old fashioned Shorten file. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 12:00:11
The people here who think reviews in Stereophile are just spouted opinions don't read the magazine and so don't understand it.

I understand the magazine, especially the most important thing ever written about the magazine:
Quote
Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. - J. Gordon Holt, Founder, Stereophile

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/)
When I write a review, I try to describe how something sounds, not whether or not I like it. Whether or not I like something is meaningless.

Whether or not you like the sound colours your opinion of the sound. Prove that it doesn't.
The point of a review is to give people an indication if something might be a product they would be interested in owning.

Why would they like the sound just because you do? Even if you happened to review the product accurately, by your own admission that won't leave a reader any wiser on if they will like the sound. You are essentially arguing that a good hi fi system sounds like whatever a particular person thinks a good hi fi system sounds like. Or as J. Gordon Holt wrote:
Quote
Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes.

If argument from authority is good enough for you, then I'm sure you'll let me use the same tactic.
Quote
Does anyone else find it ironic that for people who are so against lossy codecs that they are offering a mp3 for download on their site? I expected an old fashioned Shorten file.

But don't worry, I'm sure they have done spectral analysis of these MP3 files to ensure they produce interesting looking graphs. They are experts at it (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html) It is interesting how the reliance on graphs is seemingly used to create a quasi-scientific appearance of authority.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 12:38:01
The report on the debate at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/) includes a link to an MP3 of the debate between Mr. Krueger and myself,


Does anyone else find it ironic that for people who are so against lossy codecs that they are offering a mp3 for download on their site? I expected an old fashioned Shorten file. 


If you think that's amusing, you'll find it hilarious that, given that my magazine's name is _Stereo_phile, the recording of the debate is a _mono_ file. :-)

As for Stereophile being against lossy codecs, Colorado-based audiophiles can attend a series of demonstrations I am giving May 5, 6, & 7 comparing hi-rez recordings against Red Book and lossy versions. Details later this weekend on the www.stereophile.com home page.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-25 13:07:41
Yet no matter what I say, I am stereotyped as someone who "hates digital," or who "doesn't listen to digital," or whatever, by people who are happier to attack me for something I am not.


Unless you are claiming that you actually never had a "Compact Discs Suck" bumper sticker and you are recanting articles like this one: http://www.musicangle.com/feat.php?id=106 (http://www.musicangle.com/feat.php?id=106) then I would argue that you have stereotyped yourself.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 13:29:41
As for Stereophile being against lossy codecs, Colorado-based audiophiles can attend a series of demonstrations I am giving May 5, 6, & 7 comparing hi-rez recordings against Red Book and lossy versions. Details later this weekend on the www.stereophile.com home page.

Will you be judging the lossy files using graphs, or will you be using your ears during controlled tests?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 13:41:50
As for Stereophile being against lossy codecs, Colorado-based audiophiles can attend a series of demonstrations I am giving May 5, 6, & 7 comparing hi-rez recordings against Red Book and lossy versions. Details later this weekend on the www.stereophile.com home page.

Will you be judging the lossy files using graphs, or will you be using your ears during controlled tests?


Those aren' tthe only options. Read more closely - I used the word "demonstrations." I have a  series of files derived from the original hi-rez data, along the lines of Philip Hobbs' test described at http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1007awsi/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1007awsi/) . The downsampled, decimated, lossy compressed versions were all resampled to 24-bit/88.2kHz files, so the only substantive difference will be the coding. Allowing the people who attend my seminars to hear for themselves whether they can hear any differences and if so, what the magnitude of those differences might be, is one of the purposes of my public demonstrations.

I also have files prepared containing just the _differences_ between the lower-rez versions and the original, so listeners can hear what has been discarded by the various codecs. You may feel that use of a lossy codec is justifiable but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of what it is doing, surely?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 13:51:43
There are MP3 codecs I wouldn't even use for my answering machine. What encoder has been used?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: user on 2009-04-25 13:57:51
See footnote 1 at  :  http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html)

Footnote 1: Something I have rarely seen discussed is the fact is that because all compressed file formats, both lossless and lossy, effectively have zero data redundancy, they are much more vulnerable than uncompressed files to bit errors in transmission.


This is the most funny statement I have read recently from audiofools.
Who is the author of that story ?

John Atkinson !

He reveals great technical knowledge of the basics of maths, PC, audio

Unfortunately he is fooling his readers

What makes me sad, is, he recommends wav uncompressed over compression without losses (so called "Lossless") like FLAC etc.

Not only in this footnote, also above in the text:


So to us at Stereophile, the question of which lossy codec is "the best" is moot. We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC. These will be audibly transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music through all systems.


This is really sad to read.
it really shows null, zero understanding of technics, underlying simple maths or even usability of wav vs. FLAC.


So, Mr. John Atkinson plus Mr. Michael Fremer,
welcome in your world of fooling other people.

At some points, I am really still undecided, if you 2 believe yourself, what you write.
See the examples above


So, to bring some light into technics for Audiophiles (I count myself into this category, coming from the ancient Greek and Latin meanings):

FLAC offers tags, wav doesn't properly.
FLAC saves space, about 30% to 50% of the wav.
FLAC has no technical disadvantages, only advantages to wav.
FLAC stands as synonym for the other Lossles formats, but FLAC is the only one necessary, other Lossless formats are redundant, as Lossless  = Lossless = WAV = FLAC = APE = WAVPACK = ALAC = etc.

As you now see, there is no reason to prefer wav over FLAC.
Audiophiles do the opposite, Audiophiles prefer FLAC over wav for practical reasons.
In a proper system FLAC and wav will play identical sound quality,
in a borked bugged system like with faulty RAM,
both, FLAC and wav, would be bugged.
But that would be similar to vinyl playback at wrong speed, with a ton of dust on the vinyl,
or playback via CD-player with faulty electrics, so that sound gets muted, on and off..



For those listeners with some audio experience it is no question, that vinyl can sound simply great.
But the reason for this was already discussed lentghy here at HA !

Here at HA is the regular publication medium for Dr. David Robinson, inventor of ReplayGain, called 2Bdecided.
Replaygain is a value, which describes the average loudness of a song or an averaged loudness of a complete album.

The reason for modern CDs sounding worse than same new albums released on vinyl is so simple, read here at HA.
You will get to know that already by the replaygain values.
Point to: Loudness race/war.


But this is not the fault of the CD standard at 16 bit stereo, 44,1 kHz sampling.
The technical possibilites as medium to come the live experience of music as close as possible,
these possibilities are owned by the CD.
Depending on the producers....

Nevertheless, vinyl already offers great playback capabilites, but CD offers even more....






my personal footnote 1 to my texts:
Please excuse, if i should have simplified a bit in here,
but I needed to write about technical things that way, that Mr. John Atkinson and maybe even a Michael Fremer, have a little bit of chance, to grasp it.
Also it helps, that people outside of HA, get the points about those Audiofools writing about Lossless or any formats or devices at Stereophile.

2. ABX footnote as additional technical explanation:

A/B/X listening , as test methodoligy , helps to find out, if an individuum can separate between 2 test-setups, be it 2 different formats or 2 different devices like speakers or amps.
ABX can show/prove only, that there is a difference.
ABX might show, that there is no difference in generally, but ABX cannot prove with 100% certainty, that there is no difference at all, eg. for all listeners.
ABX cannot prove the absence of a difference, written more compact.

AB means: sighted comparison.

ABX means:
1. step AB sighted known comparison, to get familiar with (tiny/small) differences between test candidates A + B.
2. step X: hidden/Blinded comparison of X, which is either A or B. X can be tested/listened directly against A or B, to find out, if X is either A or B.
of course, a proper ABX test needs some thinking at beginning, and maybe help by 2nd or 3rd person and/or technical parts like switcher, foobar2000 etc.





footnote 3: the 1.000.000 challenge about audio cables for Michael Fremer

Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables, as long those are not totally corrupted towards the HiFi setup. (like dust on vinyl).
Unfortunately I recall an ugly conversation between Randi and Fremer, which had shown writing Fremer a lot of in CAPITALS and using some weird words, I did not understand as non-native English speaker.
The capitals did not appear here so many so far, or not so obvious, but I found again some words from Fremer, I wasn't able to grasp.
I cite, give citates:

Fremer:

The psychiatrist line was funny, I have to admit. However I have many in my family and their behavior leaves plenty to desire. As for shoving anything up one's ass, well you should know.

Sorry, I don't understand, shoving ass ?
is it anything audio related ?

THERE I GO AGAIN WITH THE CAR ANALOGIES...

oh, i excuse, there are the capitals. My sensitive ears, they hurt so easily when other shout...



I really couldn't give a shit. I'm outta here. Nice talking with some of you. However, some of you are really among the bitterest, arrogant, condescending assholes I've ever encountered online or anywhere else....

What's the meaning of those 2 words ?
some experts' vocabulary for HiFi or High-End audio ?
I cannot find them in my Oxford Dictionary of 1986.
Probably some new development.



My summary About Stereophile:

Maybe the knowledgeable Mr. Atkinson is the editor, because his ability to remember facts correctly, is better than Mr. Fremer's.

See: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=629517 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=629517)

QUOTE (analogcorner @ Apr 24 2009, 19:50) *
Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.


I don't believe so, Michael. It was David Clark aided by Tom Nousaine, if I remember correctly. Arny Krueger isn't an AES member and doesn't attend the conventions.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


But even the knowledgeable Mr. Atkinson wasn't good enough to describe some simple basic facts about digital audio (Lossless formats and wav) in an adequate way, see above in my post.
Misinformation instead.

I hope, both improve in their ways,
I recommend as start for reading my introduction tutorials into High Quality Audio at http://www.High-Quality.ch.vu (http://www.High-Quality.ch.vu) , preferably the Lossless guides at http://www.angelfire.com/magic2/hq-audio/tut-lossless.htm (http://www.angelfire.com/magic2/hq-audio/tut-lossless.htm)
if then anything is still unclear, read the hydrogenaudio wiki or explanations about special expert terms.
or ask me, or the knowledge group here at HA !



Edit:



I also have files prepared containing just the _differences_ between the lower-rez versions and the original, so listeners can hear what has been discarded by the various codecs. You may feel that use of a lossy codec is justifiable but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of what it is doing, surely?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Please,
Mr. Atkinson,
avoid this mistake of listening to difference of wav minus lossy.
At least from a little bit scientific informed people , you will get a laugh.
Listening the difference signals is a total  overamplifying of the lossy "mistakes" on purpose.
Carrying out such way, is against the construction of lossy compression, and does not make sense, simply.
If it would be used as demonstration for difference  original vs. wav, it would be like comparing oranges against lemons. 1 sweet, 1 extremely sour.
Every school boy knows, that oranges taste well, but lemons are quite sour.
No test or demo needed.

Just compare your 88.2 kHz 24 bit preprared stuff by "blinded" listening.
Comparing lossy by graphs or by difference signals, these methods are lame and out since , hm, more than 10 years ?




Just for the personal record,
in living room, I listen either to CD or to Lossless sourced CD copies, ie. also the original music, bits for bits, be them 16  bit, 24 bit or HDCD, or DVD-Audio, or SACD.
No lossy for my HiFi/living room.
I have 2 tasks for lossy mp3 encoded by Lame V5 (130 - 150 k vbr):
a) earphones listening during sports, running 1 hour in the woods or streets, USB-stick/SD-card with analogue output
b) car listening, source a)
here mp3 is fine enough,
both tasks have too much background noises, as that Lossless / original CD would offer more sound quality compared to good mp3.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: [JAZ] on 2009-04-25 14:26:26
The downsampled, decimated, lossy compressed versions were all resampled to 24-bit/88.2kHz files, so the only substantive difference will be the coding.

Sorry... what?  88khz 24bit -> 44Khz 16bit -> mp3 -> 88khz 24bits? And you say "the only difference will be the coding"?

I also have files prepared containing just the _differences_ between the lower-rez versions and the original, so listeners can hear what has been discarded by the various codecs. You may feel that use of a lossy codec is justifiable but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of what it is doing, surely?


Yes. this is the exact reason why it can't be considered serious. It is the equivalent of looking at graphs.
I will not explain you why, because I have already contributed in this thread once, just to be told wrong on a thing i was right.


@ Moderators, I think it is really time to close this thread. There have been too many wrongdoings, for both usual members and newcomers, but in the end, it has not provided any goodness at all, just a lengthly thread of such a quality that doesn't belong to hydrogenaudio.

Not only that, but I fully think that this thread is attacking at the bases of hydrogenaudio.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 14:38:22
As for Stereophile being against lossy codecs, Colorado-based audiophiles can attend a series of demonstrations I am giving May 5, 6, & 7 comparing hi-rez recordings against Red Book and lossy versions. Details later this weekend on the www.stereophile.com home page.

Will you be judging the lossy files using graphs, or will you be using your ears during controlled tests?

Those aren' tthe only options. Read more closely - I used the word "demonstrations."

Oh OK, you'll be doing uncontrolled tests. Whatever floats your boat.
The downsampled, decimated, lossy compressed versions were all resampled to 24-bit/88.2kHz files, so the only substantive difference will be the coding. Allowing the people who attend my seminars to hear for themselves whether they can hear any differences and if so, what the magnitude of those differences might be, is one of the purposes of my public demonstrations.

And the only way you can do this conclusively must be a double blind test - the founder of the magazine you edit says so.
I also have files prepared containing just the _differences_ between the lower-rez versions and the original, so listeners can hear what has been discarded by the various codecs.

This statement is just bizarre, and demonstrates you don't understand how lossy encoders work.  They are designed to take into account what sounds will be masked (and thus not audible) when the entire audio stream is played back. Performing tests that involve cancelling out parts of the audio to 'reveal' sonic artefacts isn't a real world test. It would be the same as a magazine publishing spectral graphs of lossy files, which seems to assume that people listen to the files with their eyes.

A lossy encoder BY DEFINITION removes parts of the audio that humans can't hear WHEN ALL OF THE AUDIO is being played back. That is part of how they achieve transparency, they take advantage of the fact human hearing has certain flaws and limitations that can be exploited. Sort of like how optical illusions exploit limitations in the ways our brains and eyes interact to produce visual perception.

But I accept that this would be a difficult thing to appreciate for people who don't think lossy encoders can ever be transparent BECAUSE they throw away parts of the signal (i.e. when an encoder is working properly, the parts humans can't hear). People of this ilk make unsubstantiated blanket statements such as "So to us at Stereophile, the question of which lossy codec is "the best" is moot."
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html)

I think the issue is that most audiophiles spend so much time building systems that will supposedly provide the most complete reproduction of a signal, that they can't fathom that human hearing can be tricked after removing a heap of signal that is never heard.
You may feel that use of a lossy codec is justifiable but that doesns't mean you shouldn't be aware of what it is doing, surely?

Where is Sterophile's complex understanding of how lossy encoders work? I mean something more sophisticated than the biased statement "The MP3 codec, and others that achieve similar reductions in file size, are "lossy"; ie, of necessity they eliminate some of the musical information. The degree of this degradation depends on the data rate. Less bits always equals less music. " (From the same link as above)

Have you published interviews with people who work on developing lossy codecs, or engineers and mathematicians that developed the principles that underpin how they work? Have you provided a mathematical explanation to your readers of what inverse discrete consine transformation does, or Huffman coding (shock horror, a LOSSLESS process!), or the use of sophisticated polyphase filtering, or what features AAC has that make it a technological progression beyond MP3, and how AAC fixes flaws that are common in (improperly encoded) MP3s?

Beyond these omissions, I think the worst thing is you write articles as if all versions of encoders are essentially the same. You think the FORMAT, e.g. MP3 or AAC or just the category "lossy" is more important than actual encoder. This is a tell-tale sign of people who are inherently biased against the capabilities of modern lossy encoders, because it assumes that all encoders of a format will produce the same quality.

So why don't you publish a report on the quality of as many different MP3 encoders as you can find from early implementations to the latest version of LAME (3.98.2)?  Or do you think that there haven't been any improvements to MP3 and other lossy encoders over the last 18+ years?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 14:48:37

The downsampled, decimated, lossy compressed versions were all resampled to 24-bit/88.2kHz files, so the only substantive difference will be the coding.

Sorry... what?  88khz 24bit -> 44Khz 16bit -> mp3 -> 88khz 24bits? And you say "the only difference will be the coding"?

What does it matter? He has already concluded that lossy files are all inherently flawed because "Less bits always equals less music (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html)." (My emphasis) so why would he even bother applying the same resampling to the lossless source file? I mean that would be kind of J. Gordon Holt principled and scientific like, Stereophile gave up on that in the 1970s.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 14:50:27

Not only that, but I fully think that this thread is attacking at the bases of hydrogenaudio.


Why? Fremer has shown in this thread, for everybody to read, that he cannot answer the simple question, why he requires his eyes for audio testing, with anything else than a childish car analogy. We should not underestimate our readers. They can surely differentiate without the mods' help how telling that is.

Whole cars can't be ABXed for obvious reasons, audio can, if you are just willing to. Fremer isn't and his reasons might be that he needs optical self deception to write the kind prose that he is bought for. His customers also enjoy their equipment with eyes and ears. But letting himself get involved into the latter makes him much more of a style guide than a trustable source about sound quality, even if he would not want to hear that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-04-25 15:00:32
I wonder how many people can hear differences between original hi-rez version and its downsampled (to 44.1/16) version.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 15:01:08
This statement is just bizarre, and demonstrates you don't understand how lossy encoders work.  They are designed to take into account what sounds will be masked (and thus not audible) when the entire audio stream is played back.


We should not bash everything they say, that makes HA look one sided. I have listened to difference files myself. It is just interesting to hear what's inside them, that should not be prohibited.

The sample rate conversion to 88.2 khz was also an attempt to increase objectivity and we shouldn't bash that just for the cause of it. An upsampling DAC doesn't do much else. 88.2 instead of 96 khz is also a sensible choice to keep SRC conversion artifacts as low as possible. From this side the test setup looks good and we should not bark at those points just because we might not trust the organizer.

There may be flaws (choice of dither, MP3 codec used, etc..) but we don't know that. When we do, we can bark. When they aren't disclosed we can bark, but just don't let us bark at everything.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 15:03:06
But letting into the latter makes him much more of a style guide than a trustable source about sound quality, even if he would not want to hear that.

What you're saying is he should be entitled to his own opinion (like everyone else) but not his own facts.

I think that is the issue here, the constant assertion that opinions (e.g. all MP3s sound bad, and can never be transparent) as if it is a fact is what is killing the audiophile industry, because if all opinions are facts, then why should we care what anyone writes about audio?

There is also the issue that new technologies have made better quality audio available at cheaper prices (e.g. the CD, and the transistor), but instead sections of audiophilia pretend that this inventions have only reduced sound quality. Or to have this point put another way:
Quote
John Atkinson (Stereophile Editor): As you were so committed to surround, do you feel that the commercial failures of DVD-Audio and SACD could have been avoided?

J. Gordon Holt (Stereophile Founder):  I doubt it. No audio product has ever succeeded because it was better, only because it was cheaper, smaller, or easier to use. Your generation of music lovers will probably be the last that even think about fidelity.

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/)

The blame for the decline of sound quality should be directed at some idiotic record producers, bands, and sell out mastering 'engineers' who have spent the last decade completely under utilising cutting edge analog, and more importantly, digital technologies. It has nothing to do with technologies themselves, which are as good as, if not far better than what was affordable for the average person 20 or 30 years ago.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 15:05:39
We should not bash everything they say, that makes HA look one sided. I have listened to difference files myself. It is just interesting to hear what's inside them, that should not be prohibited.

It may be interesting, but what can you definitively conclude from it? I propose nothing.
The sample rate conversion to 88.2 khz was also an attempt to increase objectivity and we shouldn't bash that just for the cause of it. An upsampling DAC doesn't do much else. 88.2 instead of 96 khz is also a sensible choice to keep SRC conversion artifacts as low as possible. From this side the test setup looks good and we should not bark at those points just because we might not trust the organizer.

Sure, but the point was if the MP3 is resampled, then the source file should be put through the same resampling routines too, else the experiment would be uncontrolled. (Are any differences attributable to the lossy encoding, or to the resampling, or to both?)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 15:13:15
Unlike most people who post here, I've had the *privilege* of meeting Michael Fremer in the flesh. Well sort of. This was in 2005.  After a few seconds in my presence, he started loudly screaming profanities about an ABX demo that some of my friends did at an AES meeting back in the very early 1990s.  His friends had to forcably restrain him and drag him out of the room.


  I am totally speechless. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at such ignorance.


Cry: you're believing a total liar. Krueger lied. No such encounter ever occurred.


Typical of the usual posturing we see from some people.

If I was a "total liar" then every statement I ever made would be false, and known to be false by me when I posted it.

I'll stand on just my posting record on HA - how many true, verifiable statements have I made here?

At least one, right? ;-)

If I've ever made any true statements at all, then the claim that I am a "total liar" has been falsified.

I suspect that even the person who claimed that I am a "total liar" knows that *everything* I say is not false.

Therefore he made a knowingly made a false statement. Technically he was lying.

Of course he didn't mean to lie - it was all just his usual hyperbole.  ;-)

The real problem with people like him is knowing when its hyperbole, and when it is something that you can "take to the bank".  :-(

If I say it without obvioius intent at humor, I would hope that you can take it to the bank.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 15:16:21
Sure, but the point was if the MP3 is resampled, then the source file should be put through the same resampling routines too, else the experiment would be uncontrolled. (Are any differences attributable to the lossy encoding, or to the resampling, or to both?)


They also upsample the Redbook PCM to 88.2 khz just like the MP3 as I read it, so that's fine. You cannot demand that high rez audio is resampled to Redbook and back first (it wouldn't be high rez anymore) if you want to compare MP3 to high rez.

I don't believe that a difference will be perceivable anyway for their choice of music, if the setup was 100% proper (choice of encoder, no truncation) and blind. Of course, having an admired Stereophile 'star' in your city who asks the audience "did you hear the difference, did you hear it? much more lively, wasn't it", a lot of people would hear a difference - no matter how proper the comparison was setup otherwise.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 15:20:04
I am not a psychiatrist. But people who spend their time counting other people's money can probably use one.


You heard it here. According to this post, *all* people who "who spend their time counting other people's money can probably use (a psychiatrist)"

So who counts other people's money?

Bank tellers
Other cashiers
Accountants
Criminal investigators
People who help blind people manage their personal affairs.
etc. etc.

So does the poster actually believe what he said?

Obviously not.

Obviously, he writes in the *Hyperbole* dialect of the English language! ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-04-25 15:21:05
They also upsample the Redbook PCM to 88.2 khz just like the MP3 as I read it, so that's fine. You cannot demand that high rez audio is resampled to Redbook and back first (it wouldn't be high rez anymore) if you want to compare MP3 to high rez.

So any test won't be able to explain if any differences are a result of the resolution or the lossy compression.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 15:24:02
Yes, else your supposed "high rez" would just be Redbook padded with zeroes.

PS I would have expected some heavier artillery than sophistry from Arnold. He must be tired today.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 15:56:56
There was an AES meeting back in the early '90s and an ABX test of amplifiers. I was involved because I claimed that the idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance and I told David Clark to produce an ABX test and I'd be happy to take it.


So far so good.

Let's review for a second exactly what a relevant ABX test is or would be in the context presented above.

(1) An ABX test is an open-ended event where people can compare two different things (A & B) by means of a third unknown thing (X) which is one of the two,  as many times as they want to. They are forced to summarize their judgements as one decision as to the identity of X  which is called a "trial". The comparison process is repeated as required  to obtain a sufficient number of trials.

(2) An ABX test is composed of as many trials as is established before the first trial. The number of trials has to be sufficient that the usual statistical tests do not run afoul of the problems related to a small number of samples. The traditional number of trials is on the order of 16. 5 or 6 trials is always totally inadedequate for a serious test. Nothing of importance or reliability can logically be determined from such a small number of trials.

(3) Obviously, it would take far more than one comparision of just  two amplifiers to provide compelling evidence related to such a large issue as "the idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance".

(4) Any such comparison needs to be done under conditions that are far more favorable to the performance of the listener.  5-6 trials done with  stone cold listeners who had no opportuinty for listener familiarization and training, in a conference room at an AES convention is just a demonstration, and not a proper test.


Quote
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct.


Based on what I know about ABX testing (and I'm merely the inventor of ABX ;-) )  There never was any such ABX test.  Whatever happened, based on the best evidence available to me, was a demonstration of what an ABX test might be like.

End of story.

This is BTW, the information that I tried to convey to Mr. Fremer at HE2005, and it is my best recollection of what I said or partially said that provoked his regrettable outburst. I do not know if he heard me say any or all of the above, due to his outburst.

I presume that his denials of my account of his actions are in their way not lies, because he was obviously way too distressed at the time to have an accurate recollection of what really happened.

My recollection is that I was pretty much alone in the room when this happened, other than Fremer and anybody who might have walked in with him. I think it was well before the debate. I'm pretty sure that the person who posts here as krabapple was not present.

Ordinarily, an important  issue such as  "The idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance" would involve more than two amplifiers, more than two listeners, and more than 5 or 6 trials.

Considerable evidence related to the above question are presented quite clearly in the Stereo Review article that has been linked to out of this thread. If others wish to assert that they are actually just as sincere and energetic in their intentions to help resolve this quesiton, one would think that sometime in the past 15 or more years since the SR article, they would have done an equal amount of similar work of their own and published the same. In fact they have spent their time posturing against any kind of reliable subjective testing efforts. They have even questioned the applicability of science as we know it.

Note that there are more ways to scientifically study this question than just ABX. So, I'm not promoting ABX at all.

I would be happy to work as I have the resources to serve, to help anybody who was seriously interested in the above issue, gather such evidence as they would wish to gather in a scientific way. I believe that my behind the scenes support for many persons who have made publications and presenations related to this question, the 8 years of operation of the now-departed www.pcabx.com web site, and my posts on HA are consistent with and demonstrations of the reality of my desires along those lines.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 16:12:01
See footnote 1 at  :  http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index.html)

Footnote 1: Something I have rarely seen discussed is the fact is that because all compressed file formats, both lossless and lossy, effectively have zero data redundancy, they are much more vulnerable than uncompressed files to bit errors in transmission.


This is the most funny statement I have read recently from audiofools.
Who is the author of that story ?

John Atkinson !

He reveals great technical knowledge of the basics of maths, PC, audio

Unfortunately he is fooling his readers

What makes me sad, is, he recommends wav uncompressed over compression without losses (so called "Lossless") like FLAC etc.

Not only in this footnote, also above in the text:


So to us at Stereophile, the question of which lossy codec is "the best" is moot. We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC. These will be audibly transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music through all systems.


This is really sad to read.
it really shows null, zero understanding of technics, underlying simple maths or even usability of wav vs. FLAC.


I would be prone to call the rather grotesque misapprehension embodied above, a simple ignorant mistake.

Of course you are absolutely right that  compressed (lossy or losless) are no more susceptible to transmission errors than uncompressed files.

Let me count the (most obvioius) ways that Atkinson is oh, so wrong.

(1) The compressed file is shorter. Error processes being mostly random, will therefore add fewer errors to less data.

(2) The compressed file is more likely to be noticably degraded by any errors that take place.

(3) The process of expanding the file may do additional validity checking and again be more revealing of any errors that take place.

Of course it is too bad that there is insufficient technical fact checking at Stereophile to keep embarassing stuff like this from getting published.

As many of us know, if there was adequate technical fact checking at Stereophile, he magazine's content would have to undergo a rather significant and potentially financially disasterous change.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 16:22:36
PS I would have expected some heavier artillery than sophistry from Arnold. He must be tired today.


What would constittue "heavy artillery"?

I may have some, I'm just warming up! ;-)

Atrkinson and Fremer are zillions of words ahead of me on this topic, so far...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 16:34:34
Yet no matter what I say, I am stereotyped as someone who "hates digital," or who "doesn't listen to digital," or whatever, by people who are happier to attack me for something I am not.


Unless you are claiming that you actually never had a "Compact Discs Suck" bumper sticker and you are recanting articles like this one: http://www.musicangle.com/feat.php?id=106 (http://www.musicangle.com/feat.php?id=106) then I would argue that you have stereotyped yourself.



That bumper sticker was on my car in the early 1980s when compact discs did suck. They sounded awful. The transfers from analog were uniformly poorly done from questionable sources with overuse of CEDAR and Sonic Solutions. So called DDD discs actually went through multiple D/A A/D conversions since there were no digital mixing boards. Many factors contributed to what was awful sound. Those who called that sound "pristine" and a "big advancement" were wrong. History has proven me correct as virtually the entire catalog of what had been issued back then has been reissued using better sources, better associated gear, especially better converters and fewer attempts at lopping off the top end along with supposedly offensive tape hiss.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 16:54:15
What would constittue "heavy artillery"?


I don't know. I just thought that you might be really pissed after all what they have said about you last night. But it really may be the right strategy to keep the ball low. Just politely tacking them down to central inconsistencies can unveil much more than endless battles about details and personal attacks. It's really an enrichment for HA that they come here to defend themselves instead of us having to argue with zealots as B0RK. I really thought Fremer is a total nut until he showed up here personally!

They don't sell a perspective that many around here would buy, myself included. It's not scientific and it's not suitable to make objectively verifiable statements about the sound (and only sound) of audio gear. But as I understand it now, their world has much more inner consistency than I had thought before. These are sane people. Their subjective approach is so extreme, that I really don't think that they would call anything they do objective even in the slightest sense (they might not admit that in public). Their world is a huge circus to love and celebrate music. It doesn't matter a shit if unit A is really objectively better than unit B, it's a preposterous question in their world. They fill audio gear, even from our point of view idiotic things as cables, with life and story and that alone can make a huge actually perceivable difference for their followers.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 17:01:41
There was an AES meeting back in the early '90s and an ABX test of amplifiers. I was involved because I claimed that the idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance and I told David Clark to produce an ABX test and I'd be happy to take it.


So far so good.

Let's review for a second exactly what a relevant ABX test is or would be in the context presented above.

(1) An ABX test is an open-ended event where people can compare two different things (A & B) by means of a third unknown thing (X) which is one of the two,  as many times as they want to. They are forced to summarize their judgements as one decision as to the identity of X  which is called a "trial". The comparison process is repeated as required  to obtain a sufficient number of trials.

(2) An ABX test is composed of as many trials as is established before the first trial. The number of trials has to be sufficient that the usual statistical tests do not run afoul of the problems related to a small number of samples. The traditional number of trials is on the order of 16. 5 or 6 trials is always totally inadedequate for a serious test. Nothing of importance or reliability can logically be determined from such a small number of trials.

(3) Obviously, it would take far more than one comparision of just  two amplifiers to provide compelling evidence related to such a large issue as "the idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance".

(4) Any such comparison needs to be done under conditions that are far more favorable to the performance of the listener.  5-6 trials done with  stone cold listeners who had no opportuinty for listener familiarization and training, in a conference room at an AES convention is just a demonstration, and not a proper test.


Quote
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct.


Based on what I know about ABX testing (and I'm merely the inventor of ABX ;-) )  There never was any such ABX test.  Whatever happened, based on the best evidence available to me, was a demonstration of what an ABX test might be like.

End of story.

This is BTW, the information that I tried to convey to Mr. Fremer at HE2005, and it is my best recollection of what I said or partially said that provoked his regrettable outburst. I do not know if he heard me say any or all of the above, due to his outburst.

I presume that his denials of my account of his actions are in their way not lies, because he was obviously way too distressed at the time to have an accurate recollection of what really happened.

My recollection is that I was pretty much alone in the room when this happened, other than Fremer and anybody who might have walked in with him. I think it was well before the debate. I'm pretty sure that the person who posts here as krabapple was not present.

Ordinarily, an important  issue such as  "The idea that all amplifiers sound alike, or pretty much alike (that measure the same) is kind of foolish, since we really don't measure every aspect of performance" would involve more than two amplifiers, more than two listeners, and more than 5 or 6 trials.

Considerable evidence related to the above question are presented quite clearly in the Stereo Review article that has been linked to out of this thread. If others wish to assert that they are actually just as sincere and energetic in their intentions to help resolve this quesiton, one would think that sometime in the past 15 or more years since the SR article, they would have done an equal amount of similar work of their own and published the same. In fact they have spent their time posturing against any kind of reliable subjective testing efforts. They have even questioned the applicability of science as we know it.

Note that there are more ways to scientifically study this question than just ABX. So, I'm not promoting ABX at all.

I would be happy to work as I have the resources to serve, to help anybody who was seriously interested in the above issue, gather such evidence as they would wish to gather in a scientific way. I believe that my behind the scenes support for many persons who have made publications and presenations related to this question, the 8 years of operation of the now-departed www.pcabx.com web site, and my posts on HA are consistent with and demonstrations of the reality of my desires along those lines.


Oy vay. First of all, this useless blather above is absurd. It's not on subject. It's a smokescreen. As I recall it, I ran into David Clark at a CES. I told him I disagreed with his contention regarding amplifiers sounding alike. He challenged me to a blind test. Whatever the hell you want to call the test I didn't set it up. Others did. As agreed to the challenge, I took the test, along with dozens of other AES attendees. The amplifiers used sounded very different from one another, which is why I got all five identifications correct. I was challenged. I took the test set up by others. I passed it 100%. That's what I know. For my efforts I was declared a "lucky coin" and dismissed. Now that pissed me off. I had been "set up" because had I gotten it all wrong, it would have been used as "proof" against me. I failed. But having succeeded the only thing to do was to A)Dismiss me as a "lucky coin," and B) Declare the test not really valid..never mind that I didn't set it up, though it was, of course a 'set-up.' Of course I was pissed. I'd been conned and set up. Had I failed, we all know what the result would have been. But having passed the test, the results were dismissed! What a con job!

One thing that can be said about that test, whatever you want to call it, is that 5 very different sounding amplifiers could not be reliably identified by a statistically significant percentage of the participants. That tells me, that that particular test, and I'd say this kind of test generally (though that's just my supposition) produced statistically insignificant results, not because "it all sounds the same," but because the test is not necessarily a valid way to to evaluate the sonic performance of audio gear.

At the very least, there was something wrong with that test, since the test takers--mostly recording engineers-- couldn't identify what clearly were 5 very different sounding amplifiers. My conclusion is that these kinds of tests produce confusion and performance anxiety that masks obvious differences for inexperienced test takers.

BTW: one more point: aside from getting that test 100% correct, and doing very well in a series of Floyd Toole designed speaker identification blind tests at Harman's factory, there was an interesting cable blind test run by The Wall Street Journal's Portals columnist Lee Gomes that you can read here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1200446920...main_promo_left (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120044692027492991.html.html?mod=technology_main_promo_left)

Gomes took a room at "The Show" (a parasitic audio show that runs concurrent to CES) where he haphazardly set up two identical, modest systems with only the speakers visible. He put a sign on the window asking for volunteers to take an admittedly non-scientific blind test. I took it along with others. Gomes didn't say what the test was about but he intimated that it was a comparison of either an iPod versus a CD player, or redbook versus MP3.. (in fact he run a number of different tests).in any case, it was obvious to me that the two systems sounded very different and one sounded better than the other, though both sounded pretty poor compared to what I was used to.  When it was over I told him I was puzzled because it didn't sound like an iPod versus CD player test or a redbook versus MP3 test......he then took me around back to show me that in fact, it was a cable test---a comparison of, hardware store cable (14 gauge lamp cord I think) versus Monster cable. I preferred the Monster Cable, which sounded much better....

So now, let the angry, bitter, petty, infantile name calling and sniping begin! The more it's done here, the more entertained I am.






Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 17:18:48
[
footnote 3: the 1.000.000 challenge about audio cables for Michael Fremer

Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables, as long those are not totally corrupted towards the HiFi setup. (like dust on vinyl).
Unfortunately I recall an ugly conversation between Randi and Fremer, which had shown writing Fremer a lot of in CAPITALS and using some weird words, I did not understand as non-native English speaker.
The capitals did not appear here so many so far, or not so obvious, but I found again some words from Fremer, I wasn't able to grasp.
I cite, give citates:


Randi is a con artist. I agreed to take his challenge and we began setting up the parameters. The whole thing came about because of a review or some Pear cables in, I believe, Positive Feedback, that were described as "danceable"---not a descriptor I would ever use... Pear at first agreed to supply the cables, and then they backed out. However, in the interim I offered him a choice of some other very expensive cables and he said he'd check with his people to see if they were acceptable. Then Pear backed out. They emailed to tell me. I told them to contact Mr. Randi directly and tell him, which they did. The next morning I went to Randi's site where he'd written a nasty post claiming I had backed out and that I was a fraud (etc.), when in fact I had not backed out but was negotiating in good faith to set the test parameters and cables used. So I posted for all to see, the emails between Randi and myself, with the dates. At that point even Randi's most fervent cult followers could see his bad behavior. A few even called him on it and Randi was left to defend himself. Do you know what he did? He actually posted a picture of his hospital band and claimed that he had to go to the emergency room because he was sick and that prevented him from attending to the web site....of course he did manage to lie about our emails and to accuse me of pulling out of the challenge and of being a "fraud" when in fact NONE of that was true. Now, maybe you would continue to associate with someone like this, but not I.

I have not been to Randi's site in some time and have no desire to go there, but I will give "user" the benefit of the doubt and assume that Randi has removed the pertinent parts of the thread wherein I explained all of this, and that he left up the parts that make me look 'bad' because I don't like being accused of being a "fraud" by someone who actually is one---and that is the reason "user" has chosen to post here only about my CAPITAL offense.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: analogcorner on 2009-04-25 17:27:29

Not only that, but I fully think that this thread is attacking at the bases of hydrogenaudio.


Why? Fremer has shown in this thread, for everybody to read, that he cannot answer the simple question, why he requires his eyes for audio testing, with anything else than a childish car analogy. We should not underestimate our readers. They can surely differentiate without the mods' help how telling that is.

Whole cars can't be ABXed for obvious reasons, audio can, if you are just willing to. Fremer isn't and his reasons might be that he needs optical self deception to write the kind prose that he is bought for. His customers also enjoy their equipment with eyes and ears. But letting himself get involved into the latter makes him much more of a style guide than a trustable source about sound quality, even if he would not want to hear that.


The car analogy was an obvious joke that was clearly beyond your 'childish' lack of a sense of humor. You may characterize me as a 'style guide' or whatever. I've been doing this for twenty years and have an excellent track record for being a 'trustable source about sound quality' around the world, though of course your answer will be that I've "duped" all of these people. I really couldn't care less what you think.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-25 17:38:12
They don't sell a perspective that many around here would buy, myself included. It's not scientific and it's not suitable to make objectively verifiable statements about the sound (and only sound) of audio gear. But as I understand it now, their world has much more inner consistency than I had thought before. These are sane people. Their subjective approach is so extreme, that I really don't think that they would call anything they do objective even in the slightest sense (they might not admit that in public). Their world is a huge circus to love and celebrate music. It doesn't matter a shit if unit A is really objectively better than unit B, it's a preposterous question in their world. They fill audio gear, even from our POV idiotic things like cables, with life and story and that alone can be a huge actually perceivable enjoyment for their followers.

How is this sane:
One thing that can be said about that test, whatever you want to call it, is that 5 very different sounding amplifiers could not be reliably identified by a statistically significant percentage of the participants. That tells me, that that particular test, and I'd say this kind of test generally (though that's just my supposition) produced statistically insignificant results, not because "it all sounds the same," but because the test is not necessarily a valid way to to evaluate the sonic performance of audio gear.

At the very least, there was something wrong with that test, since the test takers--mostly recording engineers-- couldn't identify what clearly were 5 very different sounding amplifiers. My conclusion is that these kinds of tests produce confusion and performance anxiety that masks obvious differences for inexperienced test takers.

1) I think there are huge differences.
2) The results of the test conclude there are not huge differences.
3) Therefore the test must be wrong, because I think there are huge differences.


I'm sorry but that is not sane at all. That is the epitome of egotistical, illogical thinking.

[edit] I should mention that he does at least provide a rationale, although according to a study done by Sean Olive (http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2008/12/loudspeaker-preferences-of-trained.html) (done about ABC/HR) it's not a very good one.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 17:47:38
 Well stated point!

However, it is not an insane position to lack a completely consistent world view. Empirical studies show that nearly 100% of us don't. I have also never read a philosophical work that would qualify for that.

It can still be sane and even consistent to tangle up logical reasoning as you have just demonstrated to protect your cause or because your followers' main priority is something else than logical consistency. Peoples' heads don't always work like formal logic. Just look around. The world would else be a totally different one.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 18:23:21
One thing that can be said about that test, whatever you want to call it, is that 5 very different sounding amplifiers could not be reliably identified by a statistically significant percentage of the participants. That tells me, that that particular test, and I'd say this kind of test generally (though that's just my supposition) produced statistically insignificant results, not because "it all sounds the same," but because the test is not necessarily a valid way to to evaluate the sonic performance of audio gear.


How are we to know that the 5 amplifiers you mentioned do indeed sound "very different"?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 19:29:42


Yes. this is the exact reason why it can't be considered serious. It is the equivalent of looking at graphs.
I will not explain you why, because I have already contributed in this thread once, just to be told wrong on a thing i was right.

@ Moderators, I think it is really time to close this thread. There have been too many wrongdoings, for both usual members and newcomers, but in the end, it has not provided any goodness at all, just a lengthly thread of such a quality that doesn't belong to hydrogenaudio.


No, moderators, please don't.  Let the Stereophile folk keep demonstrating their 'expertise' in lossy and lossless codecs, and how to perform valid 'demonstrations'.  It could be a valuable teaching tool for future reference: a case study in officially sanctioned audiophoolery.

Quote
Not only that, but I fully think that this thread is attacking at the bases of hydrogenaudio.



So?  The 'bases' of HA are more than strong enough to handle such 'attacks'.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-25 19:39:15
The car analogy was an obvious joke that was clearly beyond your 'childish' lack of a sense of humor.


Maybe I got so tired of waiting for an actual answer to a simple question that I missed an obvious joke.

So please, don't duck away from this one. Why is blind testing no standard procedure in your lab? Why do you insist on being allowed to use your eyes to judge sound?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 19:40:59
My recollection is that I was pretty much alone in the room when this happened, other than Fremer and anybody who might have walked in with him. I think it was well before the debate. I'm pretty sure that the person who posts here as krabapple was not present.



If the fracas happened well before the debate, I certainly wasn't there.  I was likely still marveling at exhibition tables offering CD player tweaks ;>

(Not to say the whole convention was flooby...there were some wonderful demos going on too...amidst a few  too many just-OK sounding demos consisting of very expensive, gear in small, hot, acoustically troubled rooms packed with sweaty, paunchy old audiophiles.)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 19:43:39
The truth is that Fremer and Kruger have some history of mutual rancor--mostly online.


My memory is not perfect, but I recall zero instances of directly communicating with Fremer, other than the single HE2005 instance.

Of course aliases and sockpuppets are as opaque to me as anybody else. I have long suspected that some SP employees have posted  things online under various aliases, but I have no relaible evidence to back that up.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 19:46:21
I can't say what happened afterwards between AK and MF from personal witness, as I was mainly talking to Tom Nousaine at the other end of the large-ish room.  I did introduce myself to Arny at some point, and do recall MF being in the vicinity then, and later hearing some audience buzz about 'words' having been exchanged between him and MF, but if a physical brawl almost broke out, it was a pretty local and well-damped one ;>


Fremer was restrained by one or more associates from approaching me closely.  What some might call one-sided assault but no battery.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-25 19:49:01
That bumper sticker was on my car in the early 1980s when compact discs did suck. They sounded awful. The transfers from analog were uniformly poorly done from questionable sources with overuse of CEDAR and Sonic Solutions.


NoNoise didn't debut until 1987, and CEDAR until 1988.

[movie voiceover] IN A WORLD where 1987 is the 'early 80s',  everything sounds different if you believe it does. [/movie voiceover]

Quote
So called DDD discs actually went through multiple D/A A/D conversions since there were no digital mixing boards.


And amusingly,  at the time, some 'audio engineers' were saying they purposely put their work through analog stages to add some 'warmth'.  Some still do today.

Quote
Many factors contributed to what was awful sound. Those who called that sound "pristine" and a "big advancement" were wrong.


Actually, when done right, it was pristine and a big advancement.  Also *fucking awesome*. Which is perhaps why classical music recording professionals, for whom arguably sound 'matters' most,  pushed for digital , and embraced digital when it arrived, and haven't looked back.

Quote
History has proven me correct as virtually the entire catalog of what had been issued back then has been reissued using better sources, better associated gear, especially better converters and fewer attempts at lopping off the top end along with supposedly offensive tape hiss.


But even by your own testimony, it wasn't "CD' that was the problem, Mr. Fremer.  Would you have sported a bumper sticker saying 'LPs suck' based on, say, fake stereo releases of the Beatles catalog rushed into print in the 1960s?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 20:02:21
Krueger was at the AES where I got the 5/5 identifications correct. That part is true....that's the only part.


I don't believe so, Michael. It was David Clark aided by Tom Nousaine, if I remember correctly.


That agrees with what I remember. Just another example of Fremer's flawed memory. Stress does that to people.

Quote
Arny Krueger isn't an AES member and doesn't attend the conventions.


I am not currently an AES member, and wasn't one in 1995, but that is irrelevant. I was an AES member earlier, but I dropped it when I lost a lot of my interest in audio.  Non-members can attend AES exhibits and presentations.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-25 20:09:09
That bumper sticker was on my car in the early 1980s when compact discs did suck. They sounded awful. The transfers from analog were uniformly poorly done from questionable sources with overuse of CEDAR and Sonic Solutions. So called DDD discs actually went through multiple D/A A/D conversions since there were no digital mixing boards. Many factors contributed to what was awful sound. Those who called that sound "pristine" and a "big advancement" were wrong. History has proven me correct as virtually the entire catalog of what had been issued back then has been reissued using better sources, better associated gear, especially better converters and fewer attempts at lopping off the top end along with supposedly offensive tape hiss.


You were sitting at the ground floor of a technology that would ultimately bring revolutionary change to the entire popular entertainment business and all you could do was go racing home and slap on a reactionary bumper sticker inciting a crusade against that technology.  You couldn't see the upside or the potential, just the things that you perceived as problems.  I suppose it's a good thing that you weren't hanging out in Thomas Edison's lab or in Steve Jobs' garage.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-04-25 21:18:52
No, moderators, please don't.  Let the Stereophile folk keep demonstrating their 'expertise' in lossy and lossless codecs, and how to perform valid 'demonstrations'.  It could be a valuable teaching tool for future reference: a case study in officially sanctioned audiophoolery.


The strange thing is, they seen to think they're actually scoring points here!?!?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-25 21:55:31
(trying to bring some science into this discussion)

To Mr. Atkinson and all others thinking of doing a comparison test à la "high-res vs. MP3":

I think you should produce the MP3 files from 24-bit, 44-kHz downsampled files. IIRC, it is possible to encode/decode from/to such files with LAME. After all, the QMF and MDCT filterbanks used for MP3 coding/decoding are typically operating in floating-point precision, so it's a reasonable thing to feed the encoder with the highest possible word length, and to get the highest possible word length out of the decoder. Otherwise, you would be comparing to the high-res original not only the effects of down-/upsampling and lossy coding, but also the distortion effects caused by truncation to 16 bit (yes, most PC decoders I know of truncate their output to 16 bit). The latter distortion effects can be audible when the playback volume is high enough. So in short:

- Downsample to 24-bit/44.1-kHz
- Encode, e.g. with Lame
- Decode to 24-bit/44.1-kHz
- Upsample to 24-bit/whatever sampling rate your original high-res file has.

Chris
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 22:00:40
The strange thing is, they seen to think they're actually scoring points here!?!?


Yawn, I am seriously being underwhelmed here. I was really looking forward to a vigourous debate, but all I have seen so far is that ridiculous car analogy and the repetition of the "I am an expert" mantra.

I have to agree with Gag Halfrunt that at least John Atkinson is trying.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-25 22:09:31
The strange thing is, they seen to think they're actually scoring points here!?!?


That's a little unfair. John Atkinson is at least trying. Realistically, he's doubly damned:

If he mentions double-blind ABX tests in a positive light, his readers start calling for his head on a platter
If he doesn't, HA members do the same

We're not his readership so he doesn't need to be here, especially as this is about as unfriendly a place he can possible post his viewpoint. I don't see him trying to score points, at most he's trying to present and justify something he really doesn't stand a chance of justifying here. I would guess he's smart enough to know that, too. And yet, he's posting.

Even though I don't agree with his methodology and question the results they deliver, I respect him for that.

Of course, if he'd try and apply something more than 'scienciness' to find a way to back up the claims made in his magazine, I'd respect him a whole lot more...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 22:19:13
This statement is just bizarre, and demonstrates you don't understand how lossy encoders work.  They are designed to take into account what sounds will be masked (and thus not audible) when the entire audio stream is played back.


We should not bash everything they say, that makes HA look one sided. I have listened to difference files myself. It is just interesting to hear what's inside them, that should not be prohibited.


Of course. It is interesting with these files, not only to audition the character of what is removed by various codecs but also the level of the difference signal.  I fail to see why my doing so in these demonstrations should be "prohibited."  :-)

Quote
The sample rate conversion to 88.2 khz was also an attempt to increase objectivity and we shouldn't bash that just for the cause of it.


If you don't resample back to the original bit depth and sample rate, you are introducing an additional variable in the performance of the replay DAC and reconstruction filter at different sample rates. If all you wish to examine is the effect of the codec, you _must_ eliminate that variable. Basic application of Scientific Method, I would have thought. Obviously some others disagree.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 22:21:53
No, moderators, please don't.  Let the Stereophile folk keep demonstrating their 'expertise' in lossy and lossless codecs, and how to perform valid 'demonstrations'.  It could be a valuable teaching tool for future reference: a case study in officially sanctioned audiophoolery.


The strange thing is, they seen to think they're actually scoring points here!?!?


Really? I haven't posted anything that is equivalent to my thinking that. I can't help thinking your imagination is running a little wild, however. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 22:27:43
I can't say what happened afterwards between AK and MF from personal witness, as I was mainly talking to Tom Nousaine at the other end of the large-ish room.  I did introduce myself to Arny at some point, and do recall MF being in the vicinity then, and later hearing some audience buzz about 'words' having been exchanged between him and MF, but if a physical brawl almost broke out, it was a pretty local and well-damped one ;>


Fremer was restrained by one or more associates from approaching me closely.  What some might call one-sided assault but no battery.


No, this is not correct, Mr. Krueger. You were on the podium, behind the table as shown in the photographs at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/); Michael was on the floor. Both of you ended up shouting but no-one had to be restrained. Your statement in the original posting that "[Michael's] friends had to forceably restrain him and drag him out of the room" is a false memory on your part.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-04-25 22:33:03
No, moderators, please don't.  Let the Stereophile folk keep demonstrating their 'expertise' in lossy and lossless codecs, and how to perform valid 'demonstrations'.  It could be a valuable teaching tool for future reference: a case study in officially sanctioned audiophoolery.


The strange thing is, they seen to think they're actually scoring points here!?!?


Really? I haven't posted anything that is equivalent to my thinking that. I can't help thinking your imagination is running a little wild, however. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Might be guilty of lumping the "audiophile" posts together.

.... you don't drive a Ferrari, do you?

 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 22:34:13
I think you should produce the MP3 files from 24-bit, 44-kHz downsampled files. IIRC, it is possible to encode/decode from/to such files with LAME.


I did consider that, but decided against it because, to the best of my knowledge commercial MP3 files are almost universally mastered from the 16-bit CD master. I am demonstrating _typical_ differences that might be heard from the lossy codecs under normal circumstances.

I'd be glad to talk in person to any Hydrogen Audio members who turn up to the Colorado dems. And I will also be playing what I think are some excellent-sounding recordings.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 22:37:45
No, moderators, please don't.  Let the Stereophile folk keep demonstrating their 'expertise' in lossy and lossless codecs, and how to perform valid 'demonstrations'.  It could be a valuable teaching tool for future reference: a case study in officially sanctioned audiophoolery.


The strange thing is, they seen to think they're actually scoring points here!?!?


Really? I haven't posted anything that is equivalent to my thinking that. I can't help thinking your imagination is running a little wild, however. :-)


Might be guilty of lumping the "audiophile" posts together.


Might be the case.

Quote
.... you don't drive a Ferrari, do you?



Sadly no, but having once driven a friend's, I do feel any Ferrari is useless for hauling audio components around :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-25 22:46:32
Of course aliases and sockpuppets are as opaque to me as anybody else. I have long suspected that some SP employees have posted  things online under various aliases, but I have no relaible evidence to back that up.


Not only do you not have any evidence for this specious claim, Mr. Krueger, when you made the same claim on Usenet, you were repeatedly assured that all of Stereophile's writers post to public forums using their own names or, as in this forum, under screen names that reveal their identity. There is one exception, in that the writer Tom Gillett posts under his nom-de-plume "Sam Tellig," which he adopted 25 years ago for professional reasons.

If you have no evidence for your suspicion, Mr. Mr. Krueger, than you should refrain from expressing it on a public forum, partualrlty as it was recenrly revealed that you_ have been posting under sockpuppet aliases to Usenet newsgroups :-).
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-25 22:49:20
If you think that's amusing, you'll find it hilarious that, given that my magazine's name is _Stereo_phile, the recording of the debate is a _mono_ file. :-)




As for Stereophile being against lossy codecs, Colorado-based audiophiles can attend a series of demonstrations I am giving May 5, 6, & 7 comparing hi-rez recordings against Red Book and lossy versions. Details later this weekend on the www.stereophile.com home page.


I was just going by what Mr. Fremer wrote. It is nice to see this. I hope it is not just a sighted test. Also, why limit the lossy versions to mp3 and not include some more modern codecs such as Ogg Vorbis and AAC?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-25 22:55:52
I fail to see why my doing so in these demonstrations should be "prohibited."

But is there a logical reason for doing so?

In other words, what exactly is the point? Surely we aren't to believe it's going to be done purely for educational purposes, John.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-25 23:48:11
That bumper sticker was on my car in the early 1980s when compact discs did suck.


Ignores the fact that even in the initial release of CDs, there were many fine-sounding examples. I bought one of the first CD players sold in my area, and I took advantage of many business trips to browse the rather limited collections of CDs that were for sale in he early days. Ironically, I found an amazing collections in Bismark, North Dakota, as well in as more predictable locations like downtown Chicago.

Quote
They sounded awful.


I don't know why anybody would say that. By modern standards, the general run of recordings was hit-or-miss, whether LP or CD. Since the LP format added the well known technical problems of the format, as well as the production and quality control problems in many pressing plants, CDs early on became the more uniformly-enjoyable product. 

The miserable quality of the general run of work in US pressing plants was driven home to me by a late-60's year in Europe, all expenses paid by Uncle Sam. ;-) I actually re-bought a number of favorite LPs on the strength of the improved sonics of European pressing and mastering.

Quote
The transfers from analog were uniformly poorly done


While mistakes were made, there was also a lot of good work done right up front.

Quote
from questionable sources with overuse of CEDAR and Sonic Solutions.


This claim about CEDAR has already been falsified.

Furthermore, many analog tape masters were already subjectively noise-free as-is because Dolby A had been in use for  a decade or more if memory serves.

Quote
So called DDD discs actually went through multiple D/A A/D conversions since there were no digital mixing boards.


This is also false as a generality, and its not the problem that some would make it out to be, since a quality SS analog mixing boards can easily have more than 96 dB dynamic range.

By the late 80s and early 90s, even semi-pro mixing boards (e.g. Mackies) had more than 96 dB dynamic range.

Most DDD discs were minimal-miced, so no mixing board was required.


Quote
Many factors contributed to what was awful sound.


Denies the well-known fact among non-digiphobes that there was a lot of good or better sound on CDs from the outset.

Quote
Those who called that sound "pristine" and a "big advancement" were wrong.


With TOS 8 sitting here before us, how were these people wrong?

Quote
History has proven me correct as virtually the entire catalog of what had been issued back then has been reissued using better sources, better associated gear, especially better converters and fewer attempts at lopping off the top end along with supposedly offensive tape hiss.


What history has shown is that the CD was the most successful introduction of a new audio format in history up until the introduction of the DVD. The CD quickly sent the LP and cassette formats packing.

In fact I know of no early recordings that show evidence of atttempts of lopping off the top end. Titles and catalog numbers please.

Many of us bemoan the sound quality of many  reissues because they were degraded, often by excessive dynamics compression. In some cases resissues have had other added-on sonic defects like reverb.

Those of us who have original CD recordings from the early-mid 80s still treasure them, because they are in fact very clean, uncompressed, and have some of the widest dynamic range and strong upper octaves ever heard. Compared to the gundgy LPs that went before them, they were strong breaths of fresh air.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 01:22:48
Of course aliases and sockpuppets are as opaque to me as anybody else. I have long suspected that some SP employees have posted  things online under various aliases, but I have no relaible evidence to back that up.


Not only do you not have any evidence for this specious claim, Mr. Krueger, when you made the same claim on Usenet, you were repeatedly assured that all of Stereophile's writers post to public forums using their own names or, as in this forum, under screen names that reveal their identity. There is one exception, in that the writer Tom Gillett posts under his nom-de-plume "Sam Tellig," which he adopted 25 years ago for professional reasons.


Just shows how naive you are, John. If one of your employees were posting from his own computer using an alias that was unknown to you, how would you know?

Quote
If you have no evidence for your suspicion, Mr. Mr. Krueger, than you should refrain from expressing it on a public forum, partualrlty as it was recenrly revealed that you_ have been posting under sockpuppet aliases to Usenet newsgroups :-).


I know of no such revelations. If you have any evidence John, then you should meet the standard that you try you hold me to, and provide it forthwith. I have from time to time posted from google instead of my usual newsgroup provider, but there was no effort to conceal that those posts were from me.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-26 01:35:38
If you have no evidence for your suspicion, Mr. Mr. Krueger, than you should refrain from expressing it on a public forum, partualrlty as it was recenrly revealed that you_ have been posting under sockpuppet aliases to Usenet newsgroups :-).
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
With all due respect, his suspicion has a large engaging sort of soundstage and the warm, full midrange that only someone who has many years of examining suspicions could appreciate.  We could never possibly see the entire picture of factors which go into examining such suspicion, and you should therefore withhold your skepticism.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 01:36:49
I can't say what happened afterwards between AK and MF from personal witness, as I was mainly talking to Tom Nousaine at the other end of the large-ish room.  I did introduce myself to Arny at some point, and do recall MF being in the vicinity then, and later hearing some audience buzz about 'words' having been exchanged between him and MF, but if a physical brawl almost broke out, it was a pretty local and well-damped one ;>


Fremer was restrained by one or more associates from approaching me closely.  What some might call one-sided assault but no battery.


No, this is not correct, Mr. Krueger. You were on the podium, behind the table as shown in the photographs at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/); Michael was on the floor.


Of course John you want  everybody to believe that Michael and I were frozen in the locations shown in that photograph from well before the debate until well after.

Just like you want everybody to believe that if one of your writers were posting using an alias that was unknown to you, he would report it to you immediately.

Funny John, I didn't smell fresh cabbage or truck exhaust when I met you at HE2005. ;-)

Let the record show that I really don't recall that much about the Fremer HE2005 incident but what I recently posted, and Michael being hustled away while he was shouting the F-word repeatedly in a very loud voice.  I can't remember the exact way he phrased his usage of the F-word except that it was clear that it somehow was directed towards me. Being a hetrosexual in a long term committed relationship, I was not the least bit pleased by the repeated declarations of his sexual intentions towards me. ;-)

Needless to say I was quite releaved by Michael's recent admission that he is not psychiatrist. He behavior at HE2005 was quite unprofessional by the standards of any number of professions including medicine. Apparently it did not affect his repuation as a writer but of course we all know about writers... ;-)



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 01:45:23
Yawn, I am seriously being underwhelmed here. I was really looking forward to a vigourous debate, but all I have seen so far is that ridiculous car analogy and the repetition of the "I am an expert" mantra.


What we see before us pretty much follows the behavior of Atkinson on Usenet. I don't recall having seen him post anything opn Usenet that was actually about audio for years. He got his &^%!! kicked by Nousaine and I many times quite a few years back on RAO and RAHE, and apparently learned his lesson.

Fremer has actually posted a little about audio here, but people are quickly figuring out that he's actually posting a treatise about his ignorance of just about any topic in audio he has written about.

This supports my general belief that most golden ears say what they do out of ignorance and inabilty to comprehend relatively simple techical topics in audio, not any a priori desire to be dishonest.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 02:04:42
Of course aliases and sockpuppets are as opaque to me as anybody else. I have long suspected that some SP employees have posted  things online under various aliases, but I have no relaible evidence to back that up.


Not only do you not have any evidence for this specious claim, Mr. Krueger, when you made the same claim on Usenet, you were repeatedly assured that all of Stereophile's writers post to public forums using their own names or, as in this forum, under screen names that reveal their identity. There is one exception, in that the writer Tom Gillett posts under his nom-de-plume "Sam Tellig," which he adopted 25 years ago for professional reasons.


Just shows how naive you are, John. If one of your employees were posting from his own computer using an alias that was unknown to you, how would you know?


Because as the person who pays them, I have asked them outright, Mr. Krueger. They have responded, truthfully I fully believe, that they only post under their own names, not as sockpuppets. If such trust in my employees makes me "naive" by your standards, Mr. Krueger, that is something I am fully content to live with.  As you said, you have no evidence to support your specious claim; you'd be wise to leave the subject alone, surely.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 02:16:19
I can't say what happened afterwards between AK and MF from personal witness, as I was mainly talking to Tom Nousaine at the other end of the large-ish room.  I did introduce myself to Arny at some point, and do recall MF being in the vicinity then, and later hearing some audience buzz about 'words' having been exchanged between him and MF, but if a physical brawl almost broke out, it was a pretty local and well-damped one ;>


Fremer was restrained by one or more associates from approaching me closely.  What some might call one-sided assault but no battery.


No, this is not correct, Mr. Krueger. You were on the podium, behind the table as shown in the photographs at http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/); Michael was on the floor.


Of course John you want  everybody to believe that Michael and I were frozen in the locations shown in that photograph from well before the debate until well after.


No-one said anything about "well before" to "well after," Mr. Krueger. The photos merely show where you were when you were shouting at Michael and he was shouting back at you. As you know, I was spooling microphone cables and packing up my recording gear so had a grandstand view of the argument. The point was that, contrary to your assertion, no-one had to "forceably restrain" Michael or even you :-)

Quote
Just like you want everybody to believe that if one of your writers were posting using an alias that was unknown to you, he would report it to you immediately.


If I ask a direct question, it is my experience that I get a truthful response from those I employ. If your experience is different, either as employer or as employeee, than that is unfortunate, of course.

Quote
Let the record show that I really don't recall that much about the Fremer HE2005 incident but what I recently posted...


I do believe that your memory is faulty, Mr. Krueger.

Quote
and Michael being hustled away while he was shouting the F-word repeatedly in a very loud voice.  I can't remember the exact way he phrased his usage of the F-word except that it was clear that it somehow was directed towards me. Being a hetrosexual in a long term committed relationship, I was not the least bit pleased by the repeated declarations of his sexual intentions towards me. ;-)


Perhaps you would have done well to have left well enough alone, Mr. Krueger. :-)

But I am puzzled that the moderating team allow you so much latitude. As it says in Hydrogen Audio's "Terms of Service,"

"2. All members, at the staff's discretion, must converse in an acceptable fashion to be allowed the privilege of continued participation."

I am not sure if the personal comments you direct toward Michael or me qualify as "acceptable," Mr. Krueger. Oh well. First Amendment and all that.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-26 02:32:33
This statement is just bizarre, and demonstrates you don't understand how lossy encoders work.  They are designed to take into account what sounds will be masked (and thus not audible) when the entire audio stream is played back.


We should not bash everything they say, that makes HA look one sided. I have listened to difference files myself. It is just interesting to hear what's inside them, that should not be prohibited.


Of course. It is interesting with these files, not only to audition the character of what is removed by various codecs but also the level of the difference signal.  I fail to see why my doing so in these demonstrations should be "prohibited."  :-)


But *of course* mp3s aren't bit-identical to their source and *of course* there can be audible content in the difference file.  You could also horrify them by showing waveforms of an mp3 versus lossless.

And then when you've got them gasping and shaking their heads in dismay, you *do* plan to explain what perceptual encoding *means*, right?  Which is to say, why the differences you hear in isolation, and see on graphs, can be perceptually *irrelevant* to what the mp3 sounds like? And why DBT would be *necessary* to determine if a given listener can actually hear the difference?
 
If you don't, you're misleading and misinforming your public...and that would be *shameful*.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-26 02:42:53
I think you should produce the MP3 files from 24-bit, 44-kHz downsampled files. IIRC, it is possible to encode/decode from/to such files with LAME.


I did consider that, but decided against it because, to the best of my knowledge commercial MP3 files are almost universally mastered from the 16-bit CD master. I am demonstrating _typical_ differences that might be heard from the lossy codecs under normal circumstances.



 

And to what do you plan to ascribe these differences?  If you performed a similar demonstration of 'normal' pop or rock LPs bought circa 1978, at random from your local Sam Goody, would you present that as demonstration the capabilities of the format? 

I doubt it.  So I must assume you also plan to explain what to look for when shopping for commercial MP3s, and how easy it is for audio hobbyists to create their own first-rate mp3s from CDs, demonstrating that deficiencies you may find in the 'commercial MP3 files', aren't necessarily inherent to the format? 

Otherwise....shameful

So, what encoder and settings and source CDs *are * you planning to use in the interests of mimicking 'commercial MP3 files'?  And may I presume that the very idea of having the demonstration be performed with blind and level-matching controls in place,  is *right out*?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 11:22:58
Quote
They have responded, truthfully I fully believe,


Many people tell me that their pastor at church responded truthfully, and they fully believe.

Call me crazy, but I'm more comfortable believing in God than Michael Fremer. Billions of people agree with me. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-26 13:20:19
If you don't, you're misleading and misinforming your public...and that would be *shameful*.


You know, my number one beef with Atkinson, Fremer and others like them is not that they have their quirky little hobby or that they spend buckets of money on their gear and an absurd amount of time tracking down obscure issues of music they've all ready been listening to for decades, it is that they give BAD ADVICE to people and send them on unnecessary wild goose chases.  I am not much of a techy.  I don't claim to know very much about sampling rates or how lossy compression actually works and so forth.  I've learned a bit, but a lot of the threads here still sail way over my head.  I consider myself fairly representative of the layperson/end consumer music junkie who mainly just wants things to turn on when I push "on", turn off when I push "off" and to sound decent in between.  If those three objectives are accomplished then I'm pretty happy.  My bottom line is that if I had gone to Atkinson prior to ripping my music and setting up my iPod then I would have gotten this line ( http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/ (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/) ) "MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening."  Maybe that's his opinion and he obviously has lots of fancy graphs to back it up, but does it really hold water?  Is it based on sound reasoning? 

I came here for advice and I was told that I should:  1. Strongly consider ripping to lossless so that my music is 100% future-proof, I never have to rip the discs again, and I can always transcode to any lossy or lossless format I want down the line.  2.  Do a series of ABX tests in order to determine the point at which I could no longer distinguish lossy files from lossless files.  3.  Make lossy files from my lossless files at that bitrate, load up my iPod with those and rock out.  If I had been told to just rip everything at 128kbps CBR and toss the CDs then I'd have been wary, but this seemed like a very prudent, sensible and objective approach that was far preferable to someone pontificating from on high "Thou shalt rip thusly." 

I followed the advice I got here as close to the letter as I could, was suitably humbled by the ABX tests, and I am sitting here today beyond thrilled with the results which are nearly 600GBs worth of ALAC and a 120GB Classic stuffed with over 1700 CDs worth of music in AAC at a level of quality that my ears, which are pretty decent, are unable to distinguish from my lossless files and about 7GB left over for new additions.  If I had gone to Atkinson then I'd have ALAC or  (Ack!) Wav in the iPod instead and I'd be stuck spending a fairly large amount of time glued to the computer every week swapping out music and making new playlists instead of simply being able to grab my iPod with my full library on it and just go.  I think it is safe to say that I would not be nearly as satisfied if I had followed Atkinson's approach and I would like to ask Atkinson the following:  If I am unable to distinguish the sound I hear from the lossy files that inhabit my iPod and make up my iTunes library from my lossless files then in what way do these lossy files "...not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening."?  I assure you that I take my music and my listening thereof quite seriously.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-26 13:53:28
I couldn't agree more.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-26 14:56:10
My bottom line is that if I had gone to Atkinson prior to ripping my music and setting up my iPod then I would have gotten this line ( http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/ (http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/) ) "MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening."

*sigh* Time for science again. Mr. Atkinson, this is exactly what I was talking about. From the above URL regarding Figure 2:

Quote
However, a picket fence of very-low-level vertical lines can be seen. These represent spurious tones that result, I suspect, from mathematical limitations in the codec.

No, they are not limitations in the codec. They are are a limitation of the particular decoder used. The spurious tones are the harmonic distortion you get when letting an MP3 decoder output to 16 bit by simply rounding the floating-point data. They would be completely gone when you decode to 16 bits with dither. LAME developers, maybe you should add a decoder option to dither before outputting to 16 bits so that the audiophile community has one less thing to worry about. IIRC, Winamp and foobar can dither MP3 decodes.

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Like the skirts that flank the 1kHz tone, these will not be audible. But they do reveal that the codec is working hard even with this most simple of signals.

From my audio coding engineer's point of view, very tonal sounds belong to the most difficult sounds to code, especially for MP3. The skirts that flank the 1-kHz tone are due to the QMF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_mirror_filter) in MP3. There is no QMF in AAC, hence there is much less smearing of the tones at low levels.

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Both MP3 and AAC introduce fairly large changes in the measured spectra, even at the highest rate of 320kbps.

Regarding AAC at 320 kbps, I completely disagree with your conclusion. In the range below 17 kHz, the maximum distortion level is -110 dB. That's on the order of the distortion the best D/A-converter+amplifier+loudspeaker configuration can achieve.

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Given the bigger bit budget at 320kbps, the AAC codec produces a result that may well be indistinguishable from CD for some listeners some of the time with some music.

I have never heard of a person being able to repeatedly distinguish a 320-kbps AAC encoded stationary signal from its original, especially if the signal is like the one shown in Figures 4 - 8. If there is, please let me know. He/she will surely be of help in improving the quality of today's audio coders.

Chris

P.S.: Mr. Atkinson, it's "Fraunhofer", not "Fraunhöfer"
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 15:26:51

It is interesting with these files, not only to audition the character of what is removed by various codecs but also the level of the difference signal.  I fail to see why my doing so in these demonstrations should be "prohibited."  :-)


But *of course* mp3s aren't bit-identical to their source and *of course* there can be audible content in the difference file.


Correct. And I believe people who don't have the facilities to prepare such files for themselves should be able to experience them. Surely an informed listener is a better listener?

Quote
And then when you've got them gasping and shaking their heads in dismay, you *do* plan to explain what perceptual encoding *means*, right?  Which is to say, why the differences you hear in isolation, and see on graphs, can be perceptually *irrelevant* to what the mp3 sounds like? And why DBT would be *necessary* to determine if a given listener can actually hear the difference?
 
If you don't, you're misleading and misinforming your public...and that would be *shameful*.


You seem very ready to argue by projection, "krabapple." Why wouldn't I explain what perceptual coding is and why it can be useful under some circumstances? Why wouldn't I allow people to hear MP3s at various bitrates and the equivalent Red Book and hi-rez versions?  Even if they can't perceive any difference between any of the versions I play them, again, an informed listener is a better listener.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 15:40:33
I think you should produce the MP3 files from 24-bit, 44-kHz downsampled files. IIRC, it is possible to encode/decode from/to such files with LAME.


I did consider that, but decided against it because, to the best of my knowledge commercial MP3 files are almost universally mastered from the 16-bit CD master. I am demonstrating _typical_ differences that might be heard from the lossy codecs under normal circumstances.



 

And to what do you plan to ascribe these differences?  If you performed a similar demonstration of 'normal' pop or rock LPs bought circa 1978, at random from your local Sam Goody, would you present that as demonstration the capabilities of the format? 

I doubt it.


Again you argue by projection, "krabapple."

Quote
So I must assume you also plan to explain what to look for when shopping for commercial MP3s, and how easy it is for audio hobbyists to create their own first-rate mp3s from CDs, demonstrating that deficiencies you may find in the 'commercial MP3 files', aren't necessarily inherent to the format?


Not at all. As I write in an article quoted elsewhere in this thread, I don't regard lossy-compressed files as appropriate for serious listening, particularly when lossless compression is easy and convenient and hard-drive space is ridiculously cheap. My standing advice for use of lossy compression for use on space-limited iPods is to encode at 320kpbs AAC. But even that will not be transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music, which is what I deem necesary for "serious" listening. My opinion. YMMV, of course.

Quote
Otherwise....shameful.


Oh dear. That would be _terrible_ :-)

Quote
So, what encoder and settings and source CDs *are * you planning to use in the interests of mimicking 'commercial MP3 files'?  And may I presume that the very idea of having the demonstration be performed with blind and level-matching controls in place,  is *right out*?


Of course these comparisons will be level-matched. Why wouldn't they be? But given that these demonstrations are open to the public there may by up to 20 people in the listening room, a formal DBT is out of the question. And please note that, as I keep saying, these are demonstrations, not tests. There will be no scoring of listeners' preferences. As I have said, I am only interested in exposing listeners to the the various formats. This is so that they can decide for themselves whether a) hi-rez formats are necessary, b)  whether CD is good enough for serious listening, and c) whether the lossy versions are sonically compromised or not. Who could argue that that would be a bad or, in your emotionally loaded term, a "shameful" thing.

As I have said, Hydrogen Audio members who live in Colorado are welcome to attend one of these sessions and debate this subect in person.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 15:58:57
John Atkinson stated:
Quote
They have responded, truthfully I fully believe...


Many people tell me that their pastor at church responded truthfully, and they fully believe.

Call me crazy, but I'm more comfortable believing in God than Michael Fremer. Billions of people agree with me. ;-)


It looks as if you are confusing the different usages "I believe..." and "I beleve in..." Mr. Krueger. But your raising of your belief in God raises an interesting point.

Hydrogen Audio appears, by its charter, to be a community of logical positivists in that something that cannot be proved through experiment to exist must be assumed not to exist. (Forgive me, moderators, if this paraphrase is not sufficiently nuanced.) Arny Krueger has long adopted this position on Usenet and on this forum, condemning those, like me, who describe our perceptions as being deluded. Yet in the past day on this forum, Arny Krueger has twice declared that he believes in something for which no evidence exists and that cannot be tested by experiment: 1) his belief in something called "God," and 2) his belief that, despite his own admission that there is _no_ evidence for them having done so, he believes that Stereophile's writers disguise their identities when posting to on-line forums/fora.

Surely this behavior is what he so antagonistically accuses others of? Doesn't this make Mr Krueger the subjectivist in this thread, the one who holds on to beliefs despite the lack of evidence?

By contrast, if you examine my postings in this thread, I have kept to facts or made it clear when I am expressing an opinion. And unlike Mr. Krueger, I have not been reduced to hurling personal insults.

As my friend James Johnston once observed in another forum, an unreasonable advocate for a reasonable position harms, not helps that position. I believe JJ's label should pinned on you, Mr. Krueger. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 16:01:09
Mr. Atkinson, it's "Fraunhofer", not "Fraunhöfer"


Thank you for the correction.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Light-Fire on 2009-04-26 16:27:39
...a formal DBT is out of the question...
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Do you guys ever perform a double blind test for any reason?

Why do you avoid it?

A double blind test would eliminate the placebo effect from your comparisons and reveal the truth.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 16:50:39
...a formal DBT is out of the question...


Do you guys ever perform a double blind test for any reason?


Of course. I took part in my first blind test in the spring of 1977, and must have been involved in over 100 since then, using all kinds of methodologies including the original ABX box.

Quote
Why do you avoid it?


I haven't overall, but yes, we perform them very infrequently in review listening. If this bothers you, then please do not read my magazine. You won't offend me by not doing so. :-)

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A double blind test would eliminate the placebo effect from your comparisons and reveal the truth.


Not really. I assume you mean by the "truth" you mean null results. But you can't draw a general conclusion from a set of null results, only that under the specific circumstances of that test, no difference could be detected to a predetermined degree of statistical confidence.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-26 17:01:19
My standing advice for use of lossy compression for use on space-limited iPods is to encode at 320kpbs AAC.


Geez, I wonder how many tracks people with a 2 GB DAP can put on their device at that bitrate. 

But even that will not be transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music, which is what I deem necesary for "serious" listening.


Please backup your claims with some ABX test results that you can actually hear a difference or are you too afraid that your precious ego will be destroyed?

My opinion. YMMV, of course.


Of course this is an opinion not backed by any DBT hard data. This is all hyperbole until I see some ABX results.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-26 17:17:26
Quote
A double blind test would eliminate the placebo effect from your comparisons and reveal the truth.


Not really. I assume you mean by the "truth" you mean null results. But you can't draw a general conclusion from a set of null results, only that under the specific circumstances of that test, no difference could be detected to a predetermined degree of statistical confidence.


"...Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel "

--- Gordon Holt, founder of Stereophile magazine

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


cpchan
Field Agent, Bureau of Scientific Investigations 

I feel like I am in a episode of the X-Files, investigating voodoo!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-26 17:18:50
It looks as if you are confusing the different usages "I believe..." and "I beleve in..." Mr. Krueger. But your raising of your belief in God raises an interesting point.

Hydrogen Audio appears, by its charter, to be a community of logical positivists in that something that cannot be proved through experiment to exist must be assumed not to exist.


As someone working on their Master's of Divinity at a evangelical institution, I assure you that your stereotype is incorrect. You can read my reasons for a lack of personal conflict here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70950&view=findpost&p=626501).

That said, it certainly doesn't do anyone wishing to study audio scientifically any favors to compare audio to religion; you're just giving the other side more meaningless cannon fodder.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 17:25:27
Hydrogen Audio appears, by its charter, to be a community of logical positivists in that something that cannot be proved through experiment to exist must be assumed not to exist.


As someone working on their Master's of Divinity at a evangelical institution, I assure you that your stereotype is incorrect.
You can read my reasons for a lack of person conflict here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70950&view=findpost&p=626501).


I will certainly check what you wrote.

Quote
That said, it certainly doesn't do anyone wishing to study audio scientifically any favors to compare audio to religion; you're just giving the other side more meaningless cannon fodder.


Perhaps you didn't read my posting carefully enough. I didn't compare audio to religion. I stated that Mr. Krueger is arguing about non-audio-related behavior of others based on beliefs that are not based on physical evidence. I find that strange behavior in someone who subscribes to this group.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: /mnt on 2009-04-26 17:31:11
My standing advice for use of lossy compression for use on space-limited iPods is to encode at 320kbps AAC.


320kbps is pretty steep for flash based players such as the iPod Nano, iPod Touch and mobile phones that can play AAC files. Anyway the average person with untrained ears is likely to find that a 175 kbps VBR AAC file to be transparent most of the time.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-26 17:41:44
Perhaps you didn't read my posting carefully enough.
Ah, I actually misunderstood Arny's stance on the matter.


I didn't compare audio to religion. I stated that Mr. Krueger is arguing about non-audio-related behavior of others based on beliefs that are not based on physical evidence. I find that strange behavior in someone who subscribes to this group.

Ah. You're working the same argument I thought you were only you're coming at it backwards. 

No, just because you believe in God doesn't mean that you necessarily must reject any methodology or conclusion loosely related to science. There's quite a few fundamentalist in this world that would like you to think that, but such an idea is the most obvious kind of non sequitur.

[edit]fixed spelling
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 17:50:41
My standing advice for use of lossy compression for use on space-limited iPods is to encode at 320kpbs AAC.


Geez, I wonder how many tracks people with a 2 GB DAP can put on their device at that bitrate. 


I think to fair to assume that someone who is not prepared to pay for more than 2GB of storage will accept some tradeoff in sound quality. Where each of us decides to balance sound quality against storage requirements is a personal choice. For myself, I choose lossless or no compression for serious listening ie, at home, and either lossless or AAC at 320kbps for portable use, depending on how temporary that music's residence on my iPod will be. Why do I have to answer to someone else for those preferences?

But even that will not be transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music, which is what I deem necessary for "serious" listening.


Quote
Please backup your claims with some ABX test results that you can actually hear a difference...


Why do I have to? I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.

From my reading of the literature and my discussions with some of the engineers involved in designing lossy codecs, audible transparency does not appear to be the goal. Instead, it is that a lossy codec be undetectable enough of the time with enough listeners with enough kinds of program that it will be appropriate for use in circumstances where storage space or transmission bandwidth is at a premium.

Quote
or are you too afraid that your precious ego will be destroyed?


I fail to see what you think is achieved by descending to personal remarks. Your opinion and presumably your experiences are different from mine, is all.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-26 17:51:07
Not at all. As I write in an article quoted elsewhere in this thread, I don't regard lossy-compressed files as appropriate for serious listening, particularly when lossless compression is easy and convenient and hard-drive space is ridiculously cheap. My standing advice for use of lossy compression for use on space-limited iPods is to encode at 320kpbs AAC. But even that will not be transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music, which is what I deem necesary for "serious" listening. My opinion. YMMV, of course.


Why have "standard advice" at all?  Why not, you know, consider the needs of the person doing the asking?  A lot of the time it seems to me that when hardcore audiophile types give "advice" they are really just taking the the opportunity to show off, ramble on about their gear, their collection or their real/imagined knowledge and not making a sincere effort to do right by the questioner.  I had a coworker a couple of weeks ago who had still been listening to portable music on a cassette Walkman which died and she had gotten an 8GB Nano to replace it.  She asked me how to import her music.  I knew she wasn't excessively concerned with sound quality, wasn't a huge music junkie the way I am, wasn't technically inclined or terribly into computers and definitely wouldn't be interested in mucking around with bitrates, ABX and so forth.  An approach like the one I took recently would be a horrible choice for her though it has turned out to be perfect for me.  I just explained to her how to set up iTunes, rip the songs she wanted with checks, make playlists, sync up the iPod and told her that she would most likely be just fine with the default 128kbps AAC settings.  She's happy, not bogged down with jargon and arcane audiophilia and she likes the iPod much better than the Walkman. 

Anyway, I'll ask you one more time:  If I can't tell the difference between an AAC file ripped to my iPod at a bitrate determined by ABX testing and a lossless file then in what way, precisely, is the AAC file not appropriate for serious listening?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-26 18:05:51
From my reading of the literature and my discussions with some of the engineers involved in designing lossy codecs, audible transparency does not appear to be the goal. Instead, it is that a lossy codec be undetectable enough of the time with enough listeners with enough kinds of program that it will be appropriate for use in circumstances where storage space or transmission bandwidth is at a premium.


True. However it should be perceptionally transparent at a high enough bitrate. If not, then it is failure of the codec- this is why they are constantly tuned for problematic samples. The point is, can you hear the difference? This is what ABX is for.

I fail to see what you think is achieved by descending to personal remarks. Your opinion and presumably your experiences are different from mine, is all.


You posted on this board. You agreed to TOS #8:

8. All members that put forth a statement concerning subjective sound quality, must -- to the best of their ability -- provide objective support for their claims. Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR) demonstrating that the member can discern a difference perceptually, together with a test sample to allow others to reproduce their findings. Graphs, non-blind listening tests, waveform difference comparisons, and so on, are not acceptable means of providing support.

I am not being condescending here. You just refuse to prove to us that you can actually hear a different with ABX testing. The only reason that I can think of for this refusal is that you are afraid that you can't hear a difference.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on  Gordon Holt's remarks?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Dracaena on 2009-04-26 19:04:37
It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.

I am a bit puzzled by this comment. If a given 16bit/44.1KHz LPCM encoding of a particular source material was indeed non-transparent, and an mp3 was made from the 16bit/44KHz LPCM encoding rather than the source, then an assumption that the mp3 would also not be transparent to the source would be correct.
But if the 16bit/44.1KHz LPCM is the source material, as is the case for the vast majority of currently available music, how can it not be totally transparent with itself? If the source was something other than 16bit/44.1KHz LPCM, then any information or test results about 16bit/44.1KHz LPCM are irrelevant to discussions about an mp3 encoding of the source, and one cannot make any assumptions about mp3 based on them.

As far as I can tell:
* you seem content with 16bit/44KHz LPCM for serious listening
* you are not content with mp3 for serious listening, because it is not transparent to all people, all of the time, for all types of material
* you do not feel the need to perform tests to acertain whether or not mp3 is transparent to you personally, based on the limitations of the 16bit/44KHz LPCM source material which you are content with for serious listening!

If I have misinterpreted your comments, or misrepresented your views, perhaps you would like to provide clarification?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-26 19:20:12
I agree with Dracaena.

I think we have different notions of the meaning of "transparency". For me (and most others in this forum, I think), transparency of a lossy audio codec is achieved when the decoded signal is indistinguishable from the signal fed into the encoder. So if a decoded 44-kHz signal "sounds exactly like" the original 44-kHz signal, the codec is transparent, isn't it?

Btw, the AAC standard allows for coding of 24-bit/96-kHz PCM signals. So Mr. Atkinson, even by your stringent requirements: if we assume that 24-bit/96-kHz audio actually is transparent to everyone, a lossy codec can be transparent if you use a sufficient bitrate.

Chris
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: sld on 2009-04-26 19:50:02
No, just because you believe in God doesn't mean that you necessarily must reject any methodology or conclusion loosely related to science.

Erm no, "fundamentalists" (cultists) may use it from time to time, but most of the time it's certainly the other camp who purposely uses this as a strawman to attack (and win, obviously).


Isn't transparency completely subjective (i.e. to the individual's capability) and hence needs a universally objective methodology (DBT) to measure with?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 19:58:42
Hydrogen Audio appears, by its charter, to be a community of logical positivists in that something that cannot be proved through experiment to exist must be assumed not to exist. (Forgive me, moderators, if this paraphrase is not sufficiently nuanced.) Arny Krueger has long adopted this position on Usenet and on this forum, condemning those, like me, who describe our perceptions as being deluded.


This is typical of John Atkinson't inability to be communicated with. His problem is his inability to distinguish what he wants to hear from what he's actually hearing.  Like every other human I've got the same problem, but I address them with appropriate tools such as ABX.

Here's a typical statement by me on a public forum that Atkinson is well-known to monitor quite carefully:

"People who perceive (imaginary) subtleties in sighted evaluations aren't
nuts or liars, they are just confusing seeing with hearing. They
aren't deluded, they are just illuded. What they experience isn't a
psychological pathology, it's simply how normal people work."

The most important sentences above are:

"They aren't deluded, they are just illuded. What they experience isn't a
psychological pathology, it's simply how normal people work."

This is from a direct reply to an Atkinson post:

"I figured from the onset that I was
speaking to a group of people who were pretty well set in
their illuded ways..."

I think I also said something similar in the HE2005 debate.

Therefore, the idea that I think that true believers in the perceptions of Atkinson are deluded is yet another one of John's many misapprehensions that I have been unable to disabuse him of, despite years of diligent effort on my part.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 20:03:42
Why do I have to? I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.


John, to the best of my knowlege, the various writings of Stuart and Fielder that you have cited do not in fact themselves meet the standards of HA TOS #8. Therefore, they cannot be cited in your obvious efforts to circumvent TOS #8.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-26 20:18:29
I stated that Mr. Krueger is arguing about non-audio-related behavior of others based on beliefs that are not based on physical evidence. I find that strange behavior in someone who subscribes to this group.



What Atkinson finds strange about my belief structure is not the issue at hand. But personally-directed comments like this are typical of his habitual methodologies for avoiding more important issues at hand like his obvious attempts to circumvent HA TOS 8.

Quote
No, just because you believe in God doesn't mean that you necessarily must reject any methodology or conclusion loosely related to science.


I agree with that and raise you 5 trillion. ;-)

I believe that all true and reliable Scientific beliefs and all true and reliable beliefs about God *must* converge. One of the biggest mistakes that religionists make is trying to limit everybody's beliefs about God to their own beliefs, which are necessarily limited and therefore almost certainly in error. This is actually counter to the clear teachings of a book they love to cite, namely the Bible. At this time the most notorious example of this kind of confused thinking is probably what some call Creationism.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-04-26 20:26:18
Why do I have to? I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.
Can I get more of a citation than that? I can't pinpoint a precise article using only those two names and a smattering of relevant keywords. The studies I am familiar with regarding the matter seem to affirm the opposite. (http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 20:57:24
Why do I have to? I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.


John, to the best of my knowlege, the various writings of Stuart and Fielder that you have cited do not in fact themselves meet the standards of HA TOS #8. Therefore, they cannot be cited in your obvious efforts to circumvent TOS #8.


Sigh. I had assumed that academic  papers published in the Journal of the AES (in this case by two AES Fellows), could be cited on this forum. If this is not the case, then I apologize to the moderators, of course. But it does seem inappropriate that the research of third parties is not available for reference by posters.

To avoid thread bloat, I am addressing comments made by Arny Krueger in other recent postings here:

Quote
This is typical of John Atkinson't inability to be communicated with. His problem is his inability to distinguish what he wants to hear from what he's actually hearing.


Yet more personal comments. It really doesn't seem possible for you to address the argument, Mr. Krueger rather than the arguer, does it.

Quote
Like every other human I've got the same problem, but I address them with appropriate tools such as ABX.


Actually, for codec testing, ABX is not useful, because of its yes/no response scoring. The literature tends to support using ABC/HR testing using an impairment scale for lossy codecs. I suppose you are now going to claim that that published research also does not meet the requirements of TOS#8, Mr. Krueger. :-)

Quote
(Stereoeditor @ Apr 26 2009, 12:25) *
I stated that Mr. Krueger is arguing about non-audio-related behavior of others based on beliefs that are not based on physical evidence. I find that strange behavior in someone who subscribes to this group.


Quote
What Atkinson finds strange about my belief structure is not the issue at hand. But personally-directed comments like this are typical of his habitual methodologies for avoiding more important issues at hand like his obvious attempts to circumvent HA TOS 8.


I am not trying to circumvent anything in this posting, Mr. Krueger, nor am I making any kind of unsupported personal comment. Instead, I am directly addressing a misstatement that you made earlier in the thread, out of the blue and with no connection to audio, codes, bitrates, etc etc. You even admitted that the statement was not supported by any evidence. If the moderators are willing to allow you the license to wander off-topic in this manner, then surely I should be allowed the same license to correct your misstatement? Ideally, of course, I would prefer the thread stay on-track.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-26 21:12:56
ABX is the appropriate test to demonstrate that you can distinguish a lossy encode from the source from which it was created.

Why you're evading the issue is somewhat a mystery to me.  Perhaps it's not intentional because you simply don't understand the methods and how they apply to this forum.  Based on what you've said so far this appears to be the case.

It also appears that you'd rather engage people on their method of arguing rather than the substance of what they argue.

It is my opinion that Arny is quite right when he suggests that you are completely unwilling to make an attempt to correlate what you actually hear with what you want to hear.  If this is true, then please, just go away.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 21:18:11
I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.


Can I get more of a citation than that? I can't pinpoint a precise article using only those two names and a smattering of relevant keywords.


Search the AES paper database for Louis Fielder's paper on dynamic range and J.R. Stuart's on the coding requirements for transparency. (I think Bob Stuart actually published 2 papers on this subject.) If you can't find them, I'll dig out the exact references.

Quote
The studies I am familiar with regarding the matter seem to affirm the opposite. (http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195)


Ah, yes. Not one of the JAES's better days when they published the Meyer-Moran paper, not the least because of its lack of experimental detail. YMMV, of course.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Member of the AES since 1981, BTW

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-26 21:31:59
Why you're evading the issue is somewhat a mystery to me.


I agree. I would also like to see him address Gordon Holt's comment. He seem to be evading that too.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 21:37:34
ABX is the appropriate test to demonstrate that you can distinguish a lossy encode from the source from which it was created.


I disagree. You need to establish the degree of departure from transparency using an impairment scale. As I said, the literature appears mainly to feature ABC/HR testing for codec testing and from what I have observed of tests that use that protocol, it does appear a more fruitful tool for blind testing of small but real differences.

Quote
Why you're evading the issue is somewhat a mystery to me.


I am not avoiding anything. I have been addressed points made by other posters who have referred to comments I have made elsewhere. I really don't see that TOS#8 applies to my writings that have published outside this group. If the moderating team wishes me not to comment, then perhaps they should request those posters not to quote my published work.

Quote
Perhaps it's not intentional because you simply don't understand the methods and how they apply to this forum.  Based on what you've said so far this appears to be the case.


See above. I have been an AES member for 28 years and have been involved in a great deal of blind testing, both as an organizer and as a test subject. There certainly isn't the bandwidth to go into all that work here but you can find my writings on the subject and the descriptions of many of those tests in Stereophile and in Hi-Fi News.

Quote
It also appears that you'd rather engage people on their method of arguing rather than the substance of what they argue.


The only comments I have made on this topic concern personal and insulting comments made about me by certain other posters. I felt it appropriate to point that fact out as it appears to conflict with Hydrogen Audio's TOS#2. All other comments I have made have been factual and have addressed specific point raised by other posters, not the posters themselves.

Quote
It is my opinion that Arny is quite right when he suggests that you are completely unwilling to make an attempt to correlate what you actually hear with what you want to hear.  If this is true, then please, just go away.


It is certainly not true and I have no problem answering specific points made on this forum. I don't see what purpose would be served by my not responding. If you do feel that I have infringed on TOS#2 and TOS#8, then I apologize, of course. But I don't intend to go away.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-26 21:43:30
"...Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel "

J Gordon Holt, founder of Stereophile magazine

This needs unpicking, IMO.

"Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand." Pretentious nonsense. It was nothing to do with audio types destroying their own business - other businesses pushed it aside. Audio as a hobby has been dying ever since TV became widely available and relatively cheap to buy and run. By the time it got to the 1980s, we all had a million other things to play with before we got to audio. Now we have got hundreds of things that can play audio before we get to audio. So where audio might be a legitimate hobby to someone in the 1950s, because there really weren't many other things as competition, those days are long gone.

"As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s..." More nonsense. High-end audio only briefly had a moment of credibility when those guys who built things in the 1950s got rich enough during the 1960s to afford to get someone else to build their things for them. Once the 1970s came round, PR created a personality cult around product designers and the die was cast.

"When it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal." Er, I may be wrong on this, but I don't remember Stereophile being a paragon of scientific virtue when it was under J Gordon Holt's wing.

"[This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel." Hmm, would that be the gospel according to St Chocolatey, or the one by St Microdynamics, the patron saint of liquid inner details?

Perhaps we can conclude that old reviewers never die, they just turn objective with age.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-26 21:51:02
Why you're evading the issue is somewhat a mystery to me.


I agree. I would also like to see him address Gordon Holt's comment. He seem to be evading that too.


I have commented on Gordon's essay elsewhere, but not on Hydrogen Audio. And as the person who interviewed Gordon and published his essay in my magazine, perhaps you might want to give me some credit for that.

While on the face of it, Gordon's statement at http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi (http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi) is powerful, it must be pointed out that Gordon never performed any blind testing to support his review conclusions when he edited Stereophile nor after I took over from him as  editor in 1986. (Perhaps paradoxically, I have been involved in a considerably greater amount of blind testing than Gordon.)  He did review the ABX Comparator - see http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/121 (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/121) - but ultimately decided it would not be a useful reviewing tool - see http://www.stereophile.com/thinkpieces/141 (http://www.stereophile.com/thinkpieces/141) - writing "We never purchased an ABX comparator for several reasons. First, we have never felt the need for it. Second, we are finding that, regardless of "controls," an A/B test doesn't reveal small differences between components as well as does prolonged listening."

It is fair, therefore, to point out that Gordon hadn't practiced what he now preaches.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-26 21:56:09
ABX is the appropriate test to demonstrate that you can distinguish a lossy encode from the source from which it was created.


I disagree. You need to establish the degree of departure from transparency using an impairment scale.

There's nothing to disagree about.

ABX determines if something is perceptually transparent or not. This is the first question to answer. If it is satisfied with a statistically significant result, then ABC/HR can be used to rank the degree of non-transparency.

It is my understanding is that you challenge the idea that anything (e.g. a lossy codec, or an amplifier, or an interconnect) can be perceptual transparent to begin with. Yes or no?

Is there an actual reason for that challenge, or is this just a poor assumption?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-26 21:56:36
ABX is the appropriate test to demonstrate that you can distinguish a lossy encode from the source from which it was created.
I disagree. You need to establish the degree of departure from transparency using an impairment scale.

Such a test is not suitable when only a difference is to be discerned. Sample rating is typically desirable but not necessary when the only information sought is the answer to the question "can I perceive a difference?".

greynol is correct.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-26 21:57:46
Your dissection of Gordon Holt's comment is very true (especially the part about "personality cult around product designers") and amusing.

Perhaps we can conclude that old reviewers never die, they just turn objective with age.


Agreed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-04-26 22:05:11
Search the AES paper database for Louis Fielder's paper on dynamic range and J.R. Stuart's on the coding requirements for transparency. (I think Bob Stuart actually published 2 papers on this subject.) If you can't find them, I'll dig out the exact references.
Aha! That does it exactly. The way you phrased the citation made me think it was a jointly-authored document. I shall get back to you.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: itisljar on 2009-04-26 22:35:58
I've been reading this thread with great amusement seeing how those three people, Framer, Atkinson and Krueger (I don't know any of them) act and behave like children. I expected discussion, but instead, I read pages of childish fighting, the kind my daughter went through in 4th grade.
People, please, show some dignity. You are not children anymore, and are able to have civilized conversation.

Mr. Framer, Mr. Atkinson, do you even believe that ABX test can be used to show if there are really a difference between two amplifiers, or two codecs?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-26 22:42:14
I've been reading this thread with great amusement seeing how those three people, Framer, Atkinson and Krueger (I don't know any of them) act and behave like children. I expected discussion, but instead, I read pages of childish fighting, the kind my daughter went through in 4th grade.
People, please, show some dignity. You are not children anymore, and are able to have civilized conversation.

Mr. Framer, Mr. Atkinson, do you even believe that ABX test can be used to show if there are really a difference between two amplifiers, or two codecs?


That's fightin' talk where I come from.

Fortunately, I moved.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-26 22:55:52
Mr. Atkinson, thank you for your comments. That is all I wanted to see.

It is fair, therefore, to point out that Gordon hadn't practiced what he now preaches.


True. However, he seem to have recognized that he was wrong and that scientific rigour must be applied.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-26 23:29:13
True. However, he seem to have recognized that he was wrong and that scientific rigour must be applied.


I doubt this. I think if he were still the editor of Stereophile, he'd still be 'on message', even if he thought the magazine was heading in the wrong direction - or already there. Think about it. If John Atkinson (or any of the other audiophile editors) took a hard objective stance while editor, he'd be an ex-editor within three issues. It would be like the Pope suddenly saying "You know what... that Richard Dawkins guy was right all along. I still get to be Pope, though, don't I?"

That's not just because the advertisers would pull out, it would be considered a betrayal by the readership, too. A magazine could potentially argue that its responsibility to its readers includes supporting the belief systems of those readers, even if those belief systems are highly questionable to non-readers. A 'pr0n' magazine, for example, is never going to include features about how its industry objectifies women.

What gets me is just how on message everyone is on magazines like Stereophile. What happens to those voices of dissent in print? I understand why they don't last long on audiophile forums - for the same reason audiophile opinions tend not to have long shelf-lives here - but what about the magazine itself? Is the subject forbidden, or does it simply engender so much animosity in the faithful readership that to publish anything apart from the received audiophile wisdom is fruitless? I really can't imagine that there's not one scientifically-savvy audiophile in the whole pack.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-27 00:04:43
I doubt this. I think if he were still the editor of Stereophile, he'd still be 'on message', even if he thought the magazine was heading in the wrong direction - or already there.


Agreed. I wonder if this is the true reason why he resigned.

That's not just because the advertisers would pull out, it would be considered a betrayal by the readership, too. A magazine could potentially argue that its responsibility to its readers includes supporting the belief systems of those readers, even if those belief systems are highly questionable to non-readers. A 'pr0n' magazine, for example, is never going to include features about how its industry objectifies women.


No argument here.

What gets me is just how on message everyone is on magazines like Stereophile. What happens to those voices of dissent in print? I understand why they don't last long on audiophile forums - for the same reason audiophile opinions tend not to have long shelf-lives here - but what about the magazine itself? Is the subject forbidden, or does it simply engender so much animosity in the faithful readership that to publish anything apart from the received audiophile wisdom is fruitless? I really can't imagine that there's not one scientifically-savvy audiophile in the whole pack.


This is because it is based on blind faith and in reality, a cult (no offense, Mr. Atkinson, but this is my POV)- bra... bra.... It is a house of cards and cannot stand the slightest scrutiny with the light of science.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 00:12:26
I've been reading this thread with great amusement seeing how those three people, [Fremer], Atkinson and Krueger (I don't know any of them) act and behave like children. I expected discussion, but instead, I read pages of childish fighting, the kind my daughter went through in 4th grade.
People, please, show some dignity. You are not children anymore, and are able to have civilized conversation.


I am sorry if that is how my postings are perceived. I do try to address the argument and not the arguer. If there is a specific example of my behaving childishly in recent postings, could you point it out to me. Thank you.

Quote
Mr. [Fremer], Mr. Atkinson, do you even believe that ABX test can be used to show if there are really a difference between two amplifiers, or two codecs?


Of course. But to organize such a test is not a trivial matter. The problem with the ABX protocol is that unless carefully implemented, it tends to produce false negatives, particularly if the number of trials is small - ie, the results are null even when a real but small difference exists. (See Les Leventhal's mid-1980s AES paper on this problem.)

For example, look at the 1986 Stereo Review test of amplifiers that someone else recently referred to on HA. As published in that magazine, the results were null, ie, the listener as a group could not distinguish the amplifiers by ear to an acceptable degree of statistical significance. Yet the frequency response differences between the amplifiers driving the test loudspeaker were sufficiently large that they _should_ have been detected - ie, they were above the threshold established by other, more carefully implemented blind listening tests.

I admit that the sighted listening practiced by my magazine can produce false positives. But in my view, that is preferable to false negatives. YMMV, of course. But in the end, if I publish a significantly high proportion of false positives, I will go out of business.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 00:20:39
What gets me is just how on message everyone is on magazines like Stereophile. What happens to those voices of dissent in print?


As I thought would have been clear from the discussion of J. Gordon Holt's valedictorian comments, I do publish "voices of dissent" in Stereophile. Over the years I have published comments from such "objectivists" as Stanley Lipshitz (whom I count as a friend and mentor), Tom Nousaine, Arny Krueger, David Clark etc. I have even published reviews where the writer admits he can hear no significant difference between the item under test and his reference.

I think it important to remember that those of us whom you might consider to be on the other side of the fence are a heterogeneous bunch.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-27 00:28:14
Of course. But to organize such a test is not a trivial matter. The problem with the ABX protocol is that unless carefully implemented, it tends to produce false negatives, particularly if the number of trials is small - ie, the results are null even when a real but small difference exists.


Isn't that a myth, that ABX testing is all so not trivial? Especially in the case of amps. Just give your reviewer an ABX switch box and let him play with it as long and with as many tries as he wants to. He can even listen whole hours and days to A and then switch to B again, switch back and forth, and so on... He just needs to write down what he believes is X, A or B and what he thinks about its respective sound. So much objectivity could be gained. If you get false negatives under these circumstances your tester's ear must be below average.

The question is do you want to lose excellent writers with respectable fan bases just because they can't keep up when tested blindly?

rpp3po
Editor: Emacs
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-27 00:33:41
Of course. But to organize such a test is not a trivial matter. The problem with the ABX protocol is that unless carefully implemented, it tends to produce false negatives, particularly if the number of trials is small - ie, the results are null even when a real but small difference exists. (See Les Leventhal's mid-1980s AES paper on this problem.)


So run enough trails until it is statistically significant rather than allow the placebo effect to run rampant as in sighted tests.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 00:34:15
I doubt this. I think if he were still the editor of Stereophile, he'd still be 'on message', even if he thought the magazine was heading in the wrong direction - or already there.


Agreed. I wonder if this is the true reason why he resigned. .


Not at all. While we did have some of the usual employer/employee disagreements, Gordon resigned from Stereophile in August 1999 primarily because he felt music reproduction in surround was the only valid way forward and he was frustrated by my refusal to abandon the magazine's coverage of 2-channel components and recordings.  I did offer him a monthly column on music in surround, but he felt that resigning would draw attention to what he felt was my turning my back on the future of domestic audio reproduction. He ended up contributing a short-lived column on surround sound to The Absolute Sound, while what would have been his column was eventually taken over by Kalman Rubinson (see http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/) (http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/)).

Gordon is now retired and, sadly, in poor health.

Quote
This is because it is based on blind faith and in reality, a cult (no offense, Mr. Atkinson...)


None taken.

Quote
...but this is my POV)- bra... bra.... It is a house of cards and cannot stand the slightest scrutiny with the light of science.


Please understand that I don't have a problem with criticisms or with people expressing their opinions of what I do, as you have done here. All I request is that people address what I have actually said or done, not what they think someone, somewhere, for one of _those_ "cult" magazines has done.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-27 00:38:32
Editor: Emacs


Ha ha... I curse you with VI VI VI. Seriously, Emacs in my favourite program . Getting into org-mode:

http://orgmode.org/ (http://orgmode.org/)

yet?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-27 00:55:40
I am not avoiding anything. I have been addressed points made by other posters who have referred to comments I have made elsewhere. I really don't see that TOS#8 applies to my writings that have published outside this group. If the moderating team wishes me not to comment, then perhaps they should request those posters not to quote my published work.


Considering the focus of this forum you surely have to realize that coming here and not fully expecting to be asked myriad questions about your stated positions on lossy compression is kinda like Rush Limbaugh turning up at Daily Kos thinking he can just do his usual routine without being challenged.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 02:51:03
Why do I have to? I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al). As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.


John, to the best of my knowlege, the various writings of Stuart and Fielder that you have cited do not in fact themselves meet the standards of HA TOS #8. Therefore, they cannot be cited in your obvious efforts to circumvent TOS #8.


Sigh. I had assumed that academic  papers published in the Journal of the AES (in this case by two AES Fellows), could be cited on this forum.


As usual, you're over-reacting, John. You can cite whatever you want to.

But just because you cite something doesn't mean that it is sacrosanct. I guess that you are very inexperienced with academic research and are unaware of the fact that reviewers may actually read cited documents and reach their own conclusions about them.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-04-27 03:38:29
That being said, Arnold, I would personally hold works by the AES in high regard unless glaring flaws were found in them. AES is respectable if nothing else. Their focus seems to be scientific. I'd hold them to be true until proven otherwise.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 06:25:24

It is interesting with these files, not only to audition the character of what is removed by various codecs but also the level of the difference signal.  I fail to see why my doing so in these demonstrations should be "prohibited."  :-)


But *of course* mp3s aren't bit-identical to their source and *of course* there can be audible content in the difference file.


Correct. And I believe people who don't have the facilities to prepare such files for themselves should be able to experience them. Surely an informed listener is a better listener?



Yes, as long as it's information and not *mis*information.  That's why I believe people should experience a double-blind comparison of a well-encoded mp3s to its lossless source.  Don't you?    Then they'll be all the more amazed when they listen to what is being removed....because after all, removing content that is inaudible *in context* is what perceptual encoders like mp3 are *supposed* to do, as you surely know....right?

If you just present the difference content alone, or coupled with mere sighted comparisons,  as indicators of what mp3 'sounds like' -- shame on you, Mr. Atkinson. 


Quote
And then when you've got them gasping and shaking their heads in dismay, you *do* plan to explain what perceptual encoding *means*, right?  Which is to say, why the differences you hear in isolation, and see on graphs, can be perceptually *irrelevant* to what the mp3 sounds like? And why DBT would be *necessary* to determine if a given listener can actually hear the difference?
 
If you don't, you're misleading and misinforming your public...and that would be *shameful*.


Quote
You seem very ready to argue by projection, "krabapple." Why wouldn't I explain what perceptual coding is and why it can be useful under some circumstances? Why wouldn't I allow people to hear MP3s at various bitrates and the equivalent Red Book and hi-rez versions?  Even if they can't perceive any difference between any of the versions I play them, again, an informed listener is a better listener.


So let's see, you'll present the subjects with the difference file (which content is predicted to be dispensable *in context*, in good mp3s), and then you'll explain that 'under some circumstances'  (unspecified) mp3 can be 'useful' (really?) and you'll play 'MP3' (encoder and input unspecified) at ''various bitrates' (unspecified) .  After such a *fair and balanced* demo,  how could I even *think* that the listener might be misled?

The next time you quote one of my posts, would it be too much for you to address the issues therein directly, rather than in the manner of a seasoned politician?  Thanks.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 06:39:08
Of course these comparisons will be level-matched. Why wouldn't they be? But given that these demonstrations are open to the public there may by up to 20 people in the listening room, a formal DBT is out of the question. And please note that, as I keep saying, these are demonstrations, not tests. There will be no scoring of listeners' preferences. As I have said, I am only interested in exposing listeners to the the various formats. This is so that they can decide for themselves whether a) hi-rez formats are necessary, b)  whether CD is good enough for serious listening, and c) whether the lossy versions are sonically compromised or not. Who could argue that that would be a bad or, in your emotionally loaded term, a "shameful" thing.

As I have said, Hydrogen Audio members who live in Colorado are welcome to attend one of these sessions and debate this subect in person.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



'Of course these comparisons will be level-matched';  Ah, silly me!  Where ever did I get this idea that a Stereophile representative might not adhere to good experimental practice in listening comparisons? 

You want your demonstration to be 'informative' above all, and to that end you are planning to present difference content out of context,  yet you don't plan employ blind listening comparison.  I bet your friend JJ (who posts here, making him another logical positivist I guess) would be tickled pink by that particular strategy for educating the public about mp3s.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 06:48:08
Why do I have to? I have not said anything that is in dispute. It has been established that 16-bit LPCM at 44.1Hz sampling is not audibly transparent, ie, undetectable by all listeners under all practical circumstances with all kinds of program material (see Stuart, Fielder et al)


No, it most certainly has not, Mr. Atkinson.  Stuart has *never* published actual data in this regard; at best he has made reference to some supposed extant data about higher sample rates, in his paper advocating hi-rez in JAES.  The vagueness of that claim was what induced Meyer and Moran to embark on their DSD vs Redbook tests... and I trust you know how THOSE turned out for your claim.

By Fielder, do you refer to his close-miked dynamic range results, summarized in Alton Everest's book, showing that close-miked orchestral DR can exceed CD's range (which already well exceeds LP's btw)?  If so, is that a 'practical' circumstance? 
 
So yes, you *have to* show us the evidence.

Quote
As the performance of a lossy codec can only asymptotically approach that of the original LPCM file, thus it, too, is not audibly transparent.


To a given user, it certainly can be. I would wage decent money that it would be for you too.

Quote
From my reading of the literature and my discussions with some of the engineers involved in designing lossy codecs, audible transparency does not appear to be the goal. Instead, it is that a lossy codec be undetectable enough of the time with enough listeners with enough kinds of program that it will be appropriate for use in circumstances where storage space or transmission bandwidth is at a premium.


I'm curious, is universal nonasymptotic 'transparency' to be the yardstick that Stereophile measures audio quality by now?  If so, will you be firing your vinyl guys?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 06:52:43
Ah, yes. Not one of the JAES's better days when they published the Meyer-Moran paper, not the least because of its lack of experimental detail. YMMV, of course.


Compared to Stuart's, which you cite as evidence pro hi-rez? Oh, my.  C'est rire.

You''re aware, *of course*, that Meyer and Moran have a supplement to *their* paper up on the Web, yes?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 06:58:51
ABX is the appropriate test to demonstrate that you can distinguish a lossy encode from the source from which it was created.


I disagree. You need to establish the degree of departure from transparency using an impairment scale. As I said, the literature appears mainly to feature ABC/HR testing for codec testing and from what I have observed of tests that use that protocol, it does appear a more fruitful tool for blind testing of small but real differences.


ABC/hr is routinely used in Hydrogenaudio.org codec tests involving quality ratings of codecs at settings that stand a decent chance of NOT being transparent.  ABX , on the other hand, is entirely appropriate for establishing *difference* when *that* is in question.

Quote
It is certainly not true and I have no problem answering specific points made on this forum.


You seem to have a problem addressing them directly, though.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 07:05:09
Why you're evading the issue is somewhat a mystery to me.


I agree. I would also like to see him address Gordon Holt's comment. He seem to be evading that too.


I have commented on Gordon's essay elsewhere, but not on Hydrogen Audio. And as the person who interviewed Gordon and published his essay in my magazine, perhaps you might want to give me some credit for that.

While on the face of it, Gordon's statement at http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi (http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi) is powerful, it must be pointed out that Gordon never performed any blind testing to support his review conclusions when he edited Stereophile nor after I took over from him as  editor in 1986. (Perhaps paradoxically, I have been involved in a considerably greater amount of blind testing than Gordon.)  He did review the ABX Comparator - see http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/121 (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/121) - but ultimately decided it would not be a useful reviewing tool - see http://www.stereophile.com/thinkpieces/141 (http://www.stereophile.com/thinkpieces/141) - writing "We never purchased an ABX comparator for several reasons. First, we have never felt the need for it. Second, we are finding that, regardless of "controls," an A/B test doesn't reveal small differences between components as well as does prolonged listening."

It is fair, therefore, to point out that Gordon hadn't practiced what he now preaches.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



It is a characteristic of religious belief to hold to an untenable position in the face of mounting evidence.  25 years is plenty of time to 'see the light' and let go of the untenable position.  Good for Holt. 

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 07:19:33
Of course. But to organize such a test is not a trivial matter. The problem with the ABX protocol is that unless carefully implemented, it tends to produce false negatives, particularly if the number of trials is small - ie, the results are null even when a real but small difference exists. (See Les Leventhal's mid-1980s AES paper on this problem.)


Mr. Atkinson, this is a smokescreen, and one that Stereophile has been puffing out for far too long.  Yes, it would be an overreach to claim that there is never any difference tout court between A and B based on a small dataset (which is why 'objectivist' claims typically are qualified with words like 'likely').  But one can test *you* and *your* particular claim that you already hear a difference, rather more readily, and discover whether you were really hearing what you claimed to hear five minutes ago.

I propose that the next time you, or one of your writers, pens a digital player or amp or cable review claiming that in your audition A sounds different from B, that you subsequently be tasked with distinguishing them in a level-matched ABX test.  At that point you already believe you hear the difference; now all you have to do is verify that you do, by a scientifically-accepted means -- just as you supply copious objective measurements of the gear you review. 


Quote
I admit that the sighted listening practiced by my magazine can produce false positives. But in my view, that is preferable to false negatives. YMMV, of course. But in the end, if I publish a significantly high proportion of false positives, I will go out of business.


Nonsense.  This presumes that consumers can detect 'false positives' in audio with some native accuracy.  You don't eat audio, it doesn't make you turn green if the $10,000 CDP in truth sounds no different from the $170 Oppo. Meanwhile numerous factors militate to bias the consumer's perception of audio performance.  That's why the means to detect 'false positives' is....blind testing!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 07:24:14
That being said, Arnold, I would personally hold works by the AES in high regard unless glaring flaws were found in them. AES is respectable if nothing else. Their focus seems to be scientific. I'd hold them to be true until proven otherwise.


Don't be misled.  Look up the papers.  Robert Stuart's papers are not experimental studies of whether humans detect the effects of higher SR.  His evidence  for the 'need' for hi-rez for home delivery formats -- like, say,  DVD-A , which Meridian had a stake in -- was highly circumstantial.  As has been discussed before on this forum, most recently here

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=626519 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11442&view=findpost&p=626519)

(IIRC, 2bedecided studied under Stuart)


The publication of his long JAES article on that subject occasioned a strong objection in a letter published an issue or two later, signed, IIRC by Stanley Lipshitz, E Brad Meyer, and David Moran.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 07:31:28
What gets me is just how on message everyone is on magazines like Stereophile. What happens to those voices of dissent in print?


As I thought would have been clear from the discussion of J. Gordon Holt's valedictorian comments, I do publish "voices of dissent" in Stereophile. Over the years I have published comments from such "objectivists" as Stanley Lipshitz (whom I count as a friend and mentor), Tom Nousaine, Arny Krueger, David Clark etc. I have even published reviews where the writer admits he can hear no significant difference between the item under test and his reference.

I think it important to remember that those of us whom you might consider to be on the other side of the fence are a heterogeneous bunch.



This sound oh so reasonable, but if one were to actually tally the number and placement of the 'heterodox' writings, I'm rather sure one would find that by far most of them appear in the letters column, not the articles and reviews, and that that the rare peep of doubt about the Emperor's couture in a review is dwarfed by the amount of 'orthodox' content.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 07:36:14
I doubt this. I think if he were still the editor of Stereophile, he'd still be 'on message', even if he thought the magazine was heading in the wrong direction - or already there.


Agreed. I wonder if this is the true reason why he resigned. .


Not at all. While we did have some of the usual employer/employee disagreements, Gordon resigned from Stereophile in August 1999 primarily because he felt music reproduction in surround was the only valid way forward and he was frustrated by my refusal to abandon the magazine's coverage of 2-channel components and recordings.


Another canny and prescient stance on Holt's part.  In terms of getting closer to the 'absolute sound', multichannel *is* the only valid way forward.  Unless you want to move entirely to binaural headphone listening.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 08:08:45
I'm coming back to this thread again, and all I can think of is "oh god oh god MY HEAD". For the sake of my sanity, could a mod please break this up into at least a couple separate threads?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ff123 on 2009-04-27 08:30:55
ABX is the appropriate test to demonstrate that you can distinguish a lossy encode from the source from which it was created.


I disagree. You need to establish the degree of departure from transparency using an impairment scale. As I said, the literature appears mainly to feature ABC/HR testing for codec testing and from what I have observed of tests that use that protocol, it does appear a more fruitful tool for blind testing of small but real differences.


ABC/hr is routinely used in Hydrogenaudio.org codec tests involving quality ratings of codecs at settings that stand a decent chance of NOT being transparent.  ABX , on the other hand, is entirely appropriate for establishing *difference* when *that* is in question.


I should point out that it is possible to add an impairment scale to ABX, or to add repeated trials to ABC/hr, and thus make ABX the ratings test and ABC/hr the difference test.  I have wondered whether or not there would be a true sensitivity difference between the two protocols, both set up the same way.  That's mainly an academic question though, since we have codec testing applications which combine both ABC/hr and ABX to get the best of both worlds.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Kees de Visser on 2009-04-27 09:44:17
AES is respectable if nothing else. Their focus seems to be scientific. I'd hold them to be true until proven otherwise.

Sigh. I had assumed that academic  papers published in the Journal of the AES (in this case by two AES Fellows), could be cited on this forum. If this is not the case, then I apologize to the moderators, of course. But it does seem inappropriate that the research of third parties is not available for reference by posters.
IMHO AES papers are a great source of information. But different AES authors don't always agree, so don't assume that a paper is the voice of the entire AES. Also it's not always easy to read the whole paper since only few are available free of charge, which could lead to "read my book" type of discussions.
Btw, the AAC standard allows for coding of 24-bit/96-kHz PCM signals. So Mr. Atkinson, even by your stringent requirements: if we assume that 24-bit/96-kHz audio actually is transparent to everyone, a lossy codec can be transparent if you use a sufficient bitrate.
It's interesting to see that according to this (2001) Fraunhofer AES paper (http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/Images/AES5476_Beyond_CD-Quality_-_24-96_High_Resolution_AAC_tcm97-67557.PDF), hi-res AAC can be transparent at quite low bitrates.
Quote
In order to assess the subjective sound quality of signals encoded and decoded at 24 bit resolution and 96 kHz sampling frequency, listening tests in the style of the ITU test specification BS.1116 have been performed.
.../...
The choice of bitrates has been performed to reach almost transparent quality at these bandwidths.
• Setting 1: 160 kbps for 21 kHz
• Setting 2: 192 kbps for 27 kHz
• Setting 3: 256 kbps for 42 kHz
• Setting 4: 160 kbps for 42 kHz.
Setting 4 has been included as a lower anchor. All these bitrates should be read as total bitrates for stereo.
.../...
As shown in figure 3 and the corresponding tables at the end of this paragraph, no statistically significant difference could be detected for settings 1, 2 and 3. Only at 160 kbps/ 42 kHz, the items ’cymbal’, ’applause’, ’guitar’ and ’triangle’ showed a degradation with a confidence interval not crossing the zero line. All of these results tend to be consistent for both, headphone and loudspeaker reproduction.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-27 09:46:55
Another canny and prescient stance on Holt's part.  In terms of getting closer to the 'absolute sound', multichannel *is* the only valid way forward.  Unless you want to move entirely to binaural headphone listening.


Trouble is, multichannel has proved difficult to shift as a concept. Even multichannel movie sound. Sales are not bad in North America, but it has next to no uptake in many parts of Europe and Asia, where room size is a limiting factor. There seems to be nothing that can disabuse people of that concept, even though many people 'get' why it's better, both conceptually and when demonstrated to them.

You also get the audiophiles themselves - a deeply conservative group within an already conservative market - who refuse to buy products from companies that 'dirty' themselves with multichannel products and send excoriating letters and emails to the editors of the magazines who still consider this a going concern. They want the world to be safely back in a time before smallpox was eradicated and when turntables walked the earth. And, because they are the only people actually buying audio magazines these days, that's precisely what they get. However, their sphere of influence is very small and inward-looking and I don't think they get to sway the diktats of the music business or the manufacturers particularly. That being said, launching multichannel SACD to an audience that simply said 'We didn't like quadraphonic, we won't like this either' even before SACD was launched was not a bright idea.

Multichannel is a great idea in theory. In reality it was, is, and remains of deeply limited appeal to most music buyers worldwide.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 10:20:45
Thanks for posting a compendium of stupidity. It's reassuring that my suggesting that people buy a nice audio system when they can afford one has not done too much "damage." I am relieved.
While I'll soak up some punches for my generally rude tone in my post, I have never beat up on you for advocating people buy better systems. That isn't what I meant, and I think the distinction here is important.

Just standing back from all of these fights, a lot of the tone of that post was relating not to how wrong or right we are, but what would be affected if we were wrong. And really - just ignoring the ABX issue - when you take any of a majority of music listeners off the street with their iPods, and the immediate, (relatively) inexpensive things they can do to improve their listening experiences, I think you and we are going to agree on a very great deal. Use better music encodings, or use lossless when reasonable. Use headphones that don't suck. Trust your ears more than brand names on selecting products. Listen to as much live music as you can. And most of all - and I'm probably saying this in a rather hokey fashion, but I really do agree with this notion - venerate your music. Spend time listening to it with undivided attention. Don't treat it as muzak for one's everyday existence. Maybe even take time to be adventurous and listen to music you wouldn't otherwise listen to, and listen to it with a completely open mind. I hope we both more or less agree on those things! And I do see a lot of what you advocate publically as supporting that, and I can only thank you for that.

So, that said... exactly what are we disagreeing with, in terms of what actually impacts people? Past this baseline of generally agreeable upgrades and ideas, I think there exists some sort of upgrade "priority" - in terms of what are the most important things people should be putting their audio dollars into for some particular individual at some particular time. And making upgrade decisions that are not high on this priority list means not making a sound upgrade decision. Even if cables did impart a characteristic sound, it would likely be very unwise to spend a large amount of money on cables with a $50 pair of speakers. That is a bad decision.

To tweak your car analogy a bit... Ferraris may benefit from high octane gas. That doesn't mean my Saturn can benefit from it (and it doesn't).

I see a lot of what "the high end" advocates - for instance, high res and vinyl - as supporting bad decisions. I'm not going to begrudge the high end its formats. But when it trickles down to my friends shelling out 2x-3x the money for a vinyl release, with what is almost certainly the exact same hypercompression as on the CD, and playing them on their $100 Sony turntables... that bugs me. When it means the only way I can get the best master of an album is on some incredibly obscure, out of print SACD release, when a CD release would have contained all the dynamics just fine, at far lower manufacturing cost... that bugs me. When people get confused on the meaning of the words "dynamics" and "microdynamic" because the think a high res recording must have more of it than an MP3, even when the MP3 is an unmastered orchestra recording and the high res recording is chamber music of a distinctly unvarying loudness... that bugs me. It also bugs me that finding useful speaker measurements is astonishingly difficult for a wide range of speakers, because manufacturers do not believe it is important to provide them - because consumers let them get away with it - because such such measurements are largely not considered important in the high-end world.

I think that sort of high-end mindset is entirely justified in a luxury market, where manufacturers and dealers exist largely to please individual customers, and hearing and taste is assumed to be discriminating. This, of course, is Stereophile's bread and butter. But - and this is the crux of my point - that is a bad way to think about mainstream audio. By "mainstream audio" I mean, of course, any component where differences are discernible through ABX testing...

Quote
Your comments about my abilities to offer suggestions on budget gear indicate that your ignorance exceeds your arrogance. Your characterization of my work indicates you don't read what I write. "Observational" reviewing is not about spouting preferences. It's about attempting to describe how something sounds. How one reacts to that particular sound is an opinion. If you don't believe human being are capable of assessing sound quality and only measurements can do that, fine. That's your opinion. But you are claiming all I do is write 'opinions' of what I personally like. And that, my friend is so wrong, that I know you don't read what I write.
Strong words, and truthfully, I have not spent much time going through your reviews on Stereophile and musicangle.net.

But I totally believe one should trust objective measurements over subjective evaluation for budget gear. That doesn't mean any objective measurements are to be trusted - it means that if I don't have a good objective reason backing up a subjective evaluation, I'm trusting the measurements over the evaluation. Sometimes this means that more measurements should be made in order to quantify something, and sometimes this means rejecting the subjective evaluation.

To trust an opinion of subjective listening experience over any measurement, quite frankly, is a luxury that is reserved for the truly well-off. And not for me.

Quote
Yes, Mr. Salvatore did provoke me with a series of paranoid rants and attacks and I took the bait and sent him a flaming email which he chose to publish. He then continued a bitter string of attacks based upon his paranoia. So go read it and I'm sure everyone here would like to have 20 years of work judged on one screw up.
Heh. I'm too bemused by that whole flamefest, and the rest of Salvatore's comments on audio, to not agree with you.

Quote
The psychiatrist line was funny, I have to admit. However I have many in my family and their behavior leaves plenty to desire. As for shoving anything up one's ass, well you should know.
As far as the speed thing goes I agree that was out of line to toss that out, insofar as I didn't challenge you to your face on it in the Stereophile thread. (One of my ongoing goals is to avoid being an asshole behind peoples' backs, and be sure to be an asshole to people directly. Congeniality is a longer term goal.  )

I don't think it's an invalid objection, though. It's really hard for me to just wave away a 0.6% average speed deviation when interpreting the importance of a sighted listening result. Doesn't really matter who the listener is! I'm willing to give a by to a multi-thousand-dollar turntable exhibiting such behavior, because I can recognize that one can value said equipment for many other reasons... but it does make me cherish my SL-1200 slightly more firmly.

It's also possible that this may be largely due to effects somewhat independent of the turntable - say, that the vinyl's coeffecient of friction changes with short-term repeated plays, which would be a really fascinating effect to explore further - it would provide an explanation for sound changes with replays, that goes away after a period of time, but it wouldn't be observed with turntables with active-feedback speed control like direct drives, etc...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 10:37:49
Indeed I heard the hiss. It doesn't bother me. I have subscription to the New York Philharmonic too. When I sit in a room full of the elderly, there's constant coughing, choking and phlegm spitting from them. I ignore that too. I'm there to listen to the music. That's what I do at home too. If there's hiss who cares? Absence of hiss doesn't necessarily equal good sound....

This point has been traded around a bit, but I believe that few people have really commented what I believe to be the real issue here: that many people are misled into believing that vinyl has no noise. Note, this isn't a criticism of you specifically - I am not sure if you've said stuff like the following or not.

I very commonly hear statements to the effect "if you have good enough vinyl on a good enough rig, there's no noise". Most of the attempts I have made to challenge this argument (particularly one time with SM) have been flipped back around into an attack on why I am so concerned about it in the first place, which I believe to be extremely disingenuous.

I happily listen to vinyl needledrops all the time. I agree that the noise is almost always not a major concern when listening to the music, and that many people are focusing too much on it. Some vinyl is astonishingly quiet. Some even has noise levels that I would say trade pretty well with CDs remastered from tapes of a similar period. But all of them have transient noise, even after extensive cleaning regimens and well-maintained playback environments. And I do not believe that will ever change, nor is it any different for anybody else. To argue that such noise is inaudible is to simply castigate one's own critical listening skills.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 11:01:37
Yet no matter what I say, I am stereotyped as someone who "hates digital," or who "doesn't listen to digital," or whatever, by people who are happier to attack me for something I am not.
Unless you are claiming that you actually never had a "Compact Discs Suck" bumper sticker and you are recanting articles like this one: http://www.musicangle.com/feat.php?id=106 (http://www.musicangle.com/feat.php?id=106) then I would argue that you have stereotyped yourself.
That bumper sticker was on my car in the early 1980s when compact discs did suck. They sounded awful. The transfers from analog were uniformly poorly done from questionable sources with overuse of CEDAR and Sonic Solutions. So called DDD discs actually went through multiple D/A A/D conversions since there were no digital mixing boards. Many factors contributed to what was awful sound. Those who called that sound "pristine" and a "big advancement" were wrong. History has proven me correct as virtually the entire catalog of what had been issued back then has been reissued using better sources, better associated gear, especially better converters and fewer attempts at lopping off the top end along with supposedly offensive tape hiss.

I disagree. From my vantage point, the reputation of early-mid 80s CDs has risen quite substantially in the last few years. Of course digital was used as some sort of snake oil to be applied liberally to bad recordings like any new technology can be abused, and I have seen some 80s CDs of extremely poorly remastered material... but all of my 1980s CDs sound fantastic, and of course the some self-proclaimed audiophiles like the SH.tv crowd very often prefers 1980s masterings over more modern masterings. Specifically, the CDs I own that I think sound good are the 1990 Mozart Requiem on Philips by Schreier (recorded 1983), original pressings of Depeche Mode's "Black Celebration" and "Music for the Masses", a Tchaikovsky 6 by HvK with Vienna Phil, Ride the Lightning by Metallica, Boulez Conducts Zappa...

That said, I totally agree that many remasters were inferior to the original LPs, and people who dumped their vinyl for said CDs were being taken for a ride. But again, that's just marketing hyperbole and it has nothing to do with the CD as a format (or perhaps the digital converters used along with it). I am not convinced that it had anything to do with the sources, as you are saying.

I guess it could help if you could point me to specific CDs from the early-mid 80s period that have deficient sound, and how the sound was not due to recording or mastering mistakes?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 11:18:39
This sound oh so reasonable, but if one were to actually tally the number and placement of the 'heterodox' writings, I'm rather sure one would find that by far most of them appear in the letters column, not the articles and reviews, and that that the rare peep of doubt about the Emperor's couture in a review is dwarfed by the amount of 'orthodox' content.


That said, IIRC, didn't JA reject Beltism?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 11:20:31
Your dissection of Gordon Holt's comment is very true (especially the part about "personality cult around product designers") and amusing. 
Perhaps we can conclude that old reviewers never die, they just turn objective with age.
Agreed.


Counterexample: Clark Johnsen.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-27 11:48:32
Mr. Atkinson, this is a smokescreen, and one that Stereophile has been puffing out for far too long.  Yes, it would be an overreach to claim that there is never any difference tout court between A and B based on a small dataset (which is why 'objectivist' claims typically are qualified with words like 'likely').  But one can test *you* and *your* particular claim that you already hear a difference, rather more readily, and discover whether you were really hearing what you claimed to hear five minutes ago.


If we really want to pin these guys down then I think it would be better to sort of narrow down our challenges, present a unified front and a unified message and force them to either shit or get off the pot.  Otherwise they get to pick and choose which points to which they will respond from which people and generally obfuscate, evade and conflate all they like and then claim victory afterwards.  I'd hate for that to happen.  Here is my proposal:  Atkinson is on record claiming that all lossy compressed music is unsuitable for "serious listening".  He is also now on record in stating that he uses lossless AND also AAC 320kbps on his own iPod.  Presumably this means there are tracks in his collection where he can very access both a lossy and lossless version of the same track without even doing a fresh rip.  That means he can take a few minutes to download Foobar while he is typing his next post and then he can either demonstrate his ability to ABX AAC at the highest quality setting from lossless or he can publicly retract his statement that lossy music is unsuitable for "serious listening".  I think that should be the challenge.  He either takes it or he folds his tents.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 12:24:01
Of course. But to organize such a test is not a trivial matter.


Here we have the usual anti-ABX propaganda - that somehow ABX tests are more difficult to do than any other proper listening test of similar equipment.

Were Atkinson to be accurate and truthful, he would say: "Organizing any amplifier test is not trivial". But that's not what he says - he makes an false negative example of ABX.

Hence, my accurate description of his words - it is Anti-ABX propaganda.  Atkinson *must* do this because of his long history of poorly-designed and poorly-organized amplfier tests that characteristically produce false and misleading results.

Quote from: Stereoeditor link=msg=0 date=
The problem with the ABX protocol is that unless carefully implemented, it tends to produce false negatives, particularly if the number of trials is small - ie, the results are null even when a real but small difference exists.


No the problem with Stereophile and other high-end magazine and consumer sighted evaluations is that *any* listening test protocol, unless carefully designed and implmented, will produce numerous *false* results. Some will be false positives and some will be false negatives.

It doesn't matter to an unbiased investigator  whether the false results are positive or negative. It matters that they are overwhelmingly false!

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 12:27:32
While I doubt that Dibrom (the founder of this forum) ever dreamed that he'd have John Atkinson, James D Johnston, Arnold Krueger, and Michael Fremer posting in the same thread here on HA, I have to say that I think it's been hell.


Now, something constructive:

I'm only aware of a few of successful ABX tests showing that "CD quality audio" is not transparent. In all those tests, either the hardware was suspect or the audio content and/or replay level was extreme.

John Atkinson, you will have the scoop of the century if you can run a double blind test where you demonstrate that CD quality audio is not transparent with normal music. I would suggest getting a source (live performance, analogue master tape, vinyl etc), and splitting the feed: take one direct, and another that goes through an A>D and D>A set at 44.1kHz 16-bits.

All the usual pre-requisites apply: level matched, double blind, good quality equipment, trained listeners.

You can report the results in your publication. For statistical significance, I'd like to see p<0.05. Some people like p<0.01. Far more importantly, if you are going to have many many listeners, and then report that one or more did pass the test, those successful listeners have to re-take the test.

If they pass a second time, you have a truly convincing result.

There's no limit on time scale, and no great need to listen to the same 15 seconds of audio again and again. Kick back and listen to a whole album or two, flicking the ABX switch and submitting an answer whenever you feel like it during playback.

It sounds like a nice way to spend an afternoon to me - listening to some great music through a great system.

You have noting to lose. It'll drive more traffic to your website and more sales for your magazine. If someone passes the test, you'll go down in history while your hardcore readers will just tut and say "we told you so". If no one passes the test, your hardcore readers will continue to disparage ABX and buy your magazine regardless.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I don't feel there's the same value for you in ABXing lossy audio. There's a few people getting carried away with the hyperbole in this thread, but the truth is that most lossy codecs can be ABXed at their intended bitrate with some signals. A lot of people find it difficult or impossible, but it's hardly a shock that some people manage it. Therefore publishing positive ABX results of mp3 wouldn't be quite such an amazing acheivement.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-27 12:30:10
Otherwise they get to pick and choose which points to which they will respond from which people and generally evade and conflate all they like.


I was thinking the same. While what they are saying may be correct, Arnold and krabapple don't seem to notice, that how they are presenting it allows Atkinson to cherry-pick attacks that he can politely reply to while silently ignoring hard to refute objections to his agenda:

1. Isn't Stereophile actually giving bad advice (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=629908), if you take it by the word?

2. Atkinson tries to sell that proper ABX testing is terribly hard to do right and can lead to false negatives. Both is nonsense. 1. ABX testing, at least in the case of amps (also cables, DACs, ...), that he brought up, is actually pretty easy (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=630061). 2. False negatives can only happen when the number of trials is small or too short. As Stereophile would be conducting the test, those pitfalls could be easily avoided by just giving reviewers as much time as they are getting now for their sighted tests. In that case false negatives would mean nothing else than sub-average ears.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 12:54:44
That being said, Arnold, I would personally hold works by the AES in high regard unless glaring flaws were found in them. AES is respectable if nothing else. Their focus seems to be scientific. I'd hold them to be true until proven otherwise.


AES publications generally fit into two categories - conference papers whose contents have undergone zero reviews, and journal papers that are pretty carefully reviewed. 

In the absense of formal cites (typical Atkinsonian slopiness and name-dropping) I don't know for sure what Atkinson is citing.  He seems to be surprised that *anything* he cites isn't immediately accepted as total proof for what he says. :-(

I'm under the impression that one of the papers Atkinson cited is just a conference paper, and the author is well known for his public rants against ABX. One of these rants was recently discussed on HA. Thus, we can't expect him to be observant of TOS 8.

The other paper could be one of several papers, and here is the one that IMO fits best:

Dynamic Range Requirement for Subjective Noise Free Reproduction of Music by Fielder, Louis D. Paper Number:  1772    AES Convention:  69 (May 1981)  also JAES Volume 30 Issue 7/8 pp. 504-511; August 1982

"A dynamic range of 118 dB is determined necessary for subjective noise-free reproduction of music in a dithered digital audio recorder."

Ironically, Clark's first JAES ABX paper was: High-Resolution Subjective Testing Using a Double-Blind Comparator JAES Volume 30 Issue 7/8 pp. 504-511; August 1982

Clark's paper was published in the same issue of the JAES as Fielder's! 

Thus Fielder's paper was not required meet the standards of TOS 8, since Clark's ABX JAES paper had not yet been published when Fielder's paper was reviewed by the relevant AES review board.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 13:08:03
Mr. Framer, Mr. Atkinson, do you even believe that ABX test can be used to show if there are really a difference between two amplifiers, or two codecs?


The question was asked by me further up the thread, and both Atkinson and Fremer seem to have sloughed it.

By now they know that any answer they give has to be consistent with TOS 8.

Kryptonite!

My question was something like:

"How do we know for sure that two amplifiers sound different?".

Their basic argument is that ABX fails to properly identify amplfiers that sound different, but they can't say how one is to know for sure that any two amplifiers actually sound different.

I would favor using ABC/hr to develop independent evidence about whether or not two amplifiers sound different, but somehow I don't think that Fremer or Atkinson are headed there! ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-04-27 13:12:21
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.


Maybe you were ambushed by the ABX'ers, but calling your positive results a 'lucky coin' is valid.

Maybe this has already been explained, but i haven't seen it in this thread.

Toss a coin 5 times, chance of it coming up heads five times is 5/32 or 3.1%, chance of 4 heads is 10/32 or 15.6%
Multiply those chances over 20 trials of 5 coin flips, and you will expect to see a few 4 head outcomes, and there's a good possibility of a 5 head outcome (around 60% i think, i'm no statistics whiz)

So with 20 abx sessions, of 5 trials each, purely by chance you would expect to see a 4/5 or two, and a good chance of a 5/5.  When those popped up, you should have been offered a second run with a larger number of trials, to verify that you weren't a 'lucky coin'.  Whether it wasn't offered, or it was refused by you, i don't know.  I can see how the feeling of being ambushed could lead you to refusing, but really you should have demanded more trials to affirm your results.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 13:17:58
But good systems with excellently matched speakers (with excellent time and frequency domain responses) do "image" spectacularly better than lower quality stuff. The front/back depth of the sound stage is increased, the location of (say) the singer is focussed more tightly etc etc. You can also put the speakers further apart before the sound stage falls apart. It's not what the record producer intended (usually), but it's very impressive. Stereo is supposed to work with 60 degree speaker angle. I've heard it work stunningly well with 110 speaker angle - but only with very good speakers.

The photographs of that particular listening room are not impressive unless they misrepresent the reality - from what it looks like, I'd want the speakers much further away from the walls, and from everything else. The kind of early reflections I'd expect in that room would seriously damage the magical 3-d sound stage that's claimed to exist.
If you're into objective measurements, my room measures quite well thank you. Those photos don't really let you know what's going on. You might want the speakers further from the walls, but the measurements tell a somewhat different story as does the sound. The first reflection is very well taken care of...your "expectations" would be dashed. There's something incredibly condescending about your post...that you'd think that someone with 30 years of doing this wouldn't know how to deal with a first reflection. I mean really....
I wasn't intending to be condescending, but that probably only makes it worse. I didn't mean to cause offence.

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but it seems like you were more upset by my post than by some that were intentionally quite insulting.

My apologies.

Now, while it's no reflection on you, I know several people with many years experience who have systems which sound terrible to me. We all grow accustomed to our own listening rooms and our own speakers, which probably explains some of the inability to come to agreement on what constitutes "good sound".

Sorry you were driven away from HA. I can't say I'd have stayed either, given that reception.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 13:20:39
While I doubt that Dibrom (the founder of this forum) ever dreamed that he'd have John Atkinson, James D Johnston, Arnold Krueger, and Michael Fremer posting in the same thread here on HA, I have to say that I think it's been hell.


The presence of Atkinson and Fremer on HA was pre-ordained as soon as I started posting here with any degree of regularity. My ability to troll Atkinson is legendary in places where I have been practicing that art for over a decade! ;-)

Seriously, by his own admission, Atkinson regularly searches the internet for my posts.

Quote
I'm only aware of a few of successful ABX tests showing that "CD quality audio" is not transparent. In all those tests, either the hardware was suspect or the audio content and/or replay level was extreme.


Right. If we restrict ourselves to audio content that is a commercial recording, and stipluate that listening levels be non-damaging to the listener's ears, the test is going to be a slam-dunk failure.

Quote
John Atkinson, you will have the scoop of the century if you can run a double blind test where you demonstrate that CD quality audio is not transparent with normal music. I would suggest getting a source (live performance, analogue master tape, vinyl etc), and splitting the feed: take one direct, and another that goes through an A>D and D>A set at 44.1kHz 16-bits.


IME, Atkinson lacks the technical ability to do this. He has already tried and failed to reliably show differences between amplifiers that are dissimilar enough that I would be willing bet that I could set up a ABX test with a positive outcome.

My old PCABX web site had downloadable files that allowed people to reliably hear the degradation due to some fairly highly-regarded SS power amplifiers.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 13:25:17
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.


Maybe you were ambushed by the ABX'ers, but calling your positive results a 'lucky coin' is valid.

Maybe this has already been explained, but i haven't seen it in this thread.

Toss a coin 5 times, chance of it coming up heads five times is 5/32 or 3.1%, chance of 4 heads is 10/32 or 15.6%
Multiply those chances over 20 trials of 5 coin flips, and you will expect to see a few 4 head outcomes, and there's a good possibility of a 5 head outcome (around 60% i think, i'm no statistics whiz)


I'm glad you made this post because it really needs to be cleared up. It is obvious that Fremer has taken this issue personally for about 20 years.

This is just another reason why I say that a lot of what people like Fremer and Atkinson say is based on ignorance of some fairly basic stuff.

I can't imagine how Atkinson got his BS in Physics (if memory serves) without learning some basic statistics.  What was he smoking? ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-27 13:33:23
"Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand." Pretentious nonsense. It was nothing to do with audio types destroying their own business - other businesses pushed it aside. Audio as a hobby has been dying ever since TV became widely available and relatively cheap to buy and run. By the time it got to the 1980s, we all had a million other things to play with before we got to audio. Now we have got hundreds of things that can play audio before we get to audio. So where audio might be a legitimate hobby to someone in the 1950s, because there really weren't many other things as competition, those days are long gone.


What exactly is the assumption that audio as a hobby is dying based on?

I can see no immediate evidence that supports that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 13:53:01
Indeed I heard the hiss. It doesn't bother me. I have subscription to the New York Philharmonic too. When I sit in a room full of the elderly, there's constant coughing, choking and phlegm spitting from them. I ignore that too. I'm there to listen to the music. That's what I do at home too. If there's hiss who cares? Absence of hiss doesn't necessarily equal good sound....



Given Fremer's numerous rants about (many probably imaginary) audible flaws in digital recordings and equipment, we see here that he is admitting that he is not an unbiased reviewer.

He rants and raves about alleged flaws that he doesn't like, and gives a pass to clearly audible flaws that we all, even him can clearly hear.

Quote
This point has been traded around a bit, but I believe that few people have really commented what I believe to be the real issue here: that many people are misled into believing that vinyl has no noise.


I've certainly been told this by many vinyl advocates over the years. In some cases it might even be true in a way - get the right SET, the right high-efficiency speakers, and the right room and at least some of the inherent audible noise and distoriton in the LP format can be very much attenuated. Throw in some well-aged and/or damaged ears, and it might even be true.  For example, one vinyl advocate who personally made this claim to me and then demonstrated it with his system was a steam fitter. Another well-known vinyl advocate who writes extensively about the tone of vinyl is or has been a construction worker.

Quote
I very commonly hear statements to the effect "if you have good enough vinyl on a good enough rig, there's no noise".


Been there, done that very many times. On the face of it, it seems like a scam fabricated to stimulate an ever-increasing spiral of expenditures on overpriced equipment.

Quote
Most of the attempts I have made to challenge this argument (particularly one time with SM) have been flipped back around into an attack on why I am so concerned about it in the first place, which I believe to be extremely disingenuous.


I've been able to use a far more direct approach - less talk and more action. I've actually gone out and heard some of these supposedly no-noise or low-noise systems.  To me they either had very poor sonic balance or the owner and I were hearing very different things.

I think there may actually be some kind of zen-like meditational state in which the hiss, tics, pops, rumbles, grindings, and constant tonal and timbre shifts are not perceived.  It is possible that a lot of my constant irritation with vinyl during the 30-odd years that I survived as an audiophile before the CD, was based on my obsessive personality preventing me from enther that state of nirvanna. ;-)

Quote
I happily listen to vinyl needledrops all the time. I agree that the noise is almost always not a major concern when listening to the music, and that many people are focusing too much on it. Some vinyl is astonishingly quiet. Some even has noise levels that I would say trade pretty well with CDs remastered from tapes of a similar period. But all of them have transient noise, even after extensive cleaning regimens and well-maintained playback environments. And I do not believe that will ever change, nor is it any different for anybody else. To argue that such noise is inaudible is to simply castigate one's own critical listening skills.


Ditto. 

BTW, I think it would be cool if we could momentarily redirect Knwozy away from low end USB turntables and make a few passes at some air-is-rare high end stuff. I find his needle drops to be quite well done and representative. I am also humbled by his energy and focus.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-27 14:01:47
My question was something like:

"How do we know for sure that two amplifiers sound different?".

Their basic argument is that ABX fails to properly identify amplfiers that sound different, but they can't say how one is to know for sure that any two amplifiers actually sound different.

I would favor using ABC/hr to develop independent evidence about whether or not two amplifiers sound different, but somehow I don't think that Fremer or Atkinson are headed there! ;-)


As we all know, ABX only tells wether or not the individual were able to identify the tested amplifiers there and then.

IMO ABX testing is a good way to conclude that there are very small or no differences between amplifiers/codecs whatever. That is enough for most people to say that they don't care if they use one or the other. Certainly so for most of the guys here at HA. But that may not be true for everyone else.

If you, like Atkinson and Fremer, are pursuing the best sound possible, more or less regardless of cost - ABX may not be sufficient to tell wether they should use a piece of equipment or not.

Even if I can't make a statistically significant ABX test involving say, my DAC, my loudspeaker cables or my amplifier - doesn't mean that there are no audible differences. And if you put the three together, I may even be able to ABX it against a system containing three other cables, dacs and amplifiers.

How any individual are able to choose the correct (best sounding) equipment when the audible difference between each individual component are so subtle I'm not sure. Perhaps they can through experience and prolonged listening to different setups, perhaps they can't.  You can probably neither prove or disprove this with any kind of testing.

I'm about to loose track of my point here, but I think what I'm trying to say is that many of the issues we're discussing isn't really testable with ABX, so nagging on and on about making such a test doesn't really make any sense (because the differences are so small). Fremer and Atkinson knows this (while they may not be in a position to say it out loud), but they also know that even though it isn't ABXable doesn't really prove that there is no difference at all. And I see nothing much wrong with that.

It could possible be unethical to recommended said equipment to anyone with a low/midend system though.  And of course making subjective, sighted tests of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 14:04:05
"Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand." Pretentious nonsense. It was nothing to do with audio types destroying their own business - other businesses pushed it aside. Audio as a hobby has been dying ever since TV became widely available and relatively cheap to buy and run. By the time it got to the 1980s, we all had a million other things to play with before we got to audio. Now we have got hundreds of things that can play audio before we get to audio. So where audio might be a legitimate hobby to someone in the 1950s, because there really weren't many other things as competition, those days are long gone.


What exactly is the assumption that audio as a hobby is dying based on?

I can see no immediate evidence that supports that.


Of course you're seeing things like they are.

What's actually dying is audio as we boomers grew up with it.  Remember that Stereophile and other ragazines of its ilk are still largely based on the premise that the audio hobby is about to dedicated listening to 2 channel audio-only recordings in a dedicated listening room.

For example, Atkinson has on occasion gone out and found a really cheap DVD player where a little video leaks into the audio, and has used this as an object lesson to preach to his little flock that here is an audible impurity that no real audiophile will tolerate. This is spun into the *truth* that no real audiophile can stand to listen to a CD being played on a low-cost DVD player. It also means that no true audiophile will listen to music while watching video from the same recording.

It's amazing all the propaganda that you can spin if you are not bound like minor inconveniences like TOS 8. ;-)

The bad news is all the energy that has been wasted chasing Atkinson's imaginary audible demons. He's been preaching Ghostbusters when what we really need is Mythbusters.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 14:13:06
Atkinson has on occasion gone out and found a really cheap DVD player where a little video leaks into the audio, and has used this as an object lesson to preach to his little flock that here is an audible impurity that no real audiophile will tolerate. This is spun into the *truth* that no real audiophile can stand to listen to a CD being played on a low-cost DVD player. It also means that no true audiophile will listen to music while watching video from the same recording.


It seems as if your imagination is really active this morning, Mr. Krueger. I haven't written anything like the paraphrase you describe above. But yes, it is true that with some DVD players (not just cheap ones), the clock generators can be sufficiently dirty that the analog output with CD playback can have very high levels of jitter. In some cases, this is above the threshold for audibility that even the most conservative engineer will accept.

Regarding your statement that "no true audiophile will listen to music while watching video from the same recording," which you appear to attribute to me, I have on many occasions written the opposite: that rather than SACD and DVD-A, it is the live music DVD that can perhaps be considered the true successor to the CD.

And to address a point you made in another of your multiple postings, Mr. Krueger:

Quote
Seriously, by his own admission, Atkinson regularly searches the internet for my posts.


No, this is not true either.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-27 14:27:32
Great job, Arnie! Thanks to your carpet bombing Atkinson could just pick the cherries again.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pisymbol on 2009-04-27 14:28:43
Hydrogen Audio appears, by its charter, to be a community of logical positivists in that something that cannot be proved through experiment to exist must be assumed not to exist. (Forgive me, moderators, if this paraphrase is not sufficiently nuanced.)


The main issue I have with the above statement is that you have plainly shifted the burden on the listener and not the manufacturer when determining quality of product.  This is by far and wide the biggest issue within the audiophile community.  It is the one of the few industries that thrives on perception instead of fact.  This is a fundamental problem I have with Stereophile and its elk.  Your focus in reviews is not justifying the cost of the component or explaining on why its more sonically superior than its cheaper alternative but instead, to give a sense of high-fidelity in the language you use and the attitude you portray.  Your attitude toward MP3's is just an extension of this doctrine.  If I read 10 random articles about amplifiers from Stereophile I highly doubt I could determine whether or not the $400 amplifier or the $4k one would deliver high-fidelity in my home.  This refusal to link any kind of real quantifiable metrics within reviews is what makes Stereophile so frustrating to read and many here on HA skeptical of its claims.

Personal note:

John, we met I believe at the first National Headfi meet in NY a couple of years ago.  I believe I spoke to you and John Grado from Gradolabs.  You were both wonderfully gracious to all the folks there asking questions and approaching both of you.  Please continue to be active in the headphone community! 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-27 14:32:32
What exactly is the assumption that audio as a hobby is dying based on?

I can see no immediate evidence that supports that.


All the traditional purveyors and suppliers to the audio enthusiast (as opposed to someone who listens to music) have seen a marked downturn in sales since the 1980s. That accelerated dramatically when DVD hit town and once more when the iPod arrived. Whether you are talking about the number of loudspeakers sold or the number of people buying magazines, the business appears in sharp decline with no immediate sign of a come-back.

This conveniently skips over the millions of iPods in circulation, but by most indicators used by marketing types, these sales rarely count as 'enthusiast' purchases. For their purposes, those who consider something a hobby buy more than just the primary product. A good parallel here is in photography: people who buy a DSLR today fall into two broad camps - those who consider it a first footing into digital photography, and those who just want something better than a compact. The former will rapidly buy a tripod, flash, lenses, bags and so on over a period of time; the latter will simply buy camera and bag in store at the time of purchase and not come back until the thing breaks. The second group would not be considered engaged with photography as a hobby.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-27 14:36:25
This is a fundamental problem I have with Stereophile and its elk.


You think that's bad. You should see The Absolute Sound and its reindeer
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 14:47:56
My question was something like:

"How do we know for sure that two amplifiers sound different?".

Their basic argument is that ABX fails to properly identify amplfiers that sound different, but they can't say how one is to know for sure that any two amplifiers actually sound different.


I would favor using ABC/hr to develop independent evidence about whether or not two amplifiers sound different, but somehow I don't think that Fremer or Atkinson are headed there! ;-)


As we all know, ABX only tells wether or not the individual were able to identify the tested amplifiers there and then.


Sorry, but you're obviously not getting something that has been said in a number of posts that I just made, and other posts that I made in the past few days. Maybe I'm not expressing it well, so here it is, all in one place! ;-)

What some of us know is that one negative ABX test is insufficient to support the claim that all amplifiers sound the same or sound different. So right up front we don't say that all amplifiers sound the same.

What some of us know is that one negative ABX test is insufficient to support the claim that a given amplifier never ever causes any audible degradation . So right up front we don't say that any particular amplifier is always sonically perfect.

The controversy at hand is whether or not amplifiers in general are more like musical instruments which always sound different almost without regard to what you change, or whether they are more like a sharp diamond-edged blade that always cuts.

The first thing that was discovered about 30 years ago was that people like Atkinson and Fremer do egregiously-flawed sighted listening tests that will generally produce results agreeing with the amplifier as musical instrument theory. These people consistently told us that there were mind-blowing differences between just about any amp and any other amp and they wrote volumes of colorful prose about this *fact*. Their judgements were based on a naive view of human behavior which many of us at the time had been disabused of by a liberal arts & science type education.

For example, my wife has a degree in experimental psychology. All I had to do is listen to her for a while, and bang! out came ABX. ;-)

So, we ABX tested a lot of amplfiiers with a lot of listeners in a lot of contexts.

It was only after a lot of ABX tests that we started thinking that the diamond-edged blade model of amplifiers was closer to the reality of the amplifier situation than the musical instrument model.

Lots of other people have done more ABX and other related kinds of tests, and we all come up with the same basic result. Lots of things are more like the diamond blades, and as time goes on more and more things become sufficiently perfected that they transition into the same category.  This has happened ADCs and DACs.  Hasn't stopped the sighted-listening purveyers of purple prose. :-(

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IMO ABX testing is a good way to conclude that there are very small or no differences between amplifiers/codecs whatever. That is enough for most people to say that they don't care if they use one or the other. Certainly so for most of the guys here at HA. But that may not be true for everyone else.


One of the things we found out with ABX is that there are no golden ears, and that it is not that hard to get enough tests and testers to obtain results that are representative of the general population.  Note that nobody has gone to our original ABX web site and redone any of our tests exactly under what they think are more ideal conditions and disproven any of our negative results.  Note that Fremer and Atkinson won't run right out and pick up Axon's challenge. They can't answer my simple question "How do we know that two amplifiers sound different?" with anything like convincing evidence.


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If you, like Atkinson and Fremer, are pursuing the best sound possible, more or less regardless of cost - ABX may not be sufficient to tell wether they should use a piece of equipment or not.


Their problem is far more serious than that. They have this list of recommended components, complete with purple prose about how their sound quality fits into what seem to be well-defined and vastly different categories, when in very many cases they can't even show that they sound different in a way that would be convincing to the average HA participant. Well yes, the speakers sound different and some of the SETs sound different from good SS amp, but what about a really good tubed amp and just about any run-of-the mill SS amp? What about all of the SS amps they sliced and diced?  (note that switchmode power amps can be ABXed in many cases due to FR problems).

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Even if I can't make a statistically significant ABX test involving say, my DAC, my loudspeaker cables or my amplifier - doesn't mean that there are no audible differences.


Of course, but why are you limiting your comment to just ABX?  You're falling into the Fremer/Atkinson trap of making ABX the whipping boy for the slings and arrows of doing subjective tests.

I can generally set up an ABX or other kind of test (even in some cases sighted), where the same problem will be evident.


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And if you put the three together, I may even be able to ABX it against a system containing three other cables, dacs and amplifiers.


Well, you just tipped your hand with the cables comment.  You're obviously one of the people that guys like Fremer and Atkinson have been leading around by the nose for years. How ever much time you've spent on HA has not done the usual thing. :-(



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How any individual are able to choose the correct (best sounding) equipment when the audible difference between each individual component are so subtle I'm not sure.


You've missed an important point. A system that sounds bad is not subtly different from one that sounds good. The differences when accurately known, are generally pretty gross. There is a wide range of system performance characteristics that will sound very good to you.

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Perhaps they can through experience and prolonged listening to different setups, perhaps they can't.  You can probably neither prove or disprove this with any kind of testing.


What I can prove is that there is nobody who can hear the difference between two systems with very impressive looking differences, if you subscribe to the Atkinson/Fremer value system. Help me test a million people and we'll have a million null results.

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I'm about to loose track of my point here, but I think what I'm trying to say is that many of the issues we're discussing isn't really testable with ABX, so nagging on and on about making such a test doesn't really make any sense (because the differences are so small). Fremer and Atkinson knows this (while they may not be in a position to say it out loud), but they also know that even though it isn't ABXable doesn't really prove that there is no difference at all. And I see nothing much wrong with that.


You need to continue your efforts in self-education about what matters, and what doesn't. Stick with it, it will make you happier and it will get you to your dream system faster and more inexpensively. I promise it.



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 14:51:57
Great job, Arnie! Thanks to your carpet bombing Atkinson could just pick the cherries again.


If I cared to document it, I can falsify all of those so-called cherries.

You apparently don't realize how far off into the ozone of belief in his own perfection he is, and how he'll spin true statements into apparent falsehoods.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 14:53:56
This sound oh so reasonable, but if one were to actually tally the number and placement of the 'heterodox' writings, I'm rather sure one would find that by far most of them appear in the letters column, not the articles and reviews, and that that the rare peep of doubt about the Emperor's couture in a review is dwarfed by the amount of 'orthodox' content.


The point is that, contrary to the point made by the original poster, I _do_ publish voices of dissent in Stereophile.

That said, IIRC, didn't JA reject Beltism?


You can find my thoughts on Peter Belt's devices and my attitude to crazy-sounding tweaks in general at http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/787/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/787/).

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 15:01:35
Dynamic Range Requirement for Subjective Noise Free Reproduction of Music by Fielder, Louis D. Paper Number:  1772    AES Convention:  69 (May 1981)  also JAES Volume 30 Issue 7/8 pp. 504-511; August 1982

"A dynamic range of 118 dB is determined necessary for subjective noise-free reproduction of music in a dithered digital audio recorder."

Ironically, Clark's first JAES ABX paper was: High-Resolution Subjective Testing Using a Double-Blind Comparator JAES Volume 30 Issue 7/8 pp. 504-511; August 1982

Clark's paper was published in the same issue of the JAES as Fielder's! 

Thus Fielder's paper was not required meet the standards of TOS 8, since Clark's ABX JAES paper had not yet been published when Fielder's paper was reviewed by the relevant AES review board.


BTW Stanley Lipshitz tells me that with suitable noise shaping, a 16 bit linear PCM system can have a subjectively-weighted dynamic range of > 120 dB, if memory serves.

Fieldler's paper was cited by the developers of HDCD, which was encapsulated into standard RedBook CDs. 

AFAIK nobody has ever found a HDCD that actually had more dynamic range than a properly-made standard Redbook CD could handle.  Like SACD and DVD-A, it was a solution looking for a problem.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-27 15:07:57
Great job, Arnie! Thanks to your carpet bombing Atkinson could just pick the cherries again.


If I cared to document it, I can falsify all of those so-called cherries.

You apparently don't realize how far off into the ozone of belief in his own perfection he is, and how he'll spin true statements into apparent falsehoods.


I question the wisdom of bringing a sawed off shotgun to a chess game.  Might it not be better to stick to challenging these cats on a few very clearly defined points, narrow them down and force them to answer instead of making word soup at them?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 15:12:24
Otherwise they get to pick and choose which points to which they will respond from which people and generally evade and conflate all they like.


I was thinking the same. While what they are saying may be correct, Arnold and krabapple don't seem to notice, that how they are presenting it allows Atkinson to cherry-pick attacks that he can politely reply to while silently ignoring hard to refute objections to his agenda:


I think you guys really ought to pursue your own agenda and have the common courtesy to not flame other people are who are pursing their agendas.

You've obviously never heard about a well-known strategy called "divide and conqueor".

You posts are no more cherry-pick proof than anybody else's when you are dealing with people like Atkinson, perchance you would actual say something of substance about the issue you wish to pursue.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-27 15:17:36
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Even if I can't make a statistically significant ABX test involving say, my DAC, my loudspeaker cables or my amplifier - doesn't mean that there are no audible differences.


Of course, but why are you limiting your comment to just ABX?  You're falling into the Fremer/Atkinson trap of making ABX the whipping boy for the slings and arrows of doing subjective tests.

I can generally set up an ABX or other kind of test (even in some cases sighted), where the same problem will be evident.

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And if you put the three together, I may even be able to ABX it against a system containing three other cables, dacs and amplifiers.


Well, you just tipped your hand with the cables comment.  You're obviously one of the people that guys like Fremer and Atkinson have been leading around by the nose for years. How ever much time you've spent on HA has not done the usual thing. :-(

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I'm about to loose track of my point here, but I think what I'm trying to say is that many of the issues we're discussing isn't really testable with ABX, so nagging on and on about making such a test doesn't really make any sense (because the differences are so small). Fremer and Atkinson knows this (while they may not be in a position to say it out loud), but they also know that even though it isn't ABXable doesn't really prove that there is no difference at all. And I see nothing much wrong with that.


You need to continue your efforts in self-education about what matters, and what doesn't. Stick with it, it will make you happier and it will get you to your dream system faster and more inexpensively. I promise it.


Thank you for taking the time to elaborate your previous comments 

Wether I've been led around by the nose or not I'm not sure - I've fallen in and out of the audiophile camp over the years. A few years back I sold lots of stuff, and bought relatively cheap stuff that logically should do the trick. That took all the fun out of the entire hobby for me (probably didn't sound as good either). Currently I  settled with a fairly expensive system where I'm using relatively (to the equipment) cheap van den hul loudspeaker cables (about 20usd/metre). Not because I'm convinced I can hear a difference, it's more that it doesn't "feel right" to put the cheapest cables I can find on that kind of equipment. No real logic behind that. 

I didn't mean to beat up on ABX specifically, I was just pointing out the fact that HA seem to use ABX as the universal truth about any given component. You are of course right to point out that the same issues are present with any kind of test.

I'm sure it's possible to make more or less transparent DACs or Amps. I've never been that into neutral sound to begin with, and have both DAC and Amp that is warm sounding and slightly rolled off by design.  I'm sure there are cheaper ways I could have achieved a similar sound - but for me this is more about the hobby and not so much about absolute truths. Having expensive gear that looks (and hopefully sounds) good is part of the total package.

I think it's good that HA is around to give objective information about where you actually get sound quality for your money. I just tried to get across that this could possibly coexist with the more audiophile part of the hobby - where people enjoy "highend" gear even though it doesn't necessarily give the same value for money as cheaper stuff.

But this is probably slightly besides the current point about sighted, subjective tests in audio magazines (which is not entirely where this thread started out)    I understand both sides of this story, and think both the most extreme "believers" and the most extreme "sceptics" could gain from a bit enlightment about the world view and experiences of the other
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 15:18:20
One of the things we found out with ABX is that there are no golden ears
This is not bourne out by testing here on Hydrogen Audio. The percentage of people who can hear flaws in "high quality" coded audio is very small. This is even more amazing given that the visitors to hydrogen audio are presumably self-selecting - people who don't give a damn obviously aren't going to visit in the first place. Even so, it's clear that listeners like guruboolez (that's his HA user name) are very rare here, and probably rarer elsewhere.

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...and that it is not that hard to get enough tests and testers to obtain results that are representative of the general population.
That's a different thing entirely. Of course it's not difficult to get results representative of the general population.

Are we really interested in that? From the HA tests I've seen, lots of the general population find ~128kbps mp3 entirely transparent. That's very interesting, but it doesn't help me pick a better audio codec.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 15:21:27
I understand both sides of this story, and think both the most extreme "believers" and the most extreme "sceptics" could gain from a bit enlightment about the world view and experiences of the other
You mean the fact that the system mentioned in post 1 is probably very enjoyable to listen to?

Or the probably that, for most of the 2-channel recordings available, reproducing them "perfectly" won't be nearly half as enjoyable as hearing them somewhat messed up in one way or another?

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 15:22:21
John Atkinson, what about this...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=630140 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=630140)

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-27 15:25:50
I understand both sides of this story, and think both the most extreme "believers" and the most extreme "sceptics" could gain from a bit enlightment about the world view and experiences of the other
You mean the fact that the system mentioned in post 1 is probably very enjoyable to listen to?

Or the probably that, for most of the 2-channel recordings available, reproducing them "perfectly" won't be nearly half as enjoyable as hearing them somewhat messed up in one way or another?

Cheers,
David.


Probably both. I for one certainly thinks that a colored version of the original signal is far better sounding than a "neutral" version for almost any source material.

EDIT: Earlier in this thread(I think) it was argued that it's easy to make a solid state amp that sounds like a tube amp. I'm sure that's correct, but if you prefer the tube sound it's probably easier to just go buy one than to find a SS amp that sounds like one.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 15:28:13
2. Atkinson tries to sell that proper ABX testing is terribly hard to do right and can lead to false negatives. Both is nonsense.


Both claims are IME true in their way. Use of words like "nonsense" creates a post that is easy to cherry-pick, even if  one generally agrees with your position. It is very Fremer-like.

The first question I have for you is how do you know what procedures Stereophile actually uses to test say, amplifiers?

It turns out that their procedures (if they are true to their published words and I don't think they actually are) might be a decent lead up to an ABX test, but that the ABX test requires considerably additional work.

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1. ABX testing, at least in the case of amps (also cables, DACs, ...), that he brought up, is actually pretty easy (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=630061).


I've already registered my issues with that post. I could write a long article about the problems with that viewpoint. Someone else did, and with a nice positive tone. It's called ITU recommendation BS-1116. Ever read it?

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2. False negatives can only happen when the number of trials is small or too short.


If life were only that simple!  Listener selection and training is a big issue. I strongly suspect that if adequate controls were used, a lot of *sucessful* reviewers would be sent back for more training or permanently benched.

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As Stereophile would be conducting the test, those pitfalls could be easily avoided by just giving reviewers as much time as they are getting now for their sighted tests. In that case false negatives would mean nothing else than sub-average ears.


The bottom line is that doing proper listening tests by *any* reasonsble means more work than using the usual slipshod techniques.

The most obvious problem s with proper subjective testing producedures is that they are sort of self-checking and produce a ton of negative results until you do things right, given that the subtle audible difference in question is even really there.

Stated another way, you can't tell the difference between a subjective test with  adequate experimental controls but that is otherwise inadequate, and one that is going to give you negative results forever no matter how much effort you put into it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 15:35:09
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I admit that the sighted listening practiced by my magazine can produce false positives. But in my view, that is preferable to false negatives.


False positives sell advertising and magazines. A win-win for the people who favor them and build a personal empire around them.

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YMMV, of course.


I was raised to believe that if you can't do it right, don't do it.

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But in the end, if I publish a significantly high proportion of false positives, I will go out of business.


I see no logical support for this claim.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 15:41:43
Indeed I heard the hiss. It doesn't bother me. I have subscription to the New York Philharmonic too. When I sit in a room full of the elderly, there's constant coughing, choking and phlegm spitting from them. I ignore that too. I'm there to listen to the music. That's what I do at home too. If there's hiss who cares? Absence of hiss doesn't necessarily equal good sound....
Given Fremer's numerous rants about (many probably imaginary) audible flaws in digital recordings and equipment, we see here that he is admitting that he is not an unbiased reviewer.

He rants and raves about alleged flaws that he doesn't like, and gives a pass to clearly audible flaws that we all, even him can clearly hear.
But if the "alleged" flaws were real, that bias would be quite understandable.

I'd rather listen to 78s than 128kbps CBR mp3s, even though (objectively) the latter clearly have far fewer imperfections.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 15:42:31
One of the things we found out with ABX is that there are no golden ears
This is not bourne out by testing here on Hydrogen Audio. The percentage of people who can hear flaws in "high quality" coded audio is very small. This is even more amazing given that the visitors to hydrogen audio are presumably self-selecting - people who don't give a damn obviously aren't going to visit in the first place. Even so, it's clear that listeners like guruboolez (that's his HA user name) are very rare here, and probably rarer elsewhere.


You are very quick to apply your own definitions to terms that may be, for the purpose of discusisons with you, too general.

Like, why not you define what I mean by "golden ears", since you have been so quick to crticize what I said about them.

;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 15:45:20
John Atkinson, what about this...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=630140 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=630140)

Cheers,
David.


I will check it out and reply later today if appopriate. My apologies to those who are waiting for me to respond to their questions. The sheer volume of posts to this thread is actually  overwhelming, particularly when one person posts multiple responses to things I have written. I do have a  fulltime job to attend to  - if not necessarily a life :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 15:56:24
Great job, Arnie! Thanks to your carpet bombing Atkinson could just pick the cherries again.


If I cared to document it, I can falsify all of those so-called cherries.

You apparently don't realize how far off into the ozone of belief in his own perfection he is, and how he'll spin true statements into apparent falsehoods.


I question the wisdom of bringing a sawed off shotgun to a chess game.


I question the wisdom of loudly criticizing one of the players in a match, at least until the game is over.

I know of places where doing that could have very bad repercussions for the perp, on several levels ranging from physical to legal.

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Might it not be better to stick to challenging these cats on a few very clearly defined points, narrow them down and force them to answer instead of making word soup at them?


BTW My friend, where is the thread where you tried to get general agreement among the HA regulars about what those points are?

You seem to be good about making up hidden agendas and they trying to enforce them. :-(

As far as Atkinson goes, been there, done that. For over a decade. In person and over the wire.

You ain't going to change them, you ain't gonna corner them at least in their own eyes, and you ain't going to convince the people who believe in them.

Atkinson has made millions, spawned and raised his kids, and generally had the life of his choosing out of this. He'll never recant, except perhaps on his death bed.

I will say that he's lost a lot of energy over the years. And he's suffering badly from not having his usual posse of supporters running interference for him like he did on RAO.

Moderation is Atkinson's undoing, he was never able to totally subvert RAHE like happened on RAO.  His time here will be very short, I predict. It appears that Fremer already fled.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-27 16:02:15
You apparently don't realize how far off into the ozone of belief in his own perfection he is.


I'm not sure about that. He might be well aware that blind testing would be much closer to the truth (existence and/or perceptibility of acoustical differences). But acknowledging (and enforcing) that may severely handicap the best racehorses in his stable. Right now they are writing good prose and own a solid fan base. Forcing them by ABX to acknowledge the truth, that 90% of their trade is imagination, could cause severe writer's block.

So he may keep ABX testing at a safe distance from them despite knowing better. Mauvaise foi always seeks compensation and he might be using you, Arnold, exactly for that purpose. While knowing that you're basically right he also knows about the very few buttons he has to push to make you dance. So in the end they all dance for him: his writers who must not face the truth and his critics who go crazy by just a few words he throws at them, whenever he feels like it.

Edit: Typo.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 16:19:02
You apparently don't realize how far off into the ozone of belief in his own perfection he is.

Mauvaise foi always seeks compensation and he might be using you, Arnold, exactly for that purpose.


Wow!  Now I do smell the fresh cabbages and truck exhaust, ;-)

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While knowing that you're basically right he also knows about the very few buttons he has to push to make you dance.


Atkinson is here, dancing my dance because I pushed his buttons.  You could at least thank me for the entertainment value in that. ;-)

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So in the end they all dance for him: his writer's who must not face the truth and his critics who go crazy by just a few words he throws at them, whenever he feels like it.


The bottom line is that ABX got me a little (in)fame, a tiny bit of cash at a rediculously low hourly rate, a free trip to NYC in 2005,  and a number of really good friends going back decades. That's it.

Avoding and subverting ABX got Atkinson $millions.

We were both successful in our ways. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 16:24:17
Earlier in this thread(I think) it was argued that it's easy to make a solid state amp that sounds like a tube amp. I'm sure that's correct, but if you prefer the tube sound it's probably easier to just go buy one than to find a SS amp that sounds like one.


1.0- 3.3 ohm wirewound resistors are AFAIK still under a couple of bucks each at your nearest Radio Shack or other electronics store. 

Therefore, if you can solder or know somebody who can, or at least can cut a speaker wire and twist one of these resistors in series,  it is most definately *not* easier to buy a tubed amp than to make a solid state amp that sound like a tubed amp.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-27 16:47:04
One of the things we found out with ABX is that there are no golden ears
This is not bourne out by testing here on Hydrogen Audio. The percentage of people who can hear flaws in "high quality" coded audio is very small. This is even more amazing given that the visitors to hydrogen audio are presumably self-selecting - people who don't give a damn obviously aren't going to visit in the first place. Even so, it's clear that listeners like guruboolez (that's his HA user name) are very rare here, and probably rarer elsewhere.
You are very quick to apply your own definitions to terms that may be, for the purpose of discusisons with you, too general.

Like, why not you define what I mean by "golden ears", since you have been so quick to crticize what I said about them.

;-)
If communication on the internet is to be worthwhile at all, we each have to attach some meaning to words written by others. This isn't an unreasonable thing to do!

If I have mistaken the meaning you intended, it is up to you to clarify.


My rough definition of a "Golden Ear" would be someone who can hear a change or feature in an audio signal which the (vast?) majority of people cannot. There are degrees (e.g. something that only 10% can detect, 1%, 0.1% etc!), and there are areas/features (pre-echo, codec noise, loudspeaker amplitude dips etc!), but I think that's the basic idea. It has something, but not everything, to do with training.

Your turn.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-27 18:32:40
If I have mistaken the meaning you intended, it is up to you to clarify.


No, if three 's any doubt about the meaning of what I said, its up to you to clarify before you proceed.

I call a golden ear a person who is a standout in a pre-selected group of people who have demonstrated far better than average sensitivity to audible differences.

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My rough definition of a "Golden Ear" would be someone who can hear a change or feature in an audio signal which the (vast?) majority of people cannot.


I call those people "pre-selected, trained, listeners".

For example, Clark assembled about 25 "pre-selected, trained listeners" out of the Detroit area for the amp and CD Stereo Review tests by Clark and Masters.  The candidates were the 60-odd people in our audio club, the 20-odd active members of the local SMPTE group, the 40-odd active members of the local AES chapter, and maybe 20-30 others who worked professionally in audio including audio bench technicans, car audio tech staff from the car companies, live sound, recording studio staff, technically-oriented musicans, etc., and weren't already in the previously-mentioned groups.  By this time we had been doing public ABX tests in the Detroit area for nearly a decade.

We did public ABX tests in a number of contexts that intersected the above groups of folks, and selected out the people who seemed to do well based on observation during tests and their individual results. When then sent out invitations to join the SR test group, and refined our selections as the SR tests progressed. For example people who talked during tests got a warning and if it continued, out!

Within that group we occasionally had people who scored significant individual results while most of the other "pre-selected, trained, listeners" were scoring random guessing.  We provisionally called them our "Golden Ears".  In retests and/or subsequent tests of a similar nature their test results returned to conformance with the group. Hence, my comment that "There are no golden ears".

Quote
There are degrees (e.g. something that only 10% can detect, 1%, 0.1% etc!), and there are areas/features (pre-echo, codec noise, loudspeaker amplitude dips etc!), but I think that's the basic idea. It has something, but not everything, to do with training.


IME the main "other thing" in addition to normal pre-selection and training is freedom from debilitating ear damage.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-04-27 19:25:44
I will check it out and reply later today if appopriate. My apologies to those who are waiting for me to respond to their questions. The sheer volume of posts to this thread is actually  overwhelming, particularly when one person posts multiple responses to things I have written. I do have a  fulltime job to attend to  - if not necessarily a life :-)
I moderate here and am still trying to come to grips with this thread. I'm glad I'm out of the fray for once.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ff123 on 2009-04-27 19:28:26
So what I think I just read is that Arnie claims that if there is a pre-selected group (of supposedly sensitive listeners), who have been trained to hear certain types of audio deficiencies, and their hearing has not been damaged (either by trauma or age), then it has been his experience that their standout results regress to the mean in subsequent testing.

That certainly is an interesting claim, and not one I would intuitively guess to be true.  I would personally expect, for example, that as typically is the case with human attributes, that there is a bell curve of sensitivity.  At some point, let's arbitrarily call it 2 sigma, we would have a few people whose sensitivity is so far from the norm, that we could call them "golden ears," for all practical purposes.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-27 19:44:23


Quote from:  link=msg=630212 date=0
I know of places where doing that could have very bad repercussions for the perp, on several levels ranging from physical to legal.

What's the point of a statement like that?


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BTW My friend, where is the thread where you tried to get general agreement among the HA regulars about what those points are?

I haven't been following this thread avidly but I obviously missed the part where you were elected sole spokesman

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As far as Atkinson goes, been there, done that. For over a decade. In person and over the wire.

You ain't going to change them, you ain't gonna corner them at least in their own eyes, and you ain't going to convince the people who believe in them.

So what's the point in persuing them if you can't settle any issues after a decade?

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It appears that Fremer already fled.

Ah, I see. You're not trying to settle a difference of opinion you're trying to intimidate him. Why don't you just threaten him with physical repercussions?

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Atkinson is here, dancing my dance because I pushed his buttons. You could at least thank me for the entertainment value in that.


Well, I'm not finding it entertaining. I'm finding it increasingly puerile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-04-27 19:56:08
Well, I'm not finding it entertaining. I'm finding it increasingly puerile


If only someone could develop a simple methodology for removing ego issues from threads like these.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-27 20:02:26
The German c't magazine conducted a blind listening test (MP3 vs. Redbook) in 2000 with 12 participants. About 300 people had applied to take part and they mainly chose known audiophile advocates and people with audio related engineering professions. Most of them failed pretty badly, but 2 stood out of the crowd. One, Gernot von Schultzendorff, is mastering engineer at Deutsche Grammophon. The other one has a cutoff of 8 khz in his left ear after an explosion accident. He could hear the filter banks' flanging artifacts that otherwise would had been masked by higher frequency components.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-27 20:50:27
If only someone could develop a simple methodology for removing ego issues from threads like these.

I can think of a way
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 21:05:40
This sound oh so reasonable, but if one were to actually tally the number and placement of the 'heterodox' writings, I'm rather sure one would find that by far most of them appear in the letters column, not the articles and reviews, and that that the rare peep of doubt about the Emperor's couture in a review is dwarfed by the amount of 'orthodox' content.


That said, IIRC, didn't JA reject Beltism?



'Old Earth' creationists scoff at 'Young Earth' creationists, too.   

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 21:17:22
Mr. Atkinson, this is a smokescreen, and one that Stereophile has been puffing out for far too long.  Yes, it would be an overreach to claim that there is never any difference tout court between A and B based on a small dataset (which is why 'objectivist' claims typically are qualified with words like 'likely').  But one can test *you* and *your* particular claim that you already hear a difference, rather more readily, and discover whether you were really hearing what you claimed to hear five minutes ago.


If we really want to pin these guys down then I think it would be better to sort of narrow down our challenges, present a unified front and a unified message and force them to either shit or get off the pot.


No one can 'force' anyone to do anything of the sort.  One is still free to be a raving audiophile in the US of A.  And free to  criticize them.
 
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Otherwise they get to pick and choose which points to which they will respond from which people and generally obfuscate, evade and conflate all they like and then claim victory afterwards.


I'm actually glad people here have gotten a taste of Mr. Atkinson's talent for that, as well as Mr. Fremer's 'bad cop'.  Now you know what 'we're' up against because, this, folks is the face of 'authority' to a large segment of the high end.  Visit the Stereophile forum for a heapin' helpin' of crazy from the infantry, if you really want more.  (Wave to me and Axon and JJ as you drive by.  ;> )

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I'd hate for that to happen.  Here is my proposal:  Atkinson is on record claiming that all lossy compressed music is unsuitable for "serious listening".  He is also now on record in stating that he uses lossless AND also AAC 320kbps on his own iPod.  Presumably this means there are tracks in his collection where he can very access both a lossy and lossless version of the same track without even doing a fresh rip.  That means he can take a few minutes to download Foobar while he is typing his next post and then he can either demonstrate his ability to ABX AAC at the highest quality setting from lossless or he can publicly retract his statement that lossy music is unsuitable for "serious listening".  I think that should be the challenge.  He either takes it or he folds his tents.


Heh.  Don't count on it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 21:38:52
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.


Maybe you were ambushed by the ABX'ers, but calling your positive results a 'lucky coin' is valid.

Maybe this has already been explained, but i haven't seen it in this thread.

Toss a coin 5 times, chance of it coming up heads five times is 5/32 or 3.1%, chance of 4 heads is 10/32 or 15.6%
Multiply those chances over 20 trials of 5 coin flips, and you will expect to see a few 4 head outcomes, and there's a good possibility of a 5 head outcome (around 60% i think, i'm no statistics whiz)



Actually, a 5/5 score has a p of 0.03...it's the first x/x score to break the .05 threshold.  But we don't settle for an n = 5 , do we?  Neither do scientists or statisticians, unless they're desperate.  Nor is it very consistent of JA  to cite a 5-trial test if he's also going to dun objectivists for small sample sizes.

As if that was our fault....by now, the high-end camp could have done and published hundreds of positive ABX results, if these differences were truly as apparent as they seem.  It has always struck me as remarkable that 'hi rez' was launched with *no* accompanying scientific listening data.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-27 21:46:44
As we all know, ABX only tells wether or not the individual were able to identify the tested amplifiers there and then.


If the individual has already asserted that ability to hear the difference, including 'there and then',  the performance 'there and then' can actually be quite telling about the *individual's* authority.  Stereophile reviewers seem to have little trouble routinely hearing differences there and then  -- at least based on what they write.  The interesting thing would be to test their 'ears'.

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I'm about to loose track of my point here, but I think what I'm trying to say is that many of the issues we're discussing isn't really testable with ABX, so nagging on and on about making such a test doesn't really make any sense (because the differences are so small). Fremer and Atkinson knows this (while they may not be in a position to say it out loud), but they also know that even though it isn't ABXable doesn't really prove that there is no difference at all. And I see nothing much wrong with that.


What audible difference is so small as to be impossible to ABX?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: hybris on 2009-04-27 22:04:24
What audible difference is so small as to be impossible to ABX?


I don't know, loudspeaker cables possibly? 

Is something audible if you can't ABX it? I guess it's a matter of definition

My main point (I found it now) is that you're asking them to do ABX(or similar tests), but we all know (including them probably) that the difference is too small for that to make any sense, as they'll fail. What that fact actually means is probably the main disagreement here.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-27 22:35:03
I took the ABX test as devised and produced by the group and I got five of five identifications correct. My editor, John Atkinson got 4 of 5 correct. The average of all test takers was inconclusive. According to Dr. Stanley Lipschitz, I was a "lucky coin" and my result was tossed.


Maybe you were ambushed by the ABX'ers, but calling your positive results a 'lucky coin' is valid.

Maybe this has already been explained, but i haven't seen it in this thread.

Toss a coin 5 times, chance of it coming up heads five times is 5/32 or 3.1%, chance of 4 heads is 10/32 or 15.6%
Multiply those chances over 20 trials of 5 coin flips, and you will expect to see a few 4 head outcomes, and there's a good possibility of a 5 head outcome (around 60% i think, i'm no statistics whiz)



Actually, a 5/5 score has a p of 0.03...it's the first x/x score to break the .05 threshold.  But we don't settle for an n = 5 , do we?  Neither do scientists or statisticians, unless they're desperate.


In the AES Convention tests that Michael and you are discussing, the number of trials (5) was set by the test organizer David Clark. In theory it was possible for conventiongoers to sign up for a second and third session of 5 trials, but the tests were over-subscribed as it was. So Michael and I had to remain "lucky coins" with Michael being a bit "luckier" than me. :-(

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Nor is it very consistent of JA  to cite a 5-trial test if he's also going to dun objectivists for small sample sizes.


I argued at the time that 5 trials was too small, for the reasons mentioned, but that was the number decided upon, presumably to be able to get as many listeners through the listening test as was possible during the convention. The goal was to have a large number of listeners each doing a small number of trials, as I understood from the test organizers at the time.

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It has always struck me as remarkable that 'hi rez' was launched with *no* accompanying scientific listening data.


Bob Katz, Vicky Melchior, JJ, and others have been discussing the design of formal listening tests comparing hi-rez audio with Red Book versions. Eliminating interfering variables turns out not to be a trivial matter.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-27 23:57:29
I argued at the time that 5 trials was too small, for the reasons mentioned, but that was the number decided upon, presumably to be able to get as many listeners through the listening test as was possible during the convention. The goal was to have a large number of listeners each doing a small number of trials, as I understood from the test organizers at the time.
As I think I mentioned before to Michael, I agree wholeheartedly that the results do not support the conclusion that you and Michael were "lucky coins", and it is news to me that you two got 5/5 and 4/5. It's plainly unfortunate that more testing was not done.

At the same time, do you not agree that the overall result of the test - IIRC, that the results overall were fairly indistinguishable from chance (I don't have the paper on me right now) - still has a very important meaning? I am comfortable with the notion that a small fraction of listeners are able to tell a difference in such situations, while most listeners can't. And if you get close to a 50% result, while individual testers such as yourself can still pass a 16- or 32-trial test with flying colors, well..

Moreover, I think that such results can have considerable importance for those who cannot pass such ABX tests, and perhaps can readjust their purchase priorities accordingly. Of course this has to be balanced against the odds of the listener becoming more adept in the future to hearing such details.

So I'm really tempted to just straddle the fence here. That test did not show that you and Michael could hear the difference, because your results were as to be expected as due to chance. But they certainly did not show that you couldn't hear the difference, either - it is quite plausible - and more testing really should have been done on that matter. The test did strongly suggest that a majority of the testers could not tell a difference, and that in itself is important.

Put another way, the test was certainly "flawed" if it was attempting to show that absolutely nobody could hear a difference, but under a more relaxed criteria (of showing that the proportion of discriminators must be below some low percentage), I don't think it's flawed at all.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-28 00:03:17
Regarding your statement that "no true audiophile will listen to music while watching video from the same recording," which you appear to attribute to me, I have on many occasions written the opposite: that rather than SACD and DVD-A, it is the live music DVD that can perhaps be considered the true successor to the CD.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Now, this conclusion surprises me. Isn't the audio on DVD lossy coded? AC3? DTS?

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger link=msg=0 date=
BTW Stanley Lipshitz tells me that with suitable noise shaping, a 16 bit linear PCM system can have a subjectively-weighted dynamic range of > 120 dB, if memory serves.


He might have said that, but I don't agree. I've done a number of listening tests over the last three years (double-blind ones, of course), and I got a perceptual dynamic range gain of about 2 bit, i.e. 12 dB, when using noise shaping. That's roughly in line with Stuart's findings (see his AES papers from the mid 90s... sorry, I forgot the exact titles).

Edit: This holds for 44 and 48 kHz. True, at 88 kHz and beyond, you can gain 3 or 4 bits of additional perceputal dynamic range (also tried that).

Chris
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 00:10:21
Now, this conclusion surprises me. Isn't the audio on DVD lossy coded? AC3? DTS?
Usually, but it doesn't have to be.

Many music titles have 2-channel 48kHz LPCM of various bitdepths (16, 20, 24) along with the video. Some even have LPCM with more than 2 channels - this leaves less bitrate for the video for each channel you add.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 00:20:14
If I have mistaken the meaning you intended, it is up to you to clarify.


No, if three 's any doubt about the meaning of what I said, its up to you to clarify before you proceed.

I call a golden ear a person who is a standout in a pre-selected group of people who have demonstrated far better than average sensitivity to audible differences.
If I have to assume that any word you use has been equally tortuously removed from its generally accepted meaning, it will make discussion very difficult.

Which, on the evidence I've seen on HA, is the general intention of your debating technique.

You do the cause of DBT a huge disservice. John Atkins comes across as perfectly reasonable; you come across as a complete twit (I misspelled that). If I had no prior knowledge, and could only judge this subject from the tone of this discussion, I'd be deleting my HA account and subscribing to Stereophile immediately.

I can't put it much more strongly - if this kind of debate and style spreads much further in HA, it'll kill it. Please take it back to Usenet.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 00:45:39


It has always struck me as remarkable that 'hi rez' was launched with *no* accompanying scientific listening data.


Bob Katz, Vicky Melchior, JJ, and others have been discussing the design of formal listening tests comparing hi-rez audio with Red Book versions. Eliminating interfering variables turns out not to be a trivial matter.


Indeed, yet isn't it rather after the fact?  SACD was launched how many years ago with how much hype about it's obvious superiority to CD?

(edit: to remove a wasteful amount of quoting by me)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: DocBeard on 2009-04-28 00:57:01
Quote
You do the cause of DBT a huge disservice. John Atkins comes across as perfectly reasonable; you come across as a complete twit (I misspelled that). If I had no prior knowledge, and could only judge this subject from the tone of this discussion, I'd be deleting my HA account and subscribing to Stereophile immediately.


As someone who really does have very little knowledge of the subject, I've got to second this. I mean, I totally understand being tired of making the same civil and informative arguments over and over and over (and over) again, but that is what being an advocate for something entails. If you (for whichever value of 'you' is preferred) would rather score points on the Great Electric Arguing Machine that is the internet (people think I'm joking when I call it this) than actually convince people of anything, well done I suppose.

As it is, I think I hate ABX tests on principle now, and will be making my future audio equipment purchasing decisions based on the number of people it will annoy. I wonder if there's a double-blind test for that?



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-28 00:57:53
If I have to assume that any word you use has been equally tortuously removed from its generally accepted meaning, it will make discussion very difficult. Which, on the evidence I've seen on HA, is the general intention of your debating technique. You do the cause of DBT a huge disservice. John Atkins comes across as perfectly reasonable; you come across as a complete twit (I misspelled that). If I had no prior knowledge, and could only judge this subject from the tone of this discussion, I'd be deleting my HA account and subscribing to Stereophile immediately. I can't put it much more strongly - if this kind of debate and style spreads much further in HA, it'll kill it. Please take it back to Usenet.


Seconded. Strongly.

Arny, your cavalier attitude on the simple topic of communication is breathtaking. I have been nearly ostracized - literally - for making far less inflammatory accusations between groups of friends, than what you have accused Michael of. And then you have the nerve to respond not by actually backing your sh*t up, but by attacking Michael's semantics!?! I was willing to just drop the issue like everybody else did, but now that it seems like that's par for the course for you, I think I'll just go ahead and dig that back up.

I think I understand why I am (and Canar is) so flummoxed about this entire topic, going all the way back to when B0RK was the center of attention. You, and also Steven to a certain degree, have turned this thread into what seems like a word-for-word rematch of the exact same argument, made against the exact same people, that has been replayed on Usenet for what seems like a decade - an argument I have absolutely no intention of supporting. I said this to jj, I alluded to this to Michael, and I'll say it to you: HA IS NOT RAO. It isn't even RAHE. Some of us are quite willing to take John and Michael as being rational, intelligent, educated, experienced people - which is an assertion to some degree backed up by their rather good and coherent replies (particularly John's which I have always admired). I cannot say the same about your replies.

Let me put it this way, when your debating style is criticized as being too coarse on Stereo Central, something is deeply wrong.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 01:14:25
I argued at the time that 5 trials was too small, for the reasons mentioned, but that was the number decided upon, presumably to be able to get as many listeners through the listening test as was possible during the convention. The goal was to have a large number of listeners each doing a small number of trials, as I understood from the test organizers at the time.
As I think I mentioned before to Michael, I agree wholeheartedly that the results do not support the conclusion that you and Michael were "lucky coins", and it is news to me that you two got 5/5. It's plainly unfortunate that more testing was not done.

At the same time, do you not agree that the overall result of the test - IIRC, that the results overall were fairly indistinguishable from chance (I don't have the paper on me right now) - still has a very important meaning?


My take on it is that when very small  but real differences are involved, either the design of the test becomes non-trivial, or any individual identifications disappear into the overall noise from the results of those who do not perceive a difference. You need to repeat thr test to determine what is the problem, and that may not be possible, as at the AES Convention tests we have been discussing.

When I organized an amplifier test at our 1989 Show in San Mateo, I could tell the amplifiers apart under blind conditions -- see http://www.stereophile.com/features/113 (http://www.stereophile.com/features/113) for a description of the methodology. (This shouldn't be surprising as the amplifiers had response differences into the test loudspeaker and I had done so many dry runs that I think it fair to claim that I had learned the difference.) But when the results of all the listeners were calculated and adjusted for the inadvertent mismatch between Sames and Differents, we were back to the old null result.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-28 01:26:59
@Axon :
I am getting confused here.

I just read this post :
IN his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.
Fremer is a psychiatrist? That joke writes itself. Multiple times over actually. Heh.

Indeed. Fremer's pricey system didn't restore his ability to hear the LP hiss that the reporter heard.
Nor does it guarentee that his LPs play back with a speed tolerance of any less than 0.6%, as I observed a few days ago with some needledrops he posted.

Next time you hear an audiophile claim that high-mass turntables do not have speed issues, pour that into their cornflakes and shove it up their ass.


Your last post is playing quite a different tune ... correct ?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Dynamic on 2009-04-28 01:32:55
I wasn't intending to contribute but I would add that too much of this comes across as personal grudges and mudslinging. Informative logical argument, most importantly with some civility would be welcomed by the rest of us who are interested in the topics concerned.

HydrogenAudio is wonderfully free of flame wars and their like and rich in information and genuine enquiry and knowledge-seeking. I can understand a degree of personal animosity after many years of conflict, perhaps people feeling they're hounded wherever they go, having their integrity and honesty called into question despite the fact that they're right. However, I'm fairly confident that the rest of us here would like civil discussion unpolluted by personal attacks and "he would say that because..." which are irrelevant to the technical points being discussed and worsen the high signal to noise ratio of this forum.

Having the humility and intellectual honesty to acknowledge the limitation of your own past results and not claim more that they've actually demonstrated, despite your immense contributions to the field, and your obvious intellectual rigour in those contributions, is the kind of behaviour that engenders great respect when sustained for some time, such that statements you do make can be trusted more straightforwardly that having to see if they're too sweeping The effective assertion that no golden-ears exist generally, runs counter to codec-testing experience of people like Guruboolez of which we've seen so much evidence here and in the French hardware forums where he's also reported his detailed listening tests, so this would seem too sweeping and needs qualifying, as you did after some queries.

I'm definitely outside the industry, but scientifically trained as a physicist, and I appreciate the gracious tone of John Atkinson, even if I know little of Stereophile and though I have a general scepticism and a propensity to dismiss as placebo most of the sighted reviews and recommendations unless I see statistically significant evidence or gross measurement differences to support the views expressed.

Anyhow, I'm diluting the information content enough, so I'll stop there.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-28 01:35:21
You mean I'm communicating more politely to people to their faces? Shocker.

Read up on the intermediate threads between that post and my last one. I changed my tune only a couple posts after that one, actually. I remain exasperated that a high-end turntable can have such wide speed excursions, but that's a significantly different issue than what the discussion has evolved into (or, at least, what I'd like the discussion to evolve into): a more nuanced discussion on the nature of blind testing, along with a larger debate on the role of high-end audio plays with respect to mainstream audio. And really, given my recent posting history on the philosophy of science and blind testing in other threads, this should not be a surprise.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-28 01:47:21
My take on it is that when very small  but real differences are involved, either the design of the test becomes non-trivial, or any individual identifications disappear into the overall noise from the results of those who do not perceive a difference. You ned to rpeat teh test to determine what is the problem, and that may not be possible, as at the AES Convention tests we have been discussing.

When I organized an amplifier test at our 1989 Show in San Mateo, I could tell the amplifiers apart under blind conditions -- see http://www.stereophile.com/features/113 (http://www.stereophile.com/features/113) for a description of the methodology. (This shouldn't be surprising as the amplifiers had response differences into the test loudspeaker and I had done so many dry runs that I think it fair to claim that I had learned the difference.) But when the results of all the listeners were calculated and adjusted for the inadvertent mismatch between Sames and Differents, we were back to the old null result.

Fair enough.

However, wouldn't it also be fair to say that, if testing an effect that is self-reported by the testers to definitely not be "very small", that they should be taken at their word? That is, for differences like high res vs Red Book, or before/after demag, when the testers universally agree in sighted listening that the difference is obvious, that the proportion of discriminators should be somewhere very close to 1, and so the type II error is actually very low?

That's one of my biggest peeves about this whole debate. We are not talking about effects that are supposed to be "very small". There are reviews on any number of things I can dig up, where the reviewer claims night-and-day differences... and yet DBTs on the issue yield negatives. IMHO, it's only after the DBTs are taken into account that the words "very small" creep into the discussion. It's largely ad hoc.

Frankly, if sighted testing identifies a clear difference that can be consistently identified, but a DBT in the same listening environment yields a null result, it doesn't really matter whether or not the difference was very small to begin with. The sighted testing impressions are critically challenged all the same.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-28 01:56:19
Mr. Atkinson,
I have twice put versions of this question to you, but it was apparently lost in the shuffle.  Your published position on the use of lossy compression is as follows:  "MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening. This is not true of lossless-compressed formats such as FLAC, ALC, and WMA lossless" 

If an individual listener is unable to differentiate a lossy file, either under the conditions of an ABX test or in a more relaxed and conventional listening setting, from its lossless counterpart then in what way, precisely, does the lossy file "not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening"?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 02:18:46
If I have mistaken the meaning you intended, it is up to you to clarify.


No, if three 's any doubt about the meaning of what I said, its up to you to clarify before you proceed.

I call a golden ear a person who is a standout in a pre-selected group of people who have demonstrated far better than average sensitivity to audible differences.


If I have to assume that any word you use has been equally tortuously removed from its generally accepted meaning, it will make discussion very difficult.


No torture intended. Your problem is one of context. You apparently don't understand the mindset of people who have been doing DBTs for 30 years or so. There's no reason why you should, but when you are communicating with people who have been doing DBTs for such a long time, you might consider making some allowances.

BTW, I didn't invent the usage - David Clark did back in early 1990s.

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Which, on the evidence I've seen on HA, is the general intention of your debating technique.


Hmm, my debating technique?

I don't have a debating technique. I just write about my experiences and my thoughts.  BTW, the RAO usage is "Debating trade".

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You do the cause of DBT a huge disservice. John Atkins comes across as perfectly reasonable; you come across as a complete twit (I misspelled that).


John Atkinson strikes you as being perfectly reasonable?  I'm beginning to think that I'm in Hell, complete with sign over the entrance saying "abandon all hope ye who enter in". ;-)

So what's your next move David, run right out and buy a $20,000+ LP demagnetizer, as recommended by your good buddy Mr. "Perfectly reasonable" John  Atkinson? ;-)

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If I had no prior knowledge, and could only judge this subject from the tone of this discussion, I'd be deleting my HA account and subscribing to Stereophile immediately.


I didn't set the tone of this thread all by myself. Far from it.  So you are willing to give these guys free passes for all of their childish name-calling? I logged on one day and found myself described as a"total liar". The worst thing I've said about them is that they are on occasion poorly-behaved and poorly-informed. I've even done their footnotes for them. ;-)

Quote
I can't put it much more strongly - if this kind of debate and style spreads much further in HA, it'll kill it. Please take it back to Usenet.


You know David, this post of yours seems like it is fresh off of RAO, childish name-calling and all. I think you need to start referring to me as "Krooger" so that the RAO effect will be complete. ;-)

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 02:38:47
So what I think I just read is that Arnie claims that if there is a pre-selected group (of supposedly sensitive listeners), who have been trained to hear certain types of audio deficiencies, and their hearing has not been damaged (either by trauma or age), then it has been his experience that their standout results regress to the mean in subsequent testing.


Yes, with the caveat that ABX is not a test that all by itself naturally interates towards finding individual thresholds.  IOW if you test amplifiers whose distortion is inaudible to everybody, you aren't obtaining different results for the sensitivity of all of the listeners. None of them can hear the difference, they are all random guessing, and that is that.

If you have a bunch of people who are guessing randomly, then if you do enough tests their results will eventually all converge to the (same) mean. If anybody is a standout, the outstanding results are really a statistical fluke, and statistical flukes have this nice way of converging to the mean as you do more and more tests.


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That certainly is an interesting claim, and not one I would intuitively guess to be true.


It wasn't intuitive to us up front, but when we thought about it and talked about it for a few weeks, we figured it out.

We had a similar experience with the problem of test results that seem to be far *worse* than random guessing. Lots of thinking and talking and we figured it out.  It turns out that results that seem to be worse than guessing are explained when there was some communication among the listeners, and the number of actual trials is less than the apparent number of  trials because of the inter-communication.  Joe and Sam are somehow communicationg and reporting the same thing, so there is actually one less independent listener than your head count.



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I would personally expect, for example, that as typically is the case with human attributes, that there is a bell curve of sensitivity.


I don't know about that. Listening is essentially athletics, so athletic metaphors can work. Is there a bell curve for people running the mile that extends below the current world's record by however many sigma?


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At some point, let's arbitrarily call it 2 sigma, we would have a few people whose sensitivity is so far from the norm, that we could call them "golden ears," for all practical purposes.


In fact the thresholds of hearing various things often seem to be quite abrupt.  Lots of results just above the threshold, but none below.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Night Surfer on 2009-04-28 02:41:59
I will delurk to third the sentiment that HA regulars (Mr. Krueger in particular) championing the cause have been sanctimonious and a general embarrassment.
While I do not buy what they are selling Mr Atkinson has been by far the better debater and I wish other more reasonable and level headed members if HA would step in to continue this.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 02:51:23
The effective assertion that no golden-ears exist generally, runs counter to codec-testing experience of people like Guruboolez of which we've seen so much evidence here and in the French hardware forums where he's also reported his detailed listening tests, so this would seem too sweeping and needs qualifying, as you did after some queries.


Not everything is a codec. Codecs seem to be very different from things like amplifiers and CD players. In the hardware world we have seriously inaudible things like 0.1 dB FR and level shifts, and noise floors that are 30 dB below the noise in the program material. Not the same as ABXing 128 or maybe 320 kbps codecs.

I don't have a lot of experience with testing codecs. I do just about everything including personal listening with pure .wav files and redbook CDs.

Testing real-world hardware, particularly that of the floobydust kind, seems to be an especially different world than testing codecs. 

We've just never seemed to find any people at all who could reliably hear the benefits of demagnetizing vinyl records, for example. ;-)

So, the concept of varying levels of sensitivity were irrelevant for many of our tests.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-04-28 02:59:19
No more ad hominem, guys. No names, no finger pointing. Let's discuss the interesting parts, not attack each other.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 03:20:49
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Arny, your cavalier attitude on the simple topic of communication is breathtaking. I have been nearly ostracized - literally - for making far less inflammatory accusations between groups of friends, than what you have accused Michael of.


So what's your point? Are you saying that is was a lie or is it too strong of stuff to ever be said in public?

I didn't point a gun at Michaels head and make him act that way.

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And then you have the nerve to respond not by actually backing your sh*t up,


Exactly what sort of backup am I supposed to provide? A video tape? An audio recording?  Notarized documents by two independent witnesses?

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but by attacking Michael's semantics!?!


Exactly what do you mean by that?

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I think I understand why I am (and Canar is) so flummoxed about this entire topic, going all the way back to when B0RK was the center of attention. You, and also Steven to a certain degree, have turned this thread into what seems like a word-for-word rematch of the exact same argument, made against the exact same people, that has been replayed on Usenet for what seems like a decade - an argument I have absolutely no intention of supporting.


The "Great Debate" is like that. They make the same old claims, we provide the latest-greatest rebuttals. It's not a world-for-word rematch or anything like it because we keep on investigating, the reliable evidence against SP keeps piling up.


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I said this to jj, I alluded to this to Michael, and I'll say it to you: HA IS NOT RAO.


With all the name-calling and public denouncements, people seem to be well into the RAO direction. You do understand that is how things came to be at RAO - by means of posts like this one I'm responding to?


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It isn't even RAHE.


Right, HA is still alive.


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Some of us are quite willing to take John and Michael as being rational, intelligent, educated, experienced people


That's a choice you get to make, and I wouldn't say booh about it, but for the slight matter of your personal attack on me.


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which is an assertion to some degree backed up by their rather good and coherent replies (particularly John's which I have always admired). I cannot say the same about your replies.


Shoot me for being more into function than form.

People who judge ideas by writing style are in my mind closely related to people who judge people by the cut of their suit, or whether they even wear one.


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Let me put it this way, when your debating style is criticized as being too coarse on Stereo Central, something is deeply wrong.


<note - up until tonight I had no idea what Stereo Central was. But with a little research...>

Fact is I can't quickly make heads or tails of what they are talking about on Stereo Central, but what I've read seems pretty tame.  I see that they are into Tone Audio, so there probably some kind of Marc Phllips connection there. Marc has crossed swords with both Krabapple and I many times in the past, so go figure.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 03:29:30
Mr. Atkinson,
I have twice put versions of this question to you, but it was apparently lost in the shuffle.  Your published position on the use of lossy compression is as follows:  "MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening. This is not true of lossless-compressed formats such as FLAC, ALC, and WMA lossless"


Yes, my apologies for the lack of response. As I said earlier today, the volume of posts in this thread has been overwhelming.

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If an individual listener is unable to differentiate a lossy file, either under the conditions of an ABX test or in a more relaxed and conventional listening setting, from its lossless counterpart then in what way, precisely, does the lossy file "not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening"?


For that person at that time, then yes, the lossy compressed file is presumably good enough. But everyone's threshold is going to be different and perhaps more significantly, their threshold of defects will change with time. For example, when I was younger, I wasn't bothered by scrape flutter in affordable analog tape machines. Just as well, as that's all I could afford at that time. But over the years, I have become much less tolerant of it, presumably because I have learned to identify it, and that is something that can't be unlearned.

Hence my blanket recommendation to which you refer: lossless or uncompressed for "serious" listening, to which I would add archiving. Why not when hard drive capacity is now so cheap. And for portable listening, I personally use AAC at 320kbps and recommend that, even if it might be thought overkill. People are not obliged to follow my advice, of course, and they are free to make their own decision about where to make the trade-off between file size and bit rate. But I think of an email from a Stereophile reader who ripped all his CDs as 128kbps MP3s and disposed of the CDs. He is now dissatisfied with the sound of his music collection but can't do anything about improving it short of repurchasing the CDs.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

PS: I always recommend to my readers that they keep their CDs, as inconvenient as that might be. They are the backup of last resort.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-28 03:38:55
I do just about everything including personal listening with pure .wav files and redbook CDs.


But that doesn't mean that no difference exists. 320kbps mp3s can be ABXed. The Emperor has clothes in this case - but very few people can see them!


Don't count me into that. My digital music players are loaded with .wav files whereever possible.


Is it justified to literally carpet bomb others with posts to convince them to refrain from any statements about audio that can't be backed up blind testing, when the same person is putting "pure" .wav files onto his iPod? Let alone AAC, where probably over 99% of all releases are transparent to 99% of the population*. But preferring "pure .wav" even over losslessly compressed files (about half the storage space, twice as fast transfer speed, less battery consumption) seems quite odd to me when you demand such high standards of rationality from others.

When I just realized the latter, I was quite baffled. I think it is a side of the whole discussion that can be noted, at least once. But if any mods consider this too ad hominem, feel free to delete this.

*I have yet to find one person who could ABX non killer samples for a modern AAC encoder with ~192kbit/s. The share of killer samples in my collection is about 1 in 4000. Even the flanging-sensitive 8 kHz cutoff tester  in the c't setup could not tell apart most 256 kbit/s mp3s from WAV. And the available mp3 encoders in 2000 were much worse than what we have today.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-28 04:22:20
For that person at that time, then yes, the lossy compressed file is presumably good enough.


So you seem to be saying that there actually are instances in which a lossy file can be perfectly fine for serious listening and that there are situations where the two are functionally equivalent.

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But everyone's threshold is going to be different and perhaps more significantly, their threshold of defects will change with time.


Biologically speaking, isn't such change almost always going to be on a downward path?  I don't know of many, if there are any, instances of someone's hearing actually improving with age.  As such, wouldn't a person be less and less capable of differentiating lossy from lossless as time takes its toll?  Wouldn't the functional equivalency between lossy and lossless actually increase on an individual basis?  I'm talking about normal, age related decline of hearing not associated with a specific traumatic event.

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Hence my blanket recommendation to which you refer: lossless or uncompressed for "serious" listening, to which I would add archiving. Why not when hard drive capacity is now so cheap.  And for portable listening, I personally use AAC at 320kbps and recommend that, even if it might be thought overkill.


I am fairly new to this forum and when I registered to ask for advice I was specifically advised to rip to lossless first.  That was fantastic advice for me that has worked out very well, but I concede that it would not necessarily be appropriate for everyone.  I love the flexibility that it gives me and the security that I'll never need to rip those discs again.  However, my current lifestyle dictates that I do most of my listening from the iPod so I want my whole library on it.  I am a relative layperson compared to most people here, but I found the process of ABX testing to be quite easy to implement and also enormously helpful in determining what bitrate of lossy compression I needed to use in order to get the level of sound quality that I require.  I love the way that the process put me and my ears in the driver's seat.  By the way, it seems to me that your advocacy of AAC 320kbps for portable use might represent something of an evolution of your position in your editorial where you recommend that people use lossless or WAV.  If I had gone by your editorial instead of the advice I got here then I wouldn't be nearly as happy with my iPod setup.   

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PS: I always recommend to my readers that they keep their CDs, as inconvenient as that might be. They are the backup of last resort.


IMHO getting rid of the CDs is a terrible choice and not something I would consider.  In the US it's also not really legal under the "fair use" doctrine since you are really obligated to get rid of any copies you have made of a copyrighted work if you transfer your license to somebody else by selling off the disc.  I have mine in metal cabinets that I ordered from a company that sells store fixtures.  Having them ripped just means that I can keep the cabinets locked most of the time.  I feel sorry for your reader who ditched his discs as well, but I think that just about everybody here, including some of your more vocal critics, will agree that was a total bonehead move.

Thanks for the response.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-04-28 05:28:14
For that person at that time, then yes, the lossy compressed file is presumably good enough. But everyone's threshold is going to be different and perhaps more significantly, their threshold of defects will change with time. For example, when I was younger, I wasn't bothered by scrape flutter in affordable analog tape machines. Just as well, as that's all I could afford at that time. But over the years, I have become much less tolerant of it, presumably because I have learned to identify it, and that is something that can't be unlearned.


In an attempt to actually learn something from this trainwreck:

I think there are two tendencies relevant here. One is the deterioration of the hearing with age; the other is our capacity to learn to discriminate better. Clearly, people can learn to hear lossy-coding artifacts, and some of us are happy not to do artifact training because ignorance is bliss.

It also seems to be the case that, once you get to a reasonable quality level, problems with lossy are occasional glitches, rather than general subtle degradation. One exception might be low-pass filtering, for the young of ear. This at least is the impression I have gained from reading the reports of people with better hearing than me.

So I have a question for Mr Atkinson, and a genuine and straight one: would he agree with this characterisation of (potential) problems with lossy, that there are episodes of glitch, or is it a more pervasive effect?

If it's the odd bit of pre-echo, flanging or whatever, then it would seem to me a question of what you get used to; I'm very very happy not ever to have to hear a sudden pop from vinyl, or anxiety that someone walking heavily in an old house will cause a skip. I'm very happy not to hear tape hiss, though I also admit I must have got more sensitive to it now that it only turns up on old recordings transferred to digital. Maybe it's the case that some people don't mind lossy artifacts, when they happen, because they just don't mind them, rather than because they've got cloth ears or no money; vinyl enthusiasts don't mind the odd vinyl hiccup.

The other is about what level we're talking about. People who are interested in music, not sound reproduction, quite clearly have better listening experiences now with lossy files bought from one of the commercial sites than the vast majority of people ever had before. I've been there, lived through it, and it's better now than ever.

Probably also the people who want to (and can) spend big have it better than ever, though there are also more opportunities for spending loadsamoney on things that are acoustically irrelevant. My impression is that the audiophile end is really interested in reproduction as a hobby (back up there, I mean audio reproduction  ) and spends a lot of time listening for imperfections. 'S ok, I've been in a similar place with photography. But it is, frankly, musically pretty irrelevant, except as shrine-building.

So my other question, to any one, is what kind of difference to musical experience does better reproduction bring? Like, for the sharp-eared I can see that harpsichord at low bit-rate might lose a bit, but what is there, musically, to be had from the very best technique for playing Presley or Furtwaengler?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-28 07:16:23
I think the reason why so many of us are focusing on the lossy vs. lossless debate and are giving Mr. Atkinson no quarter is due to his article, MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD.  It demonstrates little more than utter ignorance of lossy formats, how they're developed and how they're tested.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-28 07:41:49
I think the reason why so many of us are focusing on the lossy vs. lossless debate and are giving Mr. Atkinson no quarter is due to his article, MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD.  It demonstrates little more than utter ignorance of lossy formats, how they're developed and how they're tested.
Back up: to the best of my knowledge, none of us has actually offered a public criticism of that article to JA - I was meaning to in my copious free time, although I actually did briefly respond to him in a sh.tv topic on the subject, and I think it's a little unfair to just let him waltz into that particular mousetrap without getting the backstory.

If I may insert a few words in John's mouth, I'm sure he would not mind a concise and comprehensive criticism of that article 

Looking back at my notes on the response I was meaning to write, here are the big issues with his article. These flaws are so huge that I do not believe the article has any redeeming technical validity.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-28 08:09:49
What exactly do you mean by "making stuff up"? Are you saying that they are lying, or that there's something going on in the brain that generates the 3D experience? I believe it's the latter.


Well, potentially both.

I don't think 'lying' is the right term, though. I suspect audiophiles (make that 'most' audiophiles) are sincere in their belief that they can hear in 3D, but whether that is merely self-delusion or the result of some psychoacoustic processes is unclear. What would be interesting, however, is if you could 'deprogram' an audiophile, would they stop with the 'holographic imagery' too? Some of the less febrile are starting to question the audiophile articles of faith... will 'soundstaging' disappear along with the need to spend crazy cable cash?

I think Fremer is lying. I think he's a dishonest hack. The Beach Boys review(s) quoted earlier are clear evidence, not to mention pretty much all we know about the guy.

Anyway, my favorite quote about "reality" is that one from Philip K. Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". I too wonder what would disappear from an audiophool's vocabulary when they stop believing in their crap. Perhaps "danceable"?

By the way, I was at this and all those very questionable Gizmodo posts, questioning. Was disappointed, they did pick on Fremer when the whole Randi vs. Pear Audio thing happened. I also shot some pointed questions to one of the "sources", who stopped by. Jerry Del Coliano also stopped by, and also didn't answer my questions to him. I remember him from (IIRC) audiorevolution.com, which I used to read, if only for their monthly draws.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-28 08:20:04
Back up: to the best of my knowledge, none of us has actually offered a public criticism of that article to JA

Perhaps this would be a good time to resurrect the discussion:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=61839 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=61839)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-28 08:23:18
Back up: to the best of my knowledge, none of us has actually offered a public criticism of that article to JA

Perhaps this would be a good time to resurrect the discussion:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=61839 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=61839)


Yup, but I just edited in a brief summary.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-04-28 08:46:31
I too would like to get this topic free of personal issues and histories and turn it into a REAL discussion about blind testing. Because it is an interesting topic for all of us.

For example I think it is not fair to call mr Atkinson's 5/5 result a "lucky coin". Where is that based on? How can you blame "subjectivists" to interpret results towards a result they like if we do the same?

I'm no statistic expert, but as far as I know a 5/5 result in an ABX test is only a lucky coin if this happens in multiple test runs for the same subject. So, if one subject does multiple runs of 5 trials; a 5/5 result may indeed be interpreted as random luck. However, if one person does one run of 5 trials and gets a 100% score, the pval is something like 3%, period. That is all the statistics is able to say.

So although it is very unfortunate that no more test runs were performed, we can say (and should, if we are consistent) that based on these results it was likely that Mr. Atkinson heard a difference.

That being said, I do not agree (at all) with his attitude towards lossy compression. But let's have a little respect, I think he is also being quit fair in this discussion.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-28 09:44:44
Hm. My own experiences with the iPod are that it's a touch on the noisy side...


[...]

Get an in-line attenuator and adjust the effective sensitivity of your earphones to suit your needs for noise-free listening. Or, obtain earphones that are simply less acoustically efficient.

The basic problem that you are worrying about has been around for at least 50 years that I know of. It is very easy to set up a monitoring system that will have an audible noise floor with virtually any piece of equipment.

I think I first experienced with my own equipment  using a pair of Telex headphones and an Eico ST-70 back in 1962 or so. But I worked for an audio store and I had encountered it with the store's equipment before that.

The effective solution that I  found way back then was to build an in-line attenuator and adjust the effective sensitivity of my earphones to suit my needs for relatively noise-free listening.

That's exactly what I do with the iPod. Thanks for your comment though, it does give me some peace of mind that I was doing the right thing. I have tried the Shure earphones up to the SE530, but liked better the Westone UM2, which is too efficient for its own good. The attenuators that come with those though are very crappy, at some attenuation level they start to mess with high frequencies. I have found the Ultimate Ears attenuators to be pretty good, though they're not variable, which I guess may make them more transparent frequency-wise?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 10:46:44
I think there are two tendencies relevant here. One is the deterioration of the hearing with age; the other is our capacity to learn to discriminate better. Clearly, people can learn to hear lossy-coding artifacts...
100% true. However, I suspect there's also some kind of biological issue which affects sensitivity to pre-echo. Some people just can't hear it even if you try to train them.

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It also seems to be the case that, once you get to a reasonable quality level, problems with lossy are occasional glitches, rather than general subtle degradation. One exception might be low-pass filtering, for the young of ear. This at least is the impression I have gained from reading the reports of people with better hearing than me.
Certainly when ABXing, I usually find the "worst" part in the file and concentrate on that to deliver an ABX pass most efficiently. That doesn't always mean that that part is the only one with the problem - sometimes, especially with a "new" kind of artefact, it can sound "not quite right" across the entire file. Not always.

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So I have a question for Mr Atkinson, and a genuine and straight one: would he agree with this characterisation of (potential) problems with lossy, that there are episodes of glitch, or is it a more pervasive effect?

If it's the odd bit of pre-echo, flanging or whatever, then it would seem to me a question of what you get used to; I'm very very happy not ever to have to hear a sudden pop from vinyl, or anxiety that someone walking heavily in an old house will cause a skip. I'm very happy not to hear tape hiss, though I also admit I must have got more sensitive to it now that it only turns up on old recordings transferred to digital. Maybe it's the case that some people don't mind lossy artifacts, when they happen, because they just don't mind them, rather than because they've got cloth ears or no money; vinyl enthusiasts don't mind the odd vinyl hiccup.
I think the important things, in terms of perception, are the absolute loudness of the problem (which correlates to annoyance in some people), and whether the problem is independent from the music, or correlated with it (which correlate to annoyance in other people).

IME people who accept low quality lossy audio hate the former and are happy with the latter; while people who accept low quality analogue hate the latter but are happy with the former. That's a bit of a generalisation, but there's some truth in it.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 11:06:38
Is it justified to literally carpet bomb others with posts to convince them to refrain from any statements about audio that can't be backed up blind testing, when the same person is putting "pure" .wav files onto his iPod?


I've got enough ABX controversy in my life relating to ABXing real hardware. I personally choose to not complexify my life with perceptual coder issues that are easy to avoid. When I'm backwoods camping and space, cost and weight are big issues. I listen to MP3s on CDs with a portable CD player.  You say why cost? In the woods stuff often gets ruined by water and dirt and weather. Every once in a while I unintentionally sacrifice a $30 portable CD player instead of a $200 hard drive based player.

First off, this is a TOS 8 -based forum, and I don't think I need to justify defending good listening tests.

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Let alone AAC, where probably over 99% of all releases are transparent to 99% of the population*. But preferring "pure .wav" even over losslessly compressed files (about half the storage space, twice as fast transfer speed, less battery consumption) seems quite odd to me when you demand such high standards of rationality from others.


I don't have any portable digital music player that plays  losslessly compressed file formats or WMA or AAC. I don't have an iPod or modern equivalent. My choices are .wav. redbook CD  or MP3.

In discussions of hardware-related issues there's a whole side-argument that people like to get into about me being deaf or indiscriminate, since I listen to MP3s. I can truthfully say that I prefer to listen to uncompressed audio formats. Between you and me, a lot of the preference comes from being able to truthfully say that. ;-)

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*I have yet to find one person who could ABX non killer samples for a modern AAC encoder with ~192kbit/s. The share of killer samples in my collection is about 1 in 4000. Even the flanging-sensitive 8 kHz cutoff tester  in the c't setup could not tell apart most 256 kbit/s mp3s from WAV. And the available mp3 encoders in 2000 were much worse than what we have today.


That's great. I'm not paranoid about MP3, I just choose to avoid lossy compression whenever convenient, and exploit lossy compression when not exploiting it would cause me an inconvenience. I choose not to keep up with the latest greatest coders and coder parameters because I just don't have time for that. I make MP3s and WMAs  with Cool Edit Pro, parameters based on size targets.  The applications for which they are made never involve high performance music listening. They are mostly spoken word.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 11:59:17
PS: I always recommend to my readers that they keep their CDs, as inconvenient as that might be. They are the backup of last resort.


There is a slight legal issue - sell the CD media and you sold your license to the IP.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 12:04:14
What audible difference is so small as to be impossible to ABX?


There are things that are difficult or impossible to ABX because of their nature.

The first biggie is comparisons that are not inhrently time-synched.  There are ways to time synch music players but it can get pretty tough.

Another example would be ABXing cryogenic treatment of a very expensive musical instrument. That's going to be difficult for many reasons.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 12:15:36
For example I think it is not fair to call mr Atkinson's 5/5 result a "lucky coin".


Do you think it is fair to call it a definitive test?

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Where is that based on?


IMO it is too small of a sample to have high confidence in. I always go for 1%.

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How can you blame "subjectivists" to interpret results towards a result they like if we do the same?


I think that if I would throw away a 5 trial test on the grounds that it is too small, then applying that standard elsewhere is at least not hypocritical.

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I'm no statistic expert, but as far as I know a 5/5 result in an ABX test is only a lucky coin if this happens in multiple test runs for the same subject.


I wouldn't call that a lucky coin, I would call that a biased coin. But, I don't see how that applies to the 199x AES demos.

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So, if one subject does multiple runs of 5 trials; a 5/5 result may indeed be interpreted as random luck. However, if one person does one run of 5 trials and gets a 100% score, the pval is something like 3%, period. That is all the statistics is able to say.


Agreed.

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So although it is very unfortunate that no more test runs were performed, we can say (and should, if we are consistent) that based on these results it was likely that Mr. Atkinson heard a difference.


John has given a very believable explaination of why there were only 5 trials - the demonstration facility was overloaded.


The solution to questionable results is to simply run more trials. Run enough independent trials and the results will converge to something that is very reliable.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-28 12:17:14
I think Fremer is XXXX. I think he's a XXXX XXXX. The Beach Boys review(s) quoted earlier are clear evidence, not to mention pretty much all we know about the guy.


Er, please try to stay within the boundaries of libel laws, people.

Mr Fremer has made contradictory - but in legal terms, 'fair comment' - statements. If he likes something today and doesn't like it tomorrow, he's 'mercurial', not 'lying'. If he got facts wrong and then corrected them without comment, unless his actions were in breach of code of conduct guidelines by the publication, the publishing house or a professional body or union he is a member, this does not constitute 'dishonesty'.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-28 12:24:10
That's exactly what I do with the iPod. Thanks for your comment though, it does give me some peace of mind that I was doing the right thing. I have tried the Shure earphones up to the SE530, but liked better the Westone UM2, which is too efficient for its own good. The attenuators that come with those though are very crappy, at some attenuation level they start to mess with high frequencies.


I share the enthusiasm for the UM2. Never heard anything better in-ear. The sensitivity really is a pain with iPods in very quiet environments. Your bad experiences with in line attenuators might be caused by the fact that the UM2 is two way with a passive crossover. The attenuator's resistors alter the behavior of the crossover.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-04-28 12:36:32
Do you think it is fair to call it a definitive test?

Also, no. More an indication that something interesting may come out of a test with more trials, but I'm sure you agree on that anyway.

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IMO it is too small of a sample to have high confidence in. I always go for 1%.

Fair enough. Though 5% is used pretty universally, of course.

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I think that if I would throw away a 5 trial test on the grounds that it is too small, then applying that standard elsewhere is at least not hypocritical.

OK. I was too focused on a 5% tolerance level.

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I wouldn't call that a lucky coin, I would call that a biased coin. But, I don't see how that applies to the 199x AES demos.

Because all people are different. A 5/5 result for one person in a group of 199 persons does not mean that that particular result is lucky. I don't know of any statistical tool which can tell you the probability of chance in such a case. You're throwing a dice, but it is not the same dice on each throw. But based on the quote below I guess you agree?

Quote
Quote
So, if one subject does multiple runs of 5 trials; a 5/5 result may indeed be interpreted as random luck. However, if one person does one run of 5 trials and gets a 100% score, the pval is something like 3%, period. That is all the statistics is able to say.


Agreed.


Quote
The solution to questionable results is to simply run more trials. Run enough independent trials and the results will converge to something that is very reliable.

Absolutely. I can't recall, does Mr Atkinson or does he not agree on this?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-28 13:20:33
Could we agree on the following:



Now isn't it senseless for a reviewer to conduct exhaustive blind testing for components, that when properly built (and some audiophile grade gear has unbelievably low distortion) should all sound the same? About as senseless as writing lengthy reviews about their sound in comparison to other gear.



Now a "better" audio magazine could promote the following chain:

| Source | -> | Colorization Device (DSP)| -> | DAC | -> | Amp | -> | Speaker |

Anything excluding the DSP and speakers would be neutral elements and could be just ticked off for being "proper" and else be reviewed for looks and features. The DSP adds noise and/or harmonic distortion just as preferred and could also be replaced by an analog component behind the DAC.

Now would that be a too honest approach? Would people want to read that their acoustical taste is intended signal degradation? Or do they want to read that their choice of a non-neutral amp (e.g. with quite some output impedance) is more musical and probably "closer" to the original performance? Subjective reviewing staff could really relocate all their magic to DSP analysis and how it can bring sound reproduction even closer to human experience.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-28 13:34:13
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.

One side trying to convince the other appears fruitless to me
This sums it up perfectly. The best article so far in my opinion.

I truly believe that either side exists for only one reason: to challenge the other side and by that making improvements to general audio. At least... I hope.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: usernaim on 2009-04-28 13:40:18
IIRC (and I may not) in his 'real life' Fremer was/is a psychiatrist, and in in NYC that can pay pretty well.


Apologies if already covered but 23 pages is too much to read through right now!

Fremer is not a psychiatrist but has been a journalist since the 70s, straight music at first then The Absolute Sound and Stereophile.  He is one of the few full time journalists in the industry.  I have heard his wife makes good money, though, which may go some way to explaining the price of his system (even at accommodation pricing, typically 40-60% of retail).

You may be thinking of Michael Gindi who was parodied in Sam Tellig's 1980s columns in Stereophile and then got a gig with The Absolute Sound and maybe Ultimate Audio and had an MBL fixation--that guy was definitely a psychiatrist.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-04-28 14:22:09
So I have a question for Mr Atkinson, and a genuine and straight one: would he agree with this characterisation of (potential) problems with lossy, that there are episodes of glitch, or is it a more pervasive effect?

If it's the odd bit of pre-echo, flanging or whatever, then it would seem to me a question of what you get used to; I'm very very happy not ever to have to hear a sudden pop from vinyl, or anxiety that someone walking heavily in an old house will cause a skip. I'm very happy not to hear tape hiss, though I also admit I must have got more sensitive to it now that it only turns up on old recordings transferred to digital. Maybe it's the case that some people don't mind lossy artifacts, when they happen, because they just don't mind them, rather than because they've got cloth ears or no money; vinyl enthusiasts don't mind the odd vinyl hiccup.

Canny observation.

Encoder artifacts are analogous to vinyl noise, skips and pops.  Arguably they are less distracting, since on a properly encoded lossy file they are generally subtle and difficult to identify, especially for an untrained listener.

You could get comfortable with either, depending on your listening preferences.







Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 14:39:16
Could we agree on the following:
I doubt it.

Seriously. The whole point is that "we" don't.

Quote
Now isn't it senseless for a reviewer to conduct exhaustive blind testing for components, that when properly built (and some audiophile grade gear has unbelievably low distortion) should all sound the same?
You can apply ABX testing to things that a-priori knowledge tells you should sound the same, or to things that a-priori knowledge tells you should sound different.

If we have that a-priori knowledge, either seems "senseless" to me - unless we doubt the "knowledge", in which case either seems quite reasonable.


I'm left wondering: where are all these hundreds of amplifiers, DACs etc are that are completely faultless for the whole 120dB below peak output? These discussions assume this equipment is everywhere. That's not my experience.

ABK suggested 100dB as a good number a few pages back, but I'm not convinced. It's not enough if you calibrate to SMPTE RP200, for example. It's close, but I like to leave a margin of error, rather than cut it as fine as possible. For one thing, we have to chain several items together to make music - it won't work if we only make each one "just good enough".

I know this sounds like a subjectivist argument, but it's only meant as a rebuttal to the most extreme objectivist stance. I want proper ABX tests!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-28 14:41:25
In fairness to Mr. Atkinson, if he were to recommend the use of MP3 then he would become the target of everyone who ever made or downloaded a lousy MP3 file (and who hasn't) as well as all of those who aren't even willing to consider MP3's use on a philosophical basis. Recommending against its use is a safe position because it avoids all of the caveats that must otherwise be applied. He then becomes the target of MP3 advocates, which he can live with.

I do not, however, in any way condone the way in which he justified not recommending lossy encoding. His article with all of its useless and misleading spectral plots is absolutely shameful.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 14:49:59
  • A "properly" built amp has the following properties: Low output impedance, flat FR, any noise and distortion well below the threshold* of human hearing.
    [indent]
  • An absolute threshold of hearing can be agreed on, at least in terms of a rather "safe" lower limit. Relating research is already quite old and nothing that would matter in this context has been discovered for a long time. Current and recent research has discovered many interesting properties of human hearing, but it mostly relates to masking and spatial processing. Both aren't of interest when looking at supposedly neutral elements of a playback chain as amps, DACs, cables, CD players, etc., which are already accurate at much smaller time scales than this research is concerned (exclude lossy encoding)


Research into masking has shown that under common conditions, the ear is far less sensitive to spurious responses of the kind we see with power amplifiers,  digital players, etc.,  than was once thought.  Another effect that desensitizes the ear relates to theshold shifts after very loud stimulus.  Listen to music at 120 dB (slow, A-weighted) for very long and you won't be detecting sounds at 0 dB SPL!  The ear tends to become less discerning at levels much above 85 dB.

The safe lower limit would be -100 dB with the caveat that all spurious responses and noise either remain the same or decrease with decreasing output level.  -80 dB is not all that bad, but it is near the edge.  It is reasonably easy to construct test cases where artifacts at -60 dB or higher can be heard, at least in some cases.

Real world power amps tend to hedge in the low output impedance area, with significantly rising output impedance above 10 KHz being common. Switchmode power amps are often particularly bad in this area and can have audible effects with  loudspeakers whose impedance drops at high frequencies.



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 14:54:57
I'm left wondering: where are all these hundreds of amplifiers, DACs etc are that are completely faultless for the whole 120dB below peak output? These discussions assume this equipment is everywhere. That's not my experience.


Agreed. There is a fair amount of stuff whose spurious responses are -110 dB, but -120 is tough.

Quote
ABK suggested 100dB as a good number a few pages back, but I'm not convinced. It's not enough if you calibrate to SMPTE RP200, for example. It's close, but I like to leave a margin of error, rather than cut it as fine as possible. For one thing, we have to chain several items together to make music - it won't work if we only make each one "just good enough".


Please explain how SMPTE 200 (which seems innocious enough to me) breaks the -100 dB rule, and what evidence there is for that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-28 15:14:42
Don't both sides just come down to faith? Objectivists believe they know what to measure, that they can measure it and that they know the effect it has (if any). Subjectivists believe that's not true and there must be other things involved that haven't been identified or measured yet.


Depends on who you ask & where, I would say that sums it up.
Reading through this entire thread though, some questions remain unanswered.

In case measurements were an acceptable mean to prove a point, maybe this discussion would have never taken off, as I assume measurements will prove/favor lossless audio.

Reading Terme Of Service #8 specifically refers to ABX (ie subjective) tests as the objective support:

"8. All members that put forth a statement concerning subjective sound quality, must -- to the best of their ability -- provide objective support for their claims. Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR) demonstrating that the member can discern a difference perceptually, together with a test sample to allow others to reproduce their findings. Graphs, non-blind listening tests, waveform difference comparisons, and so on, are not acceptable means of providing support."

As this method is the #1 acceptable form of support, it explains why A.krueger was expected by some to carry the flag in this debate.
Reading A.Krueger's viewing angle though, & the posts provoking him to do so, it becomes clear to me, that this is not the case.

A.Krueger explains that the ABX tests he conducted /designed, were designed/intended to be used in comparing Hardware, & closely specd Hardware:

Not everything is a codec. Codecs seem to be very different from things like amplifiers and CD players. In the hardware world we have seriously inaudible things like 0.1 dB FR and level shifts, and noise floors that are 30 dB below the noise in the program material. Not the same as ABXing 128 or maybe 320 kbps codecs.

I don't have a lot of experience with testing codecs. I do just about everything including personal listening with pure .wav files and redbook CDs.

Testing real-world hardware, particularly that of the floobydust kind, seems to be an especially different world than testing codecs.


Reading the above, If I am not mistaken, I can only gather that it is not A.Krueger, that is promoting the use of ABX test methods as applied here, He is not even claiming they are essential or even vaild in this case.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 15:14:53
Doesn't SMPTE RP 200 set the peak at 103dB SPL?

So 100dB down is 3dB SPL.

If some piece of equipment in the chain generates a whining noise at 3kHz, at a level which comes out at 3dB SPL, it meets your -100dB rule, yet has an audible fault.

A bucket load of caveats apply, but it still breaks the rule, if only just.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 15:19:48
The solution to questionable results is to simply run more trials. Run enough independent trials and the results will converge to something that is very reliable.

Absolutely. I can't recall, does Mr Atkinson or does he not agree on this?


I do agree, as I thought I had made clear in an earlier posting in which I referred to the fact that it did not prove possible for Michael Fremer and me to retake the "lucky coin" test at an AES Convention in which we scored 5/5 and 4/5 correct, respectively.
 
With further trials, either Michael's and my scoring would have regressed to the mean or it would have confirmed the earlier identification with a higher degree of probability.

In the 1990s, Tom Norton and I did perform a number of blind tests of loudspeakers. Ostensibly, this was in connection with reviews but it was also to allow me to test my reviewers' consistency as listeners. The reviewers as a whole performed well, but it quickly became apparent that the results were meaningless unless every speaker was auditioned in the same place in the room - boy, do I envy Sean Olive at Harman! - and that no more than 2 listeners at a time took the test and ideally one. This meant that the procedure became so time-consuming that doing such tests on a routine basis was impractical, at least for a magazine with our resources. Having tested my reviewers and seen that they were consistent reliable listeners, we concentrated on sighted listening.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-28 15:30:29
Now a "better" audio magazine could promote the following chain:

| Source | -> | Colorization Device (DSP)| -> | DAC | -> | Amp | -> | Speaker |

Anything excluding the DSP and speakers would be neutral elements and could be just ticked off for being "proper" and else be reviewed for looks and features. The DSP adds noise and/or harmonic distortion just as preferred and could also be replaced by an analog component behind the DAC.

Now would that be a too honest approach? Would people want to read that their acoustical taste is intended signal degradation? Or do they want to read that their choice of a non-neutral amp (e.g. with quite some output impedance) is more musical and probably "closer" to the original performance? Subjective reviewing staff could really relocate all their magic to DSP analysis and how it can bring sound reproduction even closer to human experience.


I suspect it would be too honest, yes. Given that a small but significant proportion of the audiophile community use something like the following:

|Colorization Device (turntable)| -> |Colorization Device (RIAA equalization)| -> |Colorization Device (Single-ended triode amp with about 10% distortion at one watt)| -> |Colorization Device (Horn Speaker)|

I think you are on a hiding to nothing. Especially because, as everyone knows, this is 'better' than anything we've dreamed up in the last 50 years

I also suspect that even if you could ably demonstrate that any distortion preferences people might have could be removed to DSP and perfectly replicated there, there would still be a body of audiophiles who insist that the distortion 'sounds better' in its natural home.

The problem is one of expectation in the audiophile community. They've been sold this idea of everything making a difference for so long, most are too entrenched to even entertain an alternate viewpoint. If one of the magazines started taking a more objective stance, it would fold fast. Especially as its readers would get pretty upset at being told that the expensive amp recommended a few months back is in fact functionally identical to one that costs 1/10th or 1/50th the price.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-28 15:32:08
I think Fremer is XXXX. I think he's a XXXX XXXX. The Beach Boys review(s) quoted earlier are clear evidence, not to mention pretty much all we know about the guy.


Er, please try to stay within the boundaries of libel laws, people.

Mr Fremer has made contradictory - but in legal terms, 'fair comment' - statements. If he likes something today and doesn't like it tomorrow, he's 'mercurial', not 'lying'. If he got facts wrong and then corrected them without comment, unless his actions were in breach of code of conduct guidelines by the publication, the publishing house or a professional body or union he is a member, this does not constitute 'dishonesty'.

Sorry, but calling someone dishonest, or even a liar, especially when having reasonable evidence, libel? I didn't know it was such a formal environment here. Perhaps I should adopt Penn & Teller's strategy of not saying any specific words, and just proclaim BS?

But anyway, what kind of small weak mind would even think of suing for libel someone over some internet comments, even if I did commit libel? I'm not writing for the New York Times for crying out loud.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-28 15:43:31
That's exactly what I do with the iPod. Thanks for your comment though, it does give me some peace of mind that I was doing the right thing. I have tried the Shure earphones up to the SE530, but liked better the Westone UM2, which is too efficient for its own good. The attenuators that come with those though are very crappy, at some attenuation level they start to mess with high frequencies.


I share the enthusiasm for the UM2. Never heard anything better in-ear. The sensitivity really is a pain with iPods in very quiet environments. Your bad experiences with in line attenuators might be caused by the fact that the UM2 is two way with a passive crossover. The attenuator's resistors alter the behavior of the crossover.

I didn't consider that, thanks for the idea. Although, the non-variable attenuators from Ultimate Ears don't seem to affect frequency response appreciably at all. Also, I'm not 100% sure, but with the Shure E4, which have a single driver, I think I also heard the difference.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-04-28 15:58:52
Sorry, but calling someone dishonest, or even a liar, especially when having reasonable evidence, libel? I didn't know it was such a formal environment here. Perhaps I should adopt Penn & Teller's strategy of not saying any specific words, and just proclaim BS?

But anyway, what kind of small weak mind would even think of suing for libel someone over some internet comments, even if I did commit libel? I'm not writing for the New York Times for crying out loud.


It doesn't matter where you are writing from, particularly. Defamation is defamation. And law suits have been issued against forums and chatrooms:

http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/...20chatrooms.htm (http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/view_article.asp?name=../articles/Defamation%20on%20chatrooms.htm)

It may seem unlikely, but here's a scenario that ends up bad for you. Your post notionally defamed Fremer. This forum is being read by Fremer's boss, John Atkinson. Unbeknown to any of us, Atkinson plans to reduce Fremer's workload over the coming months. Fremer has just lost work and he knows his boss has read your post; he could potentially put these things together and blame your post for potential loss of earnings. You would have to find some seriously strong evidence to support your suggestions.  The evidence you have is of his presenting 'fair comment'.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ff123 on 2009-04-28 16:17:39
OT, but calling somebody a liar accuses them of habitually intending to deceive.  Since I can't read minds, I have almost no occasion to use the word.  However, I have said without qualms that somebody has uttered false statements (and backed it up).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-28 16:52:57
@Gag Halfrunt ,regarding Defamation is defamation, you do have a point, it is a possible scenario.
but have a look throughout this thread, way mo better .
Certainly a lot more worthy of your notice then andy, he's really just quoting/joining/backing what others have said before him.

Got 2 quick quotes from the thread's first page, there are more & they are very easy to find.

Quote
[krueger:] the only way to understand Fremer is to consider the meaning of the word hyperbole. Fremer seems to live in a world of hyperbole where nothing is anything like what it seems....

has Fremer fanned the flames of Fremer-celebrity or possbily Fremer-fear so well that enough high end audio dealers and/or manufacters have been cowed into giving or loaning him most if not all of that equipment?


Quote
[krabapple]: There's a certain part of me that sees modern "audiophilism" as some sort of mental disease. Unfortunately, Fremer would probably feel similarly about anyone who subscribes to the notion of audio objectivism: that we are not only wrong but that we're indeed knee-deep in some sort of circle of madness. Thankfully, logic dictates that objective thinking is not only rational but quite comfortably sane, so I can (generally) rest easy


If there was an Audiophile union, you could have added Class Action on top of it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-28 17:01:03
So 100dB down is 3dB SPL.

If some piece of equipment in the chain generates a whining noise at 3kHz, at a level which comes out at 3dB SPL, it meets your -100dB rule, yet has an audible fault.


I found this very interesting and generated a -100db 3kHz (24 bit, 44.1kHz) test tone in Wavelab. Just to hear it at all I had to turn up the volume about three times as high as my usual listening setting and about twice as high as my recently loudest setting (party).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 17:04:17
I argued at the time that 5 trials was too small, for the reasons mentioned, but that was the number decided upon, presumably to be able to get as many listeners through the listening test as was possible during the convention. The goal was to have a large number of listeners each doing a small number of trials, as I understood from the test organizers at the time.
As I think I mentioned before to Michael, I agree wholeheartedly that the results do not support the conclusion that you and Michael were "lucky coins", and it is news to me that you two got 5/5 and 4/5. It's plainly unfortunate that more testing was not done.

At the same time, do you not agree that the overall result of the test - IIRC, that the results overall were fairly indistinguishable from chance (I don't have the paper on me right now) - still has a very important meaning? I am comfortable with the notion that a small fraction of listeners are able to tell a difference in such situations, while most listeners can't. And if you get close to a 50% result, while individual testers such as yourself can still pass a 16- or 32-trial test with flying colors, well..

Moreover, I think that such results can have considerable importance for those who cannot pass such ABX tests, and perhaps can readjust their purchase priorities accordingly. Of course this has to be balanced against the odds of the listener becoming more adept in the future to hearing such details.[

So I'm really tempted to just straddle the fence here. That test did not show that you and Michael could hear the difference, because your results were as to be expected as due to chance. But they certainly did not show that you couldn't hear the difference, either - it is quite plausible - and more testing really should have been done on that matter. The test did strongly suggest that a majority of the testers could not tell a difference, and that in itself is important.

Put another way, the test was certainly "flawed" if it was attempting to show that absolutely nobody could hear a difference, but under a more relaxed criteria (of showing that the proportion of discriminators must be below some low percentage), I don't think it's flawed at all.



If someone can pass the ABX -- almost certainly if that someone is a 40-ish adult male very likely having a normal amount of high-frequency loss -- then others can do it to, with some training.  And if this was indeed a tube vs SS trial, then really, this is all rather beside the point, as no 'objectivists' I know of argue that the tubes vs SS are typically just as likely to sound the same as SS vs SS.

And again, MF's 4/5 is not above even the usual standard of statistical significance, while JA's was (again with the note that .05 is not necessarily low enough for demonstrating the existence of truly 'small' difference).  What we don't have, and IIRC from my reading about the fracas in Stereophile years ago, didn't have even then, is a full rundown of each person's results, as we get here on HA.  So I'm not even sure what the aggregate report tells us. What I am sure is that debating this particular test from years and year ago is about as much a sideshow as the original test itself probably was.

Let's see JA and MF  ABX two competently designed level-matched solid state amps at nondistorting levels,  16 trials minimum  -- THEN we have something to debate.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-28 17:06:01
If there was an Audiophile union, you could have added Class Action on top of it.

You misquoted. I wrote your second quote, not krabapple.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 17:11:29
Quote
You do the cause of DBT a huge disservice. John Atkins comes across as perfectly reasonable; you come across as a complete twit (I misspelled that). If I had no prior knowledge, and could only judge this subject from the tone of this discussion, I'd be deleting my HA account and subscribing to Stereophile immediately.


As someone who really does have very little knowledge of the subject, I've got to second this. I mean, I totally understand being tired of making the same civil and informative arguments over and over and over (and over) again, but that is what being an advocate for something entails. If you (for whichever value of 'you' is preferred) would rather score points on the Great Electric Arguing Machine that is the internet (people think I'm joking when I call it this) than actually convince people of anything, well done I suppose.

As it is, I think I hate ABX tests on principle now, and will be making my future audio equipment purchasing decisions based on the number of people it will annoy. I wonder if there's a double-blind test for that?



I would be very happy if all the crap that originated in the RAO cesspool, stayed there.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 17:22:24
So 100dB down is 3dB SPL.

If some piece of equipment in the chain generates a whining noise at 3kHz, at a level which comes out at 3dB SPL, it meets your -100dB rule, yet has an audible fault.

I found this very interesting and generated a -100db 3kHz (24 bit, 44.1kHz) test tone in Wavelab. Just to hear it at all I had to turn up the volume about three times as high as my usual listening setting and about twice as high as my recently loudest setting (party).
I would guess that your PC is louder than 3dB SPL - you need to try in a properly quiet room.

Over half a century of psychoacoustic testing says that 3kHz @ 3dB SPL is audible for most people with "normal" hearing.

btw, there's no calibration in your system, and SMPTE RP200 calibration can't be used with "loudness war" CDs - play those CDs at that loudness level and you will be in pain.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 17:28:14
I think I understand why I am (and Canar is) so flummoxed about this entire topic, going all the way back to when B0RK was the center of attention. You, and also Steven to a certain degree, have turned this thread into what seems like a word-for-word rematch of the exact same argument, made against the exact same people, that has been replayed on Usenet for what seems like a decade - an argument I have absolutely no intention of supporting.


I'd be curious to what degree that is.  RElative to my usenet activity on the whole, my participation in RAO isn't much to speak of...google it and see.  I can't recall when my last post there was.  My usenet audio posting is overwhelmingly on a  moderated forum: rec.audio.high-end, to this day.

I do think Fremer is a d*ck,  and Atkinson is 'elusive' at best when it comes to brass tacks, and what have you seen here or elsewhere that shows me wrong?  I don't support everything Arny writes, and I agree he's being a d*ck  by dredging up sludge from RAO , especially silly claims of stalking or whatever.  (My take on Arny was already noted long ago on HA  here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=29619&view=findpost&p=257037) ; note too JJ's response a few posts down)

I'm sure I can be perceived as 'militantly' anti-audiophool, just as I suppose I would be called a 'militant' atheist or a 'militant' scientist by the sorts of people who find Richard Dawkins or Chris Hitchens just too plain *rude* and who fret over whether they are helping or hurting 'the cause' (sometimes mistakenly referred to as 'concern trolls').  I have my own concerns; I sincerely believe that Stereophile's work within its ambit has a pernicious effect on 'my' hobby, and I'm not afraid to act on that.

If anyone has complained to moderators about my posts, I haven't been made aware of it.  (And if my style has been called 'too coarse' on Stereo Central, for god' sake, that's I just have to see  ).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-28 17:38:23
I would guess that your PC is louder than 3dB SPL - you need to try in a properly quiet room.

Over half a century of psychoacoustic testing says that 3kHz @ 3dB SPL is audible for most people with "normal" hearing.

btw, there's no calibration in your system,


Yes, there is no calibration. Can't say where I am in SPL terms. Just found it interesting to put this naked number of -100db in relation to my usual listening habits. It's not necessarily quiet here. While I almost can't hear my notebook all other kinds of stuff like birds excited about the beginning of spring outside and even the fridge over in the kitchen came to my attention when you mentioned this.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-28 17:41:19
I would be very happy if all the crap that originated in the RAO cesspool, stayed there.
...and look who's trying to link here with there...
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio...615e3791?hl=en# (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.opinion/browse_frm/thread/574aeee1615e3791?hl=en#)

Quote
I have my own concerns; I sincerely believe that Stereophile's work within its ambit has a pernicious effect on 'my' hobby, and I'm not afraid to act on that.
I share that concern (and have expressed it many times), but...

Quote
I'm sure I can be perceived as 'militantly' anti-audiophool, just as I suppose I would be called a 'militant' atheist or a 'militant' scientist by the sorts of people who find Richard Dawkins or Chris Hitchens just too plain *rude* and who fret over whether they are helping or hurting 'the cause'
I don't think it's that at all. I think much of this thread has been "rude", and more importantly unhelpful, by the standards of HA.

We'll get back on track though. Stereophile won't do proper ABX tests, HA will ignore Stereophile, the world will return to normal.

Well, that's my guess. If JA returns and does a proper DBT of something meaningful, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 17:43:15

If an individual listener is unable to differentiate a lossy file, either under the conditions of an ABX test or in a more relaxed and conventional listening setting, from its lossless counterpart then in what way, precisely, does the lossy file "not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening"?


For that person at that time, then yes, the lossy compressed file is presumably good enough. But everyone's threshold is going to be different and perhaps more significantly, their threshold of defects will change with time. For example, when I was younger, I wasn't bothered by scrape flutter in affordable analog tape machines. Just as well, as that's all I could afford at that time. But over the years, I have become much less tolerant of it, presumably because I have learned to identify it, and that is something that can't be unlearned.

Hence my blanket recommendation to which you refer: lossless or uncompressed for "serious" listening, to which I would add archiving. Why not when hard drive capacity is now so cheap. And for portable listening, I personally use AAC at 320kbps and recommend that, even if it might be thought overkill. People are not obliged to follow my advice, of course, and they are free to make their own decision about where to make the trade-off between file size and bit rate. But I think of an email from a Stereophile reader who ripped all his CDs as 128kbps MP3s and disposed of the CDs. He is now dissatisfied with the sound of his music collection but can't do anything about improving it short of repurchasing the CDs.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

PS: I always recommend to my readers that they keep their CDs, as inconvenient as that might be. They are the backup of last resort.


Nobody here has ever recommended archiving to MP3 -- certainly not to 128 kbps.  And we here, too, recommend keeping the 'hard backup' CD.  That is a side issue.

Your contention here is that longer listening to mp3 could sensitize the listener to its artifacts, as you were eventually sensitized to tape scrape flutter.  This suggests that 'self training' for artifacts is taking place.  This is reasonable and could be -- indeed would have to be, to verify that it happened -- readily tested...using blind methods.

On the other hand one might propose that people can get used to and 'hear through' artifacts too -- apparently what vinylphiles do.

But that too is somewhat beside the point.  There are 'audiophiles', some in your employ, who seem to rarely if ever to listen to mp3s, on the basis that whenever they do, they sound just awful, hugely less good than lossless.  Assuming this is true even for the very best mp3 encoding,  they cannot have arrived at this power through inadvertant sensitization; they must either be natively terrific discriminators, or they are imagining the difference.

Which do you suppose is true, or have you another explanation? And how would you test it?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 17:55:56
  • The entire notion of using frequency response plots to estimate the performance of lossy encoders is fundamentally flawed, because they only show one source of distortion while being ignorant of many far more important ones, like pre-echo and stereo imaging. They are almost useless for such evaluations. Relying on plots to tune coders - especially at lower bitrates - is a direct cause of the crappy MP3 sound that JA comments on, and yet he makes the exact same mistake that so many others have made in the past! In a magazine that prides itself on the primacy of subjective evaluations! HA as a forum is profoundly against the use of objective measurements (like frequency response) to evaluate coders, as is jj IIRC, who is about the best expert opinion one is likely to find on the matter...
  • Too little information is provided on the Fraunhofer codec that JA uses. Is it fastenc or l3enc? Which version? CBR or VBR? Which other settings? All these things matter tremendously. As Sebastian's latest test results pointed out, 128kbps can vary quite tremendously in quality - and at least one Fraunhoder codec is considered among the worst codecs out there.


I called JA out on this sort of thing earlier in the thread, giving much the same reasons:  misleading presentation of facts that are irrelevant to perceived mp3 sound, and inadequate documentaion of the conditions (codecs etc) used.

You call that sort of presentation 'flawed'.  I call it *shameful*. Because JA is taken as a voice of audiophile authority on this, and really should know better -- and I think, *does* know better.  And from his vague report, it sounds like much the same sort of 'flawed' evidence for performance of lossy encoding will be presented to some folks in Colorado -- I *do* hope some HA folk show up.

So explain to me again why I'm degrading the debate?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 18:01:13
You may be thinking of Michael Gindi who was parodied in Sam Tellig's 1980s columns in Stereophile and then got a gig with The Absolute Sound and maybe Ultimate Audio and had an MBL fixation--that guy was definitely a psychiatrist.


You're exactly right!  I was confusing my audiophile journalist Michaels.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 18:07:07
Reading Terms Of Service #8 specifically refers to ABX (ie subjective) tests as the objective support:


At least in my mind I object to using ABX as a synonym for subjective testing because there are so many other ways to do reliable listening tests (IOW, DBTs) than just ABX (and ABC/hr).  The most important properties of a test is that it is reliable and relevant.  DBT is just one of many things that have to be done if there is a reliable test. However, it seems like DBT is a good simple litmus test for reliability.

Quote
"8. All members that put forth a statement concerning subjective sound quality, must -- to the best of their ability -- provide objective support for their claims. Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR) demonstrating that the member can discern a difference perceptually, together with a test sample to allow others to reproduce their findings. Graphs, non-blind listening tests, waveform difference comparisons, and so on, are not acceptable means of providing support."

As this method is the #1 acceptable form of support, it explains why A.krueger was expected by some to carry the flag in this debate.
Reading A.Krueger's viewing angle though, & the posts provoking him to do so, it becomes clear to me, that this is not the case.


?????????????

Quote
A.Krueger explains that the ABX tests he conducted /designed, were designed/intended to be used in comparing Hardware, & closely specd Hardware:


Please remember that there were no codecs that had much interest to people working with high quality audio when we invented ABX (ca. 1978). 

Not everything is a codec. Codecs seem to be very different from things like amplifiers and CD players. In the hardware world we have seriously inaudible things like 0.1 dB FR and level shifts, and noise floors that are 30 dB below the noise in the program material. Not the same as ABXing 128 or maybe 320 kbps codecs.

I don't have a lot of experience with testing codecs. I do just about everything including personal listening with pure .wav files and redbook CDs.

Testing real-world hardware, particularly that of the floobydust kind, seems to be an especially different world than testing codecs.


Quote
Reading the above, If I am not mistaken, I can only gather that it is not A.Krueger, that is promoting the use of ABX test methods as applied here, He is not even claiming they are essential or even vaild in this case.


??????

For the record, I understand that technical tests (tests based on test equipment which also don't involve listening) are not generally agreed upon as a reliable means for characterizing the performance of codecs.  Therefore, listening tests are still very important for assessing the performance of codecs. It appears that people long been using reliable listening test methods such as ABX and ABC/hr for that purpose. Of course, I support those efforts in any way that I can.

I also understand that technical tests (tests based primarily measuring synthetic signals and sometimes other signals such as music ) are also not generally agreed upon as a reliable means for characterizing the performance of audio products other than codecs, such as amplifiers and music players. Not only does it appear that people long been using reliable listening test methods such as ABX and ABC/hr for that purpose, but I invented ABX for just that purpose. I also support those efforts in any way that I can.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 18:11:55
It may seem unlikely, but here's a scenario that ends up bad for you. Your post notionally defamed Fremer. This forum is being read by Fremer's boss, John Atkinson. Unbeknown to any of us, Atkinson plans to reduce Fremer's workload over the coming months. Fremer has just lost work and he knows his boss has read your post; he could potentially put these things together and blame your post for potential loss of earnings. You would have to find some seriously strong evidence to support your suggestions.  The evidence you have is of his presenting 'fair comment'.


MF called AK a liar here too -- I suggest they both contact their lawyers. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 18:22:54
Doesn't SMPTE RP 200 set the peak at 103dB SPL?

So 100dB down is 3dB SPL.

If some piece of equipment in the chain generates a whining noise at 3kHz, at a level which comes out at 3dB SPL, it meets your -100dB rule, yet has an audible fault.


Where in the real everyday world do you propose to do your listening test to show conformance with TOS 8? ;-)

I have it on good authority that there is no conventional office, workship or performance space that will suffice.

If memory serves JJ had a SOTA listening room at the old AT&T labs. Immensely expensive.  Its noise level level was something north of NC10, maybe NC15. 

According to http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/educati...se_Criteria.pdf (http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/education/pdfs/Noise_Criteria.pdf)  NC 15 sets the room tone at 3 KHz about 13 dB SPL. Good chance that noise will be masked, I'd say.

Now for the real fun. The widest dynamic range commercial recording I've ever found (and I've been searching for about 10 years) has about 80 dB dynamic range.  If I play it with peaks at 103 dB, then its quietest passage will have a SPL of about 23 dB SPL.  Probability of masking even greater than in JJ's old listening room.

If I played that recording in my living room with background noise in the 35 dB territory when its really quiet, then the loud passages would play at 115 dB which is not a serious problem for a reasonably good audio system.  Of course the quietest passage will be 35 dB SPL or more.  Probability of masking even greater than  the previous examples.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 18:25:38
I would be very happy if all the crap that originated in the RAO cesspool, stayed there.
...and look who's trying to link here with there...
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio...615e3791?hl=en# (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.opinion/browse_frm/thread/574aeee1615e3791?hl=en#)


Ah, crap.  Crap.  It might be good to just agree to delete any new account if it can be found to have originated as a result of JA's advertising (and maybe some here, reading a thread like THAT, will see how Arny got to be Arny)

Quote
I share that concern (and have expressed it many times), but...

I don't think it's that at all. I think much of this thread has been "rude", and more importantly unhelpful, by the standards of HA.


It was Axon, not you, who called me to task, so I'm curious to know what he's on about.

Quote
We'll get back on track though. Stereophile won't do proper ABX tests, HA will ignore Stereophile, the world will return to normal.


D'ya think?        I also wouldn't be surprised if there was a more or less enragingly 'spun'  report about it in Stereophile at some point.


Quote
Well, that's my guess. If JA returns and does a proper DBT of something meaningful, I'll be pleasantly surprised.



JA claims a Damascene experience that made him 'anti' DBTs.  IIRC, Saul became Paul, and never went back to being Saul.  So don't count on it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-28 18:29:10
I called JA out on this sort of thing earlier in the thread, giving much the same reasons:  misleading presentation of facts that are irrelevant to perceived mp3 sound, and inadequate documentaion of the conditions (codecs etc) used.

You call that sort of presentation 'flawed'.  I call it *shameful*. Because JA is taken as a voice of audiophile authority on this, and really should know better -- and I think, *does* know better.  And from his vague report, it sounds like much the same sort of 'flawed' evidence for performance of lossy encoding will be presented to some folks in Colorado -- I *do* hope some HA folk show up.


Agreed. Also it seem to be a sighted test. To me this is just a self-congratulating exercise of "I told you mp3's are bad". It is not a scientific test and indeed *shameful*.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 18:29:24
I would be very happy if all the crap that originated in the RAO cesspool, stayed there.


It seems like the following link suggests that Atkinson's intents are the exact opposite:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio...615e3791?hl=en# (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.opinion/browse_frm/thread/574aeee1615e3791?hl=en#)

I'm not afraid of HA being inundated with posts by RAO regulars - some of them have previously investigated HA and said that they found that posting here would be too much work.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 18:42:03
JA claims a Damascene experience that made him 'anti' DBTs.  IIRC, Saul became Paul, and never went back to being Saul.  So don't count on it.


This would be in his opening comments at the 2005 debate, right?

Anybody who thinks that JA has a first rate logical mind really needs to study those comments.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 19:52:47
You call that sort of presentation 'flawed'.  I call it *shameful*. Because JA is taken as a voice of audiophile authority on this, and really should know better -- and I think, *does* know better.  And from his vague report, it sounds like much the same sort of 'flawed' evidence for performance of lossy encoding will be presented to some folks in Colorado -- I *do* hope some HA folk show up.


Agreed. Also it seem to be a sighted test...


I did address this question. Perhaps you both missed my posting. There are no "tests," there won't be any scoring. All I am doing is playing level-matched files of various provenances to meetings of audiophiles, including many of my own recordings. I will be using the original hi-rez master files, the Red Book master files, and AACs and MP3s at various bitrates, as well as the specific comparison I mentioned in an earlier posting. The goal, as well as to have a pleasantly entertaining evening, is to allow listeners to hear for themselves if any of the differences are a) audible and b) matter.

Regarding the meta-discussion about defamation earlier,  I think it fair to point out that pretty much everything that has been said on this forum merits a First Amendment defense as protected opinion. Where someone would get into trouble was if they presented something defamatory as fact rather than opinion. My 2 cents, as someone who has been involved in libel lawsuits and gained an education in return. Feel free to ignore it.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-04-28 19:56:08
Sorry for the OT, but I looked on the Stereophile site for news of this Colorado audiophile event but couldn't find anything.  Did I just miss it, or is it yet to be announced?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 20:06:46
I did address this question. Perhaps you both missed my posting. There are no "tests," there won't be any scoring. All I am doing is playing level-matched files of various provenances to meetings of audiophiles, including many of my own recordings. I will be using the original hi-rez master files, the Red Book master files, and AACs and MP3s at various bitrates, as well as the specific comparison I mentioned in an earlier posting. The goal, as well as to have a pleasantly entertaining evening, is to allow listeners to hear for themselves if any of the differences are a) audible and b) matter.


In other words a sighted *comparison* with all that's problematic about those. Yes, I think we all 'got' that, even those calling it a 'test'.  IIRC it was also referred to, by you, as educational.  I'd say it could be far more educational if done fairly , while as it stands it could be downright misleading.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: cpchan on 2009-04-28 20:09:23
I did address this question. Perhaps you both missed my posting. There are no "tests," there won't be any scoring. All I am doing is playing level-matched files of various provenances to meetings of audiophiles, including many of my own recordings. I will be using the original hi-rez master files, the Red Book master files, and AACs and MP3s at various bitrates, as well as the specific comparison I mentioned in an earlier posting. The goal, as well as to have a pleasantly entertaining evening, is to allow listeners to hear for themselves if any of the differences are a) audible and b) matter.


Fair enough, but it is still sighted, thus people's preconceptions and bias can influence their judgment. Also, Axon's comments in this post:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry630354 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245&st=550&p=630354&#entry630354)

are still valid.

Regarding the meta-discussion about defamation earlier,  I think it fair to point out that pretty much everything that has been said on this forum merits a First Amendment defense as protected opinion. Where someone would get into trouble was if they presented something defamatory as fact rather than opinion. My 2 cents, as someone who has been involved in libel lawsuits and gained an education in return. Feel free to ignore it.


Mr. Atkinson, I have great respect for you saying this.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-28 20:38:30
Regarding the meta-discussion about defamation earlier,  I think it fair to point out that pretty much everything that has been said on this forum merits a First Amendment defense as protected opinion. Where someone would get into trouble was if they presented something defamatory as fact rather than opinion. My 2 cents, as someone who has been involved in libel lawsuits and gained an education in return. Feel free to ignore it.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

I agree with "Michael Fremer's boss".
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 20:47:35
Regarding the meta-discussion about defamation earlier,  I think it fair to point out that pretty much everything that has been said on this forum merits a First Amendment defense as protected opinion. Where someone would get into trouble was if they presented something defamatory as fact rather than opinion. My 2 cents, as someone who has been involved in libel lawsuits and gained an education in return. Feel free to ignore it.

I agree with "Michael Fremer's boss".


I must point out before everyone starts flinging defamatory comments around like confetti, that having a First Amendment defense does not prevent a suit being filed. It only means that there is a good probability that the suit will be unsuccessful. In cyberspace as in "meat space," it is best to be polite.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 20:52:05
maybe some here, reading a thread like THAT, will see how Arny got to be Arny)


That whole thread is unbelievably mild, compared to much of what has been posted on RAO.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 21:03:43
Now a "better" audio magazine could promote the following chain:

| Source | -> | Colorization Device (DSP)| -> | DAC | -> | Amp | -> | Speaker |

Anything excluding the DSP and speakers would be neutral elements and could be just ticked off for being "proper" and else be reviewed for looks and features. The DSP adds noise and/or harmonic distortion just as preferred and could also be replaced by an analog component behind the DAC.

Now would that be a too honest approach? Would people want to read that their acoustical taste is intended signal degradation? Or do they want to read that their choice of a non-neutral amp (e.g. with quite some output impedance) is more musical and probably "closer" to the original performance? Subjective reviewing staff could really relocate all their magic to DSP analysis and how it can bring sound reproduction even closer to human experience.


While I favor the signal chain above (basically implemented in my listening room and also at my favored work site) I feel compelled to add that the nonlinear distortion functions of the DSP would generally go unused. While audiophile's seem to love their vinyl and SETs, IME the linear distoriton in those products is generally far more audible in actual use than any residual nonlinear distortion.

My home system:

| Source | -> | Colorization Device (Rane MQ302 analog eq)| -> | Amp | -> | Speakers |

My preferred work system:

| Source | -> | Colorization Device (DSP - actually a 56 channel digitial console including DAC)|  -> [additional analog eq and crosssover] -> | Amps | -> | Speakers |
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-04-28 21:22:35
Regarding the meta-discussion about defamation earlier,  I think it fair to point out that pretty much everything that has been said on this forum merits a First Amendment defense as protected opinion. Where someone would get into trouble was if they presented something defamatory as fact rather than opinion. My 2 cents, as someone who has been involved in libel lawsuits and gained an education in return. Feel free to ignore it.

I agree with "Michael Fremer's boss".


I must point out before everyone starts flingind defamatory comments around like confetti, that having a First Amendment defense does not prevent a suit being filed. It only means that there is a good probability that the suit will be unsuccessful. In cyberspace as in "meat space," it is best to be polite.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Hmm, does Michigan J. Frog know that?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 21:23:50
JA claims a Damascene experience that made him 'anti' DBTs.  IIRC, Saul became Paul, and never went back to being Saul.  So don't count on it.


This would be in his opening comments at the 2005 debate, right?

Anybody who thinks that JA has a first rate logical mind really needs to study those comments.


To make it easier for people to do so, I repeated the HE2005 debate anecdote in the essay at http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/705awsi/ (http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/705awsi/) .

I also offered some thoughts on what I feel to be a philosophical problem with blind testing at  http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/406awsi/ (http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/406awsi/) .

If these essays make me appear illogical, so be it. But as I wrote: "To explain my quarter-century-old Damascene experience, you have to accept that either the blind test was flawed - in which case all the reports that cited that 1978 test as 'proving' the amplifiers sounded the same were wrong - or that the nonaudio factors were irrelevant, in which case the criticisms of sighted listening based on that factor must be wrong."

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-28 21:46:59
If someone can pass the ABX -- almost certainly if that someone is a 40-ish adult male very likely having a normal amount of high-frequency loss -- then others can do it to, with some training.  And if this was indeed a tube vs SS trial, then really, this is all rather beside the point, as no 'objectivists' I know of argue that the tubes vs SS are typically just as likely to sound the same as SS vs SS. And again, MF's 4/5 is not above even the usual standard of statistical significance, while JA's was (again with the note that .05 is not necessarily low enough for demonstrating the existence of truly 'small' difference).  What we don't have, and IIRC from my reading about the fracas in Stereophile years ago, didn't have even then, is a full rundown of each person's results, as we get here on HA.  So I'm not even sure what the aggregate report tells us. What I am sure is that debating this particular test from years and year ago is about as much a sideshow as the original test itself probably was. Let's see JA and MF  ABX two competently designed level-matched solid state amps at nondistorting levels,  16 trials minimum  -- THEN we have something to debate.
I more or less agree completely with you, so maybe I'm just confused as to what is being debated. Did Lipshitz really tell Michael that he was a "lucky coin"? Because I think we can all agree that is entirely unsupported from a mere 5-trial test. For Michael to tar "science" with a misinterpretation like that is something of a strawman - assuming, of course, that was what Stanley said in the first place.

I'd be curious to what degree that is.  RElative to my usenet activity on the whole, my participation in RAO isn't much to speak of...google it and see.  I can't recall when my last post there was.  My usenet audio posting is overwhelmingly on a  moderated forum: rec.audio.high-end, to this day.
Bizarrely, a search for your name on RAO in Google Groups gives me 2480 results, while on RAHE it's 5910. However, it looks like a lot of the RAO results are the result of crosspostings from eg Middius, so a thorough investigation of this will take more time than I am willing to spend on the matter. I do concede that I was ignorant of your avoidance of RAO, but honestly, while RAHE is mucho better, I think my original point still stands. This debate has gone on between you, Arny, John, and a rotating cast of other characters for so long that honestly I might just be prejudiced against large parts of this whole topic, because I just get this incredible sense of deja vu... I'll admit that is an irrational response.

Quote
I do think Fremer is a d*ck,  and Atkinson is 'elusive' at best when it comes to brass tacks, and what have you seen here or elsewhere that shows me wrong?  I don't support everything Arny writes, and I agree he's being a d*ck  by dredging up sludge from RAO , especially silly claims of stalking or whatever.  (My take on Arny was already noted long ago on HA  here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=29619&view=findpost&p=257037) ; note too JJ's response a few posts down)

I'm sure I can be perceived as 'militantly' anti-audiophool, just as I suppose I would be called a 'militant' atheist or a 'militant' scientist by the sorts of people who find Richard Dawkins or Chris Hitchens just too plain *rude* and who fret over whether they are helping or hurting 'the cause' (sometimes mistakenly referred to as 'concern trolls').  I have my own concerns; I sincerely believe that Stereophile's work within its ambit has a pernicious effect on 'my' hobby, and I'm not afraid to act on that.

If anyone has complained to moderators about my posts, I haven't been made aware of it.  (And if my style has been called 'too coarse' on Stereo Central, for god' sake, that's I just have to see  ).
Truthfully I was only referring to a single poster on SC, and I don't think he meant anything quite as strong as what I stated.

You're right - I pretty much agree with everything you're saying on audio merits. I just don't think how you're saying it is terribly effective. I think this topic and emotion don't mix, it is important to avoid responses that are needlessly inflammatory and don't prove points - and I have already tried to apologize for the things I have said that violate that belief. Using phrases like "audiophoolery", "shameful", "smokescreen" etc plays well to the peanut gallery, but express a very large degree of emotion that simply does not advance what I think is the goal of this thread, which is to actually debate. And they imply a great amount of maliciousness which I believe cannot be adequately proven.

I'm very comfortable with the assertiveness in saying one of JA's articles lacks "any technical validity". I'm not comfortable with calling that shameful.

That said, I've reread your posts and I caught a lot of important points which I had not caught the first time around. Maybe I am being irrational about this, and I'm just numbed. I dunno. But I will say that very little of what JA has said strikes me as being malicious or unintelligent - although it does still strike me as being largely wrong. And I'm seeing too much focus on the former....

...and look who's trying to link here with there...http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio...615e3791?hl=en# (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.opinion/browse_frm/thread/574aeee1615e3791?hl=en#)
But it's always nice to see where people show their true colors by posting on their home forums. Nice tell.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-28 21:53:45
If these essays make me appear illogical, so be it. But as I wrote: "To explain my quarter-century-old Damascene experience, you have to accept that either the blind test was flawed—in which case all the reports that cited that 1978 test as 'proving' the amplifiers sounded the same were wrong—or that the nonaudio factors were irrelevant, in which case the criticisms of sighted listening based on that factor must be wrong."

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


The troubling part here is that you also wrote:
Quote
Having been involved in the tests, having seen how carefully Martin had organized them, and having experienced nothing that conflicted with my beliefs, I concluded that the null results proved that the amplifiers didn't sound different from one another. I bought a Quad 405.

However, over time I began to realize that even though the sound of my system with the Quad was the same as it ever had been, the magic was gone. Listening to records began to play a smaller role in my life—until I replaced the 405 with an M&A tube amplifier two years later.


But your "loss of magic" has nothing to do with sound quality. But sighted listening tests do make sound quality claims.
So you've poorly drawn up a false dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilema).
So yeah, it really makes you look completely illogical. The fact that you're willing to hang your hat ("so be it") on such a fallacy does even moreso.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 22:13:17
If these essays make me appear illogical, so be it. But as I wrote: "To explain my quarter-century-old Damascene experience, you have to accept that either the blind test was flawed—in which case all the reports that cited that 1978 test as 'proving' the amplifiers sounded the same were wrong—or that the nonaudio factors were irrelevant, in which case the criticisms of sighted listening based on that factor must be wrong."


That's it in one rather long, drawn out sentence.

It's the same problem I had with Fremer - far reaching conclusions reached based on fragmentary, truly negligable evidence.

But thanks for making it so easy to point out, John. As I earlier pointed out, you really have a lot of confidence in your own personal rightness, no matter where the rest of the world happens to go.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-28 22:30:26
I am still wondering why no one asks the Gizmodo guy that paid the visit to Fremer, to do an ABX test to prove his claim that his MP3 sounded like shit in comparison with Fremer's vinyl.

After all, he said it, not Fremer ...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-28 22:41:45
Because he (John Mahoney) isn't here?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 22:50:47
The troubling part here is that you also wrote:

Quote
Having been involved in the tests, having seen how carefully Martin had organized them, and having experienced nothing that conflicted with my beliefs, I concluded that the null results proved that the amplifiers didn't sound different from one another. I bought a Quad 405.



The problem I have with this is that DBTs in 1978 or thereabouts were not the same as DBTs in 1989, or 2009. For example, a DBT of necessity must be done with a relatively small collection of music. Music used to test with is easily the most important component in a DBT, right after the UUT. I see mention of this here in discussion of codec DBTs, so I know this issue will resonate with many HA regulars.

However, I see no evidence of a systematic informed approach to selection of musical passages for John's 405 DBT evaluation. Left to their own devices most audiophiles of the day would select music that they liked, not music that maximally exercises such audible differences as may exist.

The second issue is listener selection and training. It is not always true that the best person to do a DBT related to a certain product is a person who has or intends to purchase it.

Note that there is an appeal to authority - Martin who set up the tests. The tests seemed to be well done to John, but what was his experience and expertise with setting up DBTs? I've never seen John set up a DBT that I would have any confidence in to this day.  I know for sure that the way we set up DBTs in the late 1970s was not what it was in the late 1980s, or better yet what it is in 2009. 

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Quote

However, over time I began to realize that even though the sound of my system with the Quad was the same as it ever had been, the magic was gone. Listening to records began to play a smaller role in my life—until I replaced the 405 with an M&A tube amplifier two years later.


But your "loss of magic" has nothing to do with sound quality.


Seems to me like the above is an inadequately supported claim about whether or not sound quality was the determing factor.

I agree that the inherent sound quality of the Quad 405 product was probably *not* the only determining factor.

I agree with John that perceived sound quality was his determining factor, and that is IMO one of the best determining factors of all.

However, I did sneak in the word *perceived*. We have no idea exactly what influences went into John's detemination of sound quality since so many different influences were present.

There are other significant issues, such as the possibiliity that there was a hidden subtle flaw in the particular Quad 405.

In the final analysis I think that a reasonable person would say that it is very unclear exactly what should be concluded from this very, very fragmentary account of what seems to be a highly limited experience. It is dubious that any conclusion at all can be logically reached. It is unreasonable to base a final life's judgement on so little questionable data.

And this all relates to the question that I asked several days ago and that both John and Michael have sloughed again and again:

How do we know for sure which product sounds better?

How do we even know that they actually sound different?  Sounding different  is obviously a prerequisite for any judgment that one sounds better than the other.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-28 23:18:33
The troubling part here is that you also wrote:
Quote
Having been involved in the tests, having seen how carefully Martin had organized them, and having experienced nothing that conflicted with my beliefs, I concluded that the null results proved that the amplifiers didn't sound different from one another. I bought a Quad 405.

However, over time I began to realize that even though the sound of my system with the Quad was the same as it ever had been, the magic was gone. Listening to records began to play a smaller role in my life—until I replaced the 405 with an M&A tube amplifier two years later.


But your "loss of magic" has nothing to do with sound quality. But sighted listening tests do make sound quality claims.
So you've poorly drawn up a false dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilema).


Thank you for the Wikipedia reference but I don't believe so. Remember, back in the 1970s I was a hard-core an "objectivist" as, say, Krabapple here on HA. The test was well-designed, as far as I could tell, and the null results were convincing. I had done exactly what appears to be the standard procedure here: test my listening impression under blind conditions and act accordingly.

It was suggested at the HE2005 debate that after I had started to feel dissatisfied with the Quad, I should have repeated the original blind test. But remember that other than taking apart in the original listening test, I was not doing any audio research. I was merely buying an amplifier for my personal use based on my positive feelings about its non-audio attributes and acting on the listening test results that appeared to indicate that it sounded the same as the other amplifiers.

It is quite possible that in a subsequent blind test, the same null result would emerge. But how would that address my very real dissatisfaction with the amplifier? And remember also that I used the Quad for a long time before recognizing the cognitive dissonance between what I was expecting to hear and what I was actually hearing.

The Quad also was neither broken nor faulty, BTW, and the speakers I was mainly using it with (a pair of Rogers LS3/5as that I still measure on a routine basis to test my speaker measurement consistency), are not a demanding load.

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So yeah, it really makes you look completely illogical. The fact that you're willing to hang your hat ("so be it") on such a fallacy does even moreso.


I am sorry, but I still don't see the lack of logic. As I wrote, either the original blind test was flawed - it was described in full in the October and November 1978 issues of Hi-Fi News, if I remember correctly -  or the non-audio aspects of perception did not dominate actual sound quality in the long term.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-28 23:23:16
Because he (John Mahoney) isn't here?


Doh, well in that case, then yeah, let's get right back to it & blame Fremer & the raving audiophiles 

seriously though, think about it, maybe if someone can call upon him to add some more weight to his own subjective experience, then maybe we can all get &/or learn something positive out of this, after all.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-28 23:26:56
Did Lipshitz really tell Michael that he was a "lucky coin"?


Stan has recounted this event for me enough that I'm sure that the phrase "lucky coin" was used. The question in my mind was whether the object he described as a lucky coin was fremer or the test fremer did.

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Because I think we can all agree that is entirely unsupported from a mere 5-trial test.


Doesn't that depend on what Stan meant?  I've always taken it to mean that MF's test results were like the test results you get when you start flipping a coin a large number of times. Of course you get runs of 5 heads from time to time. A coin that gave you 5 heads in a row when you needed 5 heads in a row would be a "lucky coin", no?


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I don't support everything Arny writes, and I agree he's being a d*ck  by dredging up sludge from RAO , especially silly claims of stalking or whatever.


Stalking?

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(My take on Arny was already noted long ago on HA  here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=29619&view=findpost&p=257037) ; note too JJ's response a few posts down)


I don't know why you would call that a take on me, since all you've got there is someone saying that I said something, not me actually saying the same thing. I went back and chased this stuff down and there was this guy named Phil who claimed that ABX statistics were flawed from the outset. He stuffed a lot of words in my mouth and then started arguing with himself like I actually said all that.

Put yourself in my shoes if you can. We put together the statistics behind ABX in the late 1970s, published the article about it in the JAES in the early 80s, and other than the Les Leventhal thing in the middle 80s the topic was pretty well happily put to sleep. We just ran with it and it got us through all sorts of thick and thin.  All of a sudden it is 2004 and this hotshot Phil starts rattling of all kinds of stuff about his misapprehensions, and of course this is RAO so the usual idiots are screaming in my other ear. Guess what, I actually had to sit down and think it all out again from first prinicples to get back into the game.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-28 23:33:09
The widest dynamic range commercial recording I've ever found (and I've been searching for about 10 years) has about 80 dB dynamic range.


I remember you noting this a few months ago in a different thread here. Would you mind sharing which recording (CD?) this was?


Now to blind listening again. I had time to read the Stereophile article about the HE2005 debate (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/).

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Yet the ABX test, consisting of 10 different 60-second musical excerpts that took close to 2.5 hours to get through, failed to reveal statistically significant differences.


No wonder in my opinion. Summed up reason: fatigue => high probability of grading errors => inconclusive results. You need to concentrate the entire time, especially at the beginning of an item because you have no clue as to which stimulus is the original and which the UUT. At Fraunhofer, we try to limit our blind test items to 20 seconds maximum each. I personally am even more strict when conducting blind tests. I try to limit one test session to 7-8 items, 12-15 seconds per item. This way even the slowest listener finishes the session within 30 minutes. Why do I do this? Because it seems to me the test results became more reliable when I started doing this. Moreover, listeners were much more willing to participate because they knew they didn't have to spend "more than an hour listening to boring and annoying music and speech". A motivated listener is better than an unmotivated one. Which is also why we usually offer candy to the participants

If I would have been asked to participate in quoted 2.5-hour test, I would have rejected the "offer". The mentioned, supposedly experienced sound engineer setting up that ABX protocol could have done much better than that.

Chris
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ff123 on 2009-04-28 23:36:16
I did address this question. Perhaps you both missed my posting. There are no "tests," there won't be any scoring. All I am doing is playing level-matched files of various provenances to meetings of audiophiles, including many of my own recordings. I will be using the original hi-rez master files, the Red Book master files, and AACs and MP3s at various bitrates, as well as the specific comparison I mentioned in an earlier posting. The goal, as well as to have a pleasantly entertaining evening, is to allow listeners to hear for themselves if any of the differences are a) audible and b) matter.


In other words a sighted *comparison* with all that's problematic about those. Yes, I think we all 'got' that, even those calling it a 'test'.  IIRC it was also referred to, by you, as educational.  I'd say it could be far more educational if done fairly , while as it stands it could be downright misleading.


I find it disappointing that after all these years, the closest thing I have seen to proper testing of audio codecs in consumer magazines was contained in a trio of articles in Stereo Review's Sound & Vision back in 1999 - 2002.  They even spent the time and money to write their own DBT software.  It seems ironic to me that the online community had to cobble together their own limited resources to get the updated truth of codec quality since then, and that the print magazines continue to ignore these results.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 23:50:57
I find it disappointing that after all these years, the closest thing I have seen to proper testing of audio codecs in consumer magazines was contained in a trio of articles in Stereo Review's Sound & Vision back in 1999 - 2002.  They even spent the time and money to write their own DBT software.  It seems ironic to me that the online community had to cobble together their own limited resources to get the updated truth of codec quality since then, and that the print magazines continue to ignore these results.



Without checking, I'm guessing that was spearheaded by David Ranada, who is sorely missed in audio journalism these days.

Meanwhile the press reports junk 'science' like that Stanford music professor's apparently informal polls showing his students' preference for lossy sound over lossless, as if it meant something.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-28 23:54:42
maybe some here, reading a thread like THAT, will see how Arny got to be Arny)


That whole thread is unbelievably mild, compared to much of what has been posted on RAO.



Yes, but I'd sincerely hope RAO is never held up as the threshold of awfulness one should not meet or exceed.  HA's should be WELL below that.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: DVDdoug on 2009-04-28 23:58:39
Quote
I am still wondering why no one asks the Gizmodo guy that paid the visit to Fremer, to do an ABX test to prove his claim that his MP3 sounded like shit in comparison with Fremer's vinyl.
    It would be easy to "prove" a difference with ABX.  They were comparing two different versions of "Heroes".  The vinyl version had a German chorus and audible hiss, pop and crackle.  That German chorus is a dead giveaway! 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 00:02:37
I am sorry, but I still don't see the lack of logic.


Interesting, because John you have laid out my argument for me, point by point.

You didn't need to because the following is also the short version of relevant points from my post of 18:26, today:

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As I wrote, either the original blind test was flawed...


Very likely. I don't know of any audio equipment DBTs done in 1978 that weren't flawed by modern standards.

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or the non-audio aspects of perception did not dominate actual sound quality in the long term.


Also very likely.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 00:04:47
I am still wondering why no one asks the Gizmodo guy that paid the visit to Fremer, to do an ABX test to prove his claim that his MP3 sounded like shit in comparison with Fremer's vinyl.


It very probably was just a level mismatch. When I hook up an iPod (< -10db) to my amp after listening to my +4db CD player it initially sounds like shit, either. You have to turn up the volume very far to compensate. But then the impression that it sounds like shit will already have burned itself into your memory. Your brain just works like that. Your ears' sensitivity to specific frequencies shifts with volume.

Fremer's phonograph would probably be very easy to ABX against any digital device, anyway, because of its audible hiss.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 00:12:36
maybe some here, reading a thread like THAT, will see how Arny got to be Arny)


That whole thread is unbelievably mild, compared to much of what has been posted on RAO.



Yes, but I'd sincerely hope RAO is never held up as the threshold of awfulness one should not meet or exceed.  HA's should be WELL below that.


Of course, and despite the firestorm of yesterday, it still is.

The point is that you told people to look at how bad things were in RAO, and your example was about a 1 on a scale of 10.

I'm beginning to think that Atkinson has no clue that if someone starts arguing with him on RAO, they have from 5 to 10 Atkinson supporters also buzzing in their ear with joyous  little spiels about what an idiot you are, what a w**** your wife is, how you have s** with your kids, and how you sod***** the kids on the block, how they are going to call the police on you, etc.  It's all ludicrous and in its way it is part of the RAO game like harassing the batter in baseball. But, it takes its toll, no matter how small. And Atkinson still gets his due, regardless. But these people have nothing to do but to have fun trying, and maybe get a free lunch with drinks from Atkinson at the next CES.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 00:20:48
Quote
I am still wondering why no one asks the Gizmodo guy that paid the visit to Fremer, to do an ABX test to prove his claim that his MP3 sounded like shit in comparison with Fremer's vinyl.
    It would be easy to "prove" a difference with ABX.  They were comparing two different versions of "Heroes".  The vinyl version had a German chorus and audible hiss, pop and crackle.  That German chorus is a dead giveaway! 


The principle that is in operation here is that once people have a positive identification of the formats that are playing, all of their prejudices come into play just like a sighted test.

And there's no need to focus on just the hiss and tics and pops in vinyl. I've repeatedly sucessfuly ABXed CD rips versus LP needle drops even when the samples were perfectly time-synched, the noise levels were generally comparable, there were no tics and pops, and the frequency respoonse was matched within a dB or so over most of the audible range. The processing was done by a vinyl advocate, and I didn't even know what A or B were before listening to them.

But I got 16 out of 16 plus the identification right.

Once you know what you're listening to by whatever means, all the memories and prejudices that you have built up over the years are automatically assigned to the media you are listening to. It may be possible to overcome, but obviously not for everybody, and certainly not for someone who does not believe that they have all this to overcome.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 00:23:56
The widest dynamic range commercial recording I've ever found (and I've been searching for about 10 years) has about 80 dB dynamic range.


I remember you noting this a few months ago in a different thread here. Would you mind sharing which recording (CD?) this was?



If memory serves:

Bis label (Swedish)
Beethoven Symphonies
Minneapolis Symphony
Dual layer SACD/CD
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 00:31:13
Now to blind listening again. I had time to read the Stereophile article about the HE2005 debate (http://www.stereophile.com/news/050905debate/).

Quote
Yet the ABX test, consisting of 10 different 60-second musical excerpts that took close to 2.5 hours to get through, failed to reveal statistically significant differences.


No wonder in my opinion. Summed up reason: fatigue => high probability of grading errors => inconclusive results. You need to concentrate the entire time, especially at the beginning of an item because you have no clue as to which stimulus is the original and which the UUT. At Fraunhofer, we try to limit our blind test items to 20 seconds maximum each. I personally am even more strict when conducting blind tests. I try to limit one test session to 7-8 items, 12-15 seconds per item. This way even the slowest listener finishes the session within 30 minutes. Why do I do this? Because it seems to me the test results became more reliable when I started doing this. Moreover, listeners were much more willing to participate because they knew they didn't have to spend "more than an hour listening to boring and annoying music and speech". A motivated listener is better than an unmotivated one. Which is also why we usually offer candy to the participants

If I would have been asked to participate in quoted 2.5-hour test, I would have rejected the "offer". The mentioned, supposedly experienced sound engineer setting up that ABX protocol could have done much better than that.


One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.

This immediate kind of memory for hearing is similar to the so-called photographic memory which people have to varying degrees. For me the photograph is pretty well shot after a few seconds, but my second son can still see it well enough maybe a day later.  It hurt him in school until he disciplined himself to not use it. The alternative was to actually learn the information instead of remembering the photograph.

The point being that if the samples are 60 seconds long, most people will forget most of the details by the next time the music comes around.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-29 00:36:48
It is quite possible that in a subsequent blind test, the same null result would emerge. But how would that address my very real dissatisfaction with the amplifier? And remember also that I used the Quad for a long time before recognizing the cognitive dissonance between what I was expecting to hear and what I was actually hearing.

I must say, I'm quite impressed at how well you are able to move from amusing personal anecdote to objective sound quality claim. It is no wonder you've managed to guide so many readers along with you, even as the newspaper and magazine industries suffer. 
I, however, don't buy it.
You're basically putting me in an impossible position with this anecdote, because I have to psychoanalyze what you were thinking so many years ago. Furthermore, I'm only privy of the facts of the story as you describe them. However, the obvious point is this: there's so many factors that go into our purchasing decisions beyond sound quality it's extremely difficult to figure out where your dissatisfaction stems from. We can however rule out (on the basis of your ABX test) that it was not sound quality. In a consumerist culture (especially when it comes to hobby purchases), generally speaking, we try to use our "stuff" to define us. Let's assume that this amp apparently did a poor enough job of defining you, and you made the subconsciously biased decision to believe that it's sound quality was sub-par, perhaps in an effort to justify trying a new amp. That decision on your part would absolutely nothing to do with the actual sound quality of the unit. I'm certain that if you had repeated your ABX test, you'd have affirmed this.

So then let me recommend a third option to your false dichotomy:
Quote
So yeah, it really makes you look completely illogical. The fact that you're willing to hang your hat ("so be it") on such a fallacy does even moreso.


I am sorry, but I still don't see the lack of logic. As I wrote, either the original blind test was flawed[...] or the non-audio aspects of perception did not dominate actual sound quality in the long term
or the non-audio aspects of product satisfaction (which ABX is designed to remove, and did so effectively) dominate actual sound quality in the long term, for you.
The problem with this conclusion is, obviously, that it has been a forgone conclusion in your mind (and ego) that your hobby was completely about the absolute sound quality, and nothing else. So when that becomes evidently false, you trash blind-testing as a scapegoat.


I'm sure it wouldn't bother anyone here if your magazine only subjectively evaluated the things which are subjective, because certainly things like atheistic of a piece of equipment matter to people, you included. Sound quality is just not one of these things, however.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 01:13:59
We have just recently banged our heads together in another thread, but I must admit that pretty much sums it up for me quite well!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-29 01:23:19
I more or less agree completely with you, so maybe I'm just confused as to what is being debated. Did Lipshitz really tell Michael that he was a "lucky coin"? Because I think we can all agree that is entirely unsupported from a mere 5-trial test. For Michael to tar "science" with a misinterpretation like that is something of a strawman - assuming, of course, that was what Stanley said in the first place.


It would be good to hear Stanley Lipshitz's side of the story....or Dave Clark's for that matter.

Off the top of my head, in the past couple of years we've had postings to HA from such audio notables as Johnston, Moran, Olive, Fremer, and Atkinson.  What the hell, let's invite Lipshitz and Vanderkooy and Clarke and make it a party.   

(I also read and participate in a pro audio list,  and all I can say is that it is very interesting to see opinions on some of these same matters from gearhead gods like Dan Lavry  et al.  A possible collision of worlds between the technically savvy no-nonsense end of pro audio , and the 'high end' audio journalists , is a scenario that has always intrigued me.)


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Bizarrely, a search for your name on RAO in Google Groups gives me 2480 results, while on RAHE it's 5910. However, it looks like a lot of the RAO results are the result of crosspostings from eg Middius, so a thorough investigation of this will take more time than I am willing to spend on the matter. I do concede that I was ignorant of your avoidance of RAO, but honestly, while RAHE is mucho better, I think my original point still stands. This debate has gone on between you, Arny, John, and a rotating cast of other characters for so long that honestly I might just be prejudiced against large parts of this whole topic, because I just get this incredible sense of deja vu... I'll admit that is an irrational response.


I have never, ever denied, and have in fact noted, that I have been in the online trenches of the 'Great Debate' for years..and years. So your deja foo is unlikely to to be stronger than mine in this instance. ;>

As for RAO posting, you have to consider frequency vs  time span.  Whenever I did post to RAO, it tended to be in brief spurts, and as you have seen I tend to answer all comers,so the posts pile up quickly, then stop for a long interval.  Whatever number turns out to be accurate, I guarantee that RAO constitutes a tiny fraction of my audio-related posting to Usenet; the vast bulk of it is to RAHE.  Within days of first reading it -- this was in the days jj used to still post there -- I considered RAO a toxic dump, and its only gotten worse, and I tell people that.  If JA or Arny are still posting there regularly, I don't get the attraction.  (Stereophile's forum today seems little better than RAO, btw.  Yet years from now the archive will show a burst of posts from me there from last  week.    )

(snip)

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You're right - I pretty much agree with everything you're saying on audio merits. I just don't think how you're saying it is terribly effective. I think this topic and emotion don't mix, it is important to avoid responses that are needlessly inflammatory and don't prove points - and I have already tried to apologize for the things I have said that violate that belief.

Using phrases like "audiophoolery", "shameful", "smokescreen" etc plays well to the peanut gallery, but express a very large degree of emotion that simply does not advance what I think is the goal of this thread, which is to actually debate. And they imply a great amount of maliciousness which I believe cannot be adequately proven.


"Audiophoolery" simply refers to the foolishness of audiophiles.  All humans are foolish and prone to kidding themselves; some make a specialty of being foolish about AUDIO.  It does not refer to any 'malicious' intent, though I can see how you might interpret that if you thought 'fool' was being used as  verb.

As for the other two, 'adequately proven' depends on what you will consider adequate.  The argument then becomes like the arguments of those who wish to prove that there is liberal bias in the media, or its opposite.
How long have you been reading the high end press?

I sez this: From long observation, I consider the journalistic high-end --  a visible face of the hobby in the media -- to be pathologically devoted to the description of the Emperor's clothes -- a stance that I can support with science.  And I consider that *detrimental* to the hobby.  I don't care a fig if they are sincere in their belief rather than 'malicious'; plenty of pernicious beliefs are sincerely held (see: creationism). 

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I'm very comfortable with the assertiveness in saying one of JA's articles lacks "any technical validity". I'm not comfortable with calling that shameful.


Who is talking about just *one of JA's articles*?  What does it mean to persist in editing a magazine discussing arcane technical details yet lacking technical validity in some fundamental ways, when one either *should* or *does* know better?  Not just that, but to also repeatedly go on the attack against DBT, from that pulpit?

JA was trained in physics, so he has some grounding in experimental method.  From his years in the trenches, he's *certainly* heard the arguments pro DBT.  He counts JJ among his friends.  He cannot possibly fail to understand at this point, why sighted reviewing is a massive fail from the scientific POV.  If he ran a TAS-like operation, where they don't even make a pretense of objectivity,  it would be shameful enough; that his magazine picks and chooses from the science it wishes to acknowledge, lending an unearned veneer of authority,  seems to me somehow worse.    No amount of English charm and politesse obscures what,  to me, seems an underlying wiliness in the way this is finessed when JA is challenged about it.  (Perhaps because I married a Brit!)

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That said, I've reread your posts and I caught a lot of important points which I had not caught the first time around. Maybe I am being irrational about this, and I'm just numbed. I dunno. But I will say that very little of what JA has said strikes me as being malicious or unintelligent - although it does still strike me as being largely wrong. And I'm seeing too much focus on the former....


I try to choose particular words carefully, for a reason.  But I understand totally if every pearl of wisdom is not gleaned.  (In other words, I skim posts a lot , too.    )


Quote
But it's always nice to see where people show their true colors by posting on their home forums. Nice tell.


It's an interesting thread as RAO threads go,  because there are perhaps more than the usual number of 'voices of reason' there than I remember from before, as well as the vicious nuts that condemn the place to a circle of hell for me.  (It doesn't compare to J Vigne's meltdown over one of YOUR  posts on the STereophile forum last week!)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-29 01:36:59
Quote
Yet the ABX test, consisting of 10 different 60-second musical excerpts that took close to 2.5 hours to get through, failed to reveal statistically significant differences.


No wonder in my opinion. Summed up reason: fatigue => high probability of grading errors => inconclusive results. You need to concentrate the entire time, especially at the beginning of an item because you have no clue as to which stimulus is the original and which the UUT. At Fraunhofer, we try to limit our blind test items to 20 seconds maximum each. I personally am even more strict when conducting blind tests. I try to limit one test session to 7-8 items, 12-15 seconds per item. This way even the slowest listener finishes the session within 30 minutes. Why do I do this? Because it seems to me the test results became more reliable when I started doing this. Moreover, listeners were much more willing to participate because they knew they didn't have to spend "more than an hour listening to boring and annoying music and speech". A motivated listener is better than an unmotivated one. Which is also why we usually offer candy to the participants



Were there no rest periods  or candy) included in the 2.5 hour session?  And did it take 2.5 hours because, I suspect, the listeners kept asking to hear the samples repeated?  Which would suggest  a certain high level of motivation?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Soap on 2009-04-29 01:41:30
I can't put it much more strongly - if this kind of debate and style spreads much further in HA, it'll kill it. Please take it back to Usenet.


I can not second this with more emotion.
Earlier (what seems like months) in this thread I issued a blanket complaint as to the tone of this conversation and the disservice it was causing in my opinion.
I say a blanket complaint, as I called nobody out by name in an attempt to prevent defenses being raised and continued poor behavior.
Now the skin wears thin I am more than willing to say it is your style, Arnold, which appears the worst.  The personal attacks are simply off the hook and rather childish.  You do yourself a disservice.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-29 02:36:36
I am still wondering why no one asks the Gizmodo guy that paid the visit to Fremer, to do an ABX test to prove his claim that his MP3 sounded like shit in comparison with Fremer's vinyl.

After all, he said it, not Fremer ...


The detail I was actually wondering about that wasn't mentioned in the article was whether the iPod signal was going out through the docking port or through the headphone jack.  I actually considered asking that question, but deemed it too nerdy.  Then again I'm posting on a fairly tech intensive site with a friggin' Yes avatar so "nerdy" is pretty much par for the course.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-29 02:59:58
The detail I was actually wondering about that wasn't mentioned in the article was whether the iPod signal was going out through the docking port or through the headphone jack.  I actually considered asking that question, but deemed it too nerdy.  Then again I'm posting on a fairly tech intensive site with a friggin' Yes avatar so "nerdy" is pretty much par for the course.


Well if you ask me, that's a valid question, as I said, after all it was his experience that was expressed in the article.

Then again, had you asked that question, nerdy factors considered, you could have been in a tricky position to provide ABX proof that the difference you attribute to using the headphone out jack as a line out, is not the fruit of your wild imagination ... 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-29 03:10:25
In fairness to Mr. Atkinson, if he were to recommend the use of MP3 then he would become the target of everyone who ever made or downloaded a lousy MP3 file (and who hasn't) as well as all of those who aren't even willing to consider MP3's use on a philosophical basis. Recommending against its use is a safe position because it avoids all of the caveats that must otherwise be applied. He then becomes the target of MP3 advocates, which he can live with.

I do not, however, in any way condone the way in which he justified not recommending lossy encoding. His article with all of its useless and misleading spectral plots is absolutely shameful.


I certainly wouldn't expect the cat to wholeheartedly embrace mp3 as the sonic format he has waited his whole life to love and adore or anything like that, but there's no reason in the world that the technology can't be treated as just another extremely useful tool in a music lover's arsenal.  I think it's entirely possible that lossy compression is just transitional technology anyway.  I'd expect that lossless compression will continue to improve while download speeds and drive capacity continue to increase.  Eventually they will meet up in the middle and, at that point, lossy compression will start to fall by the wayside.  I do believe that the days of physical media, pretty much all of it, are numbered. 

All I would ask would be some balanced, sober and nuanced analysis without the Fox News style scaremongering.  I mean, c'mon, that pixelated Sgt. Pepper pic is a little ridiculous and obviously designed to stoke that kind of irrational "Those damned kids with their mp3s are destroying real music!" attitude that audiophiles of the baby boom generation seem to be predisposed towards anyway.  I'm 37 and I listen to most of my music as lossy.  Do I get lumped in with "those damned kids" too?  Is an honest to Jebus CD playing through, say, a cheap CD boombox from the local Value Village really better for so called "serious listening" than an iPod playing AAC at a bitrate high enough to be transparent to the listener through nice headphones?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-29 03:14:49
Then again, had you asked that question, nerdy factors considered, you could have been in a tricky position to provide ABX proof that the difference you attribute to using the headphone out jack as a line out, is not the fruit of your wild imagination ... 


I actually find it listenable either way.  I might not be able to ABX it if they were matched up right.  It's just that if I go out through the headphone jack I have to set the volume level just so or the sound clips like Floyd The Barber on meth.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-29 08:29:13
I am still wondering why no one asks the Gizmodo guy that paid the visit to Fremer, to do an ABX test to prove his claim that his MP3 sounded like shit in comparison with Fremer's vinyl.

Because he (John Mahoney) isn't here?

Yeah, that, and actually I'm sure it had been asked in the long threads there. I myself on another article from that "listening test" week, questioned their "source" (a guy from audiojunkies.com) about his wild claims, only one of which was that speaker cables have a break-in period. The people who make such claims just don't care to back them up with any evidence, or even just a mildly rational-sounding argument. Nope. Nothing.

I'm actually surprised that Mr. Atkinson here is engaging with you guys. I guess props to him, but I don't think he'll change his mind any time soon. For these guys (especially audio "journalists" like Fremer and the audiojunkies guy) too much is at stake if they admit they're fundamentally wrong. Just the opposite of real science (a.k.a. intellectually honest probing of reality), actually.

I rather liked a lot the quoted interview of one of Stereohile's old founders. That was amusing. I like the guy.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: spoon on 2009-04-29 09:06:37
Quote
It seems ironic to me that the online community had to cobble together their own limited resources to get the updated truth of codec quality since then, and that the print magazines continue to ignore these results.


Exactly, 1 billion iTunes tracks have been sold, so it is not like these files are rare - they are in wide circulation, a new format-medium and to have a blanket statement that all lossy codecs should be disregarded does not do justice to that % of the population.

Audio magazines are part financed by advertisers, a magazine is hardly going to discredit a $1000 mains cable which is advertised within (do not bite the hand which feeds).

Stereophile seems at least to have taken the position that lossless codecs are identical to uncompressed audio, which cannot be said for other publications, although is a little odd they recommend WAV / AIFF with their related tagging issues and both formats are not able to self detect errors (from HDD corruption).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-29 11:01:03
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.

Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-29 11:02:09
Doesn't SMPTE RP 200 set the peak at 103dB SPL?

So 100dB down is 3dB SPL.

If some piece of equipment in the chain generates a whining noise at 3kHz, at a level which comes out at 3dB SPL, it meets your -100dB rule, yet has an audible fault.
Where in the real everyday world do you propose to do your listening test to show conformance with TOS 8? ;-)
You snipped my next line about there being a bucket load of caveats! You then wrote some of them. I agree with them all.

However, there are clearly some rooms somewhere where the human hearing threshold was measured at this low level - because we have the measurements! So it's not an impossibility. And here, the -100dB rule is broken.

Take the wheels of your goalposts  Either it's a rule that works, or it isn't. If it's a rule that works "most of the time, for all normal listening", say so.


Now, specifics...

Quote
If memory serves JJ had a SOTA listening room at the old AT&T labs. Immensely expensive.  Its noise level level was something north of NC10, maybe NC15. 

According to http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/educati...se_Criteria.pdf (http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/education/pdfs/Noise_Criteria.pdf)  NC 15 sets the room tone at 3 KHz about 13 dB SPL. Good chance that noise will be masked, I'd say.
Giving a dB (SPL) value for a pure tone is straight forward. dB (SPL) values for noise are less so - deriving the actual spectrum level requires further data, not given in that link. It may be that what is shown is the spectrum level, but it doesn't say so. Don't assume - the vast majority of people never quote the spectrum level.

Here's an example of how misleading noise levels, quoted in dB, can be: People talk about hearing "through the noise" in dithered digital audio - e.g. "the noise is at -90dB but I can hear a tone at -100dB clearly" - true, but misleading. It implies the ear is magic, but it isn't at all. If you look at the spectrum level of the noise, rather than it's total RMS power, you'll see that it's far lower than the tone. The ear isn't magic, it's just hearing what any good spectrum analyser will show. The RMS numbers are simply misleading. In this case, the spectrum level of the noise is actually -133dB; no wonder a -100dB tone is audible!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-29 11:23:17
While I am very wary of sighted listening tests, I want to share two anecdotes...

1. I've been involved in a sighted listening test (reported previously (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=9311&view=findpost&p=96338)), and the most striking thing was that, even when they knew full well what they should be hearing and fully expected to hear it, most listeners reported (and were obviously quite surprised to report) that they couldn't hear any difference at all.

2. I'm always staggered by how different the same system with the same content can sound on different days. You know nothing has changed in the audio itself, but it still sounds different, due to mood / attitude etc etc!



Different subject: way back in the thread, there was a debate about whether early CDs were "good" or "bad" compared with what we have now. The answer is both: early releases of then "current" material were often stunning, while current releases of current material are usually squashed to death. However, early release of archive material were often atrocious, while subsequent releases of archive material at least use decent master tapes etc.

Like many people, I don't have a vinyl / early CD / late CD preference over all - but where there are significant mastering differences, I do try to track down whichever version sounds best. That's why I have a ("good") turntable - I bought it to hear The Beatles properly - though with so many people doing needledrops these days, it's probably redundant.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-29 11:43:25
Quote
It seems ironic to me that the online community had to cobble together their own limited resources to get the updated truth of codec quality since then, and that the print magazines continue to ignore these results.


Exactly, 1 billion iTunes tracks have been sold, so it is not like these files are rare - they are in wide circulation, a new format-medium and to have a blanket statement that all lossy codecs should be disregarded does not do justice to that % of the population.


I think it's harmful in three different ways:  1.  It is, as you pointed out above, incredibly dismissive and patronizing towards a huge swath of music lovers who have embraced this technology and are getting a lot of joy from it.  2.  It does a huge disservice to some who might benefit from a lossy library who are now either poisoned against the idea by Stereophile's editorial stance or who might go ahead and do it, but who screw themselves over in the process out of ignorance like the reader that Atkinson mentioned who ripped everything to 128kbps and ditched the CDs.  3.  It hurts software guys like you and the people who work on actually developing and improving the lossy codecs.  I hope you guys are doing all right because your software kicks ass and I've got 1,700 plus CDs worth of lossless and lossy to prove it.  However, my sense of justice and fair play bristle at the notion that guys who sell those insanely expensive cables that might not be superior to a coat hanger are benefiting mightily from exposure in these magazines while guys who make and sell a product that is actually useful for a fair price get shut out.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 12:55:09
You may be thinking of Michael Gindi who was parodied in Sam Tellig's 1980s columns in Stereophile and then got a gig with The Absolute Sound and maybe Ultimate Audio and had an MBL fixation--that guy was definitely a psychiatrist.


I'm under the impression that Gindi invested serious cash in UA, and lost out big time when it crashed and burned after maybe 18 months of publication. It was super-glossy and by my standards pretty much content free. In short, it was Gindi and much of the high end's so-called journalism personified. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 13:21:43
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.


Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other


Listening to music is partially an emotional experience but it is not necessarily just an emotional experience.

One key point in the mass of knowlege that is currently known about listening to music is that music goes through a series of abstractions before it gets to the parts of the brain whose activity is representative and strongly influences what we call our emotional state.  At each step in the process, more information gets transformed into less information. At each step in the process the amount of evidence decreases. By the time you perceive the emotional reaction, megabits or perhaps gibabytes of information has been abstracted into a few bits of information.

One consequence of many-to-few transformations is that there are a large number of different large data sets that can possibly be abstracted and produce the same few bits of information.

A given emotional reaction or any of a group of similar emotional reactions can potentially be triggered by a large number of different playings of different pieces of music via different playback systems with different sonic characters.

Bottom line is that if your criteria for judging systems is just emotional reaction, very little can be determined from emotional reactions about what triggered it.

Another obvious conclusion is that if you aren't doing blind listening tests, there's this huge gestalt experience with zillions of influences that led to the emotional experience that you perceived.  Asserting that one small subtle change like say the miniscule electrical variations caused by changing an audio cable is so poorly supported by the available evidene as to be most likely a fantasy or an illusion.

Bottom line is that people like Fremer and Atkinson live in what many of us perceive to be a fantasy world where far-reaching and hihgly improbable conclusions come out of who knows where? It isn't reason or logic as many of us understand them to be. They can very nicely and persuasively argue that 2+2 = 5, but anybody with faith enoough in science in technology to believe that 2+2 = 4 should not be buying *any* of it.

Hence there are many recent and past statements around here that mystify me, given the overall veneer of science and reason.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-04-29 13:32:34
Although I do still not like the way you adress your "opponents" (it does never help any discussion, no blind testing needed to proof that) I must say that was a very great post Mr. Krueger. It sums up a lot of the interesting "problems" with psychoacoustics and subjective attributes. Especially the fact that the information reduction makes subjective tests basically underdetermined problems. Thanks for that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 13:47:49
One consequence of many-to-few transformations is that there are a large number of different large data sets that can possibly be abstracted and produce the same few bits of information.


Abstraction always has its costs, as this abstraction of the human brain. The brain does not work in the sense of discrete circuitry. Even if your auditory processing is able to reduce (abstraction is a higher order concept) a stream of information A of density 10M into an supervening "inner" stream A_1 of density 4K, this must neither mean that you can feed A_1 directly into a subject without a perceivable difference nor that you can feed any stream B of density 4K into a subject without perceivable difference. As long as the brain's reduction* does not work like a discrete machine in linear fashion, it is certainly possible, that "inner" stream A_1 will only be composed in a constellation where "outer" sensory is under 10M density fire.

* The reduction circuity itself may have exit ramps that are only used under special circumstances. For example, a very loud bang can startle your whole body up to the tips of your fingers "long" before you become aware of the bang's gestalt.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-29 14:21:03
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.


Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other


Listening to music is partially an emotional experience but it is not necessarily just an emotional experience.

One key point in the mass of knowlege that is currently known about listening to music is that music goes through a series of abstractions before it gets to the parts of the brain whose activity is representative and strongly influences what we call our emotional state.  At each step in the process, more information gets transformed into less information. At each step in the process the amount of evidence decreases. By the time you perceive the emotional reaction, megabits or perhaps gibabytes of information has been abstracted into a few bits of information.

One consequence of many-to-few transformations is that there are a large number of different large data sets that can possibly be abstracted and produce the same few bits of information.

A given emotional reaction or any of a group of similar emotional reactions can potentially be triggered by a large number of different playings of different pieces of music via different playback systems with different sonic characters.

Bottom line is that if your criteria for judging systems is just emotional reaction, very little can be determined from emotional reactions about what triggered it.

Another obvious conclusion is that if you aren't doing blind listening tests, there's this huge gestalt experience with zillions of influences that led to the emotional experience that you perceived.  Asserting that one small subtle change like say the miniscule electrical variations caused by changing an audio cable is so poorly supported by the available evidene as to be most likely a fantasy or an illusion.

Bottom line is that people like Fremer and Atkinson live in what many of us perceive to be a fantasy world where far-reaching and hihgly improbable conclusions come out of who knows where? It isn't reason or logic as many of us understand them to be. They can very nicely and persuasively argue that 2+2 = 5, but anybody with faith enoough in science in technology to believe that 2+2 = 4 should not be buying *any* of it.

Hence there are many recent and past statements around here that mystify me, given the overall veneer of science and reason.

Thanks for the reply. I wouldn't argue with any of what you say. In truth I'm struggling to form a conclusion based on my own experience that is consistent with any viewpoint.

I have found that I can get the same emotional "hit" from a piece of music via equipment of widely differing quality levels: EG a car radio and a decent home system. So, emotional impact is not a suitable yardstick for judging quality. I've found that I am unable to distinguish between equipment that measures differently. So, measurements don't seem a reliable predictor of quality either. I've found that differences between equipment that are obvious when directly comparing them, have no impact at all on my enjoyment of music. So, "different" doesn't seem mean "better" or "worse" in a non-technical sense. I've found that equipment that sounds different on one occassion may sometimes be indistinguishable on another and vice versa. Presumably all that proves is that I'm not the sort of person you want in a listening test.

Admittedly none of these impressions come from DBT. Some are from general leisure listening but they are mainly from what I believe would be called Single Blind Testing. IE I was "blind" but the person switching sources, or whatever, was in the same room as me and was also noting what was actually playing during a given test for subsequent comparison with what I thought was playing (didn't have a PC back then).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 14:27:57
(It doesn't compare to J Vigne's meltdown over one of YOUR  posts on the STereophile forum last week!)


Is that still online on the SP forum?

I went looking for it a few days back and came up empty?

Got a well-focused link?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 15:27:03
However, there are clearly some rooms somewhere where the human hearing threshold was measured at this low level - because we have the measurements! So it's not an impossibility. And here, the -100dB rule is broken.


Pedantic point: I don't know for sure that the published human thresholds were established in accordance with TOS 8.

Quote
Take the wheels of your goalposts  Either it's a rule that works, or it isn't. If it's a rule that works "most of the time, for all normal listening", say so.


I'm just wondering when you're going to address your TOS8 violation and prove that everything you said about the 100 dB rule is really true iwth a DBT. ;-)

I think that if you had to ABX it for real, you might see the issue in a slightly different light. ;-)  ;-)    ;-)

Quote
Quote
If memory serves JJ had a SOTA listening room at the old AT&T labs. Immensely expensive.  Its noise level level was something north of NC10, maybe NC15. 

According to http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/educati...se_Criteria.pdf (http://www.acousticalsolutions.com/education/pdfs/Noise_Criteria.pdf)  NC 15 sets the room tone at 3 KHz about 13 dB SPL. Good chance that noise will be masked, I'd say.


Giving a dB (SPL) value for a pure tone is straight forward. dB (SPL) values for noise are less so - deriving the actual spectrum level requires further data, not given in that link. It may be that what is shown is the spectrum level, but it doesn't say so. Don't assume - the vast majority of people never quote the spectrum level.

Here's an example of how misleading noise levels, quoted in dB, can be: People talk about hearing "through the noise" in dithered digital audio - e.g. "the noise is at -90dB but I can hear a tone at -100dB clearly" - true, but misleading. It implies the ear is magic, but it isn't at all. If you look at the spectrum level of the noise, rather than it's total RMS power, you'll see that it's far lower than the tone. The ear isn't magic, it's just hearing what any good spectrum analyser will show. The RMS numbers are simply misleading. In this case, the spectrum level of the noise is actually -133dB; no wonder a -100dB tone is audible!


Good thoughts. As always, noise measurement are only relelvant in the context of bandwidths.  If the noise level in a 20-20k band is -100 dB, then the noise level in a critical band will of course vary with the width of the critical band, depending on which critical band it is, and what the initial spectrum of the noise is.

I presume that the typical critical band is about 1/3 octave.  The relevant critical band in your example is the one around 3 KHz.  Estimating the width of a 1/3 octave band at 3150 Hz, I get a bandwidth of 680 Hz. Presuming uniform spectral density, the attenuation of this band is about 14 dB below the broadband noise.  So I'm thinking that the noise level in the critical band around 3 Khz is about -114 dB.  If the noise were pink, things might not be that much different because the band is near the middle of the band.

I also simulated this based on a 1/3 octave 4th order Butterworth filter @ 3150 Hz.  The attenuations I now have are:

Back of the envelope simulation, white noise:  14 dB
White noise simulation:  18 dB
Pink noise simulation : 15.6 dB

The first potential  flaw with my calculations that comes to mind is that I'm compaing a pink noise masker to a sine wave probe. I don't know offhand what the offset would be, but it might be pretty small.

Neverthelss, in every case I tried, I found your estimate of 133 dB to be high by quite a bit.

Wanna revisit your calculations with critical bands in mind, unless of course your 133 dB figure above involves all of the above, but you didn't give all the details?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 15:42:04
Although I do still not like the way you adress your "opponents" (it does never help any discussion, no blind testing needed to proof that)


Your error here seems to be presuming that I address all of my "opponents" the same way. Others seem to have figured out that there's a huge history between me and these specific persons, and most of it has been pretty sucky.

A lot of people around here seem to be very unwilling to hold certain people responsible for the libelous things that they have said on HA by our guests. Others see them.

Over the past 30 years I've found that subjectivists tend to quickly descend into personal attacks, even among themselves. Once you abandon reason and reliable facts to a certain degree, there is really not a lot else.

Fact is, theres a goodly list of people from both sides that I've gone mano-a-mano over the past 30 years. Some were true gentlemen. and others weren't.

Larry Greenhill once told me that as a psychiatrist, he's never seen as many disturbed people in one segment of the population as he had seen in audio's high end.  BTW, I'm probably in his "disturbed persons" category, but I wouldn't be surprised if he also included himself. He's a pretty self-aware guy. ;-)

Quote
I must say that was a very great post Mr. Krueger. It sums up a lot of the interesting "problems" with psychoacoustics and subjective attributes. Especially the fact that the information reduction makes subjective tests basically underdetermined problems. Thanks for that.


Well thanks for that.

I got an email this morning from Atkinson that suggests to me that we'll be back to normal around here pretty quickly. I think that we should keep out of other peoples non-technical stuff as much as we can, and get on with what we do well.

You do understand of course that you started your post out with one of those personal attacks you seem to think you abhor, right?  And of course you are aware of the forum's private messaging feature that allows you to express yourself to me in private without making public examples out of both of us?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-29 16:04:21
-133 dB is the spectrum level of -90dB RMS white noise. Spectrum level is dB / Hz.

Spectrum level of white noise with a given RMS energy in dB, and a given bandwidth in Hz, is

sl = 10*log10 ((10^(energy/10))/bandwidth)

...or at least that's what I was taught. I can't find that many references on-line. (Google finds one from the US Navy!).


It's not an indication of what you can hear, just how much noise falls into 1 unit bandwidth (1Hz) - as you've said and calculated, auditory filers aren't nearly so selective.

I haven't done the calculation myself. The easy way (very similar to what you did) is via the ERB - but I'm not convinced this is accurate near absolute threshold - the internal noise comes into play.


I haven't read it for a decade, but IIRC the old Robinson and Dadson threshold data was determined through single blind experiments.

I'm assuming (!) that the newer ISO measures were determined in double blind tests, not least because such testing has been computerised for decades (and mechanically automated even before that).

It doesn't use ABX, but I haven't seen any research using ABX to determine psychoacoustic thresholds. There probably is some, but it's not the most common method (if anything, ABC with the target being the odd-one-out - and a suitable target level which changes based on the previous one or two responses, is the "standard". There are standard stats - quite different from ABX though - typically the 70.7% point on the (Assumed) psychometric curve).

You may worry that TOS 8 says "...Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR)..." rather than "...Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (such as ABX or ABC/HR)...", but I don't think anyone else has ever said that alternative methods of DBT are invalid here - just that those two are usually the most appropriate for codec testing and development - which is the main point of this forum (and what TOS8 refers to).


If you note (and this is interesting, in passing) people are often allowed to break TOS8 here where a DBT is impractical for normal users e.g. when talking about headphones. There's a lot less traffic about such subjects on HA than codecs - for many reasons, but partly I think because people here like the kind of definitive answers which you can get from a successful DBT - definitive answers about, say, headphones are harder to come by (though I realise certain website try very hard).

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-29 16:04:58
I got an email this morning from Atkinson that suggests to me that we'll be back to normal around here pretty quickly.


Good grief, Mr. Krueger! Why do you persist in spreading fabrications like this. Your willingness to let your imagination run wild does you no favors. I am afraid. Please stick to technical discussions, not imagined personal issues.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 16:26:41
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack (especially not that old grump Carl). The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-29 16:32:36
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack. The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John



Has Hydrogen Audio turned into Bizarro World? You and I might have major disagreements over audio matters, "Rpp3po," but why would you encourage Mr. Krueger in this manner? I shouldn't have to say that I did not write the text you quote as being by me.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 16:43:48
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack (especially not that old grump Carl). The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John



ROTF!

I'd abstract your little letter into the suggestion that John and I should "Get a room". Of course that happened at HE2005, and the rest is history. I thought it was mostly a nice party. ;-)

It has also been observed to me by several that know us both,  that if John and I ever actually got together, a lot of good might evolve. 

That scares me, ;-)
but I can't positively say that it wouldn't happen that way if it did happen.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-29 17:11:18
Friends, is it only me thinking whatever it is that's going on here, it's personal, long in the tooth, and has got nothing to do with audio ?!..

The childish TOS references by the people who abuse the TOS more then anyone else, to scientific-ish poetry proving bugger all,
to zero desire to even consider anyone else's angle, lets assume for a second it can fly,
but when you read through this thread, you notice you can narrow it down to a few old players bringing their years old fight from elsewhere to a new untrashed (yet) bar.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 17:22:09
I don't know if I would agree. To be honest, the thread provided me with two weeks of both really great fun and also some insight. Beginning with the attempted assimilation by the B0RK collective (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=628856) and our retaliation over to Atkinson and Fremer joining and starting their old dance with Krueger - wasn't that quite a joy?

And it didn't "damage" HA in any way in my opinion, because it all pretty much stayed contained inside this thread. The rest of HA still followed business as usual with the (mostly) level-headed and technical discussion, which it is known for.

Edit: Added link.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-29 18:08:37
The site title does read:"the audio technology enthusiast's source"
I did flip through the threads posts, a few posts were intereting.

I have learnt a few things, still not what I wanted to learn, technologically anway.
what B0RK collective assimilation attempt? what page is that on? link?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-29 18:19:24
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.

Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other



But I don't have the same emotional experience every time I listen to the same recording, on the same playback system.  Do you?

If not, it suggests that differentiating sounds by the 'emotional experience' it evokes, is not going to be reliable.

And too, one is free to do an ABX using long 'samples'.  It's been done.  In fact, fortthe JAs of the world, I *recommend* that they first fully satisfy themselves that they have differentiated the 'emotional experience' between A and B, by whatever means they like -- including living with the gear, as JA did during his Damascene episode --  before they try ABX.

As for 'what to do' if that ABX showed that there was, in fact, no likely *audible* difference, JA seems to believe this would have no effect on his feelings toward the gear he grew to dislike.  Maybe , maybe not.  At least he would know it was not the sound of the gear, that was the problem.  AND REPORT THAT....right?




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 18:22:06
I have learnt a few things, still not what I wanted to learn, technologically anway.
what B0RK collective assimilation attempt? what page is that on? link?


It might be a tiring read and far from entertaining when you read it all from the beginning. Consumed as little niblets over two weeks I may have experienced it differently. B0RK took part in the discussion pretty loudly from the beginning. He supported many of Fremer's positions but was far from being as eloquent and often quite offensive. So somewhen I started trying to counter him with humor, what peaked (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=628798) when he thought that my evil hippie (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=628532) joke had been meant dead seriously.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-29 18:32:06
Other than unsubstantiated noise and trolling, B0RK contributed nothing to this discussion.  He demonstrated absolutely no technical acumen and was completely unwilling to demonstrate that he even understood the words his used (eg: jittery truth about CDs (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=627976)).

Simply clueless!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-29 18:40:59
(It doesn't compare to J Vigne's meltdown over one of YOUR  posts on the STereophile forum last week!)


Is that still online on the SP forum?

I went looking for it a few days back and came up empty?

Got a well-focused link?



http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showthr...page=0&vc=1 (http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=65472&page=0&vc=1)

and it was actually a reply to jj, not Axon, sorry!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-29 19:04:34
Friends, is it only me thinking whatever it is that's going on here, it's personal, long in the tooth, and has got nothing to do with audio ?!..

The childish TOS references by the people who abuse the TOS more then anyone else, to scientific-ish poetry proving bugger all,
to zero desire to even consider anyone else's angle, lets assume for a second it can fly,
but when you read through this thread, you notice you can narrow it down to a few old players bringing their years old fight from elsewhere to a new untrashed (yet) bar.


hmm, I hope you aren't dissing my haiku. 

And really, if this is *all* you think that's going on in this thread, maybe you aren't reading enough of it....or maybe you shouldn't read it at all. 

Personally, I'm finding it easy to skip the parts that seem to be more noise than signal.  But then, I'm an 'old player' who's been on HA a lot longer than since 27 April 09. 



The site title does read:"the audio technology enthusiast's source"
I did flip through the threads posts, a few posts were intereting.

I have learnt a few things, still not what I wanted to learn, technologically anway.
what B0RK collective assimilation attempt? what page is that on? link?



Ah, so you checked out a  few posts of a 15+ page thread, and decided to weigh in with a chastisement.

Well done.  May I direct you to the Stereophile forum?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Dracaena on 2009-04-29 20:07:49
He is right though. There are a few rather nasty bits in this thread.

I can't see why Krueger and Atkinson even pay any attention to each other. Maybe it's because Krueger seems to really be enjoying himself, even boasting (a few pages back) about the ability to harrass Atkinson that he has honed over many years; and Atkinson's equally impressive ability to be baited by him.

It seems certain that no forum post (no matter how epic) will cause either of them to suddenly adopt the other's way of thinking.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: dgauze on 2009-04-29 20:08:04
I think the reason why so many of us are focusing on the lossy vs. lossless debate and are giving Mr. Atkinson no quarter is due to his article, MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD.  It demonstrates little more than utter ignorance of lossy formats, how they're developed and how they're tested.


I really think that most people who have participated in this thread, like krabapple, have managed to focus on the most important issue, and that is Mr. Atkinson's apparent ignorance of lossy codecs in general. And on to this supposed "demonstration" that Mr. Atkinson will be presenting in Colorado:

I think Stereophile's refusal to incorporate any scientific methods into their hardware reviews is understandable to some degree, as their main purpose is to sell the products they advertise, and ultimately the advertisements themselves. But for Mr. Atkinson to further portray these technologies in a negative light seems to me like a slap in the face of all those who have worked hard advancing these codecs, and have done more to enhance people's enjoyment of music than Mr. Atkinson probably ever will. And for what? To instill a false sense of pride and self-affirmation in some his readers who, after biting the bullet and dropping $150,000 on a turntable, can't help but wonder whether they might have been a little ripped off? (you think!?)

Regarding the stereophile article in question (MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD) and his method for the future demonstration he described earlier, it is obvious that Mr. Atkinson does not understand how lossy codecs work. And not only that, it seems to me like he plans to further his influence on his readers at the expense of the validity of these codecs and the people who have worked so hard on tuning them. And on top of that, he'll probably be listening to AAC files on his iPod on the way there ...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 20:14:46
http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showthr...page=0&vc=1 (http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=65472&page=0&vc=1)

and it was actually a reply to jj, not Axon, sorry!


Thank you.

This whole thread seems to be pretty priceless, not that I see much need for something like it around here. Preaching to choir and all that.

BTW given the @$$-chewing I got for saying here that there are no golden ears, I quote JJ over on SP saying:

"Then, the claims of "I have better hearing", well, all I can say is that such hearing never seems to reproduce under controlled conditions."

;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 20:29:54
One other factor. Some of the books I've read about hearing perception suggest that our memory for actual sound is on the order of 5-20 seconds. After that, all we remember about the music are abstractions like the tune, the beat, the words, etc.

Could this be the crux of the matter? Listening to music is an emotional experience. Listening for differences in a short extract is not. Differences evident in one "mode" may not be evident in the other



But I don't have the same emotional experience every time I listen to the same recording, on the same playback system.  Do you?


Not at all.

One of my theories is that the high end value system puts "hearing differences" on the top rung. It seems like they have interated to a world where everthing sounds different. Cases in point would be SET amps that sound different every time you hook up a different speaker, even if you were listening to the signal at the amp's speaker terminals with headphones. Then we have these long term listening tests where it is almost impossible to actually listen to the identical same music, and if you did the listening sessions would be so far apart in time that you could not remember squat about what the previous session actually sounded like.

Quote
If not, it suggests that differentiating sounds by the 'emotional experience' it evokes, is not going to be reliable.


To say the least, and with a bullet!

Quote
And too, one is free to do an ABX using long 'samples'.  It's been done.


The TTL-based hardware ABX comparator had a battery backup for the DRAM memory to facilitate exactly long term ABX tests.

Quote
In fact, fort the JAs of the world, I *recommend* that they first fully satisfy themselves that they have differentiated the 'emotional experience' between A and B, by whatever means they like -- including living with the gear, as JA did during his Damascene episode --  before they try ABX.


IOW, familiarize themselves with the system like they couldn't have done at the early 1990s AES ABX tests.

Quote
As for 'what to do' if that ABX showed that there was, in fact, no likely *audible* difference, JA seems to believe this would have no effect on his feelings toward the gear he grew to dislike.  Maybe , maybe not.  At least he would know it was not the sound of the gear, that was the problem.  AND REPORT THAT....right?


Well.... ;-)

BTW, Got your irony suit on?  JA has been emailing me all day, lately telling me that I need immediate help from a mental health professional.  My first reaction was that it was funny, but I'm beginning to get worried about the man. Prior to today the number of emails I've gotten from him in the past decade or more could be counted on one hand.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-29 20:34:12
Sorry for the OT, but I looked on the Stereophile site for news of this Colorado audiophile event but couldn't find anything.  Did I just miss it, or is it yet to be announced?


Sorry for the tardy response. See http://www.stereophile.com/news/music_matters_in_may/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/music_matters_in_may/).

As I said before, if there any HA subscribers who attend one these evenings, I'd be happy to continue this conversation in "meat space." All I request is that you identify yourself by your HA screen name so I know with whom I am talking.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-29 20:39:33
Got your irony suit on?  JA has been emailing me all day, lately telling me that I need immediate help from a mental health professional.  My first reaction was that it was funny, but I'm beginning to get worried about the man. Prior to today the number of emails I've gotten from him in the past decade or more could be counted on one hand.


Please give it a rest, Mr. Krueger. I haven't been "emailing you all day." I did respond relatively politely to a couple of mails you sent me is all. I know you stated earlier that you enjoy "playing to the peanut gallery" (your words, not mine), but it seems that you are wasting HA bandwidth to no good end by trolling me in this manner. :-(

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 20:52:17
We sympathize with both of you. Anyone here would be a little agitated the night before we'd marry.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-29 21:21:08
He is right though. There are a few rather nasty bits in this thread.


I agree.  So?  It hardly invalidates the whole thread, which contains lots of *informative* bits.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-29 21:43:28
My God!

What is happening here? Are we now starting to behave really childish? I thought the peak was reached some time before but now it really gets mean and disrespectful. If this thread ends by throwing lies at each other just to prove a personal point (or vendetta for that matter) we retard to the middle ages. What does this prove? Guys, get a life.

Personally, I prefer to be on the side of Mr. John Atkinson. So far he appeared to be a really nice and charming person. He stayed polite and calm when others already were heated up. If that is a character feat of subjectivists I certainly stay with them - if only for that particuar reason. Though I don´t think that this is true. Because I believe in reasonable people, arguing and discussing friendly.

Regarding Mr. Fremer he is obviously a not so calm person. In his posts he displays a lot of anger. In that matter he is not so different than most of you: he furiously defends his positons. And as one person said before all of this comes down to belief. I´m not looking into a discussion, I´m looking into a religious war, each side missionaring the opposite side. Coming from Germany I truly believe in the Age of Enligtenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment) and its outcome. Following this thread my hopes in a better future are shattered! We apparantly substituted the bible for AUDIO. And I almost thought that this was over in western civilizations...

Am I a subjectivist? I don´t know. I considered myself a mixture of objectivist & subjectivist. Now I´m not so sure anymore.

Do I believe in DBT? Yes and No. If I would be forced to make a DBT with music I don´t know (e.g. Rock, Pop, Rap) I most certainly would fail. I couldn´t find a difference between 192 kBit/s & 320 kBit/s. But how could I? The reason is easy: the music and its sound is not known to me. I´m not even interested in it. How could I then find differences?
When it comes to orchestral music I certainly would be able (and I´m able) to hear differnces. I did post some DBT here before, together with audio samples to show that differences existed between certain methods of upsampling 44.1 kHz material to 96 kHz. I wanted to prove that one can actually recreates 60-70% of the original 96 kHz sound and that it can be heard with a DBT. Guess what? I offered everything but no one bothered to do a DBT. I didn´t even expect this because it was a measurable & sonically observable test. It proves just one things: if something isn´t according to the agenda of objectionists you´ll simply ignore it. But since many of you advertise that music coded in a lossy codec is not different to the original wave-file it came from I hardly doubt now that there is any interest in testing anything higher than 44.1. I guess you would say that one can´t hear frequencies over 20 kHz anyway. Well there goes the whole shebang... so much for that.

DBT are therefore flawed (WARNING: opinion) in my mind. With music I know I´m able to pass them, with music or musical styles not known to me I fail. For a true and working DBT you´ll need IMO experience. Most of the time you have to know what you are looking for.

Subjectivist Warning: Now for some really wonderful, mad and subjective claims. If this is a TOS violation so be it. What comes now isn´t even worse to things that have been stated here before. I do a lot of upsampling for my personal listening pleasure. When upsampling I keep aliasing "artifacts" on purpose. Most of you would call them artifacts while in fact they are "imaging" products (at least with iZotope RX Advanced). At the same time I don´t want to waste space so I tend to use lossy codecs. I´ve tried every codec there is. AAC, OGG, WMA-Prof and WavPack lossy are able to use 24/96 as input. You can read the results here at TheSoundtrackZone (http://www.thesoundtrackzone.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=918) (WARNING: highly subjective). I decided in favor of WavPack lossy - and I picked it by ear, only be ear. I guess this makes me a subjetivist - you can now start the usual bashing. As a sidenote you may want to read the other stuff at The Hifi Wonderland, I guess you´d find it pretty hilarious and entertaining.

On the whole, I find this thread pretty pointless right now. We (including me) are people who discuss matters that won´t interest 99% of the world population. They are happy with their iTunes stuff, their MP3, their iPod. That´s the normal way of things. For us it is different: we are geeks, true nerds. I would go so far as to describe some of us as basement dwellers. We all need to get a life. For that I have my boyfriend... oh, did I mention that I´m gay? All this personal message writing about marriages somewhere in the states really is stupid. I feel strongly offended by that... well actually not so strongly. At least I can think of some of you as childish and by that keep my own arrogance.

No hard feelings...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-29 21:55:22
Do I believe in DBT? Yes and No. If I would be forced to make a DBT with music I don´t know (e.g. Rock, Pop, Rap) I most certainly would fail. I couldn´t find a difference between 192 kBit/s & 320 kBit/s. But how could I? The reason is easy: the music and its sound is not known to me. I´m not even interested in it. How could I then find differences?

I think you are missing the whole point of DBT. Someone who can't or thinks he can't hear a difference is NEVER asked to take a DBT. That would be pointless.

Only when someone claims to be able to hear a difference, and members have some doubt, are they asked to back up the claim with DBT.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-04-29 22:01:25
Are we now starting to behave really childish? I thought the peak was reached some time before but now it really gets mean and disrespectful.

Starting? In my assessment, the childish behavior started at around page three and came near to its peak on page seven. I attribute most of the nastiness to what I perceive to be nothing more than age-related mental decrepitude.

I suppose senility just isn't as gentle to some as it is to others
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Tahnru on 2009-04-29 22:05:35
DBT are therefore flawed (WARNING: opinion) in my mind. With music I know I´m able to pass them, with music or musical styles not known to me I fail. For a true and working DBT you´ll need IMO experience. Most of the time you have to know what you are looking for.


A quick point of clarification.  DBT's (in the form of ABX) are NOT pass fail.

They provide statistically significant evidence that a difference could be detected, or nothing.  An ABX test that doesn't provide a statistically interesting result does not automatically prove the inverse of the hypothesis.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-29 22:11:10
Quote
It seems ironic to me that the online community had to cobble together their own limited resources to get the updated truth of codec quality since then, and that the print magazines continue to ignore these results.


Exactly, 1 billion iTunes tracks have been sold, so it is not like these files are rare - they are in wide circulation, a new format-medium and to have a blanket statement that all lossy codecs should be disregarded does not do justice to that % of the population.


I think it's harmful in three different ways:  1.  It is, as you pointed out above, incredibly dismissive and patronizing towards a huge swath of music lovers who have embraced this technology and are getting a lot of joy from it.  2.  It does a huge disservice to some who might benefit from a lossy library who are now either poisoned against the idea by Stereophile's editorial stance or who might go ahead and do it, but who screw themselves over in the process out of ignorance like the reader that Atkinson mentioned who ripped everything to 128kbps and ditched the CDs.  3.  It hurts software guys like you and the people who work on actually developing and improving the lossy codecs.  I hope you guys are doing all right because your software kicks ass and I've got 1,700 plus CDs worth of lossless and lossy to prove it.  However, my sense of justice and fair play bristle at the notion that guys who sell those insanely expensive cables that might not be superior to a coat hanger are benefiting mightily from exposure in these magazines while guys who make and sell a product that is actually useful for a fair price get shut out.


I swear on my Jon Anderson signed Japanese mini-LP of Tales From Topographic Oceans that I'm not usually the type to reply to my own posts.  However, I had a thought at work today that ties into what I posted earlier.  It seems to me that an unintended consequence of the above is that so called "high end" audio and, by extension, the publications that cover it have put themselves into a suicidal death spiral.  Their market demographics are almost exclusively baby boomers and older.  They are seemingly doing nothing but flinging poo at the listening choices of just about everyone under forty and they are not reaching out to the younger set by covering audio products, formats and issues that matter to them.  Do they think that the next generation are going to magically start subscribing to these magazines and buying from their advertisers and save them from the fate of "high end" buggy whip manufacturers?  Unless there is a whole lot of outreach and whole lot of change, I very much doubt it.



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-29 22:23:14
I swear on my Jon Anderson signed Japanese mini-LP of Tales From Topographic Oceans that I'm not usually the type to reply to my own posts.  However, I had a thought at work today that ties into what I posted earlier.  It seems to me that an unintended consequence of the above is that so called "high end" audio and, by extension, the publications that cover it have put themselves into a suicidal death spiral.  Their market demographics are almost exclusively baby boomers and older.  They are seemingly doing nothing but flinging poo at the listening choices of just about everyone under forty and they are not reaching out to the younger set by covering audio products, formats and issues that matter to them.  Do they think that the next generation are going to magically start subscribing to these magazines and buying from their advertisers and save them from the fate of "high end" buggy whip manufacturers?  Unless there is a whole lot of outreach and whole lot of change, I very much doubt it.


It is arguable that in the beginning, these magazines got their start by making people feel bad about the equipment they were listening to.

Perhaps, they are hoping that history will repeat itself. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-29 22:24:02
I think you are missing the whole point of DBT. Someone who can't or thinks he can't hear a difference is NEVER asked to take a DBT. That would be pointless.

Only when someone claims to be able to hear a difference, and members have some doubt, are they asked to back up the claim with DBT.
No, I do not miss the whole point of DBT. I know it quite well for that matter. And if I wouldn´t, I could look into foobar2000 or Wikipedia, couldn´t I?

And in my experience members of this site always "have some doubt". But then... this is only my experience. And I´m cynical so that won´t matter.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-29 22:25:30
Well, Mr. Atkinson, I wouldn't deny that. Most of us know already anyway...  Here's the original text from the email, that you have sent this morning:

Quote
Subject: My sweetheart!

Dear Arny,

I am excited as hell that tomorrow we finally go that step together. I will only have 4 close friends attending our wedding ceremony and still hope that you decide against bringing your whole pack. The planner just gave me a call, everything is setup and fine. Meet you tomorrow in San Francisco!

Love, 1000 kisses,

John



Has Hydrogen Audio turned into Bizarro World? You and I might have major disagreements over audio matters, "Rpp3po," but why would you encourage Mr. Krueger in this manner? I shouldn't have to say that I did not write the text you quote as being by me.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Ha!

One thing I've noticed about people who believe in pseudoscience, is the inability to grasp sarcasm. I guess that's one of the fundamentals that led to Poe's Law.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-29 22:25:55
A quick point of clarification.  DBT's (in the form of ABX) are NOT pass fail.

They provide statistically significant evidence that a difference could be detected, or nothing.  An ABX test that doesn't provide a statistically interesting result does not automatically prove the inverse of the hypothesis.
Correct, of course.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-04-29 22:26:17
Sorry for the tardy response. See http://www.stereophile.com/news/music_matters_in_may/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/music_matters_in_may/).

As I said before, if there any HA subscribers who attend one these evenings, I'd be happy to continue this conversation in "meat space." All I request is that you identify yourself by your HA screen name so I know with whom I am talking.


Thanks for the info John.  I'm not really an HA regular, as you can see by my low post count.

To others-
I don't know if any HA regulars are going to attend this event but I'm thinking about it.  If no HA regulars will be attending and there's any questions you want me to ask John or any of the other presenters, I'd be willing to pose them at the presentation and report his responses back.  My background is EE design engineering and also software development, but I don't have domain knowledge in the codec area, either lossless or lossy.  I did understand the earlier argument about lack of dither in the lossy codec John used to produce his graphs showing high distortion.  However, not knowing the details of codec implementations, I would not have been able to identify that as the cause of the problem.  I'm familiar with the sampling theorem and the basic theory of DSP, but not the nitty-gritty implementation details.

Anyway, it's just an offer.  No biggie either way.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-29 22:37:09
Personally, I prefer to be on the side of Mr. John Atkinson. So far he appeared to be a really nice and charming person. He stayed polite and calm when others already were heated up. If that is a character feat of subjectivists I certainly stay with them - if only for that particuar reason. Though I don´t think that this is true. Because I believe in reasonable people, arguing and discussing friendly.

So whoever is nicest must be telling the truth and being intellectually honest? Reality doesn't work that way. It doesn't care how nice we are. It is there to be discovered, not invented by nice people. You know what, I think the previous pope was probably a nice guy. Should I start believing in transubstantiation and 2000-year-old resurrections and virgin births?

By the way, this is a very common mistake that people who aren't familiar with science and how it works make. Even more so, pseudoscientific people tend to get VERY offended at the first criticism of their ideas and see it as personal attacks (religious people doubly so). You see people siding with the "nice" ones and condemning the "rude" ones in atheist blogs all the time.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-29 22:43:39
Personally, I prefer to be on the side of Mr. John Atkinson. So far he appeared to be a really nice and charming person. He stayed polite and calm when others already were heated up. If that is a character feat of subjectivists I certainly stay with them - if only for that particuar reason. Though I don´t think that this is true. Because I believe in reasonable people, arguing and discussing friendly.

So whoever is nicest must be telling the truth and being intellectually honest? Reality doesn't work that way. It doesn't care how nice we are. It is there to be discovered, not invented by nice people. You know what, I think the previous pope was probably a nice guy. Should I start believing in transubstantiation and 2000-year-old resurrections and virgin births?
Read more closely. I wrote "Though I don´t think that this is true" - afterwards came what I truly believe in. And Mr. Atkinson represents some parts of it. You imply a black & white thinking. Well, Reality doesn´t work that way because it truly is "shades of grey" though people love to embrace their prejudices.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-29 22:50:18
Personally, I prefer to be on the side of Mr. John Atkinson. So far he appeared to be a really nice and charming person. He stayed polite and calm when others already were heated up. If that is a character feat of subjectivists I certainly stay with them - if only for that particuar reason. Though I don´t think that this is true. Because I believe in reasonable people, arguing and discussing friendly.

So whoever is nicest must be telling the truth and being intellectually honest? Reality doesn't work that way. It doesn't care how nice we are. It is there to be discovered, not invented by nice people. You know what, I think the previous pope was probably a nice guy. Should I start believing in transubstantiation and 2000-year-old resurrections and virgin births?
Read more closely. I wrote "Though I don´t think that this is true" - afterwards came what I truly believe in. And Mr. Atkinson represents some parts of it. You imply a black & white thinking. Well, Reality doesn´t work that way because it truly is "shades of grey" though people love to embrace their prejudices.

That phrase doesn't make much sense in the context of your paragraph, so I didn't pay much attention to it. But now the question is raised. So you still stay "on the side" of pseudoscience even when you don't believe it? How intellectually honest (and sorry to keep repeating that phrase, but it can't be said enough times) is that?

Also, you seem to be making another mistake that most people just coming to discussions about science vs. pseudoscience make. You're assuming right off the bat that those are two equivalent points of view. Do you think creationism and evolution must be treated as equal theories too?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 22:59:32
My God!
...


If I have offended any gay pride, it was not my intention. I don't care about the sexual orientation of forum members. And my parody wasn't directed at any form of 'gayish' traits but at a form of defiant mutual exposure.

If you're interested in Hi Rez vs. Redbook comparisons there was a thread not too long ago that you can contribute to. Same for any codec/bitrate comparisons with your preferred music, where you are welcome to present your results. Any problematic samples that can be ABXed positively are a valuable contribution. Such has always helped to further improve lossy encoding. Several developers of the best available AAC codecs regularly hang around here (Nero's quite often, Apple's betimes).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-04-29 23:13:55
DBT are therefore flawed (WARNING: opinion) in my mind. With music I know I´m able to pass them, with music or musical styles not known to me I fail. For a true and working DBT you´ll need IMO experience. Most of the time you have to know what you are looking for.

Of course you're allowed to have opinions

But the way you put it DBT is NOT flawed. It seems that you use the following logic: "I fail a test because the music style is not known to me, while others pass the test easily because they are familiar with the type of music. So DBT is flawed".

Of course you have to know what you're looking for, that's the whole point. If you fail a test (for example when testing a certain codec) because you are not familiar with the type of signal, that means the codec is transparent for you on that particular type of signal. You can only generalize the results if you repeat the test with many test persons.

For testing of codecs at high bitrates people will even need to train themselves to get familiar with the artifacts. Does that mean DBT is flawed? No way.

And by the way, in sighted tests you will also have to know what to look (no pun intended) for, right?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-29 23:21:59
pseudoscientific people tend to get VERY offended at the first criticism of their ideas and see it as personal attacks (religious people doubly so).


At the risk of it being assumed I am labeling myself as "pseudoscientific," it should be noted that I haven't responded angrily in this thread to criticisms of my writings and statements. What has annoyed me are the personal remarks made about my behavior, my income, my status, my education, my ethics, etc, none of which have anything to do with my opinions on audio.

I have been lurking on Hydrogen Audio for a while as a "guest", so I had certainly expected criticisms of my writings on this forum - how could I not? But I have tried hard to address the argument, not the arguer, in this thread, respecting ToS #2. But what I had not expected was the puerile nastiness of some of the posters. And now you're blaming _me_ for the lowering of tone, "andy o"?

Don't get me wrong. As a public figure, I have a professional thick skin. And as someone whose publicly expressed opinions are protected in the US by the First Amendment, I certainly support the rights of others to express their opinions, no matter how strong. But the barrage of personal comments? I had expected better of Hydrogen Audio.

Okay, normal service can now be resumed.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 23:28:01
I truly believe in the Age of Enligtenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment) and its outcome.


The Age of Enlightenment's outcome has never been any form of positive knowledge about the world. Neither about a fundamental senselessness of religious conflict nor anything else. The one epochal outcome, that is still a lively, successful, and central element of our society since that time, is the realization of continuous, progressive criticism (in its original meaning) of anything we accept as true.

So citing the Age of Enlightenment and at the same time insisting to be allowed to take a believe for a fact is not the best way to go.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-29 23:32:15
That phrase doesn't make much sense in the context of your paragraph, so I didn't pay much attention to it. But now the question is raised. So you still stay "on the side" of pseudoscience even when you don't believe it? How intellectually honest (and sorry to keep repeating that phrase, but it can't be said enough times) is that?

Also, you seem to be making another mistake that most people just coming to discussions about science vs. pseudoscience make. You're assuming right off the bat that those are two equivalent points of view. Do you think creationism and evolution must be treated as equal theories too?
I obviously chose the side which appeared to be the most calm. Is that intellectually dishonest? I merely exchanged an awful position (B & W thinking) to one that is less worse (calmness). Am I therefore a traitor to my own intellect?

Here in this thread science vs. pseudoscience occupy two sides: left & right. I´m not assuming, I´m observing. As proof just read it again. You´ll find that there aren´t any shades of grey.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-29 23:38:46
If I have offended any gay pride, it was not my intention. I don't care about the sexual orientation of forum members. And my parody wasn't directed at any form of 'gayish' traits but at a form of defiant mutual exposure.

If you're interested in Hi Rez vs. Redbook comparisons there was a thread not too long ago that you can contribute to. Same for any codec/bitrate comparisons with your preferred music, where you are welcome to present your results. Any problematic samples that can be ABXed positively are a valuable contribution. Such has always helped to further improve lossy encoding. Several developers of the best available AAC codecs regularly hang around here (Nero's quite often, Apple's betimes).
Oh, don´t feel bad. I thought I was making clear that I answered cynically to a very sarcastic post. I´m sorry if I was that unclear. May I say, that I like your post very much? Short, reasonable, polite, calm. Wonderful post (I´m serious). And thank you for the invitation. In fact, it was the friendliest invitation I´ve read here so far.

I truly believe in the Age of Enligtenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment) and its outcome.


The Age of Enlightenment's outcome has never been any form of positive knowledge about the world. Neither about a fundamental senselessness of religious conflict nor anything else. The one epochal outcome, that is still a lively, successful, and central element of our society since that time, is the realization of continuous, progressive criticism (in its original meaning) of anything we accept as true.

So citing the Age of Enlightenment and at the same time insisting to be allowed to take a believe for a fact is contradictory.
I try to make it more transparent: One of the outcomes of The Age of Enlightenment was removing religion from the laws of a country. It effectively rendered the church (and for a big part religion itself) pointless. Here in this thread it appears to me, that this "enlightment" did not happen at all, but that christian religion (or the believe in God) was exchanged to matters of Audio, science. I wasn´t trying to say that one particular side is better than the other, I only wanted to say that we are not "enlightened" yet. Furthermore, I specifically called myself belonging to one of the two groups here in this thread. By doing so I wanted to make clear that I have not evolved either.

Critizism is wonderful, I appreciate that. But if it turns into the hateful war we can read here I despise it. I was trying to make clear that this discussion long ago turned away from being senseful critizism. Anyway, I was just giving an example. Maybe comparing Audio to christian religion wasn´t so clever at all. I could have started with Islam - but that would have been even worse on my part.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-29 23:40:03
Sorry for the tardy response. See http://www.stereophile.com/news/music_matters_in_may/ (http://www.stereophile.com/news/music_matters_in_may/).

As I said before, if there any HA subscribers who attend one [of] these evenings, I'd be happy to continue this conversation in "meat space." All I request is that you identify yourself by your HA screen name so I know with whom I am talking.


I don't know if any HA regulars are going to attend this event but I'm thinking about it.  If no HA regulars will be attending and there's any questions you want me to ask John or any of the other presenters, I'd be willing to pose them at the presentation and report his responses back.


If you make it, I'll answer your questions to the best of my ability. (No snickers from Mr. Krueger's "peanut gallery," please.)

Quote
I did understand the earlier argument about lack of dither in the lossy codec John used to produce his graphs showing high distortion.


I realize I didn't address an earlier question on this. As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition, or AAC in iTunes/Quicktime. All the spectral analyses were performed on the digital data using a PrismSound DScope, there was no conversion back to analog. If I remember correctly - my lab notes are in the office and I am at home - I played back all the files (other than the FLACs) using iTunes on a Mac TiBook to route the decoded PCM to the AES/EBU output of a Metric Halo MIO2882, which in turn fed the AES/EBU input of the DScope. If my memory is faulty, I will post a correction.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-29 23:58:43
As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition, or AAC in iTunes/Quicktime.


The Fraunhofer codec has long been surpassed in its quality*. Try this (http://lame.sourceforge.net/download.php) one if you want the state of the art. For AAC you should prefer encoding through Quicktime directly over encoding in iTunes, unless you want 256kbit/s ABR. Then you can use the new iTunes plus preset and still get the highest conversion quality as I have analyzed here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70405&view=findpost&p=621306). You need iTunes > 8.0 for the latter. The Nero AAC codec (http://www.nero.com/enu/technologies-aac-codec.html) has shown to be even more robust against ABXing and could deliver better quality in some cases.


*Quality in the sense of the inverse number of known positively ABXable "killer" samples.


_____________________

BTW, could anybody explain in short words what the "peanut gallery" idiom means in English?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 00:02:45
That phrase doesn't make much sense in the context of your paragraph, so I didn't pay much attention to it. But now the question is raised. So you still stay "on the side" of pseudoscience even when you don't believe it? How intellectually honest (and sorry to keep repeating that phrase, but it can't be said enough times) is that?

Also, you seem to be making another mistake that most people just coming to discussions about science vs. pseudoscience make. You're assuming right off the bat that those are two equivalent points of view. Do you think creationism and evolution must be treated as equal theories too?
I obviously chose the side which appeared to be the most calm. Is that intellectually dishonest? I merely exchanged an awful position (B & W thinking) to one that is less worse (calmness). Am I therefore a traitor to my own intellect?
If you think one side is any more right or wrong because of calmness, niceness or rudeness, then yes. If you're choosing people to invite to your next dinner party, then maybe you're right to choose the nice ones.

Quote
Here in this thread science vs. pseudoscience occupy two sides: left & right. I´m not assuming, I´m observing. As proof just read it again. You´ll find that there aren´t any shades of grey.

You're assuming based on mislead observations. The misleading seems to be done by your belief that niceness leads to being "right" somehow. Or at least right enough for you to take "their side".

I don't know exactly what you mean by "left & right". You can say up & down, 1 & 2... it's ambiguous, don't know what you're trying to get at. Are you trying to say that science and pseudoscience are two equivalent positions, intellectually and philosophically? That they both deserve the same time and attention from people seeking truth?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 00:07:32
pseudoscientific people tend to get VERY offended at the first criticism of their ideas and see it as personal attacks (religious people doubly so).


At the risk of it being assumed I am labeling myself as "pseudoscientific," it should be noted that I haven't responded angrily in this thread to criticisms of my writings and statements. What has annoyed me are the personal remarks made about my behavior, my income, my status, my education, my ethics, etc, none of which have anything to do with my opinions on audio.


I did say "tend". I haven't been following your posts, so I can't really say how pseudoscientific you are. What I have seen though, especially in Stereophile, is very wild claims. Green paints for CDs come to mind right off the top of my head.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 00:15:33
Cavaille, you do raise some good points, but not without some I must object to.

Personally, I prefer to be on the side of Mr. John Atkinson. So far he appeared to be a really nice and charming person. He stayed polite and calm when others already were heated up. If that is a character feat of subjectivists I certainly stay with them - if only for that particuar reason. Though I don´t think that this is true. Because I believe in reasonable people, arguing and discussing friendly.
Like I said before, I too am more or less impressed with how JA keeps his debates cool. That said - just because some people here are acting hotheaded doesn't mean they're not in the right. I've gravitated towards a (slightly) more moderate position on this whole thing because of the facts on the ground, and not because of the (im)politeness of various factions. I urge you to do the same. You seem to be getting close to ad hominem territory by dismissing peoples' comments on their emotional nature.

I don't think many complaints about JA (and Stereophile) as a whole are valid. But I still think many are. The goal here is to state one's claims assertively and without hyperbole.... which is surprisingly hard to do. Those of us reading must not be prejudiced by others's emotions and should judge their statements impartially.

Quote
Regarding Mr. Fremer he is obviously a not so calm person. In his posts he displays a lot of anger. In that matter he is not so different than most of you: he furiously defends his positons.
Believe it or not, I think that was his good face

Seriously, he defended his position a lot better than I was expecting. He at least convinced me to stop cracking jokes about him.

Quote
And as one person said before all of this comes down to belief. I´m not looking into a discussion, I´m looking into a religious war, each side missionaring the opposite side. Coming from Germany I truly believe in the Age of Enligtenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment) and its outcome. Following this thread my hopes in a better future are shattered! We apparantly substituted the bible for AUDIO. And I almost thought that this was over in western civilizations...
I urge you (and perhaps JA!) to study up on the lossless vs. redbook discussion (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70950&hl=) that I was involved in a few weeks ago. That goes into quite a lot of detail on why people like us are so upset over all of these discussions - and particularly, in my opinion, why some situations exist where DBTs are literally useless, but that reflects very poorly on those opposed to them.

Quote
Do I believe in DBT? Yes and No. If I would be forced to make a DBT with music I don´t know (e.g. Rock, Pop, Rap) I most certainly would fail. I couldn´t find a difference between 192 kBit/s & 320 kBit/s. But how could I? The reason is easy: the music and its sound is not known to me. I´m not even interested in it. How could I then find differences?
My experience says otherwise. For specifically chosen samples, I can get accustomed to them in a matter of minutes in the prelims to an ABX test. Some of my finer ABX moments have happened with music I was not all that accustomed to, and might only have listened to 4-5 times beforehand.

While it might certainly take skill to spot artifacts out of the blue - requiring, for instance, specific training or innate sensitivity to certain distortions - from what I have seen on this forum, everybody has a pretty decent shot at identifying a problem in an ABX test once one person has observed it.

Quote
When it comes to orchestral music I certainly would be able (and I´m able) to hear differnces. I did post some DBT here before,
Did you?

Sorry - I searched your post history regarding the 44.1/96 thread, and you claim doing a test, but you never actually posted the results AFAIK. Am I missing a link?

Quote
together with audio samples to show that differences existed between certain methods of upsampling 44.1 kHz material to 96 kHz. I wanted to prove that one can actually recreates 60-70% of the original 96 kHz sound and that it can be heard with a DBT. Guess what? I offered everything but no one bothered to do a DBT. I didn´t even expect this because it was a measurable & sonically observable test. It proves just one things: if something isn´t according to the agenda of objectionists you´ll simply ignore it. But since many of you advertise that music coded in a lossy codec is not different to the original wave-file it came from I hardly doubt now that there is any interest in testing anything higher than 44.1. I guess you would say that one can´t hear frequencies over 20 kHz anyway. Well there goes the whole shebang... so much for that.
Again, read up on my lossless vs. redbook thread above.

People will only sincerely engage in DBTs they believe they have any chance at succeeding at. Expectation bias is otherwise extremely high. There is already a preponderance of evidence that 44.1 is entirely acceptable - from mainstream psychoacoustics, a number of blind tests already conducted, etc. If you really could score a good result, I think that would spur a lot of people to try it... but I couldn't spot evidence that you could. If you look back in the HA archives you will see a few threads where many people have attempted this test in the past, and failed.

More generally, people do not spend time trying to solve problems they believe they already know the answer to. And there are a lot of those floating around here, and the objections are often incredibly weak and unconvincing.

"Objectivists" do not have an "agenda". But they/we do have a paradigm, in the Kuhnian sense, of how audio works. An extremely well justified paradigm, mind you. And 96k-vs-44.1k differences fall way, way outside that paradigm. Without truly compelling evidence, the most plausible explanation for such differences is that such perceptions have nothing to do with ultrasonics per se - they are a sign of a placebo effect, or a sign of massive intermodulation into the audible range, etc.

"Objectivists" are not dogmatic. Look back at the reconstruction filter (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=67619&st=0) debate - I think the discussion of the issue was incredibly strong, and the issues involved were not dismissed out of hand. One guy did get a 5/5 with a specially crafted (and perhaps pessimal) filter design. Is that knock-down evidence? No. More testing needs to be done. But it is very suggestive, and does appear to mean that the "accepted wisdom" that reconstruction filters are largely irrelevant might be on shakier grounds than we believed.

Quote
DBT are therefore flawed (WARNING: opinion) in my mind. With music I know I´m able to pass them, with music or musical styles not known to me I fail. For a true and working DBT you´ll need IMO experience. Most of the time you have to know what you are looking for.
Well, if you're wanting to draw some sort of universal conclusion from them, of course they're "flawed". But if you're doing them for yourself, they are never "flawed". The tests represent your hearing ability and environment at the moment you took the test, and you and others are free to interpret that in as universal or confined a meaning as they like.

Quote
Subjectivist Warning:[/b] Now for some really wonderful, mad and subjective claims. If this is a TOS violation so be it. What comes now isn´t even worse to things that have been stated here before. I do a lot of upsampling for my personal listening pleasure. When upsampling I keep aliasing "artifacts" on purpose. Most of you would call them artifacts while in fact they are "imaging" products (at least with iZotope RX Advanced). At the same time I don´t want to waste space so I tend to use lossy codecs. I´ve tried every codec there is. AAC, OGG, WMA-Prof and WavPack lossy are able to use 24/96 as input. You can read the results here at TheSoundtrackZone (http://www.thesoundtrackzone.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=918) (WARNING: highly subjective). I decided in favor of WavPack lossy - and I picked it by ear, only be ear. I guess this makes me a subjetivist - you can now start the usual bashing. As a sidenote you may want to read the other stuff at The Hifi Wonderland, I guess you´d find it pretty hilarious and entertaining.
Not really. Your own preferences are your own preferences. Some people like tube amps, some people like oversampling, some people like massive amounts of eq. One's opinions are to be respected. I use a headphone amp without a particularly good objective reason - that doesn't make me a subjectivist.

What is not to be respected are statements of fact, or superiority, based on false justifications. It's one thing to like tube amps, but it's an entirely different thing to justify that preference for specious reasons. I don't defend using my headphone amp, and you don't defend using upsampling. And that's the way it's supposed to be! I keep going back to that linked thread... I liken DBTs to a higher form of communication. Without them, one's subjective statements are intrinsically less meaningful, because of all the biases we observe in ourselves (and observe in others and in the sociological literature).

Quote
On the whole, I find this thread pretty pointless right now. We (including me) are people who discuss matters that won´t interest 99% of the world population. They are happy with their iTunes stuff, their MP3, their iPod. That´s the normal way of things. For us it is different: we are geeks, true nerds. I would go so far as to describe some of us as basement dwellers. We all need to get a life. For that I have my boyfriend... oh, did I mention that I´m gay? All this personal message writing about marriages somewhere in the states really is stupid. I feel strongly offended by that... well actually not so strongly. At least I can think of some of you as childish and by that keep my own arrogance.
I agree that very little of this debate impacts the audio buying decisions of most people. But it remains an extremely important debate when related to formats - particularly CD vs MP3, and CD vs vinyl/highres. It is also important in the context of midrange consumers like myself.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 00:16:07
That phrase doesn't make much sense in the context of your paragraph, so I didn't pay much attention to it. But now the question is raised. So you still stay "on the side" of pseudoscience even when you don't believe it? How intellectually honest (and sorry to keep repeating that phrase, but it can't be said enough times) is that?

Also, you seem to be making another mistake that most people just coming to discussions about science vs. pseudoscience make. You're assuming right off the bat that those are two equivalent points of view. Do you think creationism and evolution must be treated as equal theories too?
I obviously chose the side which appeared to be the most calm. Is that intellectually dishonest? I merely exchanged an awful position (B & W thinking) to one that is less worse (calmness). Am I therefore a traitor to my own intellect?
If you think one side is any more right or wrong because calmness, niceness or rudeness, then yes.
*sigh* I give up on you.

Here in this thread science vs. pseudoscience occupy two sides: left & right. I´m not assuming, I´m observing. As proof just read it again. You´ll find that there aren´t any shades of grey.

You're assuming based on mislead observations. The misleading seems to be done by your belief that niceness leads to being "right" somehow. Or at least right enough for you to take "their side".

I don't know exactly what you mean by "left & right". You can say up & down, 1 & 2... it's ambiguous, don't know what you're trying to get at. Are you trying to say that science and pseudoscience are two equivalent positions, intellectually and philosophically? That they both deserve the same time and attention from people seeking truth?
Left: Side 1 - Right: Side 2. And if one wants to know everything and would like to judge unbiased, yes, then he/she must consider all possibilites out there. Even the most hilarious ones. I always was for knowing every opinion and every side - in a calm way (no pun intended).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 00:18:05
I realize I didn't address an earlier question on this. As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition, or AAC in iTunes/Quicktime. All the spectral analyses were performed on the digital data using a PrismSound DScope, there was no conversion back to analog. If I remember correctly - my lab notes are in the office and I am at home - I played back all the files (other than the FLACs) using iTunes on a Mac TiBook to route the decoded PCM to the AES/EBU output of a Metric Halo MIO2882, which in turn fed the AES/EBU input of the DScope. If my memory is faulty, I will post a correction.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
John, if you can wait a bit, I'd like to run off a really quick proof-of-concept WAV/MP3 plus plot demonstrating that such an issue is not intrinsic to the MP3 format and is likely due to quantization noise.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-30 00:26:30
As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition, or AAC in iTunes/Quicktime.


The Fraunhofer codec has long been surpassed in its quality*. Try this (http://lame.sourceforge.net/download.php) one if you want the state of the art. For AAC you should prefer encoding through Quicktime directly over encoding in iTunes, unless you want 256kbit/s ABR. Then you can use the new iTunes plus preset and still get the highest conversion quality as I have analyzed here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=70405&view=findpost&p=621306). You need iTunes > 8.0 for the latter. The Nero AAC codec (http://www.nero.com/enu/technologies-aac-codec.html) has shown to be even more robust against ABXing and could deliver better quality in some cases.

*Quality in the sense of the inverse number of known positively ABXable "killer" samples.


Thanks for the info. When I have a moment, I'll repeat some of the work using more modern codecs.  Remember I did all this work 18 months ago. But I must make the point that I was not so much interested in cherry picking the very best codecs but wanted to use _typical_ codecs.

Quote
BTW, could anybody explain in short words what the "peanut gallery" idiom means in English?


In French "le clacque." Not particularly complimentary, hence my trying to make it clear that I was echoing Arny Krueger's usage.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Bjorn on 2009-04-30 00:28:46
@rpp3po  thanks for the links lol.

All I saw was a single member, in the audiophile corner of the debate.
I did notice you & some others trading some personal arrows with him, still not convinvced of him being an audiophile/phool etc.

since you did call him a "collective assimilation attempt"  , I have to ask you,
a single HA member playing for the audiophile team, a tester in a lossy format development project,
with positive ABX results & he is now banned ?
That little missing bit of info, smells funny bro.


If this is *all* you think that's going on in this thread, maybe you aren't reading enough of it....or maybe you shouldn't read it at all. 
May I direct you to the Stereophile forum?

Now why would you travel that personal road with me ?
No, you may not.
What do you mean by that ?
Is the Stereophile forum somewhere you send .. erm, who exactly ?

Correct me if I am wrong, I just had a look in the Stereophile forum,
& noticed you, sir, are a member in the Stereophile forum (http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showprofile.php?Cat=0&User=339&page=12&what=showmembers),
So I can reply to you here instead, if that's OK.

All I was saying was people like you have a long history & a lot against just about everything/one, & it carries, for lack of a better term, making it quite hard to gather the audio related bits, nothing personal.

No worries though, I will refrain from expressing anything of the sort in the future.
I did notice that you had your fight with this now banned B0RK guy,
& have zero interest in making the same mistake, so please do not offer me any more personal direction, I can clearly see where you are going with this.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 00:32:03
That phrase doesn't make much sense in the context of your paragraph, so I didn't pay much attention to it. But now the question is raised. So you still stay "on the side" of pseudoscience even when you don't believe it? How intellectually honest (and sorry to keep repeating that phrase, but it can't be said enough times) is that?

Also, you seem to be making another mistake that most people just coming to discussions about science vs. pseudoscience make. You're assuming right off the bat that those are two equivalent points of view. Do you think creationism and evolution must be treated as equal theories too?
I obviously chose the side which appeared to be the most calm. Is that intellectually dishonest? I merely exchanged an awful position (B & W thinking) to one that is less worse (calmness). Am I therefore a traitor to my own intellect?
If you think one side is any more right or wrong because calmness, niceness or rudeness, then yes.
*sigh* I give up on you.Sorry,
I edited in one more sentence there that might make it clearer. But... you're giving up on me? Thank you for your thoughtful arguments by the way. You haven't really made your point across though have you? How am I being black & white exactly? What are your arguments for treating pseudoscience with as much respect as to science? Cause I don't see any, just blank statements.

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Here in this thread science vs. pseudoscience occupy two sides: left & right. I´m not assuming, I´m observing. As proof just read it again. You´ll find that there aren´t any shades of grey.

You're assuming based on mislead observations. The misleading seems to be done by your belief that niceness leads to being "right" somehow. Or at least right enough for you to take "their side".

I don't know exactly what you mean by "left & right". You can say up & down, 1 & 2... it's ambiguous, don't know what you're trying to get at. Are you trying to say that science and pseudoscience are two equivalent positions, intellectually and philosophically? That they both deserve the same time and attention from people seeking truth?
Left: Side 1 - Right: Side 2. And if one wants to know everything and would like to judge unbiased, yes, then he/she must consider all possibilites out there. Even the most hilarious ones. I always was for knowing every opinion and every side - in a calm way (no pun intended).

So that just means that you don't understand why scientific claims are more valid than pseudoscientific claims. You don't seem to get the meaning of evidence and falsifiability. Even in the realm of wild claims, some have more validity than others because of the virtue of being (1) clear and (2) falsifiable. Pseudoscientific claims fail in both cases. If we had infinite time, sure, why not "look into" invisible dragons in our garages. Until then, I'll stick with reasonable endeavors.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 00:32:19
Heh. This is more interesting than I thought.

I will say, for now, that John may be at least one-quarter right in his analysis.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-30 00:37:56
John, if you can wait a bit, I'd like to run off a really quick proof-of-concept WAV/MP3 plus plot demonstrating that such an issue is not intrinsic to the MP3 format and is likely due to quantization noise.


I'd be interested in your findings. Certainly, every lossy-compressed file has to be converted to PCM in order to be presented to the DAC, thus I felt FFT analysis of the equivalent PCM files was a legitimate analysis technique.

Regarding FFTs, I have checked what notes I have here. I used a 32k FFT with the DScope using the 7-term PrismSound window, which has very low leakage between bins. I also repeated all the work using Adobe Audition's 32k FFT and a Blackman-Harris window, but the results were not significantly different. It is probable that those data were used to generate the plots with SigmaPlot (which is what I use to create many of the graphs published in the magazine).

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-30 00:51:34
When you analyze Bjorn's recent use of language, overall style, and formatting there is at least some reason to believe that he might be B0RK. The only difference has been a generally more polite appearance (he has made bad experiences with the opposite) and the lack (almost) of weird punctuation. The date he joined HA (and B0RK left) and both names' geographical origin would also be a match.

But this may solely exist in my head. Just an idea...

since you did call him a "collective assimilation attempt"  , I have to ask you,
...


That referred to the television series Star Trek and its BORG character/collective, that always threatened to 'assimilate' everything. A link to a short clip had been provided earlier.

But I must make the point that I was not so much interested in cherry picking the very best codecs but wanted to use _typical_ codecs.


For iTunes and AAC you are right. But LAME should have several times the market share of the old Fraunhofer (if not 10x). Adobe Audition is no mainstream encoding application.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 00:52:31
John, if you can wait a bit, I'd like to run off a really quick proof-of-concept WAV/MP3 plus plot demonstrating that such an issue is not intrinsic to the MP3 format and is likely due to quantization noise.


I'd be interested in your findings. Certainly, every lossy-compressed file has to be converted to PCM in order to be presented to the DAC, thus I felt FFT analysis of the equivalent PCM files was a legitimate analysis technique.

Regarding FFTs, I have checked what notes I have here. I used a 32k FFT with the DScope using the 7-term PrismSound window, which has very low leakage between bins. I also repeated all the work using Adobe Audition's 32k FFT and a Blackman-Harris window, but the results were not significantly different. It is probable that those data were used to generate the plots with SigmaPlot (which is what I use to create many of the graphs published in the magazine).
Thanks for the details on the FFTs. My spectrum plots (to hopefully follow soon) use a program I rolled in LabVIEW; it's configured right now to average power spectra with a 75% overlap, 4 second window length, 7th order Blackman-Harris window. I'll let ya know if I tweak any of those parameters when I post results. Samples will be 2-channel and spectrum plots will show L+R response.

Regarding your test setup... as I believe Stereophile alluded to a few years ago, using a complete playback stack, rather than doing the analysis on the pure MP3 file decoded to WAV/AIFF, opens you up to the vagaries of whatever format the digital data is passed around as. How sure are you that iTunes was decoding to 24 or 32 bits? How sure are you that the Halo was outputting the full 16 bits? It seems unfortunate to me that an article focused solely on intrinsic faults with lossy encoding would choose to use a test framework that did not isolate itself to focus solely on the lossy format in question.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-30 01:10:00
BTW, could anybody explain in short words what the "peanut gallery" idiom means in English?


American English Idiom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_gallery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_gallery)

"A peanut gallery is an audience that heckles the performer. The term originated in the days of vaudeville as a nickname for the cheapest (and ostensibly rowdiest) seats in the theater; the cheapest snack served at the theater would often be peanuts, which the patrons would sometimes throw at the performers on stage to show their disapproval. The phrases "no comments from the peanut gallery" or "quiet in the peanut gallery" are extensions of the name.

"In the late 1940s the Howdy Doody show adopted the name to represent their audience of 40 kids.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 01:14:03
Like I said before, I too am more or less impressed with how JA keeps his debates cool. That said - just because some people here are acting hotheaded doesn't mean they're not in the right. I've gravitated towards a (slightly) more moderate position on this whole thing because of the facts on the ground, and not because of the (im)politeness of various factions. I urge you to do the same. You seem to be getting close to ad hominem territory by dismissing peoples' comments on their emotional nature.

I don't think many complaints about JA (and Stereophile) as a whole are valid. But I still think many are. The goal here is to state one's claims assertively and without hyperbole.... which is surprisingly hard to do. Those of us reading must not be prejudiced by others's emotions and should judge their statements impartially.
You´re right. I guess it lies within my character. Also, my mother uses to tell: "Persons who are screaming are always wrong" - and I tend to believe her. 

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I urge you (and perhaps JA!) to study up on the lossless vs. redbook discussion (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70950&hl=) that I was involved in a few weeks ago. That goes into quite a lot of detail on why people like us are so upset over all of these discussions - and particularly, in my opinion, why some situations exist where DBTs are literally useless, but that reflects very poorly on those opposed to them.
I didn´t read that, sorry. But I will.

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My experience says otherwise. For specifically chosen samples, I can get accustomed to them in a matter of minutes in the prelims to an ABX test. Some of my finer ABX moments have happened with music I was not all that accustomed to, and might only have listened to 4-5 times beforehand.
Lucky you. I tried and I couldn´t. Everytime I meant to have heard something with, let´s say, "Hard Candy" from Madonna the ABX proved otherwise. I did my whole process of upsampling, erasing distortions etc. anyway - just to be sure. Then again, with let´s say "Franck: the complete Masterworks for Organ" by Michael Murray it was very easy.

Quote
Sorry - I searched your post history regarding the 44.1/96 thread, and you claim doing a test, but you never actually posted the results AFAIK. Am I missing a link?
You did not. I didn´t post my own test because I could very easily have been manipulating it. Which of course shows what I maybe thinking about others here - assuming that people are manipulating in order to meet their agenda. I myself wouldn´t have manipulated - but I wanted to forgo any possibilty of that kind of discussion. This presents myself in an unflattering light but I´m willingly accepting this.

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"Objectivists" are not dogmatic. Look back at the reconstruction filter (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=67619&st=0) debate - I think the discussion of the issue was incredibly strong, and the issues involved were not dismissed out of hand. One guy did get a 5/5 with a specially crafted (and perhaps pessimal) filter design. Is that knock-down evidence? No. More testing needs to be done. But it is very suggestive, and does appear to mean that the "accepted wisdom" that reconstruction filters are largely irrelevant might be on shakier grounds than we believed.
Man, I would love to believe you. But in this particular thread I´m afraid I can´t find anything related. On the other hand, my own statement that I can influence the upsampling characteristics in order for them to "sound" better basically is the same since upsamplers are using a similar reconstruction filter. I basically claimed that I found the one that closely resembles an original 24/96 source.

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Not really. Your own preferences are your own preferences. Some people like tube amps, some people like oversampling, some people like massive amounts of eq. One's opinions are to be respected. I use a headphone amp without a particularly good objective reason - that doesn't make me a subjectivist.

What is not to be respected are statements of fact, or superiority, based on false justifications. It's one thing to like tube amps, but it's an entirely different thing to justify that preference for specious reasons. I don't defend using my headphone amp, and you don't defend using upsampling. And that's the way it's supposed to be! I keep going back to that linked thread... I liken DBTs to a higher form of communication. Without them, one's subjective statements are intrinsically less meaningful, because of all the biases we observe in ourselves (and observe in others and in the sociological literature).
Oh, you´re so right. On the other hand I do believe that the techniques I´m using for regular use on my little home system are vastly superior to the ones normally used (which are, as you said "generally accepted"). They are not even remotely lossless (upsampling, reducing effects of Loudness-War and so on). Sometimes I even do think of most of the people out there (and forgive me, also here) as a bunch of dumb sheep following some advice written long time ago. When it comes to Audio I never took anything for granted, even if it grounds itself in scientific measurments. History has shown that measurments are only the beginning and over the years the methods of measurements have evolved. And they will further do. I firmly believe that some things can´t be measured yet. Take the ear for example. It is not the complex machine most believe it to be, because behind the ear comes the brain which in fact does the major work. Our ear does hear nearly everything (it filters something out though). But our brain decides what is useful and what not. The scientific research in that area is relatively young, so who can know what will come in the future? Is MP3 really transparent to us? I don´t mean by that that MP3 isn´t transparent, I´m just pointing out a possibility. The Hypersonic Effect is just another example, maybe it´ll be proven wrong in the future, maybe it´ll be proven right. Who knows? It would be unwise to assume that everything is written in stone.

All of this writing just to make clear that one should never take anything for granted - because that would avoid exploring new things. The same goes of course for Audiophiles who sometimes don´t believe in measurements. I believe in a healthy co-existence. By the way, I own a headphone amplifier too... beside the sound chosen for practical reasons because my Sennheiser HD-600 is very affected by the impedance of the Amp (the headphone itself has 300 Ohm). But you´re right, normally I restrain myself - because just uttering things like "This is better - and it is the only point of view I´ll accept" is just pointless, proves nothing and it is boring. But so many people here have done otherwise - which shines a not so bright light on the whole community.

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I agree that very little of this debate impacts the audio buying decisions of most people. But it remains an extremely important debate when related to formats - particularly CD vs MP3, and CD vs vinyl/highres. It is also important in the context of midrange consumers like myself.
If any of these people are happy with what they own that is fine with me. I´m happy too with my system. But if I come across something new to test (as hilarious it may be) and it actually proves to be good (for me) I´ll continue to use it. Then take my boyfriend. He got a PhD in science (physics & mathematics). He´s not interested in this kind of discussion. If I can interest him in it, he cares for the mathematical correctness. But when it comes to the music itself he isn´t scientific anymore (I jokingly say quite often that his PhD has to be removed because of his un-scientific approach to music) He refers to my headphone amp as my "new toy". He talks lovingly about my "electronic elves". He is not the type that comes running from the kitchen exclaiming: "My my, what have you done? Did you remove the carpets from the loudspeakers?" I can´t get him excited to CDs. He still loves his vinyl collection and his turntable, despite its major flaws and inconvenience. He says: "It´s so nice, warm and cozy." But then he listens to music completely different to mine. And I´m accepting that his music sounds nice over vinyl - whereas it sounds not so nice over my digital system. Some things are maybe in need to be flavoured in order to be appreciated. I can´t stand pops & clicks or digital distortions. He doesn´t mind them, he just doesn´t hear them. I want to make clear that he is not one bit interested in the quality. I did an easy comparisation for him just a few days ago. I played the Main Title from the movie "Batman" (1989), one time from the original Soundtrack, the other time from the re-recording Erich Kunzel did for the album "Fantastic Journey". He couldn´t hear any difference - while I could. I could also see them (the original soundtrack has no frequencies whatsoever below 80 Hz and has a huge & wide peak at 5000 Hz for 5 dB.) However I was not able to convice him that the TELARC recording is superior (which by any means it is). Reason: he just was not interested. And so are most people.

This brings me to starting point of this thread here: both sides (objectivist vs. subjectivist, which he and I are not actually) are there to challenge each other. I believe that this in combination with convenience and marketing brings true progress. We need both sides in order to evolve sonically. If the audiophiles find something new, let´s measure it. If we can´t measure it, maybe we can in a few years. If we can´t even then, well then they were wrong. We, being the geeks and nerds we are, are responsible for bringing new & improved methods of experiencing music to the people. And I believe that we owe it to them to do that calm, friendly and reasonable.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-30 01:17:28
Regarding your test setup... as I believe Stereophile alluded to a few years ago, using a complete playback stack, rather than doing the analysis on the pure MP3 file decoded to WAV/AIFF, opens you up to the vagaries of whatever format the digital data is passed around as. How sure are you that iTunes was decoding to 24 or 32 bits? How sure are you that the Halo was outputting the full 16 bits?


I did do prior tests to ensure the bit transparency of the chain at all word lengths. (It's one thing I am paranoid about.)
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-30 01:30:06
Certainly, every lossy-compressed file has to be converted to PCM in order to be presented to the DAC, thus I felt FFT analysis of the equivalent PCM files was a legitimate analysis technique.


The problem with analyzing once-lossy-compressed files is not the conversion to PCM, but rather the problems with the simplistic kind of analysis that one can do by viewing a FFT.

Modern perceptual coders generally have relatively good performance with respect to traditional measures such as frequency response. That was not always so, but it is generally true today. Artifacts that are obvious in FFT analysis such as the usual brick wall filtering at or just above 16 KHz are not nearly as audible as things that don't generally show up very easily in FFTs.

Here is a page of relatively obvioius audible artefacts related to substandard MP3 coding:

http://ff123.net/training/training.html (http://ff123.net/training/training.html)

After you hear these auidible artifacts, your challenge is to determine how you would use a FFT to expose them.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 01:56:42
I edited in one more sentence there that might make it clearer. But... you're giving up on me? Thank you for your thoughtful arguments by the way. You haven't really made your point across though have you? How am I being black & white exactly? What are your arguments for treating pseudoscience with as much respect as to science? Cause I don't see any, just blank statements.
You´re welcome. I was under the impression that I´ve made this particular point transparently clear. Or what would you want me to do? My basic argument for treating "Audiophiles" (you call it pseudoscience) the same as "objectivinists" (you call it science) is that one side needs the other one in order to evolve. I explained it in the post above. Also you imply that objectivists are scientists - which they obviously are not. Or does everyone of us here work in a laboratory or actually do scientific research with Audio at let´s say, a University? Maybe some of us - but I guess they are less than 25 %.

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You're assuming based on mislead observations. The misleading seems to be done by your belief that niceness leads to being "right" somehow. Or at least right enough for you to take "their side".
I tend to believe more in nice people, true. But I didn´t say that they are right and I don´t believe it either. I thought I made it clear that my personal choice only applies to this thread here - and only for the sake of talking reasonably to each other (which was by the way explained later in my post) if my memory serves me right.

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So that just means that you don't understand why scientific claims are more valid than pseudoscientific claims. You don't seem to get the meaning of evidence and falsifiability. Even in the realm of wild claims, some have more validity than others because of the virtue of being (1) clear and (2) falsifiable. Pseudoscientific claims fail in both cases. If we had infinite time, sure, why not "look into" invisible dragons in our garages. Until then, I'll stick with reasonable endeavors.
I don´t seem to recall doing some "wild claims". Please be so kind to provide an example. And if you choose to stick with reasonable endeavors, that is of course fine with me. But you also have to respect that I´ll stick with my "pseudoscientific" opinion, as you call it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 02:14:06
So, after my careful prosthesis.... we're wrong. Figure 2 in the MP3 article is correctly set up. There's no quantization noise in that plot.

Setup: I made a 1764hz sine wave in Audacity at a sampling rate of 44100hz - the frequency was chosen so that it was an integer factor of 44100, to avoid potential spurious harmonics in analysis. Amplitude is 0.1. The MP3 encoder is LAME 3.98b2 --vbr-new -V2, used from foobar2000. MP3 decoding was done in foobar2000. Both original file and foobar2000 decoded MP3 are in 32-bit WAV format. Quantization noise tests are done from Audacity with dither disabled and exporting to 16-bit WAV; I got the same results with fb2k.

These are power spectrum plots. I boosted them by 23db (20db for the 0.1 amplitude peak, 3db for the peak->RMS), so that the 1764hz spectrum peak is at 0db. The window length wound up being 1 second, with 75% overlap. 7th order Blackman-Harris window.

Here's a 1764hz sine wave spectrum plot, from a 32-bit WAV, amplitude 0.1 - the plot is boosted by 23db to make the peak equal to 0db. There are harmonic peaks but they are -160db down so they wouldn't even show up in John's plots. Noise floor is at the limits of double precision (-340db).
(http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/spectrum-orig.png)



And this is the MP3. Lookie lookie, the non-fundamental peaks are bigger. Those, and the 1764hz sidebands, are more or less at the same levels that John plotted.
(http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/spectrum-mp3.png)



This is the original WAV converted to 16 bits without dither. Note that the non-fundamental peaks are substantially larger than for the MP3, and their spacing is largely different.
(http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/spectrum-nodither.png)


Finally, MP3 decoded to 16 bits without dither. I don't know what's going on here - some MP3 wizard is going to have to explain to me why I don't see any nonfundamental peaks AT ALL; even though I know I disabled dithering, it still looks like it is being applied. Maybe LAME does this internally?
(http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/spectrum-mp3-nodither.png)


The only conclusion I can reach is that John's numerical analysis is more or less correctly done. At least, whatever we're getting on the MP3 spectra, it's not because the output stages are not dithered.

Note, of course, that I said "we're wrong" without saying "John's right". I believe that point #2 of my summarized objections - that the whole notion of frequency analysis for the evaluation of lossy encoders is fundamentally flawed for the purposes of observed sound quality analysis, rather than its intrinsic qualities - still stands AFAIK.

I ran into a lot of other fun oddities related to the format - Audacity does not handle gapless properly, so some trimming is required to avoid spurious spectra if using that to decode; there is a rather shocking discontinuous amplitude jump when encoding a 1khz sine at -V7; etc. I do not believe those are pertinent because they do not explain what John plotted and whose effect are not really in question. Their audibility is an entirely different discussion.

Links to media files:

http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/sine-1764.flac (http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/sine-1764.flac)
http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-m...e-1764-mp3.flac (http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/sine-1764-mp3.flac)
  http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-m...4-nodither.flac (http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/sine-1764-nodither.flac)
  http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-m...3-nodither.flac (http://files.audiamorous.net/stereophile-mp3/sine-1764-mp3-nodither.flac)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 02:42:20
You imply a black & white thinking. Well, Reality doesn´t work that way because it truly is "shades of grey" though people love to embrace their prejudices.



All scientific claims are provisional.  That means they always only 'asymptotically' approach 'absolute' truth.  But that doesn't mean that it makes sense to think it's just as likely that there really ARE unicorns, as not.

Actually, some pairs of things really don't sound different.  And some pairs of things really do sound different.  Is that too 'black and white' for you?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 03:01:02
All scientific claims are provisional.  That means they always 'asymptotically' approach 'absolute' truth.  But that doesn't mean that it makes sense to think it's just as likely that there really ARE unicorns, as not.

Actually, some pairs of things really don't sound different.  And some pairs of things really do sound different.  Is that too 'black and white' for you?
I know that science aims at the absolute truth - in explaining nature and to gain knowledge about it. The more we know, the better. But I also know that this absolute truth can change (because of the gained knowledge). And Unicorns are a fine example because some 500 years ago people believed in them and they were a "fact" in daily lives. For example the royal throne of Denmark is (as it is claimed) made out of "Unicorn Horns". Now we know that Unicorns do not exist which renders that throne ridiculous.

And no, it is not too "black and white" for me. But then, even with things that appear to be on two opposite sides, there are always reasons for them existing that way. These reasons are part of "shades of grey".  As I´ve written before, nothing is written in stone (now the "shades": Where did I get this? Apparently from the Bible. Because the 10 Commandments were written in stone and according to christian belief they haven´t changed over the years. They maybe are an exception because since some 200 years they have been superseeded by official law (which definitely is not written in stone since it constantly evolves). But this is another off-topic discussion).

I wanted to make clear that most things are in constant flux, even if it is not perceived that way right now.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 03:04:41
One's opinions are to be respected. I use a headphone amp without a particularly good objective reason - that doesn't make me a subjectivist.

What is not to be respected are statements of fact, or superiority, based on false justifications. It's one thing to like tube amps, but it's an entirely different thing to justify that preference for specious reasons. I don't defend using my headphone amp, and you don't defend using upsampling. And that's the way it's supposed to be! I keep going back to that linked thread... I liken DBTs to a higher form of communication. Without them, one's subjective statements are intrinsically less meaningful, because of all the biases we observe in ourselves (and observe in others and in the sociological literature).


One's opinions do not deserve respect by the mere fact of their existence or the sincerity with which they are held. 

*Your* opinion on headphone amps is to be respected because it is not overreaching. It recognizes its limitations in fact.  You are AWARE that you have no particular sonic reason to use a headphone amp and you ADMIT that.  Wholly admirable.  I can't imagine you writing a Stereophile review extolling its particular sonic virtues over another, as if they were demonstrable facts merely because you 'hear' them.

Undue deference to the fallacious idea that 'everyone's opinions are equally valid and worthy of respect' is a very American trope, IME.  Yet opinions can range from generous, deeply informed and well-thought out, to very misinformed and dismally stupid, or even hateful and evil.

Dichotomy between opinion and fact doesn't hold firm either, and one can't always hide behind 'it's just an opinion' -- how many opinions are actually wholly free-floating from *belief* that something is *true* (factual)?  Preference for green over red?
People have killed over  less.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 03:27:58
I know that science aims at the absolute truth.


One could say it 'aims' for it, but science is aware that it never 'reaches' it.  All scientific facts come with the proviso ...'until better evidence shows otherwise'.

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But I also know that this absolute truth can change. And Unicorns are a fine example because some 500 years ago people believed in them and they were a "fact" in daily lives. For example the royal throne of Denmark is (as it is claimed) made out of "Unicorn Horns". Now we know that Unicorns do not exist which renders that throne ridiculous.


Unicorns were never an 'absolute truth' -- and science doesn't converse in terms of 'absolute truth' today, it builds models based on available evidence and rational inference.  And you're missing my point.  Which is that accepting that 'absolute truth' is a fantasy does not mean every model is equally likely to be correct.  Some models really do have much more evidence for them than others. Some models are 'falsifiable', some aren't.

The evidence that some things 'really' don't sound different is really quite substantial.  As is evidence for some things 'really' do.  If the model needs adjusting it's up to someone to provide the new good evidence.  JA and the 'high end' are modestly industrious  about proposing theories why DBT doesn't work right for audio, or why CD players do sound different, or why Peter Belt's insanities *might* have something to them, but what  they don't offer is *good evidence*.  Instead we get stuff like presenting the difference file of an mp3vs source  to an audience primed to hear a demo comparing 'high resolution' (really neutral name, eh?) audio to CD and mp3. 


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I wanted to make clear that most things are in constant flux, even if it is not perceived that way right now.


    And some things really do seem to be remarkably stable.  If you think about it, *unless* the 'laws of physics' actually change over time, then science *must* accumulate models of the universe that are more and more accurate. The 'flux' is turbulence around the asymptotic line approaching truth.

I can sum all this up in one admonition really; keep an open mind, but not SO open that your brains fall out.







Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 03:37:50
And if one wants to know everything and would like to judge unbiased, yes, then he/she must consider all possibilites out there. Even the most hilarious ones. I always was for knowing every opinion and every side - in a calm way (no pun intended).


No, you don't *need* to consider *all* possibilities about every claim, any more than a scientist needs to re-perform every historical experiment to perform one today.  You only *need* to consider more outre possibilities if the new data aren't fitting the model, and even then it's absurd to think you have have consider ALL possibilities as being on an equal footing.  It is not really unreasonably *bias* that leads one to dismiss the likelihood that the sun will fly away tomorrow.

In case it's not clear, the sort of gooey New Agey epistemological arguments you're bandying about irritate me.  It is not necessarily 'unbiased' or admirable to consider all possibilities or all sides of an argument; it can be simply a stupid and unjustified waste of time.




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Tahnru on 2009-04-30 03:50:35
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You did not. I didn´t post my own test because I could very easily have been manipulating it. Which of course shows what I maybe thinking about others here - assuming that people are manipulating in order to meet their agenda. I myself wouldn´t have manipulated - but I wanted to forgo any possibilty of that kind of discussion. This presents myself in an unflattering light but I´m willingly accepting this.


Such manipulations are why the test is documented to an extent that allows re-performance.  In other words, peer review.  Science as it applies the world over should be no different here - fusion, medicine, physics, all are subject to peer review and re-performance.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-30 04:05:39
Usually you post positive ABX results along with an exact identification of an artifact's location and a description of its character.

The fact that you believe most positive ABX result at HA must be fake rather indicates that you were baffled how hard it is to produce one.

In fact, I don't share that opinion. After some years of ABX testing you get a gut feeling what kind of artifact a certain sound like a hi-hat may at all produce, even if your ears are too bad to reproduce it yourself. And sometimes there may have been some camp followers faking, but I'm sure not many. You don't actually win a bottle of wine and a box of chocolats at HA, when you pass an ABX test, you know? 

Personally I could reproduce most positive samples that have been posted here over time. Many samples, that fail lossy encoding for some people, fail them for many. The distribution seems to be quite bipolar. Some, the so called "killer" samples, are ABXable for many, a huge part isn't ABXable for anybody, and only fery few are ABXable by only a few.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 04:20:21
pseudoscientific people tend to get VERY offended at the first criticism of their ideas and see it as personal attacks (religious people doubly so).


At the risk of it being assumed I am labeling myself as "pseudoscientific," it should be noted that I haven't responded angrily in this thread to criticisms of my writings and statements. What has annoyed me are the personal remarks made about my behavior, my income, my status, my education, my ethics, etc, none of which have anything to do with my opinions on audio.



Writing and statements (and editing an audiophile magazine) are behavior too.

Regarding ethics, it's been a little bit amusing that the tsk-tsk contingent here hasn't come down on the intermittent dribble of posts which implicitly accuse you and your colleagues of selling out your intellectual principles so as not to offend your advertisers.  I don't mean *my* posts, where I more or less frontally accused you of either shamelessly softpedalling, ignoring, or being plain ignorant of the facts about mp3 before you presume to 'behave' about them in your attempts to educate your readers and listeners. 

I mean the ones from posters that seem to be almost sympathetic, or at worst *resigned* or *rueful* or *patronizing*, saying in effect, hey, look, what do you expect from the guy?  He's got ad space to sell!  He can't go telling his readers that CD players aren't generally likely to sound different if they compare them fairly, or that they could easily make mp3s that they likely couldn't tell from an SACD without specific training.




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I have been lurking on Hydrogen Audio for a while as a "guest", so I had certainly expected criticisms of my writings on this forum - how could I not? But I have tried hard to address the argument, not the arguer, in this thread, respecting ToS #2. But what I had not expected was the puerile nastiness of some of the posters. And now you're blaming _me_ for the lowering of tone, "andy o"?



Whereas I marvel over the awesome power of *reasonable tone* over reason, even here on HA. 

I have to wonder how many here actually read Stereophile.  Not that it's a hotbed of rancor, far from it -- well, at least outside of MF's column now and then, and the letters section occasionally --  but thare's that the constant, unquestioning, irritating  undercurrent of *utter conviction* that of COURSE what you hear is real....of COURSE mp3s aren't suitable for a real audiophile's aural palate...OF COURSE double blind tests are a sham that tell us nothing really useful....OF COURSE hi-rez sounds better than CD....OF COURSE analog sounds better than digital....OF COURSE science can't really explain what we hear, dear reader, don't worry your head about any of that.  The 'objectivists' are pedants who run bogus tests and probably can't appreciate good gear, and did we mention that their tests are crap?

As someone in the scientific world, it's always a bit creeps-inducing , to me at least, to contemplate communities of people like,say, Michael J. Frog on your magazine's online forum, endlessly reinforcing each other's dubious convictions about the Emperor's clothes.  Perhaps its bias that makes me think the typical HA denizen would find your magazine every bit as bizarrely divorced from reality,  immune to evidence and doubt if it conflicts with subjective impression, and even aggressively anti- or pseudo-scientific, as some seem to have expected you to be here.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 04:32:56
If this is *all* you think that's going on in this thread, maybe you aren't reading enough of it....or maybe you shouldn't read it at all. 
May I direct you to the Stereophile forum?

Now why would you travel that personal road with me ?
No, you may not.
What do you mean by that ?
Is the Stereophile forum somewhere you send .. erm, who exactly ?

Correct me if I am wrong, I just had a look in the Stereophile forum,
& noticed you, sir, are a member in the Stereophile forum (http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showprofile.php?Cat=0&User=339&page=12&what=showmembers),
So I can reply to you here instead, if that's OK.

All I was saying was people like you have a long history & a lot against just about everything/one, & it carries, for lack of a better term, making it quite hard to gather the audio related bits, nothing personal.



Dearest BORK,

If I am a scientifically-minded, easily outraged audio hobbyist of middling years, and think the high-end is a persistent purveyor of misinformation and outright nonsense, why *wouldn't* I have a 'long history' of being vocal about it?

I directed you to the Stereophile forum  because you didn't seem interested enough in what we are talking about here, to actually savor the interesting bits.  Having conducted a perhaps more thorough perusal of Stereophile forum than you have this one, it seems a more natural fit for 'people like you', to people like me.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 07:58:46
One's opinions do not deserve respect by the mere fact of their existence or the sincerity with which they are held. 

Undue deference to the fallacious idea that 'everyone's opinions are equally valid and worthy of respect' is a very American trope, IME.  Yet opinions can range from generous, deeply informed and well-thought out, to very misinformed and dismally stupid, or even hateful and evil.

Dichotomy between opinion and fact doesn't hold firm either, and one can't always hide behind 'it's just an opinion' -- how many opinions are actually wholly free-floating from *belief* that something is *true* (factual)?  Preference for green over red?
People have killed over  less.
So, I think I'm using the term "opinion" in a subtly different context than you - dunno if my meaning is correct or not.

Opinions exist outside truth. They are neither right nor wrong. "I like FLAC" is an opinion (I guess if I actually disliked FLAC it would be false, but....). "I like FLAC because it sounds better than WAV" is an opinion, backed up by a statement of fact. The opinion is fine, but the justification is questionable. "I believe that xxx" is an opinion about a statement of fact.

Preferences, in general, are opinions, and I don't think much has come over attacking them directly in the audio world. But what has worked to convince people is showing how the justifications people provide for their opinions are dubious. Personal blind testing is very compelling evidence for many people (including previously anti-DBT people), as Pio2001 has learned. Correcting misinformation about audio engineering is also very compelling.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-30 08:50:00
a single HA member playing for the audiophile team, a tester in a lossy format development project,
with positive ABX results & he is now banned ?
That little missing bit of info, smells funny bro.

Not that it is really any of your business, but I have no problem telling you that he was banned because he signed up for a second account.

Get caught sigining up for second account = insta-ban.

Although I don't think you're b0rk based on what I've dug up on you, I would be careful.  Doesn't matter anyway; people who sign up for new accounts because they don't like their warning level usually get re-warned and often banned.  We catch quite a few actually.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 09:46:20
You´re right. I guess it lies within my character. Also, my mother uses to tell: "Persons who are screaming are always wrong" - and I tend to believe her.
You're getting an biased look of the behavior of people on both sides of this debate. Read rec.audio.opinion and the Stereophile forums (particularly Rants & Raves) for a while to see people screaming just as loud from the other side of the fence.

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You did not. I didn´t post my own test because I could very easily have been manipulating it. Which of course shows what I maybe thinking about others here - assuming that people are manipulating in order to meet their agenda. I myself wouldn´t have manipulated - but I wanted to forgo any possibilty of that kind of discussion. This presents myself in an unflattering light but I´m willingly accepting this.
Well... when you publish *any* kind of evidence in the digital domain, there's always some way it could be doctored. It's entirely possible I could have faked every one of my plots. If you're reserving yourself for something you can actually prove, you'll never actually say anything!

And yet people post results all the time, criticisms are made, agreements are formed, and life goes on. Results from one person are important, and results from many people are extremely important. But results from nobody are rather meaningless and it's always less likely to go from 0->1 than from 1->many. The whole premise of testing in general (not even blind testing) is that the results can be repeated at different locations by different people.

I think you really are spiting yourself a bit by not describing what you have done with your tests. Although I do understand that it can be intimidating. We're not exactly carebears. :F But I'm extremely glad that I posted my blind test results here, in large part because of the criticism I received on them, and the valuable advice I received. Not many people on this board haven't been wrong one time or another.

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Man, I would love to believe you. But in this particular thread I´m afraid I can´t find anything related. On the other hand, my own statement that I can influence the upsampling characteristics in order for them to "sound" better basically is the same since upsamplers are using a similar reconstruction filter. I basically claimed that I found the one that closely resembles an original 24/96 source.
They call this "The Great Debate" for a reason  People tend gravitate to one philosophical extreme or the other, because only a few fixed personal beliefs, when logically extrapolated, pretty much define the rest of your worldview on audio matters. And much of what we have been discussing with JA has been big-idea, Great Debate sort of stuff. Stuff that's been debated for almost 30 years now.

On specific topics - like reconstruction filters - there can be specific points and hypotheses and commonly accepted beliefs that can be challenged and overturned or reinforced. But there hasn't been a whole lot of discussion like that here.

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Oh, you´re so right. On the other hand I do believe that the techniques I´m using for regular use on my little home system are vastly superior to the ones normally used (which are, as you said "generally accepted"). They are not even remotely lossless (upsampling, reducing effects of Loudness-War and so on). Sometimes I even do think of most of the people out there (and forgive me, also here) as a bunch of dumb sheep following some advice written long time ago. When it comes to Audio I never took anything for granted, even if it grounds itself in scientific measurments. History has shown that measurments are only the beginning and over the years the methods of measurements have evolved. And they will further do. I firmly believe that some things can´t be measured yet. Take the ear for example. It is not the complex machine most believe it to be, because behind the ear comes the brain which in fact does the major work. Our ear does hear nearly everything (it filters something out though). But our brain decides what is useful and what not. The scientific research in that area is relatively young, so who can know what will come in the future? Is MP3 really transparent to us? I don´t mean by that that MP3 isn´t transparent, I´m just pointing out a possibility. The Hypersonic Effect is just another example, maybe it´ll be proven wrong in the future, maybe it´ll be proven right. Who knows? It would be unwise to assume that everything is written in stone.

All of this writing just to make clear that one should never take anything for granted - because that would avoid exploring new things. The same goes of course for Audiophiles who sometimes don´t believe in measurements. I believe in a healthy co-existence. By the way, I own a headphone amplifier too... beside the sound chosen for practical reasons because my Sennheiser HD-600 is very affected by the impedance of the Amp (the headphone itself has 300 Ohm). But you´re right, normally I restrain myself - because just uttering things like "This is better - and it is the only point of view I´ll accept" is just pointless, proves nothing and it is boring. But so many people here have done otherwise - which shines a not so bright light on the whole community.
While there are a lot of people on HA who probably aren't as well read on their signal processing and electronics theory as would ideally support their beliefs, I think a very great many people here (myself included - and krab and Arny) can justify their beliefs logically and in full agreement with both mainstream theory and personal sensory experience. That is a fundamentally different situation compared to a person basing justifications on personal sensory experience alone.

Just because psychoacoustics is an incomplete field does not mean that it is a useless field. Just because measurements cannot completely cover all important qualities, doesn't mean spurning them is a good idea. Taking those two for granted does not mean trusting them blindly - it means understanding them solidly enough to use them as the basis of engineering decisions, and modifying them when contrary evidence is compellingly presented. What you seem to be advocating is a sort of precautionary principle which I think is unjustified. Just because the possibility exists doesn't necessarily mean it is always worth taking into account, at least for something as existentially trivial as audio... Moreover, operating inside the milieu of psychoacoustics and signal processing largely ensures that such fields grow into new discoveries. Operating outside of them hinders that. Like krab said - science is never really about universal truth.

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This brings me to starting point of this thread here: both sides (objectivist vs. subjectivist, which he and I are not actually) are there to challenge each other. I believe that this in combination with convenience and marketing brings true progress. We need both sides in order to evolve sonically. If the audiophiles find something new, let´s measure it. If we can´t measure it, maybe we can in a few years. If we can´t even then, well then they were wrong. We, being the geeks and nerds we are, are responsible for bringing new & improved methods of experiencing music to the people. And I believe that we owe it to them to do that calm, friendly and reasonable.
It's hard to disagree with this. Just keep in mind that there is a definite notion of progress in what you are saying - that things are 1) found, then 2) attempt to be measured, and 3) may be rejected - but the real world is not nearly so linear; many of us are on 3) while others are still at 1) or 2). Ultimately, resolving that requires cracking some eggs.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 10:02:13
At the risk of it being assumed I am labeling myself as "pseudoscientific," it should be noted that I haven't responded angrily in this thread to criticisms of my writings and statements. What has annoyed me are the personal remarks made about my behavior, my income, my status, my education, my ethics, etc, none of which have anything to do with my opinions on audio
Writing and statements (and editing an audiophile magazine) are behavior too.

Regarding ethics, it's been a little bit amusing that the tsk-tsk contingent here hasn't come down on the intermittent dribble of posts which implicitly accuse you and your colleagues of selling out your intellectual principles so as not to offend your advertisers.  I don't mean *my* posts, where I more or less frontally accused you of either shamelessly softpedalling, ignoring, or being plain ignorant of the facts about mp3 before you presume to 'behave' about them in your attempts to educate your readers and listeners. 

I mean the ones from posters that seem to be almost sympathetic, or at worst *resigned* or *rueful* or *patronizing*, saying in effect, hey, look, what do you expect from the guy?  He's got ad space to sell!  He can't go telling his readers that CD players aren't generally likely to sound different if they compare them fairly, or that they could easily make mp3s that they likely couldn't tell from an SACD without specific training.
I've been pretty hardly avoiding that line of argument, actually, but I will say that I've only responded to about 30% of the posts that I'd like to respond to, with infinite time and concentration. (Including several of yours)

Some of the most skeptical and intelligent people I know are firm believers in astrology, and believe it has a genuine scientific basis. And, y'know, empirically, calling their beliefs pseudoscientific just does not get me very far. Nobody believes their own beliefs are pseudoscience - it's always somebody else's. It's kind of like calling somebody a "dumb sheep", actually.

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I have been lurking on Hydrogen Audio for a while as a "guest", so I had certainly expected criticisms of my writings on this forum - how could I not? But I have tried hard to address the argument, not the arguer, in this thread, respecting ToS #2. But what I had not expected was the puerile nastiness of some of the posters. And now you're blaming _me_ for the lowering of tone, "andy o"?


Whereas I marvel over the awesome power of *reasonable tone* over reason, even here on HA.
ZOMG. Statements perceived as overly emotional get mistaken for statements on the losing side of an argument? Film at 11.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-04-30 10:21:32
The MP3 encoder is LAME 3.98b2 --vbr-new -V2, used from foobar2000. MP3 decoding was done in foobar2000. Both original file and foobar2000 decoded MP3 are in 32-bit WAV format.


1) IIRC foobar2000 converts 32-bit WAVs to 24-bit before sending to LAME.


2) That's how sine sweep encoded by lame -b 320 looks in Audition:

 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-30 11:06:15
Try starting with a correctly dithered (!) 24-bit file. Or convert the 32-bit file to 24-bits with 1-bit dither Triangular no noise shaping in Cool Edit Pro / Audition.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-30 11:14:21
I don't know what to think about the whole new lossy frequency plot contemplation thing in this thread, that Axon started.


No, in principle it wasn't and paying court to Atkinson by certifying that his graphical evaluation of MP3 was 'proper', doesn't help either. Every two weeks or so greynol has to explain to some new born discoverer that frequency plots don't mean anything in lossy encoding and that they are not welcome. If you take out 70% of a signal's information, that has to leave at least some artifacts in a spectrogram. For lossy you should care about one thing: is this difference audible? And after such extreme filtering, that you do in the case of MP3, it is also no news that dithering probably might play a meaningful role.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-30 11:16:58
You´re right. I guess it lies within my character. Also, my mother uses to tell: "Persons who are screaming are always wrong" - and I tend to believe her.
You're getting an biased look of the behavior of people on both sides of this debate. Read rec.audio.opinion and the Stereophile forums (particularly Rants & Raves) for a while to see people screaming just as loud from the other side of the fence.
I was going to post exactly the same thing.

In this thread JA probably strikes a nicer tone than ABK.

However, look elsewhere (pretty much anywhere else!) and the subjectivist vs objectivist debate is quite different.

Objectivists sometimes visibly post in frustration, but most subjectivists come across as complete nutters, often displaying behaviour that would get them locked up in real life.


The straw men set up against DBTs are silly - there's just one fundamental: you must not know what you are listening to, because if you do, it can cloud your judgement.

That's it. The bile people pour out against that simple principle bemuses me.


Try pointing this out in most audio forums: all that's asked is that you don't know what you were listening to until after you give judgement. See the irrational responses, personal attacks etc that get thrown at you for this simple suggestion.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 11:27:26
Some of the most skeptical and intelligent people I know are firm believers in astrology, and believe it has a genuine scientific basis. And, y'know, empirically, calling their beliefs pseudoscientific just does not get me very far.

They may be intelligent, but certainly have a skewed vision of what "skeptical" means. In these pseudoscience debates, I have found that "skeptical" and "open-minded" are two terms that are just bandied about without much understanding of what they actually mean. I'll allow myself a little digression, about the overall theme of these discussions I and a couple of others are into.

Very often we the anti-pseudoscientific types are called "close-minded", but think about this.  We will change our minds when presented with evidence. That is both simple and clear. What exactly would take for the pseudoscientific ones to admit that they're wrong? Clearly evidence doesn't count. Would it take another, "stronger" type of pseudoscience? Who is being close-minded when it comes to admission that they could be wrong?

Whenever they've been asked this question (what would it take for them to admit they're wrong), I've never seen a straightforward answer. NOT simple, and NOT clear. This gives them plenty leeway to move the goalposts afterward, and you bet they'll take advantage of it. And also, the people making these accusations seem to think "open-minded" means you just have to accept everything a priori. That's just credulity. "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out" comes immediately to mind. (End of digression.)

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Nobody believes their own beliefs are pseudoscience - it's always somebody else's. It's kind of like calling somebody a "dumb sheep", actually.
Nope, science and pseudoscience are easily identified and verified. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough. Usually when you've been around looking into pseudoscience for quite a while, you can identify very clear telltale signs though.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-30 11:38:20
The graphs in this case are largely meaningless because they accomplish nothing other than rebutting an essentially straw man argument that nobody to my knowledge has ever made.  That argument is that mp3 is "the same" as CD.  We get a bunch of scary charts and graphs showing that they are different which really shouldn't be a shocking revelation to anyone.  IMHO the only reason those graphs are even in the article is to lend some kind air of objectivity and authority to a piece that is, otherwise, about as purely propagandist as it could possibly be.  Like I said earlier, it doesn't seemed designed to do much other than get those baby boomer types with stereos that cost more than my car worked up in a lather about "those godsdamned kids and their mp3s destroying music". 

The primary claim that is made by lossy enthusiasts is that a well done lossy file can be perceptually transparent   to a lossless source.  Nowhere in the article does Atkinson make even the most token of attempts to address this with either blind or sighted listening to, gasp, actual music.  All he does is try his darndest to frighten people away from using technology they might actually enjoy and from which they might benefit if they use it properly.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 11:42:56
In case it's not clear, the sort of gooey New Agey epistemological arguments you're bandying about irritate me.  It is not necessarily 'unbiased' or admirable to consider all possibilities or all sides of an argument; it can be simply a stupid and unjustified waste of time.
Excuse me, Sir. I wasn´t aware that I was being "New Agey". Though I sometimes listen to Enya... but I´m not even romantic. Furthermore my arguments are not new. They exist as long as science existed. At Wikipedia you can read about philosophical questions regarding science. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Pseudoscience_and_nonscience) If people here at HA are calling themselves scientists I merely accuse some of them as being non-ethical, disregarding friendly behavior and social skills. This has nothing to do with New Age, it has to with how people treat each other.

When it comes to unicorns, I was using them as a metaphor. Maybe my use wasn´t completely thought through, if so, I apologize.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 11:45:55
Such manipulations are why the test is documented to an extent that allows re-performance.  In other words, peer review.  Science as it applies the world over should be no different here - fusion, medicine, physics, all are subject to peer review and re-performance.
I understand. I made a mistake then. Sorry for that. In the future I´ll post my findings so that they can be repeated easily.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 11:51:48
  And some things really do seem to be remarkably stable.  If you think about it, *unless* the 'laws of physics' actually change over time, then science *must* accumulate models of the universe that are more and more accurate. The 'flux' is turbulence around the asymptotic line approaching truth.
I like this explanation. I wanted to say the same, but it would have taken much longer.

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I can sum all this up in one admonition really; keep an open mind, but not SO open that your brains fall out.
Don't we love this one? 

Do you know the source, BTW? I know it's not RD.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 11:53:16
Usually you post positive ABX results along with an exact identification of an artifact's location and a description of its character.

The fact that you believe most positive ABX result at HA must be fake rather indicates that you were baffled how hard it is to produce one.
  Partly true. Remember, I can´t with music unknown to me. But then one member pointed out that an ABX has to be done with known music. And I don´t said that most of them must be fake. I considered the fact that some of them could be. I also considered the fact, that one could accuse me of faking my test in order for the accuser to be able to stay with his own opinion. That was wrong on my part.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-04-30 12:05:35
Try starting with a correctly dithered (!) 24-bit file. Or convert the 32-bit file to 24-bits with 1-bit dither Triangular no noise shaping in Cool Edit Pro / Audition.


green line: dithered 24-bit WAV signal.
red line: previous signal, converted to MP3 (lame 3.98.2 -b 320) and back to WAV (32-bit float) via foobar2000.
yellow line: previous signal, converted to 16 bit with TPDF dither.

(http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6752/86494621.png)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-30 12:16:50
Thanks.

Interesting!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 12:27:26
You're getting an biased look of the behavior of people on both sides of this debate. Read rec.audio.opinion and the Stereophile forums (particularly Rants & Raves) for a while to see people screaming just as loud from the other side of the fence.
I should have made that more transparent. I love reading over at computeraudiophile.com (sometimes really funny) and you´re speaking the truth. It´s just the same over there. But as the bias here tends toward bashing subjectivists I wanted to tip the scale just a tiny little bit 

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Well... when you publish *any* kind of evidence in the digital domain, there's always some way it could be doctored. It's entirely possible I could have faked every one of my plots. If you're reserving yourself for something you can actually prove, you'll never actually say anything! ..... I think you really are spiting yourself a bit by not describing what you have done with your tests. Although I do understand that it can be intimidating. We're not exactly carebears. :F But I'm extremely glad that I posted my blind test results here, in large part because of the criticism I received on them, and the valuable advice I received. Not many people on this board haven't been wrong one time or another.
Good argument and you´re right. I´m ashamed of myself not considering that reserving myself would be counterproductive.

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They call this "The Great Debate" for a reason  People tend gravitate to one philosophical extreme or the other, because only a few fixed personal beliefs, when logically extrapolated, pretty much define the rest of your worldview on audio matters. And much of what we have been discussing with JA has been big-idea, Great Debate sort of stuff. Stuff that's been debated for almost 30 years now.
You know what? My boyfriend often accuses me of thinking in Black/White. Sometimes I´m quick with prejudices, but I´m also quick with destroying these prejudices if they are critizised reasonably. Just a few days ago I found out that I´m not as tolerant as I would like me to be. I´ve thought about this for years but when it was confirmed by a friend I thought to myself that I have to improve on that part. Because respect is the thing that keeps these debates thriving and living. I love debating, but I know from my own experience that being extreme can be harmful. So I want to aim for a balance. I was guilty of being extreme before and I saw that others are doing the same. I thought that it was my job to remind them of that (and yes, including myself).

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Just because psychoacoustics is an incomplete field does not mean that it is a useless field. Just because measurements cannot completely cover all important qualities, doesn't mean spurning them is a good idea. Taking those two for granted does not mean trusting them blindly - it means understanding them solidly enough to use them as the basis of engineering decisions, and modifying them when contrary evidence is compellingly presented. What you seem to be advocating is a sort of precautionary principle which I think is unjustified. Just because the possibility exists doesn't necessarily mean it is always worth taking into account, at least for something as existentially trivial as audio... Moreover, operating inside the milieu of psychoacoustics and signal processing largely ensures that such fields grow into new discoveries. Operating outside of them hinders that. Like krab said - science is never really about universal truth.
But, but, but... no, I can´t find any argument against this.    So, I exaggerated. I didn´t want to say that all what has been discovered so far is untrue or worthless, no, far from it. But it is not written in stone (oh my, I´m doing it again), it is moving and will be refined along the way. And I believe we have a great way to go with psychoacoustics. A friend of mine studies theoretical linguistics in Cologne. He says that there is a great deal of new things to be discovered. He also says that this will directly influence as for example our existentially trivial audio world.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 12:51:43
In this thread JA probably strikes a nicer tone than ABK.

However, look elsewhere (pretty much anywhere else!) and the subjectivist vs objectivist debate is quite different.
Was that the link that someone provided earlier? I did not reat that thouroughly because I was disgusted. And if that applies to you, John Atkinson - shame on you. You - as a journalist - should know that by keeping things low you can be taken more serious. You don´t want to be the National Inquirer, do you? I really hope that I´m mistaken. This goes for everyone on every forum on the web: if one stays calm and quiet he gets taken more serious. People should abide to this.

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Objectivists sometimes visibly post in frustration, but most subjectivists come across as complete nutters, often displaying behaviour that would get them locked up in real life.
Partly true. However, from the side of subjectivists it may appear the same. I always consider from which side I´m coming.


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The straw men set up against DBTs are silly - there's just one fundamental: you must not know what you are listening to, because if you do, it can cloud your judgement.
Excuse me but what does "straw men" mean? I don´t know this. And I will be more open (no, my brain is not falling out  ) with DBT - trying to do them with music I don´t know. I´m certain that I´ll be able to learn from that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 13:00:14
In case it's not clear, the sort of gooey New Agey epistemological arguments you're bandying about irritate me.  It is not necessarily 'unbiased' or admirable to consider all possibilities or all sides of an argument; it can be simply a stupid and unjustified waste of time.
Excuse me, Sir. I wasn´t aware that I was being "New Agey". Though I sometimes listen to Enya... but I´m not even romantic. Furthermore my arguments are not new. They exist as long as science existed. At Wikipedia you can read about philosophical questions regarding science. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Pseudoscience_and_nonscience)
What does "romantic" have to do with New Age? I am a perfectly naturally romantic guy (in the real-meaning sense, not in the Julia-Roberts-flick sense). I also fail to see how that portion of the Wikipedia article you linked makes the same argument as you, or even support it. In any case, you can't seriously think that philosophers or historians possess the ability to assess truth better than scientists? I respect certain schools and individual philosophers, but philosophy as a method and by itself has never been able to discover anything significant. You can say math and science sparked from that endeavor of confirming philosophical hypotheses, actually. Some philosophy has helped tremendously and will continue to help science, but by itself can't speak truth with much, or any, authority. And there's lots of "junk" philosophy out there.

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If people here at HA are calling themselves scientists I merely accuse some of them as being non-ethical, disregarding friendly behavior and social skills.
Ethics in science doesn't have anything to do with being "friendly". Why would you think reality gives a damn about anyone's social behavior? It's absolutely irrelevant. You're confusing again being nice with being right (regarding truth claims). Likewise, lack of social skills, rudeness even being a complete jerk doesn't automatically mean somebody is wrong. I tend to trust more someone who speaks bluntly than someone who is overly nice. You know what's unethical, not only in science, but also in education and even politics? Knowingly peddling pseudoscience.

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This has nothing to do with New Age, it has to with how people treat each other.
What has to do with how people treat each other? Again, if you're planning a dinner party, suit yourself to pick whomever you think is "nice" to be your guest. If you're going to be making truth claims, nice or rude mean nothing. Or do you think that the "universe" responds to our thoughts and wishes? If so, you are a serious case of deluded New Agey. Do you think we should take as seriously something like The Secret, as, say, Newton's Principia?

You keep talking about objectivism and subjectivism like they're equivalent. Since we're quoting Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism), do you agree with this?
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Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law.
If that is what you're referring to as subjectivism, let me ask. What exactly does it have to show for itself after all these thousands of years? Do I even have to mention what science and scientific thought in just a few hundred years has accomplished? Science is not an ideology or a set of beliefs. It is just the best method humans have come up with to discover reality. No one like Randall Munroe to put it simply and bluntly:
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/science.jpg) (http://xkcd.com/54/)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-30 13:23:49
The graphs in this case are largely meaningless because they accomplish nothing other than rebutting an essentially straw man argument that nobody to my knowledge has ever made.  That argument is that mp3 is "the same" as CD.


I am sure that that claim hasn't been made on HA. But it is widely made in the outside world, in places like the "Circuits" section of the NY Times, and in advertising. Even the low-bit-rate audio offered by satellite radio is routinely described as "CD quality."

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-30 13:24:21
Whereas I marvel over the awesome power of *reasonable tone* over reason, even here on HA.


Yes, that and well-written prose.

Boy, how many times have I heard that? :-(

People who can't see through that sort of thing allow themselves to be easily mislead. I've seen this same thing in social and political contexts - anybody who talks a good line, dresses well, and thows good parties gets a lot of credibilty among shallow thinkers, who unfortunately are in the majority.

One of the worst recent cases of this just happened in the nearby City Of Detroit, whose last mayor just got out of jail after lying in court about tricking the city into paying 16 million dollars to some cops who were trying to blow the whistle on some of his other ummm, questionable activities. For their trouble the (now ex-cops) got their lives ruined, had to spend a lot of time in court, and of course they enriched some lawyers. That mayor talked a heck of a sweet line and looked great in a suit.

Of course I don't get the reasonable tone part because when pressed, many of these same sweet talkers will say some incredibly ugly things, even in public. I could quote some stuff from RAO that would pretty well dispell the appearance of a "reasonable tone".
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-30 13:39:13
Usually you post positive ABX results along with an exact identification of an artifact's location and a description of its character.


Reliable tests are inevitably highly diagnostic when they are positive. We noitced that early on, which led us to further suspect most sighted evaluations. There's a foggy sameness in accounts of sighted evaluations, while postive blind tests find a wide variety of things, few of which match up with the purple prose that is common to sighted evaluations.  I don't recall ever reading a sighted review that talked about "a gritty sound whenever the bass drum plays in <fill in recording name and catalog number> at  xxx:xx:xx and xxx:xx:xx. It has probably happened a few times, but it is the rule with blind tests.

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The fact that you believe most positive ABX result at HA must be fake rather indicates that you were baffled how hard it is to produce one.


It's a lot easier to find fool's gold than real gold. ;-)

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In fact, I don't share that opinion. After some years of ABX testing you get a gut feeling what kind of artifact a certain sound like a hi-hat may at all produce...


The absence this sort of thing makes me suspect some people who claim to have done a lot of blind tests.

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Personally I could reproduce most positive samples that have been posted here over time. Many samples, that fail lossy encoding for some people, fail them for many. The distribution seems to be quite bipolar. Some, the so called "killer" samples, are ABXable for many, a huge part isn't ABXable for anybody, and only fery few are ABXable by only a few.


The latter sort of thing is behind my comment that "There are no golden ears". We often had a more tightly controlled environment around our listening tests in the 80s and 90s  than one finds at HA. We were working in "meat space". If there was something that was detected by only a few we often had the opportunity to isolate it, give the person(s) in question a decent rest break, invite them back into the listening room, and see whether they could duplicate their performance.  They never could.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 13:47:09
What does "romantic" have to do with New Age? I am a perfectly naturally romantic guy (in the real-meaning sense, not in the Julia-Roberts-flick sense). I also fail to see how that portion of the Wikipedia article you linked makes the same argument as you, or even support it. In any case, you can't seriously think that philosophers or historians possess the ability to assess truth better than scientists? I respect certain schools and individual philosophers, but philosophy as a method and by itself has never been able to discover anything significant. You can say math and science sparked from that endeavor of confirming philosophical hypotheses, actually. Some philosophy has helped tremendously and will continue to help science, but by itself can't speak truth with much, or any, authority. And there's lots of "junk" philosophy out there.
What is a "perfectly naturally romantic guy"? I´d like to think that several people will see that differently. And you, my dear Andy, did imply that I was saying that philosophers posess the ability to assess the truth better than scientists, not me. I was aiming for a balance and I did not judge. You concentrate on some sentences, take them at face-value yet you fail to see the overall picture. I could be wrong with that but to me it appears that we are just not compatible when it comes to opinions.

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Ethics in science doesn't have anything to do with being "friendly". Why would you think reality gives a damn about anyone's social behavior? It's absolutely irrelevant. You're confusing again being nice with being right (regarding truth claims). Likewise, lack of social skills, rudeness even being a complete jerk doesn't automatically mean somebody is wrong. I tend to trust more someone who speaks bluntly than someone who is overly nice. You know what's unethical, not only in science, but also in education and even politics? Knowingly peddling pseudoscience.
I smell a bit of Seven-of-Nine here... irrelevant... hm... but then maybe Star Trek also is New Age. Ethics automatically lead to friendlieness - at least it does in my opinion. But now we have the true reason why we are clashing: you simply trust the people more who are speaking bluntly. I do not because I think that this can be said in a friendly and calm way while still speaking the truth. And by writing that you made clear that you don´t trust people who are "overly nice". Let me ask you: where does this "overly nice" start with you? Do you, when someone says a friendly "Hello" to you, automatically assume that this persons holds a knife behind his back?

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What has to do with how people treat each other? Again, if you're planning a dinner party, suit yourself to pick whomever you think is "nice" to be your guest. If you're going to be making truth claims, nice or rude mean nothing. Or do you think that the "universe" responds to our thoughts and wishes? If so, you are a serious case of deluded New Agey. Do you think we should take as seriously something like The Secret, as, say, Newton's Principia?
What has the universe to do with that? I don´t get it. And what is the advantage of presenting a claim bluntly? In my experience this leads to fury on the other side (the receptionist of this blunt claim).

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You keep talking about objectivism and subjectivism like they're equivalent. Since we're quoting Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism), do you agree with this?
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Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law.
If that is what you're referring to as subjectivism, let me ask. What exactly does it have to show for itself after all these thousands of years? Do I even have to mention what science and scientific thought in just a few hundred years has accomplished? Science is not an ideology or a set of beliefs. It is just the best method humans have come up with to discover reality.
Is it really the best method? I would tend to think that millions of people who believe in something like God would tell you different. I´m not talking about fundamentalists, I´m not talking about myself. I just don´t believe that science is the "ultimate" and "best" way to describe things. It is only one way of several approaches. When it comes to both of us I think that we are banging our opinions at each other. But if you are saying that science is superior to other things you are simply stating your own opinion as a fact. Where is your proof for that?

Science has led us to things as wonderful as the CD player, the airplane (just a few examples). But science also has led us to the atomic bomb, global warming. So you see that everything has two or more sides to it. The same goes for metaphysics, ethics, subjectivism, objectivism... the list can go on and on. Our whole discussion has been off-topic so far, we´ve strided away from the basic subject. I´m equally guilty at that, all right. Maybe we can return now to the basic subject.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-30 13:56:28
The latter sort of thing is behind my comment that "There are no golden ears".


When we have compared problem samples here in the past, /mnt could ABX several samples that I (and others) couldn't. And I don't believe that he was making it up, because his track record of identifying actual problem samples (that were found to be valid) out of the sheer mass of unABXable material is quite good. He may not be a general golden ear, but regarding pre echo he seems to be quite a shot.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-04-30 14:23:31
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The straw men set up against DBTs are silly - there's just one fundamental: you must not know what you are listening to, because if you do, it can cloud your judgement.
Excuse me but what does "straw men" mean?
A straw man argument is arguing against something (in this case, DBT) by mis-representing in order to make it easy to discredit. For example, saying that you can only listen to ten seconds of audio in a DBT, so of course there are real subtle changes that are never detected in DBTs.

The wikipedia entry is a bit wordy, but here it is anyway...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 14:24:21
Sorry Cavaille, I missed this one, you ask some pointed questions I'll be happy to answer.
[...]My basic argument for treating "Audiophiles" (you call it pseudoscience) the same as "objectivinists" (you call it science) is that one side needs the other one in order to evolve. I explained it in the post above.
I just found your explanation:
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This brings me to starting point of this thread here: both sides (objectivist vs. subjectivist, which he and I are not actually) are there to challenge each other. I believe that this in combination with convenience and marketing brings true progress. We need both sides in order to evolve sonically. If the audiophiles find something new, let´s measure it. If we can´t measure it, maybe we can in a few years. If we can´t even then, well then they were wrong.
I don't think this is true at all. Science challenges itself. It thrives from challenge. That is the difference with pseudoscience and religion. Science is constantly questioning itself. That is the core of science. If it doesn't (as in pseudoscience), or if it discourages it (as in religion), it isn't science. If you are to investigate what's wrong with your car, you don't need anyone telling you that invisible gnomes are messing with the engine and then debate with them. You go out and find out yourself, maybe by trial and error, or maybe by empirical knowledge. You don't need what you seem to think is "the other side".

By the way, these debates have been raging for years now. Evidence is overwhelmingly against what I can now call pseudoscience. They made their claims, many of which are wild, and they failed to produce any evidence. Meanwhile, when scientifically rigorous tests were done, evidence was against their claims. It has been years. And it probably will be years to come.

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Also you imply that objectivists are scientists - which they obviously are not. Or does everyone of us here work in a laboratory or actually do scientific research with Audio at let´s say, a University? Maybe some of us - but I guess they are less than 25 %.
I don't imply that, but I don't say they aren't either. I never mentioned the terms objectivist or subjectivist before this post of yours. Subjectivists though, by definition don't have much of a problem with pseudoscience. Objectivists often have to (still doesn't mean they're necessarily scientists or scientific).

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You're assuming based on mislead observations. The misleading seems to be done by your belief that niceness leads to being "right" somehow. Or at least right enough for you to take "their side".
I tend to believe more in nice people, true. But I didn´t say that they are right and I don´t believe it either. I thought I made it clear that my personal choice only applies to this thread here - and only for the sake of talking reasonably to each other (which was by the way explained later in my post) if my memory serves me right.
OK, so you like these people better. That much is clear. That still doesn't say anything about the validity of their truth claims.

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So that just means that you don't understand why scientific claims are more valid than pseudoscientific claims. You don't seem to get the meaning of evidence and falsifiability. Even in the realm of wild claims, some have more validity than others because of the virtue of being (1) clear and (2) falsifiable. Pseudoscientific claims fail in both cases. If we had infinite time, sure, why not "look into" invisible dragons in our garages. Until then, I'll stick with reasonable endeavors.
I don´t seem to recall doing some "wild claims". Please be so kind to provide an example. And if you choose to stick with reasonable endeavors, that is of course fine with me. But you also have to respect that I´ll stick with my "pseudoscientific" opinion, as you call it.
I didn't say you yourself made any wild claims. You did defend and sided with people who did though. I'm arguing both against pseudoscience and people who think it is on an equivalent footing with science. I respect that you have your pseudoscientific opinion, of course you can have it. But I can also argue against it, don't I? Especially if you are defending its peddlers based on a fallacy. Did I offend your person directly? I'm perfectly aware I'm being blunt, and maybe not that nice, but I don't think I've gone out to offend.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 14:28:49
A straw man argument is arguing against something (in this case, DBT) by mis-representing in order to make it easy to discredit. For example, saying that you can only listen to ten seconds of audio in a DBT, so of course there are real subtle changes that are never detected in DBTs.

The wikipedia entry is a bit wordy, but here it is anyway...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

Cheers,
David.
*gasp* Shoot, when I remember some of my writings here in this thread I found that I did exactly that. I apologize for that. Thank you for the link, I freely admit that I made a mistake which lead to a huge off-topic discussion.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-30 14:34:51
The graphs in this case are largely meaningless because they accomplish nothing other than rebutting an essentially straw man argument that nobody to my knowledge has ever made.  That argument is that mp3 is "the same" as CD.


I am sure that that claim hasn't been made on HA. But it is widely made in the outside world, in places like the "Circuits" section of the NY Times, and in advertising. Even the low-bit-rate audio offered by satellite radio is routinely described as "CD quality."

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


If your primary complaints are that people involved in the selling of this still comparatively new technology make exaggerated claims about their products in order to drum up business and that journalists do too much of their work from press releases without any substantial critical examination or analysis then all I can respond with are hoary cliches about pots and kettles that don't even make sense to me because my teapot is a lovely shade of turquoise.

That said, I think it is extremely unfortunate that you didn't take the opportunity to write a balanced piece that covered the strengths and benefits of lossy compression as well as the weaknesses and pitfalls along with useful and practical information about different ripping applications, codecs and bitrates instead of engaging in what I perceive as a sort of "reds under the bed", "audiophiles under siege!" kind of scaremongering.  Why not inform instead of sowing division and fear?  The latter approach makes about as much sense to me as "abstienence only" sex ed.

PS:  I listened to Sgt. Pepper's... a couple of weeks ago in lossy from my iPod and it sounded just fine. 

PPS:  I bet you didn't know that every time somebody listens to Sgt. Pepper's... in lossy some angels get really stoned and look for hidden messages and clues to Paul McCartney's death in the album cover.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 14:55:52
And you, my dear Andy, did imply that I was saying that philosophers posess the ability to assess the truth better than scientists, not me. I was aiming for a balance and I did not judge. You concentrate on some sentences, take them at face-value yet you fail to see the overall picture. I could be wrong with that but to me it appears that we are just not compatible when it comes to opinions.
I was referencing the wiki article you linked, where mostly the opinion of philosophers were quoted or referenced regarding to science. I think some of them are valid, many of them aren't. In any case, they aren't right because they're philosophers.

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Ethics in science doesn't have anything to do with being "friendly". Why would you think reality gives a damn about anyone's social behavior? It's absolutely irrelevant. You're confusing again being nice with being right (regarding truth claims). Likewise, lack of social skills, rudeness even being a complete jerk doesn't automatically mean somebody is wrong. I tend to trust more someone who speaks bluntly than someone who is overly nice. You know what's unethical, not only in science, but also in education and even politics? Knowingly peddling pseudoscience.
I smell a bit of Seven-of-Nine here... irrelevant... hm... but then maybe Star Trek also is New Age. Ethics automatically lead to friendlieness - at least it does in my opinion. But now we have the true reason why we are clashing: you simply trust the people more who are speaking bluntly. I do not because I think that this can be said in a friendly and calm way while still speaking the truth. And by writing that you made clear that you don´t trust people who are "overly nice". Let me ask you: where does this "overly nice" start with you? Do you, when someone says a friendly "Hello" to you, automatically assume that this persons holds a knife behind his back?
You're projecting here. I don't trust people because they are blunt. I am not the one who trusts people's truth claims (I can't stress this enough, cause it's our subject) based on their niceness. I tend to distrust more overly nice people because there are other more cynical reasons for which they could be being nice. Please do know that I appreciate niceness, and please note the emphasized words in my previous sentence.

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What has to do with how people treat each other? Again, if you're planning a dinner party, suit yourself to pick whomever you think is "nice" to be your guest. If you're going to be making truth claims, nice or rude mean nothing. Or do you think that the "universe" responds to our thoughts and wishes? If so, you are a serious case of deluded New Agey. Do you think we should take as seriously something like The Secret, as, say, Newton's Principia?
What has the universe to do with that? I don´t get it. And what is the advantage of presenting a claim bluntly? In my experience this leads to fury on the other side (the receptionist of this blunt claim).
I didn't say it was an advantage to be blunt. My point is that nice or blunt or rude, it's irrelevant to the truthfulness of the claims. You could use niceness as a strategy to win over people like you for instance, but the truthfulness of your claims is the same regardless. The universe comment is a new age fad right now, in which people believe they can change the outcome of what the universe throws at them by just thinking about it. Sort of good that you didn't even get the reference.

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You keep talking about objectivism and subjectivism like they're equivalent. Since we're quoting Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism), do you agree with this?
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Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law.
If that is what you're referring to as subjectivism, let me ask. What exactly does it have to show for itself after all these thousands of years? Do I even have to mention what science and scientific thought in just a few hundred years has accomplished? Science is not an ideology or a set of beliefs. It is just the best method humans have come up with to discover reality.
Is it really the best method? I would tend to think that millions of people who believe in something like God would tell you different.
And what have THEY accomplished with this kind of thinking? One of Einstein's theories (don't remember which one off the top of my head, probably GR) was so earth-shattering that a book was published: "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein". His reply (http://www.time.com/time/time100/poc/magazine/a_brief_history_of_rela6d.html)? "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." Number of people who believe something is also irrelevant for truth claims. Science IS the best method. You're typing on a keyboard and instantly sending messages over thousands of miles all over the world, for crying out loud. As Louis CK commented once on our lack of amazement: It's going to space! (http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2009/02/amazing_1.html)

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I´m not talking about fundamentalists, I´m not talking about myself. I just don´t believe that science is the "ultimate" and "best" way to describe things. It is only one way of several approaches. When it comes to both of us I think that we are banging our opinions at each other. But if you are saying that science is superior to other things you are simply stating your own opinion as a fact. Where is your proof for that?
Again, the proof is at the tip of your fingers, literally. And there's millions of other proofs. Just look around you. How do you get to work? How do you move to other continents? How do you listen to music? How do your precious headphones/amplifiers work? Surely not by magic. What has religion or pseudoscience done? What has subjectivism done compared to that?

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Science has led us to things as wonderful as the CD player, the airplane (just a few examples). But science also has led us to the atomic bomb, global warming. So you see that everything has two or more sides to it. The same goes for metaphysics, ethics, subjectivism, objectivism... the list can go on and on. Our whole discussion has been off-topic so far, we´ve strided away from the basic subject. I´m equally guilty at that, all right. Maybe we can return now to the basic subject.
So you asked for my proof, and then you basically state it. Science is not a moral guide. It is not a set of rules on how to behave morally. It advances knowledge so we can make our own educated moral decisions. Ethics should also be based on knowledge of the world, and subjectivism doesn't give you that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-04-30 15:26:00
Science has led us to things as wonderful as the CD player, the airplane (just a few examples). But science also has led us to the atomic bomb, global warming. So you see that everything has two or more sides to it. The same goes for metaphysics, ethics, subjectivism, objectivism... the list can go on and on.


I think it's worth mentioning that CD players, airplanes and atomic bombs all WORK.  When you turn them on they fulfill the function for which they were designed.  What is the non-science side's track record on this front?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Tahnru on 2009-04-30 15:28:48
Science is not a moral guide. It is not a set of rules on how to behave morally. It advances knowledge so we can make our own educated moral decisions. Ethics should also be based on knowledge of the world, and subjectivism doesn't give you that.


I'd like to expand on this just a bit.  Please consider the opening paragraph from Wikipedia's article on the scientific method:
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Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.  To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.  A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.


For those willing to read the whole thing, find it here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)

I won't elaborate on the above much further.  The paragraph I quoted is pretty concise about what capital S Science is.  Criticisms of Science like "Science killed the dodo" and "Science can't explain everything, therefore it's garbage" miss the mark completely.  And, I'm going to stop there for now.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Wombat on 2009-04-30 15:50:13
The latter sort of thing is behind my comment that "There are no golden ears".


When we have compared problem samples here in the past, /mnt could ABX several samples that I (and others) couldn't. And I don't believe that he was making it up, because his track record of identifying actual problem samples (that were found to be valid) out of the sheer mass of unABXable material is quite good. He may not be a general golden ear, but regarding pre echo he seems to be quite a shot.

Well, at least some people seem to have a different kind of perception. Me for example isn't good with hearing these pre-echoes /nmt does but i seem to be sensitive to added distortion. I a long time ago reported problems nobody really could verify, Now that Guruboolez found many samples of that kind and halb27 can hear these also and still some can't must show that ears must hear different. Guruboolez most likely can report problems in more directions anybody else here can.
Also i had the chance to do a smal listening test with a member of the Avantgarde-Acoustic team, Jürgen "the ear"
Back then i burned a cd of 3 files of one non-spectacular sample from Jazz at the Pawnshop. I used 3.96 insane + mpc xlevel 5 (if i remember right) + ripped wav playing on a Trio setup.
I played them random. On every try he detected what was wich without one error and even was able to describe what he hears sounding different. I switched several times and not one time he was wrong. His self-evidence was impressive and it was fun to him. I couldn't hear the things btw...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-30 16:06:54
This thread has by now become fragmented into several subtopics, some of which are pretty unrelated. Is there any sane way to split it up so that readers can pick and choose whch parts to read?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-30 16:11:36
Is it really the best method?


When you're talking about the many things in physical world, nothing seems to be better than science.

For example, art which is often tries to be utterly unpredictable provides us with the externals of the building, but science which always tries to be predictable provides us with the structure that holds the building up.

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I would tend to think that millions of people who believe in something like God would tell you different.


Many people who believe in God have absolutely no problems with the reliable findings of Science and happly apply them to their daily life where they fit.

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I´m not talking about fundamentalists, I´m not talking about myself. I just don´t believe that science is the "ultimate" and "best" way to describe things. It is only one way of several approaches.


I agree that science is not the only valid or the very best way to describe *everything*. I do believe in choosing the best tool for the job at hand.

OTOH, we're talking relatively simple stuff here. Audio isn't rocket science, at most it has been just a tiny subset of it.

I don't think that the people who built the SpaceLab spent a lot of time arguing over the Philosphy of Science or whether or not Science even applied.

Home audio is Science in service of Art, right? I always get the feeling that when Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Science creep into a discussion of power amplifiers, that there's a bit of obfuscation going on!  Ya think? ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-30 16:11:56
.....then all I can respond with are hoary cliches about pots and kettles that don't even make sense to me because my teapot is a lovely shade of turquoise.


Actually, it's not the teapot that's calling the kettle black it's the cooking pot. In the old days both would have been heated on an open fire and so become black. Hope that's cleared it up
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-04-30 16:16:28
This thread has by now become fragmented into several subtopics, some of which are pretty unrelated. Is there any sane way to split it up so that readers can pick and choose whch parts to read?


I think that sorting this one out would tie up an infinite number of moderators for an infinite number of years, and when they finished there would an infinite number of complaints about what they did. ;-)

Far better I think, to put the thread out of its misery with say a day's warning, and then let nature take its course when it comes to starting up any sequels.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-30 16:21:07
I would let this thread become the black hole of Hydrogenaudio. Eventually the whole universe itself might collapse into it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-30 18:00:01
The only conclusion I can reach is that John's numerical analysis is more or less correctly done. At least, whatever we're getting on the MP3 spectra, it's not because the output stages are not dithered.


Thank you for doing this work, Axon.

Quote
Note, of course, that I said "we're wrong" without saying "John's right". I believe that point #2 of my summarized objections - that the whole notion of frequency analysis for the evaluation of lossy encoders is fundamentally flawed for the purposes of observed sound quality analysis, rather than its intrinsic qualities - still stands AFAIK.


There are 2 issues here: 1) can we agree on the results of the actual experiments? 2) Do we agree on the meaning or even the relevance of those results?

Even if we agree on the first question, it is legitimate to disagree on the second. I had my say on this matter in the Stereophile article; I am therefore reading the criticisms on this forum with interest, if not some of the namecalling. One point I  would make is that some of the posters don't appear to have read my article thoroughly. Some of the criticisms were points I did actually address in the article.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-30 18:06:31
If you're talking about the MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD article, please take all discussion to the relevant thread:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=61839 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=61839)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Cavaille on 2009-04-30 18:14:33
Guys, this thread has ended in the usual amount of sentences ripped out of their context. It truly has become the "black Hole" of Hydrogenaudio.org. This reminds me of a movie... I think I´ll watch this wonderful movie again ("The Black Hole", Disney, 1979) because it is completely un-scientific and even has a typical "mad scientist" (a German scientist named Hans Reinhardt, played by the German Maximilian Schell). Before anyone of you is starting again, this is of course off-topic, completely unrelated and therefore worthless.

As a result I´m going to exit this thread and I won´t take part in discussions anymore. Maybe by erasing myself from the discussion this will provide this thread with reasonable posts again. I´ve tried to broaden your mind just a tiny little bit - but apparently some people are very narrowminded. I even went so far admitting mistakes I´d done myself in communicating my ideas & opinions. Did you? I think not. 90% of you people didn´t even bother to consider the slightest possibility that you are in fact incapable of accepting another ones opinion without critzising it. To quote another movie: "To think of oneselve as being perfect clearly is a sign of a delusional mind." In short there are too many people here that won´t challenge themselves and are happy to stay in their own comfort zone. For me however, this doesn´t work. Just another opinion, of course.

In Germany we have a saying: "Der Klügere gibt nach." Roughly translated it means "The smarter one gives in". Well, it appears that I´m the smartest person here!  Hooray, hooray, clap your hands! Can´t live with that? Pity, I´ll get you a hanky when I´ve got time.

Now please, everyone back to the subject at hand which was... eh... let me see... ah yes! "Why we need Audiophiles."
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-04-30 18:35:49
Or to quote Woody Allen:

YALE:
You're problem is you think you're God.
IKE:
Well, I've got to model myself after someone.
(from Manhattan)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-04-30 19:40:45
Or to quote Woody Allen:

YALE:
You're problem is you think you're God.
IKE:
Well, I've got to model myself after someone.
(from Manhattan)

Now we're on to Woody Allen quotes here are a couple of my favourites, albeit probably misquoted somewhat :

"My only regret in life is that I wasn't somebody else"

"Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all"
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-30 19:48:55
As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition, or AAC in iTunes/Quicktime.


The Fraunhofer codec has long been surpassed in its quality*.
*Quality in the sense of the inverse number of known positively ABXable "killer" samples.

Not according to HA's last public listening test (http://www.listening-tests.info/mp3-128-1/results.htm) from November 2008. Both LAME 3.98.2 and the Fraunhofer codec got a score lower than 4 for one out of the 14 items tested. If you were referring to the particular codec used in Audition (Mr. Atkinson, which version, by the way?), that may be true. If not, I'd like to see some more links in support of your claim.

Chris
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-04-30 19:58:48
Not according to HA's last public listening test (http://www.listening-tests.info/mp3-128-1/results.htm) from November 2008. Both LAME 3.98.2 and the Fraunhofer codec got a score lower than 4 for one out of the 14 items tested. If you were referring to the particular codec used in Audition (Mr. Atkinson, which version, by the way?), that may be true. If not, I'd like to see some more links in support of your claim.

Chris


That October 2008 reference proves me wrong, thanks. After a longer pause I had become active again at HA not before January '09. Wasn't LAME quite ahead a couple of years before that? Has your codec been continuously under development or is this the result of a rather large revision?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-04-30 19:59:27
Ok, let's refrain from further movie quotes.  While I'm considering splitting out some of the noise, I most certainly will NOT begin if people are just going to add more noise.

Any new requests for splitting or other moderation need to be specific and requested via PM.  Further public requests or complaints regarding moderation (or the lack thereof) may lead to closure of this discussion.  Intentional baiting for the closure of this thread by way of making public requests or complaining will lead to administrative action on an individual case-by-case basis.

EDIT: The second paragraph was not directed at anyone in particular.  There have only been a few requests for splitting and/or closure and none of them have been impolite or unreasonable.  It's just that dissecting this thread is no small undertaking and doing so may just increase the noise.  I think the fact that it is all contained in this thread is better for the forum overall.  If there are some technical discussions that are beyond the level of those who are here just to say "me too", I'll split them off, since the past has shown that they remain pretty focused.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2009-04-30 20:08:59
That October 2008 reference proves me wrong, thanks. After a longer pause I had become active again at HA not before January '09. Wasn't LAME quite ahead a couple of years before that? Has your codec been continuously under development or is this the result of a rather large revision?

I think LAME was only ahead a few years ago in terms of VBR quality. I think back then Fraunhofer didn't focus on VBR. So yes, over the last years our codec has undergone tuning and bugfixing just like LAME did. As you can see, we do monitor HA listening tests  Whether there was a large codec revision in between, I don't know (I working on AAC, not MP3).

Chris
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-04-30 20:19:07
As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition...


Mr. Atkinson, which version, by the way?


Adobe Audition 1.0, which I purchased in 2003.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-04-30 22:05:43
I´ve tried to broaden your mind just a tiny little bit - but apparently some people are very narrowminded. I even went so far admitting mistakes I´d done myself in communicating my ideas & opinions. Did you? I think not. 90% of you people didn´t even bother to consider the slightest possibility that you are in fact incapable of accepting another ones opinion without critzising it.
If you're saying this because of what I said earlier, it's a complete misrepresentation. I also clearly said what would change our minds. Your basic point is that science and pseudoscience deserve equivalent time and effort. What is your evidence, or at least rational argument for this? Once you provide evidence, we'll surely change our minds. Or have you changed your mind about that assertion?

Quote
Now please, everyone back to the subject at hand which was... eh... let me see... ah yes! "Why we need Audiophiles."

This discussion goes to the crux of the reason why people like the Giz writers think we "need" audiophiles, and why they think those people have any more authority to speak on reality than anyone else.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-04-30 22:21:45
That October 2008 reference proves me wrong, thanks. After a longer pause I had become active again at HA not before January '09. Wasn't LAME quite ahead a couple of years before that? Has your codec been continuously under development or is this the result of a rather large revision?

I think LAME was only ahead a few years ago in terms of VBR quality. I think back then Fraunhofer didn't focus on VBR. So yes, over the last years our codec has undergone tuning and bugfixing just like LAME did. As you can see, we do monitor HA listening tests  Whether there was a large codec revision in between, I don't know (I working on AAC, not MP3).

Chris
As I said in the article, the codecs used were the Fraunhofer, as implemented in Adobe Audition...


Mr. Atkinson, which version, by the way?


Adobe Audition 1.0, which I purchased in 2003.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

The proximity and content of these two posts is nothing short of amazing.

Mr. Atkinson,
7 year old encoders sound like 7 year old encoders.
Your sample for your demonstration will not even be close to being representative of what a modern mp3 encoder can achieve.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 22:54:51


I mean the ones from posters that seem to be almost sympathetic, or at worst *resigned* or *rueful* or *patronizing*, saying in effect, hey, look, what do you expect from the guy?  He's got ad space to sell!  He can't go telling his readers that CD players aren't generally likely to sound different if they compare them fairly, or that they could easily make mp3s that they likely couldn't tell from an SACD without specific training.


I've been pretty hardly avoiding that line of argument, actually, but I will say that I've only responded to about 30% of the posts that I'd like to respond to, with infinite time and concentration. (Including several of yours)


Well, I'm slightly sleep deprived right now so I'm having trouble parsing this...by 'pretty hardly' do you mean, just' barely', or you've kept well away from it ' (fwiw, I had no particular poster in mind, I've just noted a type of post appearing again and again)

Quote
Some of the most skeptical and intelligent people I know are firm believers in astrology, and believe it has a genuine scientific basis. And, y'know, empirically, calling their beliefs pseudoscientific just does not get me very far. Nobody believes their own beliefs are pseudoscience - it's always somebody else's. It's kind of like calling somebody a "dumb sheep", actually.


I'll go further and say people tend not to believe that their own beliefs are wrong.  Film at 11!   

I might also say that some of the most skeptical and intelligent people you know must not be all THAT skeptical, if they firmly believe in astrology.  It's interesting that you bring that 'field' up btw, because just today I was wondering what's analogous to high-end audio journalism -- maqazines about astrology and homeopathy came to mind first.  So it might be a good gedanken to substitute homeopathy, and terms of art there, for 'audiophilia' and its arguments, here.  I have no doubt there are or have been reasonable-sounding, articulate, polite editors and writers at those journals , even some willing to conduct in objective measurements.  But in the end, they, too are just*wrong* about some awfully fundamental stuff.

Quote
ZOMG. Statements perceived as overly emotional get mistaken for statements on the losing side of an argument? Film at 11.


Dammit Jim, I'm sayin' people should be more skeptical of 'reasonable tone'.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 23:08:49

I am sure that that claim hasn't been made on HA. But it is widely made in the outside world, in places like the "Circuits" section of the NY Times, and in advertising. Even the low-bit-rate audio offered by satellite radio is routinely described as "CD quality."

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


If your primary complaints are that people involved in the selling of this still comparatively new technology make exaggerated claims about their products in order to drum up business and that journalists do too much of their work from press releases without any substantial critical examination or analysis then all I can respond with are hoary cliches about pots and kettles that don't even make sense to me because my teapot is a lovely shade of turquoise.


Marketing-speak, isn't it wonderful?  I'm waiting for the coin to drop and record companies start advertising vinyl as 'better-than-CD quality'.  Then we will at last have come full circle from 'perfect sound forever'.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 23:12:04
I would let this thread become the black hole of Hydrogenaudio. Eventually the whole universe itself might collapse into it.


and then it will wormhole its way out and find itself in a Stereophile forum thread. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-04-30 23:15:29
I don't know what to think about the whole new lossy frequency plot contemplation thing in this thread, that Axon started.
IIRC, more people than just myself were worried about that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-04-30 23:20:53
The proximity and content of these two posts is nothing short of amazing.

Mr. Atkinson,
7 year old encoders sound like 7 year old encoders.
Your sample for your demonstration will not even be close to being representative of what a modern mp3 encoder can achieve.



Indeed.  Interested parties, please use the HA forum advanced search function with this input

+Audition +Fraunhofer

Return results as posts, and scroll down to posts dating from 2006 and earlier.  Note posts from gurubroolz, for example, mentioning the issues with the Audition 1.0 encoder.  Click to read the posts around it Repeat ad libitum.

Audition's encoder was hardly SOTA in 2006, much less 2008 when JA 'behaved' his article.  But of course he's claiming that he merely wanted to show how a 'typical' mp3 performed ....as if mp3 sources were typically using Audition's 2003 encoder in 2008??
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-05-01 00:01:09
Insofar as JA's article deliberately avoided the whole issue of observed audibility of lossy encoding artifacts, and that (as I pointed out) a modern codec shows similar numerical issues, I'm not sure how important the Audition/Fraunhofer thing is in the context of the article itself.

The more important issue here is that Stereophile readers are being kept in the dark about important lossy encoding information that can and will affect their listening quality. I'll grant to John that, for the high-end audio person who demands all sorts of perfection, losslessness etc out of playback stacks, MP3s have no place in them. But these same people - like Mikey - have iPods, and cell phones, and all sorts of other things which have very finite storage space. Until we all have terabytes on our cell phones, or download all our music losslessly from the cloud, people will continue to have a need for lossy encoding of audio into the 64-192k bitrate regime. And the real point krab and others are making is that there are real mistakes being perpetrated in these encodes - there really are "good" and "bad" encoder settings - and that by not describing them, Stereophile is ultimately performing a disservice to its readers. It's easy and a cop-out to just tell people to use 320kbps MP3s. Where's the discussion about inherent preecho issues at that bitrate, and why other codecs at lower bitrates may be superior? Or any kind of discussion about which encoders to use when a lower bitrate is required?

John, I think it's really too easy for people here to question your motives given your silence on stuff like that. The impression I get about Stereophile is that it is, first and foremost, a luxury audio magazine, and should be compared to other luxury magazines than other magazines covering audio. And frankly, I can grant luxury people their snobbery, because to do otherwise is in its own way elitist. But in the absence of a magazine catering specifically to lower end audio - and the absence of reviewers and review protocols revolving around that - I think Stereophile has also, willingly or unwillingly, also taken the mantle of a magazine of authority for mainstream audio as well as high-end audio. And if the magazine can review entry-level turntables and iPod sound quality, why can't it also review low bitrate codecs? And more specifically, why can't it review them on their own terms - with ABX testing?

I mean, god, I'd write the article myself gratis if you'd let me. I'd just summarize all the collective HA wisdom into "go lossless if you can, but if you can't, and storage is at a premium; these are the encoders and settings people tend to be using at these bitrates; this is how you should be thinking about selecting a codec <...>; consider running your own ABX tests to evaluate the importance of sound quality defects." Surely that isn't that terribly misleading or contrary to the goals of the magazine.

EDIT: Note that this is very central to the original premise of the thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-05-01 00:06:56
Also, John: Alas I cannot attend the Colorado show, although I do want to. Y'all in the high end world need to do a Texas show sometime. Dallas or Houston or SA is easy for me
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-01 04:11:02
Insofar as JA's article deliberately avoided the whole issue of observed audibility of lossy encoding artifacts, and that (as I pointed out) a modern codec shows similar numerical issues, I'm not sure how important the Audition/Fraunhofer thing is in the context of the article itself.


As I said, the premise behind the article was not to use the very best examples of the breed but to show typical results.

Quote
The more important issue here is that Stereophile readers are being kept in the dark about important lossy encoding information that can and will affect their listening quality. I'll grant to John that, for the high-end audio person who demands all sorts of perfection, losslessness etc out of playback stacks, MP3s have no place in them. But these same people - like Mikey - have iPods, and cell phones, and all sorts of other things which have very finite storage space. Until we all have terabytes on our cell phones, or download all our music losslessly from the cloud, people will continue to have a need for lossy encoding of audio into the 64-192k bitrate regime. And the real point krab and others are making is that there are real mistakes being perpetrated in these encodes - there really are "good" and "bad" encoder settings - and that by not describing them, Stereophile is ultimately performing a disservice to its readers. It's easy and a cop-out to just tell people to use 320kbps MP3s. Where's the discussion about inherent preecho issues at that bitrate, and why other codecs at lower bitrates may be superior? Or any kind of discussion about which encoders to use when a lower bitrate is required?


Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.

Quote
John, I think it's really too easy for people here to question your motives given your silence on stuff like that. The impression I get about Stereophile is that it is, first and foremost, a luxury audio magazine, and should be compared to other luxury magazines than other magazines covering audio. And frankly, I can grant luxury people their snobbery, because to do otherwise is in its own way elitist. But in the absence of a magazine catering specifically to lower end audio - and the absence of reviewers and review protocols revolving around that - I think Stereophile has also, willingly or unwillingly, also taken the mantle of a magazine of authority for mainstream audio as well as high-end audio. And if the magazine can review entry-level turntables and iPod sound quality, why can't it also review low bitrate codecs?


If Stereophile has acquired that mantle,  that makes sense. But I don't believe it has.

Quote
And more specifically, why can't it review them on their own terms - with ABX testing?


Again a good point. But I'd have to reinvent who we are first. Maybe a task for the next editor. :-)

Seriously,any good magazine (and in the world of publishing, Stereophile is indeed good, as witnessed by the high price just paid for the company that owns it) basically represents the tastes, thoughts and interests of its editor. In the word of Henry Luce, "All great editors are men able to see how stories, episodes, and personalities flow and merge one into the other to reproduce the pattern of a world that only their own inner eye perceives." While I may not be a "great" editor, I am safe in saying that there are no good magazines that edited by committee. Thus the magazines stance on lossy codec stems my  own distrust of them and my feeling that in a world where storage follows Moore's Law, why bother.

Quote
I mean, god, I'd write the article myself gratis if you'd let me. I'd just summarize all the collective HA wisdom into "go lossless if you can, but if you can't, and storage is at a premium; these are the encoders and settings people tend to be using at these bitrates; this is how you should be thinking about selecting a codec <...>; consider running your own ABX tests to evaluate the importance of sound quality defects." Surely that isn't that terribly misleading or contrary to the goals of the magazine.


Food for thought. Thank you.

And sorry you won't be in Colorado. There's a chance I might be Austin later in the year, in which case we could continue this conversation over a bottle or two of Shiner Bock.


John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-01 05:48:28
Quote
Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.


Really? Were you 'asked' to show how mp3s *measure* in the ways you measured it, rather than to give an fair indication of how mp3s can sound, and why?



And it's 'close enough' to compare mp3s to junk food? That analogy makes the following dubious assumptions:


1) that the sensory difference between 'organic' foods and fast food is analogous to the sensory difference between lossless  and mp3.

2) that a burger made of 'organic ingredients' will OF COURSE taste better than a Burger King or Wendy's burger -- who will of course know which is which beforehand

3) that just as fast food is essentially not worth differentiating, neither are different mp3 settings or codecs

4) that making mp3s your entire 'diet' of audio -- regardless of settings or codec -- will degrade your audio 'health', just as a diet consisting only of fast food will turn you into a sickly undiscriminating thing


Yes, the analogy is superficial, and and like the mp3 demo you did, and the one you propose to do, it's not close enough to a fair rendering of the situation to really be called  'educational'.  What it is, is notably biased.  Since mp3s are based on perceptual lossy encoding, the 'proof' of an mp3s quality really IS in the listening, not the measurements -- one would think Stereophile of all places would embrace a paradigm like that. However,  a swarm of graphs of mp3s *does* serve excellently if one wants to pander to readers' assumptions of superior taste and discrimination instead. 


Perhaps as penance you could run an article educating your younger readers about these newfangled things called LPs, focusing the article mainly on measurements of surface noise.  Make sure you end with the observation that your investigations demonstrate that no way, no how does LP approach CD quality.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-01 11:33:38
Again a good point. But I'd have to reinvent who we are first. Maybe a task for the next editor. :-)


Perhaps you might consider that your intransigence on this one thing is going to ultimately make the next editor's job that much more difficult because you've made your mag irrelevant to practically everybody under forty by pissing on their listening preference.  How is Stereophile, its advertisers and your hobby prepared to cope with the potential loss of an entire generation?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-01 11:59:54
Again a good point. But I'd have to reinvent who we are first. Maybe a task for the next editor. :-)


Perhaps you might consider that your intransigence on this one thing is going to ultimately make the next editor's job that much more difficult because you've made your mag irrelevant to practically everybody under forty by pissing on their listening preference.


Your comment is based on a false premise, that Stereophile is irrelevant to younger people. Yes, historically our reader base has been the boomer generation, to which I belong,  but it does appear that we are getting an increasing proportion of readers under 30.

Quote
How is Stereophile, its advertisers and your hobby prepared to cope with the potential loss of an entire generation?


Advertisers are not my concern. But if there _is_ a "missing generation" among our readers, I feel it is actually Gen X not Y, ie, those now in their mid-30s.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-01 12:01:47
Perhaps you might consider that your intransigence on this one thing is going to ultimately make the next editor's job that much more difficult because you've made your mag irrelevant to practically everybody under forty by pissing on their listening preference.  How is Stereophile, its advertisers and your hobby prepared to cope with the potential loss of an entire generation?
Their business model is clearly to lay claim to as much of the sinking ship as possible.

It's not a bad business model. There are other "Hi-Fi" magazines that jumped into home cinema and lossy audio - I don't know how well they're doing, but they're contemptibly DBT-free and not particularly popular with most home cinema and lossy audio fans, who would rather get their information from the internet. So Stereophile is ahead of them.

The "lad's gadget mags" seem successful, and fun, while completely unreliable in terms of discovering the real technical performance of the items reviewed - maybe Stereophile is just a "posh" version of these magazines, and saw the niche first?

Actually, if that's true, a useful tweak to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but beautiful females across the products it photographs, e.g. an upmarket version of this (http://www.t3.com/t3girls/). Then again, it would be a bad for subscription figures to give the older readers heart attacks.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 12:30:25
Actually, if that's true, a useful weak to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but beautiful females across the products it photographs, e.g. an upmarket version of this (http://www.t3.com/t3girls/). Then again, it would be a bad for subscription figures to give the older readers heart attacks.


We're all adults here, right? We do want to appeal to Stereophile's current demographics, right?  Let me put this a gently as possible: you need to rewite the above as follows:

"Actually, if that's true, a useful weak to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but gorgeous *models* across the products it photographs"
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 13:17:50
This discussion goes to the crux of the reason why people like the Giz writers think we "need" audiophiles, and why they think those people have any more authority to speak on reality than anyone else.


The high end press has been minting profits by churning consumer paranoa for decades.  The hidden subtext in the "Everthing sounds different" myth is that everything you currently have sounds really bad, so run right out and spend the big bucks on what we advertise.

The subtext of the current Gizzy story is that people like F are our saviors, and we really need to listen to them, burn our iPods, quit downloading files, and go back to spinning vinyl on megabuck tubed equipment in dedicated listening rooms.

The current scare story that the high end press is trying to spread, is that the big bad profit-mongers in the computer and music businesses are trying to ruin us and our sacred  enjoyment of music by addicting us to degraded SQ in the form of iPods, earbuds,  and compressed music files. 

I'm not a big fan of earbuds but I dig IEMs. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-01 13:59:59
The "lad's gadget mags" seem successful, and fun, while completely unreliable in terms of discovering the real technical performance of the items reviewed - maybe Stereophile is just a "posh" version of these magazines, and saw the niche first?

Actually, if that's true, a useful [tweak] to Stereophile's business model isn't accepting DBTs - it's draping tasteful but beautiful females across the products it photographs...


:-) A Swiss magazine tried this approach in the late 1970s -- it went bust within a year. Don't remember if it espoused DBTs, however.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 14:01:50
The high end press has been minting profits by churning consumer paranoa for decades.  The hidden subtext in the "Everthing sounds different" myth is that everything you currently have sounds really bad, so run right out and spend the big bucks on what we advertise.

So what? I've always thought that in a free market, the onus was on the consumer to make informed choices, or not. Don't people have a right to sell or purchase the products they want to? Without resorting to any audio issues whatsoever, since there's going to be a segment of the population that will spend money on expensive audio gear, won't there always be companies supplying that demand? Making it sound like people are being forced to buy this stuff, is factual incorrect.

Furthermore, clearly if people are happy with their gear, what's the problem with that? As well, audio isn't the only endeavor that relies on subjective opinions in order to promote products. Isn't it unreasonable to expect only audio companies, and their promoters, to be completely "objective" and without bias?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-01 14:19:19
The consumer has limited resources for making their buying decisions. Traditionally government has taken the resposibility for safety issues, and private organizations in many cases examine quality issues. The problem is when the "private organizations" have a vested interest in the products they are testing and reporting on.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-01 14:26:25
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 14:32:45
The consumer has limited resources for making their buying decisions.

  ... completely not true at all, in fact, consumers have never had more resources! Indeed, what would you call this website?

Traditionally government has taken the resposibility for safety issues, and private organizations in many cases examine quality issues.

The government  has the responsibility to make sure my stereo is safe and companies can only sell high quality products? 

Sorry, but I feel that when people need to go to extremes in order to justify their position, they actually are demonstrating how far removed from reality they have wandered.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-01 14:42:56
The consumer has limited resources for making their buying decisions.

  ... completely not true at all, in fact, consumers have never had more resources! Indeed, what would you call this website?

Yes, HA is a resource. Not everyone has discovered HA, and there are many more websites (and magazines) where the information is overwhelmingly of the oposite kind. The average person may not have the time or intellect to determine which of the conflicting views to accept. THAT is the limited resource that I am referring to.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 14:44:40
The high end press has been minting profits by churning consumer paranoa for decades.  The hidden subtext in the "Everthing sounds different" myth is that everything you currently have sounds really bad, so run right out and spend the big bucks on what we advertise.


So what? I've always thought that in a free market, the onus was on the consumer to make informed choices, or not.


Agreed.

One of the changes that the internet put into the global siuation was that the loudest voices didn't always belong to people who bought ink by the barrel.

Quote
Don't people have a right to sell or purchase the products they want to?


Within the law, for sure.


Quote
Without resorting to any audio issues whatsoever, since there's going to be a segment of the population that will spend money on expensive audio gear, won't there always be companies supplying that demand?


*always* is a big word. Yes, there will probably always be companies who still sell buggy whips. However, market shares change, and eventually products no longer command enough attention to be worth much discussion.

Quote
Making it sound like people are being forced to buy this stuff, is factual incorrect.


Did I say forced or anything like it?

No.

You did see the discusion of straw man, right? ;-)

Quote
Furthermore, clearly if people are happy with their gear, what's the problem with that?


Did I say that was a problem that needs to be dealt with forcably?

I'm under the impression that we're in a marketplace for ideas, and so it goes.

The SP web site has their ideas, and HA and AVS has theirs.

Quote
As well, audio isn't the only endeavor that relies on subjective opinions in order to promote products.


We do have a somewhat unique situation with respect to products that are placeboes, right?

Quote
Isn't it unreasonable to expect only audio companies, and their promoters, to be completely "objective" and without bias?


Umm "completely "objective" and without bias" would be another straw man, no? Or more like from the excluded middle?

And I got whipped lately for debating style?  What's much of the above? :-(



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 14:46:30
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).

Sigh ... this is simply not true, in fact right now, there are many 'medications' that have questionable medicinal value; for example, kids cough syrup. In fact, there is an entire world of alternative, unproven, holistic 'legal' remedies in the health fields of all the countries of the first world.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-05-01 14:47:42
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).
Not really.
I guess the case could be made that Stereophile is analogous to colon cleansing and "Japanese" detox footpads.

It's certainly not a medical journal, though.

[edit] too slow.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-05-01 14:49:15
Quote
So what? I've always thought that in a free market, the onus was on the consumer to make informed choices, or not. Don't people have a right to sell or purchase the products they want to? Without resorting to any audio issues whatsoever, since there's going to be a segment of the population that will spend money on expensive audio gear, won't there always be companies supplying that demand? Making it sound like people are being forced to buy this stuff, is factual incorrect.

Furthermore, clearly if people are happy with their gear, what's the problem with that? As well, audio isn't the only endeavor that relies on subjective opinions in order to promote products. Isn't it unreasonable to expect only audio companies, and their promoters, to be completely "objective" and without bias?


Economies of scale factor into this free market. So it's folks on a budget like me who want something both high-end and low-cost (relative to $350,000) who end up having to research and pay a lot more than they ought to because of the spread of all this airy misinformation.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 15:01:18
Not everyone has discovered HA, and there are many more websites (and magazines) where the information is overwhelmingly of the oposite kind.

So what? Is it really the companies who are to blame for the current situation?

Quote
The average person may not have the time or intellect to determine which of the conflicting views to accept. THAT is the limited resource that I am referring to.

If people choose to limit themselves, then don't they have that right? Look, the information is clearly available, isn't it? If people choose not to do due diligence, what is the problem?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 15:18:06
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).

Sigh ... this is simply not true, in fact right now, there are many 'medications' that have questionable medicinal value; for example, kids cough syrup. In fact, there is an entire world of alternative, unproven, holistic 'legal' remedies in the health fields of all the countries of the first world.


I like your comparison of the high end audio scene with holistic medicine. A lot of it like most of the cable stuff, simply does no good and does no harm except distract people from effective solutions.

In some cases, taking holistic medicine is not that far from religious groups who refuse effective medical treatments. When real harm is probable, courts will take over. But, bad sound has not killed that many people. ;-)

However, some of the stuff the high end  push as being better simply sounds bad or at best substandard - it is like a wine conoisseur's magazine pushing cheap even spoiled wine in expensive bottles at sky-high prices. It's legal, but...

I've wondered for decades about how long the high end scene would survive given all their flaws. The expected decline is finally happening to some degree.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-01 15:30:06
Not everyone has discovered HA, and there are many more websites (and magazines) where the information is overwhelmingly of the oposite kind.

So what? Is it really the companies who are to blame for the current situation?

There are plenty of companies that make excellent audio equipment at reasonable prices. There are also companies that make and sell products that are way overpriced. I don't have a problem with either of these.

The problem that I have is with companies and apparently neutral reviewers who feed off of people's fears and gullibility, getting the victims to pay exhorbitant prices for products that do little or nothing for audio quality.

The FTC sometimes forces a company to remove advertising claims that they cannot substantiate. But have you ever heard of them protecting consumers of audio equipment from false claims? I haven't.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-01 15:30:20
Economies of scale factor into this free market. So it's folks on a budget like me who want something both high-end and low-cost (relative to $350,000) who end up having to research and pay a lot more than they ought to because of the spread of all this airy misinformation.

This is probably the very first time in any audio-themed prose I've seen the adjective "airy" used in a proper way.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-01 15:34:39
The FTC sometimes forces a company to remove advertising claims that they cannot substantiate. But have you ever heard of them protecting consumers of audio equipment from false claims? I haven't.

The problem with pseudoscience in this regard is that it pretty much by definition makes the vaguest claims possible. It's hard if not impossible to prosecute someone who didn't manage to align your chakras just as advertised, isn't it?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 15:40:41
Not everyone has discovered HA, and there are many more websites (and magazines) where the information is overwhelmingly of the oposite kind.

So what? Is it really the companies who are to blame for the current situation?

There are plenty of companies that make excellent audio equipment at reasonable prices. There are also companies that make and sell products that are way overpriced. I don't have a problem with either of these.


Agreed.

Is this thread on HA about envy over Fremer getting space on Gizmodo when HA doesn't?

What would it take to for HA to get its 15 minutes of fame on sites like Gizmdo, and does the HA community even want it?

Quote
The problem that I have is with companies and apparently neutral reviewers who feed off of people's fears and gullibility, getting the victims to pay exhorbitant prices for products that do little or nothing for audio quality.

The FTC sometimes forces a company to remove advertising claims that they cannot substantiate. But have you ever heard of them protecting consumers of audio equipment from false claims? I haven't.


Check this out - its been the law for maybe 40 years:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/12/amprule.shtm (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/12/amprule.shtm)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-01 15:53:27
Check this out - its been the law for maybe 40 years:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/12/amprule.shtm (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/12/amprule.shtm)

Quote
exempt advertising disseminated through the media from disclosure of total rated harmonic distortion and the associated power bandwidth and impedance ratings when a power output claim is made; and

Does this really mean that when you advertise an output power rating, you no longer have to specify at what level of total harmonic distortion? I'm shocked. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 15:56:54
Check this out - its been the law for maybe 40 years:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/12/amprule.shtm (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/12/amprule.shtm)

Quote
exempt advertising disseminated through the media from disclosure of total rated harmonic distortion and the associated power bandwidth and impedance ratings when a power output claim is made; and

Does this really mean that when you advertise an output power rating, you no longer have to specify at what level of total harmonic distortion? I'm shocked. 


That's what it says, and its pretty scary. 10% THD, here we come.

Let's hope that manufacturers don't turn FTC power into PMPO power.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 15:58:03
I like your comparison of the high end audio scene with holistic medicine. A lot of it like most of the cable stuff, simply does no good and does no harm except distract people from effective solutions.

First off, it wasn't my analogy, and secondly, aren't you just conveniently ignoring the holistic practices that may actually be beneficial, but simply haven't yet been validated by medical science? Remember the movie, "Lorenzo's Oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo%27s_Oil)"?

Quote
In some cases, taking holistic medicine is not that far from religious groups who refuse effective medical treatments. When real harm is probable, courts will take over. But, bad sound has not killed that many people. ;-)

Again I feel as if you're going to extremes. Actually, in most cases, belief in holistic medicine is far, far removed from the types of beliefs that motivate a few extremely fundamental religious groups. In truth, no one has ever been injured by choosing  to purchase some high end audio gear. The concept, like some arguments, is just silly.

Quote
However, some of the stuff the high end  push as being better simply sounds bad or at best substandard - it is like a wine conoisseur's magazine pushing cheap even spoiled wine in expensive bottles at sky-high prices. It's legal, but...

So what? Isn't a connoisseur someone who would be able to spot a cheap wine in an expensive bottle? Indeed, isn't it just a straw-man argument to compare the dishonest practices of the wine industry to all those who produce expensive audio gear?

Quote
I've wondered for decades about how long the high end scene would survive given all their flaws. The expected decline is finally happening to some degree.

Don't worry, personally, I'd bet you'll be able to wonder for the rest of your life. Clearly the high end of audio isn't going to just disappear, no matter what your dreams are. By the way, do you have any proof that sales of expensive audio gear are declining?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ron Jones on 2009-05-01 16:11:02
Insofar as JA's article deliberately avoided the whole issue of observed audibility of lossy encoding artifacts, and that (as I pointed out) a modern codec shows similar numerical issues, I'm not sure how important the Audition/Fraunhofer thing is in the context of the article itself.
As I said, the premise behind the article was not to use the very best examples of the breed but to show typical results.

Today, the "typical" MP3 is the best of the breed. I know of few retailers and even fewer individuals using low quality encoders (as I would define "low quality"). Yes, many users out there are still using FhG's encoders in whatever front-end they happen to be relying on, but the more recent versions of FhG are not what I would define as low quality.

The analogy [is]...close enough.

As krab has explained, no, it most certainly isn't.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 16:50:45
I think that us ABXers and skeptics are also arguing fallaciously when we decry all high end audio as placebo, ...

Me neither - all I'm saying is that the "it's all placebo" argument is extremely easy to dismiss.

The Placebo Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo) is brought up in a number of different places in this thread. Personally, I always wonder, is this effect as bad, or as serious, as it's being held up to be? If some individuals feel better spending money in order to believe they are hearing better, is this really a bad, or avoidable, thing? Isn't it simply true that some people will always require equipment to be expensive before they can be satisfied?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-05-01 16:53:59
It's only becomes "bad" when they start making objective quality claims about their equipment, which is 99.999% of the time.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-01 17:06:51
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).
Sigh ... this is simply not true, in fact right now, there are many 'medications' that have questionable medicinal value; for example, kids cough syrup. In fact, there is an entire world of alternative, unproven, holistic 'legal' remedies in the health fields of all the countries of the first world.
It's legal to sell them, but in the UK at least it's illegal to make unsubstantiated medical claims for them.

So they make unsubstantiated non-medical claims, or things that sound like claims, but aren't.


The Advertising Standards Agency in the UK has intervened on audio matters before - they've banned an advert claiming 64kbps HE-AAC was "CD quality", partly based on evidence gathered within this very forum.

Cheers,
David.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-01 17:10:00
Don't worry, personally, I'd bet you'll be able to wonder for the rest of your life. Clearly the high end of audio isn't going to just disappear, no matter what your dreams are. By the way, do you have any proof that sales of expensive audio gear are declining?
Judging from the equipment hat is still in existence, it seems that almost every professional person bought a good hi-fi in the 1960s.

That practice is now dead. The world has moved on. People buy big TVs and nasty surround sound systems instead, plus PCs, iPods, mobile phones etc etc - new pass times that take time and money away from "hi-fi".

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 17:11:23
I like your comparison of the high end audio scene with holistic medicine. A lot of it like most of the cable stuff, simply does no good and does no harm except distract people from effective solutions.


First off, it wasn't my analogy,


Right, I should have said "the analogy" not "your analogy". My apologies.

Quote
Quote

In some cases, taking holistic medicine is not that far from religious groups who refuse effective medical treatments. When real harm is probable, courts will take over. But, bad sound has not killed that many people. ;-)


Again I feel as if you're going to extremes.


I can't do a little hyperbole in paragraphs that end with a winking smiley? ;-)


Quote
In truth, no one has ever been injured by choosing  to purchase some high end audio gear. The concept, like some arguments, is just silly.


In effect, I said that. I said: "But, bad sound has not killed that many people.;-)"


Quote
Isn't a connoisseur someone who would be able to spot a cheap wine in an expensive bottle?


Not all of the people who read connoisseur magazines are full-fledged connoisseurs.  You are of course aware of the fact that non-connoisseurs buy magazines for connoisseurs to learn how to be one?

Besides, isn't there something strange with a magazine for connoisseurs that suggests that their readers  buy bad wine because it is good?

One difference between wine magazines and  the high end magazines is that a lot of what the high enders recommend is placebos, so people who follow their advice don't necessarily get bad sound, they just get mislead in a way that they may not ever detect.

One of the ironies is that HA tends to operate more like a good wine magazine than the high enders. We try to teach people how to test audio products in effective ways. Some of the listening tests that the high end magazines have inherent flaws along the lines of actually making everything sound the same, while convincing themselves and other people  that they sound different.

Quote
Indeed, isn't it just a straw-man argument to compare the dishonest practices of the wine industry to all those who produce expensive audio gear?


Speaking of straw men, where did I say that anybody was dishonest?

And, where did I say that all of the high end audio industry agrees with the high enders that we've been talking about?

Quote
Quote
I've wondered for decades about how long the high end scene would survive given all their flaws. The expected decline is finally happening to some degree.

Don't worry, personally, I'd bet you'll be able to wonder for the rest of your life. Clearly the high end of audio isn't going to just disappear, no matter what your dreams are.


Again, you're arguing with yourself. You are arguing extinction, while I was talking about decline.

Again, you've made a straw man argument based on what seems to be speculative thinking. How do you  know that I want the high end industry to disappear? Actually, I want the high end to reform because I think there is still big market for truely high quality sound.

Quote
By the way, do you have any proof that sales of expensive audio gear are declining?


Here we go again. I never said that I had proof that sales of expensive audio gear are declining. What I said is that I see evidence of a decline.  Now, I've got a question for you, can you see the difference between those two statements?




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-05-01 17:17:05
The Placebo Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo) is brought up in a number of different places in this thread. Personally, I always wonder, is this effect as bad, or as serious, as it's being held up to be? If some individuals feel better spending money in order to believe they are hearing better, is this really a bad, or avoidable, thing? Isn't it simply true that some people will always require equipment to be expensive before they can be satisfied?

Not in my case. 
A year ago i would have sworn up and down that i could hear the difference between lossless and a well encoded mp3.  I could hear the difference.  The mp3 was flat and lifeless.  I was leaning towards going all lossless, and would have struggled to find a portable to deal with my music collection. 

In my search i found hydrogen audio and its no-bs policy of checking your expectation bias at the door.  I did the appropriate abx tests on codec quality levels and found lame vbr -v5 was transparent to me.  Now i can happily carry a cd-quality (to me) copy of my entire collection around with me in a player that didn't require outrageous disk space.

I'd argue that the current hi-end culture will cause you to spend extra money where it's not needed, limiting your budget for things that will directly affect your music pleasure.  Sure things like build quality and aesthetics affect your pleasure as well, but with placebo and expectation bias removed, you can spend an appropriate amount of money on those things, rather than chasing pristine sound quality by spending thousands on things that are sonically no better than a well made budget rig.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 17:20:54
Here we go again. I never said that I had proof that sales of expensive audio gear are declining. What I said is that I see evidence of a decline.  Now, I've got a question for you, can you see the difference between those two statements?

No, not really. So, I'll ask again, what "evidence" do you have of a decline? It seems to me that there's more high end audio being manufactured now than ever before. Of course, that's just my opinion.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 17:27:49
I think that us ABXers and skeptics are also arguing fallaciously when we decry all high end audio as placebo, ...

Me neither - all I'm saying is that the "it's all placebo" argument is extremely easy to dismiss.

The Placebo Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo) is brought up in a number of different places in this thread. Personally, I always wonder, is this effect as bad, or as serious, as it's being held up to be? If some individuals feel better spending money in order to believe they are hearing better, is this really a bad, or avoidable, thing? Isn't it simply true that some people will always require equipment to be expensive before they can be satisfied?


You've only listed only 2 of a far longer list of problems.

The placebo-related problem that bothers me the most is all the R&D time that has been wasted chasing placebo audio.

For example, consider what Meridian could do if they weren't wasting so much effort on placebo audio?

An even stronger argument might relate to Martin Colloms. By many accounts, he can do genuinely wonderful audio engineering if you keep his nose out of the flooby dust.

And no, not *all* high end audio is about placebos. There are some high end loudspeakers that have performance that is commensurate with their price.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-01 17:32:36
Here we go again. I never said that I had proof that sales of expensive audio gear are declining. What I said is that I see evidence of a decline.  Now, I've got a question for you, can you see the difference between those two statements?

No, not really. So, I'll ask again, what "evidence" do you have of a decline?


Besides the fact that high end audio stores have all but disappeared from my area, I've heard two sucessive generations of scary reports from the high end exhibitors areas of CES.

Quote
It seems to me that there's more high end manufactures now than ever before. of course, that's just my opinion.


These days all it takes to have presence as a high end manufacturer is enough money to put up a web page. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ff123 on 2009-05-01 18:31:40
The Advertising Standards Agency in the UK has intervened on audio matters before - they've banned an advert claiming 64kbps HE-AAC was "CD quality", partly based on evidence gathered within this very forum.

Cheers,
David.


I think that was very cool.

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/articles...-CD-Quality.php (http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/articles/ASA-Say-64-kbps-AAC-is-CD-Quality.php)

Clicking on the broken picture link leads to Roberto's first test:

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/64test/results.html (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/64test/results.html)

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-01 22:53:47
Besides the fact that high end audio stores have all but disappeared from my area, I've heard two sucessive generations of scary reports from the high end exhibitors areas of CES.

So your only evidence is a personal observation about stores in your area and some marketing gossip at trade shows? I'm sorry but personally, I'm not convinced. 

Quote
These days all it takes to have presence as a high end manufacturer is enough money to put up a web page. ;-)

... and produce a product. Sorry, but my opinion concerning there being an increasing number of high end audio equipment producers still stands.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 01:15:42
Is this thread on HA about envy over Fremer getting space on Gizmodo when HA doesn't?

No, my own intention, as the original poster, was to see if there was an explanation for the experience of the author of the article. After all, here's a guy who seemed to experience an effect that doesn't really exist? Now, I'm in no way making the claim that that Fremer's system actually sounds better, however, the author certainly seemed to experience just that. Was this only the placebo effect, or self-deception based on visual cues? Personally, I think that the philosophies concerning digital integrity, double blind testing and psycho-acoustic modeling are quite correct. However, I still believe that there is an audible difference between inexpensive consumer grade systems and audiophile, or professional, systems. It is this personal belief that I was questioning.

Quote
What would it take to for HA to get its 15 minutes of fame on sites like Gizmdo, and does the HA community even want it?

Personally, I spend far more time, and effort, here at HA, then I ever will at Gizmodo. IMHO, Hydrogenaudio doesn't need fame, it has integrity, which is far more important.

Quote
The problem that I have is with companies and apparently neutral reviewers who feed off of people's fears and gullibility, getting the victims to pay exhorbitant prices for products that do little or nothing for audio quality.

Isn't getting people to purchase products at exorbitant prices, a reviewers job? In fact, isn't it scientists whose job it is to be neutral? Personally, I'm just glad that all those people are working!

Quote
The FTC sometimes forces a company to remove advertising claims that they cannot substantiate. But have you ever heard of them protecting consumers of audio equipment from false claims? I haven't.

Perhaps more advocates and consumers should complain to the FTC? Actually, I'm surprised I haven't seen many, many more dubious audio equipment claims debunked at HA.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-02 01:28:00
After all, here's a guy who seemed to experience an effect that doesn't really exist? Now, I'm in no way making the claim that that Fremer's system actually sounds better, however, the author certainly seemed to experience just that. Was this only the placebo effect, or self-deception based on visual cues?


Why are you leaving out the most plausible explanation? A volume mismatch (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=630597) has a much larger effect than placebo and visual cues. Neither did the article state that they did level matching nor is Fremer the kind of person to expect that much objectivity from.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-02 01:39:04
I thought that part was obvious: in a comparison between vinyl and iPod, all kinds of things could be wrong with the version on the iPod: loudness war / badly remastered CD, lousy lossy encoding / transcoding, inappropriate EQ applied to the recording (or maybe iPod output), file with dubious provenance downloaded for free etc etc

Or maybe the iPod file was fine, but the LP had even better mastering? (There's plenty of that - it's why I own a turntable).

Or maybe (you're going to kill me for this) the vinyl version just sounded nicer?

It does happen you know. Some things just sound subjectively nicer with a bit of messing up. Noise. Distortion. Lovely.

(am I banned yet?  )

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-05-02 02:15:06
LOL David, I was under the impression that we acknowledge the existence of euphonic distortion. Distortion exists that some people prefer to the original. Most of us like high-fidelity here, so we value distortion less than a nice, unaltered signal. You're just admitting that there's euphonic distortion that you like. Me too. I tend to prefer it when the artist applies it for me, then all I need to worry about is reproducing that distortion as accurately as possible.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 02:19:37
Why are you leaving out the most plausible explanation?

Please, rest assured, it wasn't a deliberate omission, and your point is well made, however, I just hadn't quite gotten there yet.

Personally, I wonder if greater volume is really the answer in the quest for better sound. If so, wouldn't a more powerful system always sound better, given that one could just keep turning up the volume? In fact, it seems that the more expensive, the more power, therefore a better, or more accurate, sounding system? Personally, as an explanation, greater volume alone seems a little too simplistic for me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-02 03:15:08
If so, wouldn't a more powerful system always sound better, given that one could just keep turning up the volume?


Yes, but there is a trivial limitation: your ears will hurt or even before that your neighbors will ring your doorbell.

Personally, as an explanation, greater volume alone seems a little too simplistic for me.


It's not a question of personal preference but a well studied fact. Even your hearing's frequency response sensibility differs for diverging volume levels.

Try for yourself, I have just uploaded two test samples (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71619&view=findpost&p=631441).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-02 03:33:42
Besides the fact that high end audio stores have all but disappeared from my area, I've heard two sucessive generations of scary reports from the high end exhibitors areas of CES.


So your only evidence is a personal observation about stores in your area and some marketing gossip at trade shows? I'm sorry but personally, I'm not convinced. 


Nope, but I don't know if its worth the trouble to give you a longer answer and have you misunderstand what I say and dismiss it all, anyway. :-(

Hint, the info about CES came from two long term personal friends, one of whose name you would recognize and the other who has worked behind the scenes in the audio industry for maybe 20 years. They illustrated their comments with floor plans of exhibit areas and photographs.

Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 04:45:55
Nope, but I don't know if its worth the trouble to give you a longer answer and have you misunderstand what I say and dismiss it all, anyway. :-(
Hint, the info about CES came from two long term personal friends, one of whose name you would recognize and the other who has worked behind the scenes in the audio industry for maybe 20 years. They illustrated their comments with floor plans of exhibit areas and photographs.

First off, what is it in particular that I've misunderstood? Secondly, in what way have I been dismissive? All I've asked for was the "evidence", which, so far anyways, seems to me to be simply hearsay and conjecture. Look, I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse or pedantic, I'm simply trying to make the point that you seem to have made a claim without providing any proof of it. Personally, I'm left wondering why you're so defensive about this.

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Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?

Plenty, there's a brand new turntable store selling new and used albums and CDs, the high end stores are all doing fine and the only real loss has been in the number of new music retailers, which doesn't bother me since I believe current retail CD prices are unjustified.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 05:35:17
Yes, but there is a trivial limitation: your ears will hurt or even before that your neighbors will ring your doorbell.

The point that I'm not clear on is why there seems to be a quality difference greater than can be explained by just a difference in volume levels. Yes. I do understand how important level matching is for comparison sake in controlled ABX tests, however, what about comparing two systems in terms of quality at each system's maximum comfortable listening level?

Furthermore, isn't a system's ability to produce higher volumes, within normal listening levels, important? Wouldn't the more powerful system always sound better given that the volume could simply be turned up more?

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It's not a question of personal preference but a well studied fact. Even your hearing's frequency response sensibility differs for diverging volume levels. Try for yourself, I have just uploaded two test samples (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71619&view=findpost&p=631441).

First off,  thanks, both for your patience and for the samples.  Secondly, yes I completely agree with you that volume has a major effect on hearing, however, does volume alone really explain why some systems seem to sound better to me? Perhaps simply being able to drive a competent speaker to higher sound pressure levels would explain why it seems that some audio systems seem more detailed to me. I simply don't know.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-02 11:09:37
I thought that part was obvious: in a comparison between vinyl and iPod, all kinds of things could be wrong with the version on the iPod: loudness war / badly remastered CD, lousy lossy encoding / transcoding, inappropriate EQ applied to the recording (or maybe iPod output), file with dubious provenance downloaded for free etc etc


Two words:sighted evaluation.

A:

"But then, settled into the lone leather chaise in Fremer's basement audio temple, nestled right in the sweetspot of his $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers, I hear the needle drop on Air's "Run" from Talkie Walkie. It's a song I've never heard (kind of fell off Air after overusing Moon Safari considerably), but one that I'm now listening to all the time. Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.

B:

"We play my solid 256kbps VBR MP3 of "Heroes" off my iPod; it sounds like shit. Free of pops and crackles, yes, but completely lifeless, flat in every way. This is the detail that matters: Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air. It's crazy and I've never experienced anything like it."

Of course there was no X. ;-)

In fact this has to be one of the most bogus listening comparisons that I've ever heard of. It would be totally invalid even if it were hextuple-blind.  ;-)  Read the lines, not between them. They didn't compare the using same music!

Now, let's back off a step. We all know that in reproduction systems, transducers are everything. AFAIK, this comparison was between $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers and what for all the world seems to be standard iPod earbuds. Plesae prove me wrong about this!

I've compared standard iPod earbuds to IEMs from Shure and Futuresonics that cost more than the whole freakin' iPod. But they were a pittance, mere chump change compared to $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers. They did a fine job of making the iPod eabuds sound  "...completely lifeless, flat in every way..." 

Furthermore, unlike those mental giants over at Gizmodo, I went totally freakin'crazy and actually did my comparison using the same music, even the same recording!

So, if the red badge of courage goes to people who know how to make standard iPod earbuds sound like they are "...completely lifeless, flat in every way...", it seems like you've two choices. You can spend $65,000 on Wilson MAXX3 speakers, $350,000 on the complete Fremer vinyl-analog trip, or you can sink a couple-three $hundred on some decent personal transducers for listening. ;-)

The scary part for some people is that it just might be true that some of the better mid-range IEMs sound as good if not better than the most expensive speakers around. YMMV.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-02 11:43:01
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Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?

Plenty, there's a brand new turntable store selling new and used albums and CDs, the high end stores are all doing fine and the only real loss has been in the number of new music retailers, which doesn't bother me since I believe current retail CD prices are unjustified.


Thanks for stepping into my trap. After criticizing my anecdote, you provided one of your own! ;-)

I see from your profile that you are from Canada - where in Canada?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-02 12:34:21
Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.


I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?  Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-02 12:43:04
Nope, but I don't know if its worth the trouble to give you a longer answer and have you misunderstand what I say and dismiss it all, anyway. :-(
Hint, the info about CES came from two long term personal friends, one of whose name you would recognize and the other who has worked behind the scenes in the audio industry for maybe 20 years. They illustrated their comments with floor plans of exhibit areas and photographs.

First off, what is it in particular that I've misunderstood? Secondly, in what way have I been dismissive? All I've asked for was the "evidence", which, so far anyways, seems to me to be simply hearsay and conjecture. Look, I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse or pedantic, I'm simply trying to make the point that you seem to have made a claim without providing any proof of it. Personally, I'm left wondering why you're so defensive about this.

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Tell me, what's going on with high end audio stores in your area?

Plenty, there's a brand new turntable store selling new and used albums and CDs, the high end stores are all doing fine and the only real loss has been in the number of new music retailers, which doesn't bother me since I believe current retail CD prices are unjustified.


I would argue that if "high end" audio were really doing well and weren't seriously concerned about its future then there wouldn't be a need for this scorched earth campaign against lossy compression.  You don't need a scapegoat if there's no situation that calls for one.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 14:01:14
Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.


I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?


Before I took over from J. Gordon Holt 23 years ago yesterday, yes, there were some reviews of cassette recorders: a Revox, a Tandberg, a couple of Nakamichis, the original Advent. Gordon contributed one more cassette recorder review, of the Arcam, after that date, and there might have been a couple of others, from other writers. But none for the past 20 years. The potential sound quality was not worth our attention, I felt.

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Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?


Not in Stereophile. I did commission such a test for Hi-Fi News nearly 30 years ago. There's no inconsistency here. I am not J. Gordon Holt and Hi-Fi News was then much more a mainstream magazine than it is today or Stereophile has been since I took it over. Cassettes were a convenience medium just like lossy compressed files are today.

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I would argue that if "high end" audio were really doing well and weren't seriously concerned about its future then there wouldn't be a need for this scorched earth campaign against lossy compression.


With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-02 15:28:20
With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.


It just seems to me that I see a lot of very visceral hatred for anything to do with lossy compression from folks who move around in that "high end" audio world, if not from you personally then most definitely from your rank and file subscribers.  If you Google around and wade through some of the swill that's out there then it's pretty eye opening.  Some of these cats are blaming lossy compression for everything short of 9/11.  It's my experience that people simply don't react that way to something unless they feel threatened by it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 16:17:03
Thanks for stepping into my trap. After criticizing my anecdote, you provided one of your own! ;-)

  ... and here I thought this was a discussion and it appears as if you think it's a contest. I'm sorry but I'm not interested, in debating, all I wanted was a factual reference as to a decline in high-end audio sales. All I see is that you are unable to provide one, and you've become a little emotional about it. Don't worry, it's really not that important to me anyways.

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I see from your profile that you are from Canada - where in Canada?

Alberta, which is listed in my profile; not that it's really pertinent.

Don't get me wrong, sir, in fact, I have only the highest regard for your vast knowledge, opinions, willingness to share, and personally, I'd like to thank you for your time and patience.

However, at this time, I still remain unconvinced that sighted evaluation and or volume alone accounts for all differences between any two competent audio systems. Furthermore, I wonder if the placebo effect can so easily be dismissed as a non-important factor in regards to listening enjoyment.

Powerful amplifiers and expensive speakers may just be appearance, but so far I've seen no compelling evidence that would prove that all high end audio is nothing but dishonest salesmanship. Yes, there are many biased subjective reviewers, however there is also an entire industry which apparently provides products that people actually purchase. Are you really suggesting that there is no high end or is it just that the high end is rife with dishonesty?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-02 16:39:25
You might be mixing stuff up. Most people here would agree that high end speakers really make a tremendous difference. The only issue, that has been questioned, is wether an iPod sounds like crap vs. Fremer's gramophone (and the medium's inherent physical limitations). Serious doubts apply. Volume mismatch, a crappy transcoded download, a multitude of reasons are sufficient to explain a difference. That's a side effect of an unscientific approach to audio evaluation.

PS Or the Gizmodo guy had been using the same stone age MP3 encoder as Atkinson is using for his 'demonstrations'...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 17:15:24
You are mixing stuff up.

In what way in particular?

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Most people here would agree that high end speakers really make a tremendous difference.

Sure, and so would I.

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The only issue, that has been questioned, is wether an iPod sounds like crap vs. Fremer's gramophone (and the medium's inherent physical limitations).

I think it's incorrect to narrow this down to an analog versus digital debate. Had Fremer played a CD with a high end transport, the listener's experience would have remained the same, no?

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Serious doubts apply. Volume mismatch, a crappy transcoded download, a multitude of reasons are sufficient to explain a difference.

I agree that all the these factors are important and do need to be considered, however, even given that all these factors were addressed, I still think that Fremer's system would be more acoustically accurate and more enjoyable when compared to typical consumer grade systems.

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That's a side effect of an unscientific approach to audio evaluation.

While the current levels of scientific understanding are awesome, however, they are not without limits, and it certainly doesn't invalidate the entire reality, and weight, of subjective appreciation.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-02 17:33:00
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).

Sigh ... this is simply not true, in fact right now, there are many 'medications' that have questionable medicinal value; for example, kids cough syrup. In fact, there is an entire world of alternative, unproven, holistic 'legal' remedies in the health fields of all the countries of the first world.



Yes, there are. And that is a problem, not an endorsement.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-02 17:39:04
The Placebo Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo) is brought up in a number of different places in this thread. Personally, I always wonder, is this effect as bad, or as serious, as it's being held up to be? If some individuals feel better spending money in order to believe they are hearing better, is this really a bad, or avoidable, thing? Isn't it simply true that some people will always require equipment to be expensive before they can be satisfied?


Fine, but it's inaccurate or dishonest to claim the effect reflects a performance difference intrinsic to the gear, based simply on sighted evaluation.  Could be that the only sonic difference 'exists' in the listener's head. IN medicine the placebo effect isn't caused by the ingredients in the 'Obecalp' pill per se, it's the result of the belief that the sugar pill is 'real' medicine. No one is claiming that sugar pills really are curative...if they were known to be sugar pills, they wouldn't be.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-02 17:43:14
Besides the fact that high end audio stores have all but disappeared from my area, I've heard two sucessive generations of scary reports from the high end exhibitors areas of CES.

So your only evidence is a personal observation about stores in your area and some marketing gossip at trade shows? I'm sorry but personally, I'm not convinced. 



I have no hard evidence at hand; a good survey might be to investigate number of ad pages in TAS and Stereophile across the years.  But certainly the number of magazines devoted to the audio hobby contracted since the 80's, if my local magazine store racks are any indication.  This may well be offset by a flowering of online resources.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-02 17:47:54
Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.


I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?  Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?



Heck, they review turntables and vinyl  rekkids...which, purely on a measurement basis, are clearly inferior to CD players.  THat's why an analogous essay on TTs and LPs like the one on 'typical' mp3s,  would be most amusing....albeit  most unlikely.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-02 17:59:40
Good points all. But it presupposes a role for Stereophile which is not one I intend. To resort to analogy, Stereophile is a magazine that caters to people who cook using so-called organic ingredients but is then asked if it could discuss which fast food restaurant offers food that gets closest to that experience. My answer is that I don't think it really matters; eat what you like best or for reasons of convenience -- the Wendy's is 3 blocks closer to your office than the Burger King -- but just don't make fast food your entire diet.  Obviously the analogy breaks if examined on more than a superficial level, but it's close enough.


I am obviously not familiar with your magazine's editorial history, but did Stereophile ever review cassette decks?


Before I took over from J. Gordon Holt 23 years ago yesterday, yes, there were some reviews of cassette recorders: a Revox, a Tandberg, a couple of Nakamichis, the original Advent. Gordon contributed one more cassette recorder review, of the Arcam, after that date, and there might have been a couple of others, from other writers. But none for the past 20 years. The potential sound quality was not worth our attention, I felt.

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Did you ever, at any point, evaluate different brands and types of cassette tapes and make recommendations as to which was the best?


Not in Stereophile. I did commission such a test for Hi-Fi News nearly 30 years ago. There's no inconsistency here. I am not J. Gordon Holt and Hi-Fi News was then much more a mainstream magazine than it is today or Stereophile has been since I took it over. Cassettes were a convenience medium just like lossy compressed files are today.

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I would argue that if "high end" audio were really doing well and weren't seriously concerned about its future then there wouldn't be a need for this scorched earth campaign against lossy compression.


With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


If the 'expression' and 'act' is to publish essays consisting solely of measurements of mp3s as a basis for explaining why audiophiles could/SHOULD prefer CD to them, when perceptual encoding guarantees that mp3 will 'look'  (but not necessarily *SOUND*) worse than lossless, then one is justified in suspecting that something other than mere education and entertainment is going on.  If one affects scientific rigor via bench tests, and critiques attempts and arguments pro at DBT, but does not recognize, or consistently downplays, the role of non-audio factors in 'audio' preference  -- which is to say, the broader fundamental issue of expectation biases, and the use of controls  -- then one can reasonably conclude that something more than mere education and entertainment is going on.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 19:08:29
With respect, you're making bricks without straw, here. One can express and act on a preference without there having to be a conspiracy theory underlying that behavior.


It just seems to me that I see a lot of very visceral hatred for anything to do with lossy compression from folks who move around in that "high end" audio world, if not from you personally then most definitely from your rank and file subscribers.


Does it really need to be said that while I am responsible for what I write and what I publish in Stereophile, there are many others who also hold opinions on this subject. You remind me of the Amazing Randi, who pilloried me for something that had been written by someone else in another magazine about something of which I had no experience. Yet he was unrepentant: "All cats look black in the dark!" was his retort.

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If you Google around and wade through some of the swill that's out there then it's pretty eye opening.  Some of these cats are blaming lossy compression for everything short of 9/11.  It's my experience that people simply don't react that way to something unless they feel threatened by it.


There is an equally valid hypothesis, which is that at least some of these unnamed people you mention have tried lossy compression and didn't like what they heard. I have been rereading this thread and the other on my lossy compression article and it seems that many people here feel that the null results of a specific DBT "prove" that they couldn't hear a difference. That just isn't the case: the null results of any tests can't be stretched beyond a statement that _under the specific circumstances of that test_, no difference could be perceived to a predetermined degree of statistical confidence. Just because a test is performed under double-blind conditions doesn't mean it is not possible for it to be flawed.

For example, I will offer another anecdote from my personal experience. Almost 40 years ago, I took part in a blind test at the laboratory at which I was working. The subjects, including me, compared samples of brown-colored, alcoholic liquid. When the results were analyzed, it appeared that none of us could differentiate with any statistical significance between Scotch, Bourbon, and Cognac! As this is a nonsensical result - people can identify these liquids by taste/smell in isolation without reference to any other - the test procedure must have been flawed despite being double-blind.

So while it is reasonable to be skeptical of the results of sighted listening, because their propensity for producing false positives, I feel one should also be skeptical of blind test results because of the possibility of false negatives. In the example of a recent poster to this thread who felt he could hear the difference between lossy and lossless compressed files until he took a DBT, and who now rips using the VBR LAME codec, if that had been me I would stuck with lossless, at least for the primary rips. What happens when he eventually learns to hear that artefact of which he had been previously been oblivious or which had not been unmasked by the program used for the DBT? Is he really going to rip all his CDs for a second time?

And why _not_ use less compression than you think you might be comfortable with? I still don't comprehend what damage is being done to people by recommending they use lossless or even higher bitrate lossy coding than they might expect? As I said, hard-drive space is ridiculously cheap these days, and only the obsessively parsimonious would be bothered by the wasted resource. Good grief, when I first started recording with a computer in 1993, hard drives cost $1000/gigabyte! These days, if your 500GB drive has filled up with lossless files, just spend $79 on another drive!

John Atkinson
Editor, Sterephile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-05-02 19:25:07
DBT proves nothing. It gives a statistical probability that the individual being tested perceives a difference between two choices. To criticize double-blind testing for providing potentially false negatives is quite nonsensical. They can also provide potentially false positives as well. This is not an inherent limitation of double-blind testing but rather an inherent limitation of statistics and science! Software helps us remove the flaws. For example, there is very little that can go wrong with foobar2000's ABX comparator. The ability to produce invalid test results through invalid procedure is completely consistent with scientific methodologies in other fields.

Yes, people can learn to distinguish artifacts where perhaps they did not notice any before. However, the artifacting in LAME has become progressively less as development has gone on.

Your alcohol example makes me wonder. There are many ways you could have potentially improved your result: pre-training with each of the separate liquors beforehand, cleansing the palate between different samples, and I'm sure there are others. I am inclined to believe the results of the test: you were unable to distinguish the liquors. Here we come to another question though: how many attempts did you make? As you get progressively drunker, your ability to distinguish is also bound to lose some accuracy. However, without sufficient attempts, you have no way to analyze that statistical relevance of your tests. Without 5/5 perfect attempts, you don't even make it past the 95% confidence interval!

Double-blind testing provides quantitative results and is not subject to placebo. Subjective evaluation provides qualitative results and is very subject to placebo. That's the difference.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-02 19:58:19
Heck, they review turntables and vinyl  rekkids...which, purely on a measurement basis, are clearly inferior to CD players.  THat's why an analogous essay on TTs and LPs like the one on 'typical' mp3s,  would be most amusing....albeit  most unlikely.


Quote
If the 'expression' and 'act' is to publish essays consisting solely of measurements of mp3s as a basis for explaining why audiophiles could/SHOULD prefer CD to them, when perceptual encoding guarantees that mp3 will 'look' (but not necessarily *SOUND*) worse than lossless, then one is justified in suspecting that something other than mere education and entertainment is going on. If one affects scientific rigor via bench tests, and critiques attempts and arguments pro at DBT, but does not recognize, or consistently downplays, the role of non-audio factors in 'audio' preference -- which is to say, the broader fundamental issue of expectation biases, and the use of controls -- then one can reasonably conclude that something more than mere education and entertainment is going on.


Ya know...My relationship with vinyl is nonexistent.  I've never owned a record or a turntable.  When I started buying music around 1983 or so, when I was twelve, I bought cassette tapes and then I moved to CDs in 1987.  It was still a combination of CDs and homemade cassettes for me all the way up until 2004 when I got a Zen Xtra and first started ripping my CDs.  At that point I was finally able to drop cassettes which were pretty much the bane of my existence anyway. 

Now even though I have no interest in vinyl and its Jules Verne/Terry Gilliam tech and rituals and I prefer to get my music through other media you would never catch me trashing vinyl or belittling those who like it in the way that some vinyl aficionados feel 100% free to trash all things digital, proclaim the superiority of vinyl, the suckitude of iPods, mp3, AAC etc. and generally lord their audio supremacy over all they survey.  I find that sort of thing pretentious at best and remarkably akin to finding some Jehovah's Witnesses at your door at worst.  Anyway, I think that essay on vinyl with the graphs and so forth that you described above would be a real hoot.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-02 20:00:06
There is an equally valid hypothesis, which is that at least some of these unnamed people you mention have tried lossy compression and didn't like what they heard.
It is not equally valid unless steps were taken to ensure that their opinions were strictly limited to what was heard.

Just because a test is performed under double-blind conditions doesn't mean it is not possible for it to be flawed.
It certainly comes a lot closer to revealing the ability to distinguish differences that a completely ill-conceived article using graphs to demonstrate differences, leading people to make erroneous conclusions about what they think they hear!

people can identify these liquids by taste/smell in isolation without reference to any other - the test procedure must have been flawed despite being double-blind.
...and those people should be more than capable of matching sample x to sample a, b or c.  Last time I checked, taste and smell do not require sight.

I sure love the arguing: ABX tests can be flawed, therefore all ABX tests are flawed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 20:12:20
DBT proves nothing. It gives a statistical probability that the individual being tested perceives a difference between two choices. To criticize double-blind testing for providing potentially false negatives is quite nonsensical.


Not at all. Having taken part in many blind tests organized by others, I have witnessed examples of poor experimental design that have led to null results even when a real but small difference existed.

I am sorry but I can't remember the details of the blind liquor tests that produced non-identification. I don't recall there being anything obviously questionable about the test design. We didn't have our nostrils blocked, for example. As I said, this was nearly 40 years ago. All that has stuck all this time are the paradoxical results.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-02 20:16:11
"Some people don't set up proper ABX tests, so results from ABX tests in the case of differentiating lossless from lossy are not trustworthy."

"I can't believe the results, therefore it is not likely that they could have been true."

It seems as though this is what you want people to come away thinking.

So John, it seems that you must be close to 60.  How good is your HF response?  Have you had your hearing checked lately? 

Have you bothered to test one of the current lossy codecs correctly, or are you afraid that you won't be able to demonstrate that you can hear a difference?

You must be aware that your credibility is at stake.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 20:16:47
I sure love the arguing: ABX tests can be flawed, therefore all ABX tests are flawed.


No-one has said that, at least I haven't. What I an saying is that the results of a double-blind test cannot to be considered definitive on the grounds _alone_  that it is was performed double-blind. The experimental design and the circumstances of the test need to be take into consideration.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-05-02 20:24:02
Precisely.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-02 20:50:20
quote]
Does it really need to be said that while I am responsible for what I write and what I publish in Stereophile, there are many others who also hold opinions on this subject. You remind me of the Amazing Randi, who pilloried me for something that had been written by someone else in another magazine about something of which I had no experience. Yet he was unrepentant: "All cats look black in the dark!" was his retort.


OK...Let's talk about this picture.

(http://www.stereophile.com/images/archivesart/308mps.1.jpg)

Obviously, this is an attention getter that makes you want to scroll down, but what is the meaning behind it?  What is the intention here?  Sgt. Pepper's... is one of those watershed kind of albums in pop music history with, arguably, the most famous and instantly recognizable album cover shot ever.  It's a cultural touchstone with a lot of symbolic power for millions of people who came of age during the era in which it was released. 

So I click on the link to your article and I'm instantly confronted with a distorted and pixelated version of this famous image.  What is that all about?  It's a little shocking and disorienting at first glance.  It seems to me that the most obvious implication is that lossy compression will do precisely to the music on Sgt. Pepper's... what you have done to the cover.  (Not true, because I listened to Sgt. Pepper's... on my iPod two weeks ago and if it had sounded as bad as that picture looks then I would have thrown that iPod out the window right then and there.) Now you might go with the "sometimes a picture is just a picture" defense, but I would also argue that you are, by extension, implying that lossy compression is eroding and diminishing not just the music, but that whole rock subculture of albums, bands and concerts with the fragrant scent of marijuana wafting through the air of which Sgt. Pepper's provided kind of a symbolic jumping off point.  In other words, that picture of yours strikes me as a sort of dog whistle for baby boomer audiophile types that their culture and their very way of life is under attack.  If that's not a deliberate attempt to be provocative and inflame passions then I don't know what is.

Clearly lossy compression has destroyed The Beatles' music.  The dream is over.  What can I say?  It has destroyed their music so utterly that they are being forced to rerelease their whole catalog in a few months in order to replace all those copies in all those different formats and configurations around the world that have been destroyed by the scourge of lossy compression.  Like I said a few pages back with apologies to Frank Capra:  "Every time somebody listens to Sgt. Pepper's in lossy some angels get stoned and look for clues to Paul McCartney's death in the album cover."
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 20:53:30
So John, it seems that you must be close to 60.  How good is your HF response?  Have you had your hearing checked lately?


Last standard test was at the audiologist's about 18 months ago. Of course, that only extends up to 8kHz but my hearing still falls into the range considered "normal" in both ears. Regarding HF sensitivity, I check this pretty much on a continual basis, when I test loudspeaker impedance. I use a stepped tone starting at 50kHz and moving downward in frequency in small increments. As I am sitting in front of the Audio Precision during the test, I routinely note what frequency is being displayed when I can first hear the tone produced by the loudspeaker (which is not very loud, around 75dB spl). Currently I can't detect the sound until it reaches approximately 15.5kHz. Using headphones, however, I can still hear the "mosquito tone" that teenagers are supposed to be able to hear without having to play the file excessively loud.

As someone professionally involved in listening, I do try to protect my hearing. I wear earplugs when flying and when on the subway, for example.

And now that I have answered your questions as fully and honestly as possible, I suggest that everyone else on this forum supplies the same information: age, the time of their last visit to the audiologist; whether they have any noted deficiencies; and a reasonable estimate of their upper-frequency cutoff.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-02 20:57:51
17.5 kHz and I'm in my late 30s.

As far as acknowledging all of my points, with all respect, you most certainly have not.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 20:58:12
OK...Let's talk about this picture.

(http://www.stereophile.com/images/archivesart/308mps.1.jpg)


Why? Did the use of lossy compression render it anonymous?

Quote
Obviously, this is an attention getter that makes you want to scroll down, but what is the meaning behind it?  What is the intention here?  Sgt. Pepper's... is one of those watershed kind of albums in pop music history with, arguably, the most famous and instantly recognizable album cover shot in pop history with a lot of symbolic power.  It's also a cultural touchstone for millions of people who came of age during the era in which it was released.


So you _did_ recognize it. Obviously my art director didn't try hard enough :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 21:01:55
Quote
And now that I have answered your questions as fully and honestly as possible, I suggest that everyone else on this forum supplies the same information: age, the time of their last visit to the audiologist; whether they have any noted deficiencies; and a reasonable estimate of their upper-frequency cutoff.


17.5 kHz and I'm in my late 30s.


Thank you. And the date of your last audiologist test? And whether you have any deficiencies noted on that test?

Quote
As far as acknowledging all of my points, with all respect, you most certainly have not.


With respect, my statement  concerned your questions about my hearing. I thought my answer complete.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Slipstreem on 2009-05-02 21:05:08
If the intention was to give the impression of lossy versus lossless, wouldn't it have been more accurate to show a BMP of the image immediately next to a typically compressed JPG of the same image? Oh, wait! Nobody would have seen any difference.

Cheers, Slipstreem. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kornchild2002 on 2009-05-02 21:18:49
yes slipstreem, that would have been more accurate than trying to show the differences with that picture (of which simply can't be correlated with lossy audio compression).  I have seen the use of pictures like that before and it is yet another way to misrepresent lossy encoding.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 21:22:51
IN medicine the placebo effect isn't caused by the ingredients in the 'Obecalp' pill per se, it's the result of the belief that the sugar pill is 'real' medicine. No one is claiming that sugar pills really are curative...if they were known to be sugar pills, they wouldn't be.

Actually there's Placebo Awareness Phenomena
Quote
However, one classic 1965 study, despite having no control group and suffering from a sample size of only 14 individuals, suggests that patients can improve significantly by taking a placebo even when aware of the placebo condition. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Awareness) ~ Wikipedia

... and then there's one of my favorite placebo facts:
Quote
Proper adherence to placebos have been found to decrease mortality. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Expectancy_effect) ~ Wikipedia

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-02 21:28:19
Using headphones, however, I can still hear the "mosquito tone" that teenagers are supposed to be able to hear without having to play the file excessively loud.
Do you have a link to this tone so that I can have a listen?

Thank you. And the date of your last audiologist test?
A very long time ago.  Other than that I think I have a mild case of tinnitus I haven't seen the need to see an audiologist.

With respect, my statement  concerned your questions about my hearing. I thought my answer complete.
I can't say I find this response as much of a surprise.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: zipr on 2009-05-02 21:47:25
Using headphones, however, I can still hear the "mosquito tone" that teenagers are supposed to be able to hear without having to play the file excessively loud.
Do you have a link to this tone so that I can have a listen?


You can download the tone here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687)

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-02 21:47:38
Using headphones, however, I can still hear the "mosquito tone" that teenagers are supposed to be able to hear without having to play the file excessively loud.
Do you have a link to this tone so that I can have a listen


The tone I downloaded was an MP3 file with a single 15kHz tone at -6dBFS. I couldn't find the  specific site I downloaded it from. Here's a generic link: http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/ (http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/).

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-02 22:16:38
Two words:sighted evaluation.... In fact this has to be one of the most bogus listening comparisons that I've ever heard of. It would be totally invalid even if it were hextuple-blind.  ;-)  Read the lines, not between them. They didn't compare the using same music!

Yes, I agree, it wasn't at all, in any way objective or scientific; however, this isn't the same issue that I'm talking about. What interested me was the quality of this particular completely subjective experience. Did the listener experience what he claimed? It seems so, doesn't it? Now, I'm not claiming anything other than trying to point out that quality of his experience seemed to transcend far beyond what would have been heard through an ordinary, consumer grade audio system. To me it it seems as if some are claiming that his experience wasn't real and was nothing more than self-deception combined with hyperbole and or artistic license. Personally, I wonder as I've seemingly had similar experiences.

Quote
Now, let's back off a step. We all know that in reproduction systems, transducers are everything. AFAIK, this comparison was between $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers and what for all the world seems to be standard iPod earbuds. Plesae prove me wrong about this!

In fact, I completely agree with your point that a comparison isn't meaningful or in anyway useful, however, I'm not interested in the comparison or in his earbuds at all. What interests me is in replicating the quality of his original experience, if at all possible.

Quote
So, if the red badge of courage goes to people who know how to make standard iPod earbuds sound like they are "...completely lifeless, flat in every way...", it seems like you've two choices. You can spend $65,000 on Wilson MAXX3 speakers, $350,000 on the complete Fremer vinyl-analog trip, or you can sink a couple-three $hundred on some decent personal transducers for listening. ;-)

Comparing different earbuds, headphones and speakers would be interesting, but once again it seems as if you're just beating around the bush, while I'm trying to grasp the nettle.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-03 00:02:13
OK, now I'm confused.

As a recovering audiophile, I have started conducting at-home ABX tests through my own system. These could be more thorough (they could be double-blind, but I had enough trouble convincing the Missus to help me conduct such tests... bring in a third party and she'll think it's some kind of musical sex game) but so far when comparing ALAC and 256kbps AAC through my Mac Mini played through the system, I got things right five times out of the twelve tests conducted. I need to conduct more tests, but the chances of me spotting a difference is looking grim.

For the record, the rest of the system comprises a Sugden integrated amp and a pair of ProAc loudspeakers that I've had for several years.

So why confused? A client of mine is really into his high-end gear, and uses Spectral amps with Peak Consult speakers. His whole system cost about as much as a good Mercedes. He knows about my fall from audiophile grace and we got talking about the Fremer piece (he reads Stereophile). So, I asked him if I could bring my Mac Mini over and we could run the same ABX tests there. He agreed. First, I acted as operator, and I got to run four tests on him, and he got them right four times out of four. No struggle, either - he aced each one in seconds flat. I made sure I was turned away from him and that he couldn't see my iPod Touch I use as remote control for the test, so I tried to eliminate bias as much as possible in a single-blind test. I tried the same test twice and could clearly (and quickly) spot the difference between lossless and AAC, but his enthusiasm for 'better quality' and inexperience with running iTunes meant I was likely being biased by his testing skills. He also played me the same piece of music on my Mac Mini running lossless and his Esoteric SACD player - again I could differentiate the two clearly, but I can't vouch for precise level matching.

The thing that really got me was the speed of evaluation. On my system at home, I'd spend time listening to X trying to hear minute differences, to see whether this was A or B; here, it was an instant thing, the gulf between lossless and AAC appeared so wide (on one of my tests, I didn't even get to the music... the applause sounded like applause on lossless and like applause with quietly popping popcorn mixed in on AAC). When I returned home, I couldn't determine this difference through my system at all and I had to really struggle to hear this through headphones run from the back of the Mac. His system was not played appreciably louder than mine, but the room was bigger and there was more bass going on - I've got an old King Tubby track that had actual bass notes where there are just ill-defined parpy rumbles at my place.

So what's happening? I know the number of tests is very low, but how come the difference is so wide in one system and so small in another? It's not an easy test to replicate (unless you have tens of thousands lying round to replicate his system... he was already starting to question the need to run the test again after the second time, so the chances of re-evaluating this test is remote) but does this mean it's time to go back to the audiophile fold after all?

 






Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 00:12:21
So what's happening?

My hypothesis is that the audiophile speakers, and a high power amp, allow for greater discrimination due to greater resolution and higher sound pressure levels. As well, it may be a better environment, acoustically speaking.

PS. How would someone properly test this hypothesis?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 01:48:34
I sure love the arguing: ABX tests can be flawed, therefore all ABX tests are flawed.


It's worse than that.  Essentially what John is arguing is that he participated in a blind test with a strange outcome more than 20 years ago involving beverages, all blind tests are flawed.  His other blind test anecdote involving an amplifier is even stranger than that, because it's not clear that there was anything wrong with it at all.

Here's how blind tests worked out for me.

Before the ABX comparator there was the X identification box. The X Identifier simply presented a sequence of randomly-chosen unknowns which were either A or B, and the listener without an opportunity to compare the unknown to any references, was required to identify each of 16 Xs.  When I tried it, I had some serious doubts about it, but I did try it on some volunteers. The consensus was that it was hopeless. A few weeks of contemplating the situation and out came the ABX Comparator.

My point is that the X Identifier sounds a lot like John's blind beverage test, only in the beverage test there were more than two alternatives. That makes it even more hopeless.

And now more then 20 years later and uncounted number of ABX Compators succesfully in operation, John is still trying to give us nightmares about his bad blind beverage test way back then.

Before I was married, I had a number of really bad dates. If my mind worked like John's, I'd still be a batchelor, I guess. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 01:55:00
So what's happening?

My hypothesis is that the audiophile speakers, and a high power amp, allow for greater discrimination due to greater resolution and higher sound pressure levels. As well, it may be a better environment, acoustically speaking.

PS. How would someone properly test this hypothesis?


How about this: Compare the audiophile speakers and high powered amp to some equally high quality but non-audiophile speakers (e.g. speakers designed for use in audio production) and amplifier, by running some challenging but diable ABX tests with them, alternating sound systems for each trial over an excessivly large number of trials. Thus the effects of listener training would be divided up equally between the systems.  Then see which system enabled the listener to get the best scores.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 01:58:10
Most people here would agree that high end speakers really make a tremendous difference.


Then I guess most people here lack experience with some of the better speakers made for use while doing audio production.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 02:29:17
How about this: Compare the audiophile speakers and high powered amp to some equally high quality but non-audiophile speakers and amplifier, by running some challenging but diable ABX tests with them, alternating sound systems for each trial over an excessivly large number of trials.

Sounds do-able. What's the best way of handling the ABX switching? My problem is the time it takes to rewire makes definite direct comparisons quite difficult.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 03:15:51
How about this: Compare the audiophile speakers and high powered amp to some equally high quality but non-audiophile speakers and amplifier, by running some challenging but diable ABX tests with them, alternating sound systems for each trial over an excessivly large number of trials.

Sounds do-able. What's the best way of handling the ABX switching? My problem is the time it takes to rewire makes definite direct comparisons quite difficult.


Rewire? 

Background - Hardware ABX has traditionally been done using ABX CS-5 logic and display modules driving and RM-2 relay modules. You can find more details about them here:

http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_hdwr.htm (http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_hdwr.htm)

There's two parts to a setup like this - one ABX Compator logic and display modules controls two relay modules via TTL signals. Each relay module controls  the ABX switching in one system. So now you have two systems doing ABX tests in parallel. Then, via separate relays, you mute the speakers of the system you don't want to listen to.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-05-03 05:01:21
I made sure I was turned away from him and that he couldn't see my iPod Touch I use as remote control for the test, so I tried to eliminate bias as much as possible in a single-blind test. I tried the same test twice and could clearly (and quickly) spot the difference between lossless and AAC, but his enthusiasm for 'better quality' and inexperience with running iTunes meant I was likely being biased by his testing skills.


According to what you've described, I'm afraid the experiment doesn't suffice, not only in terms of the number of trials, because it wasn't done double-blind. You may have had your backs turned but the vocal inflections could have given away the answer.

From a distant recollection of mid-1990s undergrad psychology: there was a study on how subjects who were hypnotised to regress to their 10th (?) birthday in childhood appeared to be 80% accurate in their answer to the question of what day of the week it was (thus seeming to prove the "authenticity" of their regressed state).
[Google says: R. M. True, "Experimental control in hypnotic age regression states" (1949)]
Attempts to reproduce the result couldn't get beyond ~15% (i.e. 1/7, or what would be expected at random); the original researcher had skewed the results by posing the question verbally in the form of "Was it a Monday? [y/n] Was it a Tuesday? [y/n]... etc" until he got a "yes". He had calculated in advance what the right answers were, and apparently the subjects were able to get an 80% result entirely by guessing from the tone of his voice.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: botface on 2009-05-03 10:44:14
Does the placebo effect work in reverse? IOW if I'm convinced there is no difference between two samples does that mean I'm less likely to hear a difference that really does exist?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 11:03:50
Does the placebo effect work in reverse? IOW if I'm convinced there is no difference between two samples does that mean I'm less likely to hear a difference that really does exist?


Maybe.

It depends on how people respond to their disbelief.

Many people will blow these things off, and many other people will give it a heck of a try, anyway.

There is a phrase "suspending disbelief" which describes a common human behavior.  It is easier to suspend disbelief if you know that this can lead to knowning the true facts in the end.

A good attitude is "I'll give myself over to this thing, because that's the only way to know the truth about it".

OTOH, it is always best if people who are whole-hearted advocates of something do the tests. I've been in many situations where that is the case.

In many group and individual ABX tests I've been involved with, there is a sort of transformation where people start believing that they *are* hearing a difference, regardless of what they believed coming in.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 11:12:08
I sure love the arguing: ABX tests can be flawed, therefore all ABX tests are flawed.


No-one has said that, at least I haven't.


Perhaps not in so many words. However, this litany anecdotes about bad DBTs from zillions of years ago paint a certain picture.

It first and foremost paints a picture of DBT being a failure, because all we hear about are the failures and purported failures.

The no-so-hidden subtext is that DBT critics tend to be living in the past, which is reinforced by their opinons of modern technology.

Note that many of the MP3 critics we've been talking about are still uncomfortable with digital *in any form". Forget about perceptual coding, they are still fighting a hot war against PCM in any form. Its not as good as analog, is what they keep saying.

Quote
What I an saying is that the results of a double-blind test cannot to be considered definitive on the grounds _alone_  that it is was performed double-blind. The experimental design and the circumstances of the test need to be take into consideration.


Which brings up another point, which is that people who base their reputations with sighted evalatuions are showing their practical ignorance of experiemental design as it has been for the past 30 or more years. They may know about the walk, but they don't go there.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-03 12:03:59
According to what you've described, I'm afraid the experiment doesn't suffice, not only in terms of the number of trials, because it wasn't done double-blind. You may have had your backs turned but the vocal inflections could have given away the answer.


Except that I didn't speak, and told the guy in advance why I was staying silent for the duration of each test. I wrote 'A', 'B' and '?' on three pieces of paper. I just held up one at a time. 


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-03 12:07:01
Which AAC codec or iTunes version have you used to produce the AACs?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-03 12:14:11
I sure love the arguing: ABX tests can be flawed, therefore all ABX tests are flawed.


No-one has said that, at least I haven't.


Perhaps not in so many words.


That's exactly my point, Mr. Krueger. Please address what I took the care actually to write, not what others have written, nor what you project what I might have written.

Thank you.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-03 12:17:02
I thought that part was obvious: in a comparison between vinyl and iPod, all kinds of things could be wrong with the version on the iPod: loudness war / badly remastered CD, lousy lossy encoding / transcoding, inappropriate EQ applied to the recording (or maybe iPod output), file with dubious provenance downloaded for free etc etc


Two words:sighted evaluation.
Yes, but given that the defects of vinyl were clearly audible, it would be impossible to do blind. Then again, what was this young person's expectation bias?

Quote
Now, let's back off a step. We all know that in reproduction systems, transducers are everything. AFAIK, this comparison was between $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers and what for all the world seems to be standard iPod earbuds. Please prove me wrong about this!
I assumed, maybe wrongly, that "we play ... off my iPod" meant hooking the iPod up to Fremer's system. Makes more sense, surely?

Otherwise, we're doing a (big) speakers vs (mediocre) headphones comparison, which would be worse than pointless to prove anything about the source formats.


If we'd been a bit more polite to Fremer here, he might still be around to ask.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-03 12:25:53
Which AAC codec or iTunes version have you used to produce the AACs?


iTunes 8.1.1
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-03 12:25:58
Except that I didn't speak, and told the guy in advance why I was staying silent for the duration of each test. I wrote 'A', 'B' and '?' on three pieces of paper. I just held up one at a time.


I'm not in the position to definitely claim that your results are flawed. It may be that you friend's setup really is able to unmask some artifacts*. You have shown serious willingness to investigate the issue with scientific accuracy and have indeed found some notable outcome. If I was you, I would go the extra step and try it double blind to be really sure. As far you have just eliminated voice while body language probably carries at least as much unconscious information as the latter. DBTs are preferred over single blind in science for a reason.



* Lossy codecs are designed for a flat frequency response of the playback system. Because of that artifacts tend to become even less audible when you approach a perfect setup. Imperfections of cheap speakers can unmask artifacts that would otherwise be masked instead.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-03 12:31:53
I'm not in the position to definitely claim that your results are flawed. It may be that you friend's setup really is able to unmask some artifacts*. You have shown serious willingness to investigate the issue with scientific accuracy and have indeed found some notable outcome. If I was you, I would go the extra step and try it double blind to be really sure. As far you have just eliminated voice while body language probably carries at least as much unconscious information as the latter.



* Lossy codecs are designed for a flat frequency response of the playback system. Because of that artifacts tend to become even less audible when you approach a perfect setup. Imperfections of cheap speakers can unmask artifacts that would otherwise be masked instead.


I'd like to do more, but I hit the boredom threshold on the part of the system owner. As he's more 'client' than 'friend', I don't want to push the issue much further.

And yes, I couldn't eliminate body language. So there might be bias in there anyway. I'm not discounting that at all.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 12:34:54
I sure love the arguing: ABX tests can be flawed, therefore all ABX tests are flawed.


No-one has said that, at least I haven't.


Perhaps not in so many words.


That's exactly my point, Mr. Krueger. Please address what I took the care actually to write, not what others have written, nor what you project what I might have written.



Well John, when you stop cherry-pcking the points that I raise, and stop censoring most of my post from your replies, we might get somewhere.

As things stand, you said nothing new that merits a response, other than to complain about how you run and hide from the issues.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-03 12:47:25
I thought that part was obvious: in a comparison between vinyl and iPod, all kinds of things could be wrong with the version on the iPod: loudness war / badly remastered CD, lousy lossy encoding / transcoding, inappropriate EQ applied to the recording (or maybe iPod output), file with dubious provenance downloaded for free etc etc


Two words:sighted evaluation.
Yes, but given that the defects of vinyl were clearly audible, it would be impossible to do blind. Then again, what was this young person's expectation bias?

Quote
Now, let's back off a step. We all know that in reproduction systems, transducers are everything. AFAIK, this comparison was between $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers and what for all the world seems to be standard iPod earbuds. Please prove me wrong about this!
I assumed, maybe wrongly, that "we play ... off my iPod" meant hooking the iPod up to Fremer's system. Makes more sense, surely?


Well, the first exploding red light is the fact that they didn't compare the same basic recordings. Not even the same artists. Since I'm not familiar with what they did listen to, I don't even know if it was the same genre.

;-) Let me paraphrase the Gizmodo article with a big hammer in my hand:  "We compared a Tosconini Beethoven Symphony to a little Black Sabbath and based on that, we decided that standard Sennheiser headphone cables suck compared to Cardas." ;-)

Since there's nothing in the article saying that happened, I'm safe in assuming that a hook up didn't happen.

Given what I know about Fremer, I'm wondering how long he'd have to re-burn-in his $350,000 system after he pulled the iPod back out. ;-)

Quote
Otherwise, we're doing a (big) speakers vs (mediocre) headphones comparison, which would be worse than pointless to prove anything about the source formats.


All logic and reason was lost when they didn't compare the same basic recordings. Let's not haggle over nits.

IMO, the whole point of the article was to slam (relatively) new audio technology, and glorify vinyl, old tech and old men. It's a sales pitch, not solid science!  Remember,  doing good comparisons is a slippery slope of its own. First you hook up the iPod to the same speakers, then you start matching levels, conceal the identity of what's playing at the moment,  then a little time-synching and before you know what happens, you actually have a fair comparison!  BTW, imagine what you'd have to pay for an iPod cable for a $350,000 stereo system, being careful to stay within their value system.

Quote
If we'd been a bit more polite to Fremer here, he might still be around to ask.


I know some people actually believe that, but in fact that is an idealistic expectation.  It is all about image. Look at how Atkinson cherry-picks points to reply to. Look at how people here get distracted by that. 

I was just over on Harley's site and noticed all of the posts of mine that they've deleted behind my back. There's a big part of the high end mentality about not giving the civilians fair breaks.

If being fair was an important value of theirs, they'd do fair comparisons. It is as simple as that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-03 14:14:48
OK...Let's talk about this picture.

(http://www.stereophile.com/images/archivesart/308mps.1.jpg)


Why? Did the use of lossy compression render it anonymous?

Quote
Obviously, this is an attention getter that makes you want to scroll down, but what is the meaning behind it?  What is the intention here?  Sgt. Pepper's... is one of those watershed kind of albums in pop music history with, arguably, the most famous and instantly recognizable album cover shot in pop history with a lot of symbolic power.  It's also a cultural touchstone for millions of people who came of age during the era in which it was released.


So you _did_ recognize it. Obviously my art director didn't try hard enough :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Since you're the Editor, Big Cheese, Big Kahuna, Head Honcho, etc. that picture was either your own idea or you approved it.  Otherwise it wouldn't be there.  Since the appearance of that image is not remotely analogous to the way that the music of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band actually sounds when presented in mp3 or aac even at the lowly and much maligned 128kbps CBR bitrate and since you are obviously knowledgeable and intelligent enough to be fully aware that your image choice isn't analogous then the only possible conclusion is that the image in question represents a deliberate attempt to mislead and misinform.  The only thing at issue, then, is your intention behind misleading and misinforming.  Is it simply an act of sloppy, sensationalistic, tabloid style journalism on your part?  Is it an attempt to stir up the pot?  Is it a little bit of both?

All this has got me wondering if pixelated Beatles are bigger than pixelated Jesus, but since we don't have any actual pictures of Jesus to pixelate the answer must remain an eternal mystery of the ages.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-05-03 14:18:44
If the intention was to give the impression of lossy versus lossless, wouldn't it have been more accurate to show a BMP of the image immediately next to a typically compressed JPG of the same image?

I have respect for the way you keep participating in this discussion, Mr. Atkinson. Even though you get some nasty responses you keep calm and respectfull yourself. But I think it's rather disturbing that we have to explain to the editor of a famous audio magazine that pixilating an image has nothing to do with how lossy audio compression works.

I assume you just not know how lossy audio compression works (otherwise it would mean you're fooling your readers). Isn't it time that you - or one of your writers - look into that and publish an article about it? As objective as possible? Lossy compression is a very important part of todays music industry! I'm sure your readers wil find that interesting.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-03 14:54:15
Pixelation would actually be a jab against digital vs. analog. In this case it might represent something like 1K samples per second and 4 bit resolution.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-05-03 15:08:22
Pixelation would actually be a jab against digital vs. analog. In this case it might represent something like 1K samples per second and 4 bit resolution.

But then you forget that after an A->D->A conversion you recreate the original continuous signal + quantization noise (not discrete "pixilated" audio). So even in that case the picture won't make sense. But that's a different discussion
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-05-03 15:51:16
I know some people actually believe that, but in fact that is an idealistic expectation.  It is all about image. Look at how Atkinson cherry-picks points to reply to. Look at how people here get distracted by that.


Actually, Mr. Atkinson's evasiveness has been repeatedly commented on, and seems to be quite apparent to most here. I don't think he's scoring any points at all with that little trick.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 16:05:56
I know some people actually believe that, but in fact that is an idealistic expectation.  It is all about image. Look at how Atkinson cherry-picks points to reply to. Look at how people here get distracted by that.


Actually, Mr. Atkinson's evasiveness has been repeatedly commented on, and seems to be quite apparent to most here. I don't think he's scoring any points at all with that little trick.

There's not one poster in this thread who couldn't be accused of, in some manner, cherry-picking or evasiveness, myself included. It is my belief that singling out the behavior, and therefore becoming dismissive, of those opposed to ones own beliefs is sure sign of closed-mindedness. Furthermore I'd personally like to thank each and every poster to this thread for sharing their perspective in order that we may clearly see all sides of this issue.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 16:22:09
Or to put it more bluntly, if it was medicine rather than audio, the practice would be illegal (in most parts of the developed world!).

Sigh ... this is simply not true, in fact right now, there are many 'medications' that have questionable medicinal value; for example, kids cough syrup. In fact, there is an entire world of alternative, unproven, holistic 'legal' remedies in the health fields of all the countries of the first world.

Yes, there are. And that is a problem, not an endorsement.

Yes, the pseudo-drugs which actually are either harmful in themselves or keeping people from trying useful medications are indeed a problem. However, your argument ignores those non-scientific remedies which are effective either through the placebo effect or are themselves medicinally effective even despite any scientific endorsement. For instance, just how many people still believe that chicken soup is an effective treatment for the common cold?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-05-03 17:10:36
I know some people actually believe that, but in fact that is an idealistic expectation.  It is all about image. Look at how Atkinson cherry-picks points to reply to. Look at how people here get distracted by that.


Actually, Mr. Atkinson's evasiveness has been repeatedly commented on, and seems to be quite apparent to most here. I don't think he's scoring any points at all with that little trick.

There's not one poster in this thread who couldn't be accused of, in some manner, cherry-picking or evasiveness, myself included. It is my belief that singling out the behavior, and therefore becoming dismissive, of those opposed to ones own beliefs is sure sign of closed-mindedness. Furthermore I'd personally like to thank each and every poster to this thread for sharing their perspective in order that we may clearly see all sides of this issue.


I think it would be nice to hear Mr. Atkinson actually respond to the points in question.
Is that a sure sign of closed-mindedness in your opinion?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 17:15:48
All logic and reason was lost when they didn't compare the same basic recordings. Let's not haggle over nits.

I disagree, indeed, aren't you simply throwing out the baby with bath water? It's hardly just nits we're haggling over, it's the validity of the author's experience and his subsequent comments that is what is of concern to me. Simply put, the fact they listened to different musical selections doesn't diminish the results at all. Simply consider that no matter what the selection, the outcome would have been the same in term of the experience. Or are you really claiming that the genre of a selection will determine the quality of reproduction?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 17:21:20
I think it would be nice to hear Mr. Atkinson actually respond to the points in question.
Is that a sure sign of closed-mindedness in your opinion?

I too think it would be nice! Do you really think you've encouraged him to do so? Oh and by the way, in the way you've been putting it to him, with all due respect, yes indeed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-05-03 17:34:27
2tec, you continue to carelessly muddle "experience" with "sound quality".

I don't think anyone here really cares to disagree with whatever the author's total experience was; it was obviously quite captivating. He was not going to a listening test, but he seemed to go visit Mr. Fremer expecting something of "a show" and Mr. Fremer seems to have delivered upon that expectation.

That may be an indication that Mr. Fremer has good production values when it comes to being a host, but it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the sound quality. The fact that the author then attempts to make quality claims about the mp3 on his iPod being "dull and lifeless" is just simply a non sequitur.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 17:57:02
2tec, you continue to carelessly muddle "experience" with "sound quality".

I don't think anyone here really cares to disagree with whatever the author's total experience was; it was obviously quite captivating. He was not going to a listening test, but he seemed to go visit Mr. Fremer expecting something of "a show" and Mr. Fremer seems to have delivered upon that expectation.

That may be an indication that Mr. Fremer has good production values when it comes to being a host, but it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the sound quality. The fact that the author then attempts to make quality claims about the mp3 on his iPod being "dull and lifeless" is just simply a non sequitur.

Actually, despite your comment, I've been carefully trying to discuss the relationship between direct experience and sound quality. Are you really suggesting they aren't connected in some meaningful way? Furthermore, it's seems as if you're claiming that good showmanship produces a memorable listening experience that is completely irrespective of the equipment involved? Wow, now I know that all I need is showmanship, I'm going to hire a good MC for my room. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-05-03 18:07:24
I think it would be nice to hear Mr. Atkinson actually respond to the points in question.
Is that a sure sign of closed-mindedness in your opinion?

I too think it would be nice! Do you really think you've encouraged him to do so? Oh and by the way, in the way you've been putting it to him, with all due respect, yes indeed.


A bit more of a challenge, than encouragement. He's been asked many times, and I don't think it's working to his advantage as mentioned in the post I was responding to. Oh, and by the way, does implying that someone is small-minded despite any evidence actually fit in with your ideas of polite discourse?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-03 18:09:15
Here is an appropriate visual representation of lossy compression artifacts.

The first is a high resolution lossless 24 bit image of 11,2 MB size.
The second is an example of perceptual lossy compression by which its size could be reduced to 2 MB.

Bitmap (http://www.verprime.com/CRW_5706.bmp)
JPEG (http://www.verprime.com/CRW_5706.jpg)


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-03 18:27:32
There's not one poster in this thread who couldn't be accused of, in some manner, cherry-picking or evasiveness, myself included. It is my belief that singling out the behavior, and therefore becoming dismissive, of those opposed to ones own beliefs is sure sign of closed-mindedness. Furthermore I'd personally like to thank each and every poster to this thread for sharing their perspective in order that we may clearly see all sides of this issue.


I think that the difference is that Mr. Atkinson has put himself out there as the editor of a prominent magazine and a journalist.  He is a public figure and is considered an authority and a "go to" guy in his field.  His words and recommendations are read by more people and carry far more weight with more people than yours, mine, Arnold Krueger's or those of anybody else who has participated in this thread with the possible exception of Mr. Fremer who might have a following of roughly equal or only slightly smaller size.  As such, I think that it is perfectly reasonable that he be held to a higher standard of accountability for his writings and his editorial decisions. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-03 18:29:47
Here is an appropriate visual representation of lossy compression artifacts.

The first is a high resolution lossless 24 bit image of 11,2 MB size.
The second is an example of perceptual lossy compression by which its size could be reduced to 2 MB.

Bitmap (http://www.verprime.com/CRW_5706.bmp)
JPEG (http://www.verprime.com/CRW_5706.jpg)


I can't tell those apart.  Your pictures must be rigged.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-03 18:30:35
It's hardly just nits we're haggling over, it's the validity of the author's experience and his subsequent comments that is what is of concern to me. Simply put, the fact they listened to different musical selections doesn't diminish the results at all.


I must admit to being completely baffled by your comment.  What's specifically being haggled over is the sound quality comparison of LP and iPod mentioned in the article.  As you know, this comparison was done using two different pieces of music.

On my system, I listen to a lot of 50s and 60s jazz.  Many of these old recordings sound dull and lifeless, and that's the sound quality I experience.  However, I also have some some more modern, high-quality recordings, and the experience I have when listening to some of them could almost be described as "magical".  So the quality of the sound, and the overall experience listening to the system is profoundly influenced by the quality of the recording being played.

Now consider trying to do a comparative test of two components.  But let's add a special twist - the two components are identical.  Let's say we decided to use two different recordings to evaluate the components - say recording 1 was always used with device A, and recording 2 with device B.  Let's also assume that recording 1 is of high quality, and recording 2 is of mediocre quality.  The conclusion of such an experiment would likely be that device A sounds much better than device B.  But by construction, the devices are identical.  So we have constructed a faulty experiment.  Fixing this part of the problem is simple - use the exact same program material for both components and match the levels.

All of this seems completely self-evident, does it not?  So, what does this say about the validity of the sound quality comparison between the LP and iPod sources as stated in the article?  I would say it's unknown.  We cannot say whether the conclusions are correct or incorrect, because the (implied) experiment was uncontrolled.  Yet as readers of the article, we are implicitly expected to assume they are correct.

Edits: Fixed some redundant and/or unclear statements
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-03 18:49:41
\
I must admit to being completely baffled by your comment.  What's specifically being haggled over is the sound quality comparison of LP and iPod mentioned in the article.  As you know, this comparison was done using two different pieces of music.


There are so many variables that simply aren't known that have absolutely nothing to do with compression or lack thereof.  First of all, when you're talking about Bowie's "Heroes" you're talking about a song that all ready has a sort of brittle, clattery and abrasive texture to it just because that is the sound that Bowie and Eno chose.  Then you consider that there are, I think, three distinctly different CD masterings of the Bowie catalog out there and we don't know from which the track in question was sourced.  (I still have the Rykos myself.)  If the track was a purchase from iTunes or Amazon mp3 then I would assume that it is from the most recent mastering which means that it possibly suffers a bit from the effects of the "loudness wars" and could have inherent sound quality issues that are simply being accurately reproduced.  Then there's the business of not knowing how the sound got from the iPod to Fremer's speakers.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-03 18:51:26
I can't tell those apart.  Your pictures must be rigged.


If you zoom into both you can see that the first one is raw data and the second one compressed. At native resolution there should be no difference perceivable, though. The equivalent audio analysis would be a pitch corrected time stretching of lossy and lossless material, that else would be transparent at native speed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-03 18:53:55
I can't tell those apart.  Your pictures must be rigged.


If you zoom into both you can see that the first one is raw data and the second one compressed. At native resolution there should be no difference perceivable, though. The equivalent audio analysis would be a pitch corrected time stretching of lossy and lossless material, that else would be transparent at native speed.


That was meant to be a stab at humor actually.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 18:56:36
Oh, and by the way, does implying that someone is small-minded despite any evidence actually fit in with your ideas of polite discourse?

It was closed-mindedness I directly referred to, which is an issue in a discussion. By the way, does misrepresentation fit in with your concept of polite discourse? Aren't you, perhaps, taking this a little too personal?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-03 18:57:10
Oh, forgot that you were the original poster of the Sgt. Pepper's cover issue...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 19:15:12
I must admit to being completely baffled by your comment.  What's specifically being haggled over is the sound quality comparison of LP and iPod mentioned in the article.  As you know, this comparison was done using two different pieces of music.

Yes, I'm quite aware of that different sources were used. Indeed, I completely agree with your well-stated, and yes, quite self-evident position, however, my point is even given all that you say, the author experienced a level of quality of reproduction in excess of all of his prior audio experience.

Quote
Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.
~ John Mahoney from Why We Need Audiophiles (http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles)

Isn't what John Mahoney experienced exactly what some people around here are striving to achieve?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-03 20:01:30
...however, my point is even given all that you say, the author experienced a level of quality of reproduction in excess of all of his prior audio experience.


Thanks for the clarification.  My post was only intended to address the specific issue of the validity (or not) of the comparison of sound quality between the two sources, not the more general issue of John Mahoney's overall experience.  If his experience were not actually what he said it was, that would make him quite dishonest indeed.  I don't doubt his overall experience at all.

Quote
Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.
~ John Mahoney from Why We Need Audiophiles (http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles)


Isn't what John Mahoney experienced exactly what some people around here are striving to achieve?


I can't speak for others, but it's what I'm trying to achieve.  Have I achieved it?  I can't say.  Our experiences are very personal and subjective, so it's not really possible to "equate experiences" as it were.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: allchemie on 2009-05-03 20:18:50
2tec, you continue to carelessly muddle "experience" with "sound quality".

I don't think anyone here really cares to disagree with whatever the author's total experience was; it was obviously quite captivating. He was not going to a listening test, but he seemed to go visit Mr. Fremer expecting something of "a show" and Mr. Fremer seems to have delivered upon that expectation.

That may be an indication that Mr. Fremer has good production values when it comes to being a host, but it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the sound quality. The fact that the author then attempts to make quality claims about the mp3 on his iPod being "dull and lifeless" is just simply a non sequitur.

Actually, despite your comment, I've been carefully trying to discuss the relationship between direct experience and sound quality. Are you really suggesting they aren't connected in some meaningful way? Furthermore, it's seems as if you're claiming that good showmanship produces a memorable listening experience that is completely irrespective of the equipment involved? Wow, now I know that all I need is showmanship, I'm going to hire a good MC for my room. 

You may be more right than you probably realize. A study has been published (PNAS, 2008, 105, 1050-1054) in which was demonstrated that subjects consistently reported that more expensive wines tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper wines. Even more striking was that when subjects were told they were getting a more expensive wine, more activity was observed in a part of the brain known to be involved in our experience of pleasure.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-03 20:28:24
We have already discussed the wine study and analogy ad nauseum earlier in this thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-05-03 20:38:49
2tec, you continue to carelessly muddle "experience" with "sound quality".

I don't think anyone here really cares to disagree with whatever the author's total experience was; it was obviously quite captivating. He was not going to a listening test, but he seemed to go visit Mr. Fremer expecting something of "a show" and Mr. Fremer seems to have delivered upon that expectation.

That may be an indication that Mr. Fremer has good production values when it comes to being a host, but it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the sound quality. The fact that the author then attempts to make quality claims about the mp3 on his iPod being "dull and lifeless" is just simply a non sequitur.

Actually, despite your comment, I've been carefully trying to discuss the relationship between direct experience and sound quality. Are you really suggesting they aren't connected in some meaningful way?
I'm arguing that they are not necessarily connected in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, it's seems as if you're claiming that good showmanship produces a memorable listening experience that is completely irrespective of the equipment involved? Wow, now I know that all I need is showmanship, I'm going to hire a good MC for my room. 
Just as a good car salesman could create an enjoyable test drive experience in not necessarily the best car ever, yes absolutely.

It's called salesmanship.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-03 21:31:23
You may be more right than you probably realize.

I've been arguing all along that the placebo effect exists in almost every listening experience, and that it's an influence that really shouldn't be disregarded nor disparaged, but merely accounted for. Obviously acoustic fidelity is a speakers main criteria, but for a dedicated listening room speaker, power and presentation appears to influence enjoyment. From what I understand, near field studio monitors are great in recording studios but they aren't appropriate for an average living room, exactly as living room speakers aren't appropriate as studio monitors. Is this incorrect?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 00:21:12
I must admit to being completely baffled by your comment.  What's specifically being haggled over is the sound quality comparison of LP and iPod mentioned in the article.  As you know, this comparison was done using two different pieces of music.

Yes, I'm quite aware of that different sources were used. Indeed, I completely agree with your well-stated, and yes, quite self-evident position, however, my point is even given all that you say, the author experienced a level of quality of reproduction in excess of all of his prior audio experience.

Quote
Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.
~ John Mahoney from Why We Need Audiophiles (http://i.gizmodo.com/5213042/why-we-need-audiophiles)

Isn't what John Mahoney experienced exactly what some people around here are striving to achieve?


You are misstating what John Mahoney experienced. Whether it was a level of reproduction, or simply a different kind of reproduction is unknown. None of us were there and there is no logical reason to believe that his description of his experience was a perfect description of what happened. It has to has any number of obvious flaws that have already been discussed, and there are no doubt far more.

What John Mahoney experienced was a combination of audio and visual influences and perhaps other sensory influences, that he may have never experienced before, or at least never experienced in that combination before. Since we don't know exactly what he experinced, we have no reason to strive to achieve the same experience.


Aren't you into experiencing things for yourself before making judgements? Have you been in Fremer's place yourself, or are you just guessing about what it would be like?

I'm not very excited about listening to vinyl on a really high-resolution system. Vinyl has a lot of inherent audible problems, and listening to vinyl on a high resoltution sytem just makes them that much more obvious. It is quite pssible that in his brief exposure to Fremer's system, there was inadequate listener training for Mahoney to notice the known audible problems with vinyl that he would surely notice later on.

It is well known that when people are put into unfamiliar environments, they don't have the same insightful and detailed perceptions and memories that people who are far more familiar with that same environment obtain.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-04 01:01:32
There's some vinyl rips from Michael Fremer available here (http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web), so it's possible to get at least some insight into the sound out of his phono preamp.  The downloads are the two "Step Right Up" AIFF files.  I'm not taking sides here, just mentioning this as an FYI.

BTW, I tried these in Foobar and they didn't work, but I don't know why.  Winamp plays them okay though.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-04 01:25:56
I tried these in Foobar and they didn't work, but I don't know why.  Winamp plays them okay though.


They are "sowt" AIFFs, ie, little-endian rather than the  traditional big-endian. Not all programs will recognize them.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-04 01:28:23
OK...Let's talk about this picture.

(http://www.stereophile.com/images/archivesart/308mps.1.jpg)


Why? Did the use of lossy compression render it anonymous?

Quote
Obviously, this is an attention getter that makes you want to scroll down, but what is the meaning behind it?  What is the intention here?  Sgt. Pepper's... is one of those watershed kind of albums in pop music history with, arguably, the most famous and instantly recognizable album cover shot in pop history with a lot of symbolic power.  It's also a cultural touchstone for millions of people who came of age during the era in which it was released.


So you _did_ recognize it. Obviously my art director didn't try hard enough :-)



Since you're the Editor, Big Cheese, Big Kahuna, Head Honcho, etc. that picture was either your own idea or you approved it.  Otherwise it wouldn't be there.  Since the appearance of that image is not remotely analogous to the way that the music of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band actually sounds when presented in mp3 or aac even at the lowly and much maligned 128kbps CBR bitrate and since you are obviously knowledgeable and intelligent enough to be fully aware that your image choice isn't analogous then the only possible conclusion is that the image in question represents a deliberate attempt to mislead and misinform. 


With all due respect, you are taking this _way_ too seriously.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-04 01:42:41
You are misstating what John Mahoney experienced.

Actually, what I did was provide a quote from him.

Quote
Whether it was a level of reproduction, or simply a different kind of reproduction is unknown.

What I actually said, which you are misstating, was, "the author experienced a level of quality of reproduction in excess of all of his prior audio experience."

Quote
None of us were there and there is no logical reason to believe that his description of his experience was a perfect description of what happened.

The author was there and there is no reason to believe that his description of his experience wasn't a perfect description of what happened.

Quote
It has to has any number of obvious flaws that have already been discussed, and there are no doubt far more.

Why does it have to have any number of obvious flaws and where were they discussed? Why are you convinced there are far more flaws and exactly what flaws would they be? Perhaps you could enlighten us?

Quote
What John Mahoney experienced was a combination of audio and visual influences and perhaps other sensory influences, that he may have never experienced before, or at least never experienced in that combination before. Since we don't know exactly what he experinced, we have no reason to strive to achieve the same experience.

Spoken like a true virgin.    Personally, since I have no reason to suspect that Mr. Mahoney was either exaggerating or  lying, I can only take his words at face value and conclude that, subjectively at least, Mr. Fremer's stereo is impressive in regards to what appears to be an average or typical listener.

Quote
Aren't you into experiencing things for yourself before making judgements?

I'm sorry but exactly which judgment are you alluding too? You, on the other hand, seem to be implying that my judgment lacks experience. What exactly is your basis for that implication? 

Quote
Have you been in Fremer's place yourself, or are you just guessing about what it would be like?

Are you suggesting that only in Fremer's place could high fidelity be experienced or that I would need to guess about what it would be like?

Quote
I'm not very excited about listening to vinyl on a really high-resolution system. Vinyl has a lot of inherent audible problems, and listening to vinyl on a high resoltution sytem just makes them that much more obvious. It is quite pssible that in his brief exposure to Fremer's system, there was inadequate listener training for Mahoney to notice the known audible problems with vinyl that he would surely notice later on.

All of which is completely irrelevant from my perspective. I'm not talking about the source, but rather the result. In fact, the fact that Mr. Mahoney was impressed by vinyl after listening to a digital player says something about the potential of analog reproduction.

Quote
It is well known that when people are put into unfamiliar environments, they don't have the same insightful and detailed perceptions and memories that people who are far more familiar with that same environment obtain.

Is it well known? Can you provide a reference, or is this just your personal belief? Personally, I've always heard that "familiarity breeds contempt."
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-04 01:43:02
I know some people actually believe that, but in fact that is an idealistic expectation.  It is all about image. Look at how Atkinson cherry-picks points to reply to. Look at how people here get distracted by that.


Actually, Mr. Atkinson's evasiveness has been repeatedly commented on, and seems to be quite apparent to most here. I don't think he's scoring any points at all with that little trick.


It's a not  a "trick," merely a reflection of the reality that with so many asking questions of me in this thread and some even playing "gotcha," such as implying I have hearing damage, I don't have the time to respond to all the posts. I have a more-than-full-time job if not a life :-) I am also traveling in the SouthWest this week, so have even less time to satisfy people's curiosity.

I tend also not to respond when the questioner seems not be capable of demonstrating the usual social skills or is merely name-calling or expressing a negative opinion. I would have thought it obvious in such cases that my opinion is different and there is no point in arguing about whose opinion is more valid. If you are looking for external validation of your opinions and beliefs as contrasted with mine, I have no intention of going along with you for the ride. I also have no desire to discuss questions concerning high-end audio as a whole or things that have been said or written by other people. Life is too short.

And in the case of Mr. Krueger's post he was clearly putting words in my mouth and I don't see why that shouldn't be pointed out for the benefit of those who seem to have missed it.

And to put to death another strawman promulgated by Mr. Krueger, to the best of my knowledge, the Gizmodo writer's iPod was played though Michael's regular system, which is indeed capable of sounding superb.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-04 01:43:43

Since you're the Editor, Big Cheese, Big Kahuna, Head Honcho, etc. that picture was either your own idea or you approved it.  Otherwise it wouldn't be there.  Since the appearance of that image is not remotely analogous to the way that the music of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band actually sounds when presented in mp3 or aac even at the lowly and much maligned 128kbps CBR bitrate and since you are obviously knowledgeable and intelligent enough to be fully aware that your image choice isn't analogous then the only possible conclusion is that the image in question represents a deliberate attempt to mislead and misinform.


With all due respect, you are taking this _way_ too seriously.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Could you elaborate why as regards content? He seems to be correct with slightly exaggerated tone. Stereophile's misleading illustration indeed either indicates missing in-house knowledge about lossy compression or the intend to malign. And its not just about one silly picture, but seems to be just a building brick of a larger agenda: Stone age encoders, low bitrates, avoidance of DBTs (which are very easy to do for lossy vs. lossless through Foobar), etc.

Many posts about the whole complex were very convincing, much more at least than your cherry picking. You are very convincing about proving that you are a very sophisticated rhetorician. But we did know that much from Stereophile already.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-04 01:57:33
It's a not  a "trick," merely a reflection of the reality that with so many asking questions of me in this thread and some even playing "gotcha," such as implying I have hearing damage, I don't have the time to respond to all the posts.

Wow.  I was in no way implying that you have hearing damage, rather to gauge whether you have a measurable advantage in distinguishing hi-res from CDDA or lossy from lossless.  Based on what you said, it doesn't seem like you do.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-04 03:59:04
With all due respect, you are taking this _way_ too seriously.


And you've made light of me twice on this while making no attempt whatsoever to actually respond.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: keesue on 2009-05-04 05:00:27
Why we need audiophiles. 

My old Harmon receiver with that KLH speaker connected by lamp cord was the center of my audio system.  I and my friends, young classical musicians, avid jazz aficionados and early rock adopters on the San Francisco scene, adored that system.  We played LPs well into the night, enveloped in the sound of that single speaker.  In contrast, a friend returning home from the war, purchased a stereo system in Japan that was impressive to say the least.  Given his sensitivity to his system, I never expressed to him that I 'felt' something was missing from the sound.  It wasn’t just stereo, it was something else.  I didn't quite know how to express it then but I would come to know how later. 

When the old Harmon was past its prime, I acquired a loaner Kenwood receiver and a set of speakers from a coleague who had upgraded to tide me over while I considered my options.  He also gave me a copy of Stereophile to help in my quest.  I was in complete shock.  The words the writers used to describe the ‘sound’ of amplifiers and the ‘sound’ of cables were so utterly esoteric, I seriously thought they were insane.  As a long-time reader of Audio and Stereo Review, I was staunchly grounded in the laws of measurement, and by extension, the mantra that equal measurements yielded equal sound.  I was rooted in the Gow/McIntosh cable DBTs, and I absolutely rejected the absurd notion of differences in the 'sound' of cables.  Stereophile’s deviation from the accepted credo that specs told the story and putting forth the notion that listening was the proper way to evaluate a component was pure heresy.  I thought JA was pompous and his staff writers lunatics.

Against this backdrop, I was given the opportunity of ‘auditioning’ a preamp and amps in my home by a prospective vendor.  I really wasn’t in the market for tubes and I didn’t believe in ‘auditioning’ components, but I thought what the heck.  I realized in short order what I was missing with the Kenwood receiver.  Over the course of a few weeks, I went back and forth between the receiver and the tubes because the analytical side of my brain simply would not accept what the creative side was hearing.  It was the conundrum of ‘same-difference’ and I was at war in my own mind.  Was Easter Sunday about eggs, or was I believing in something else?

Since that time, I have come to appreciate hearing in 3D, instruments occupying their own space, positions and depth within the soundstage, transparency, nuances of the warmth of tubes and that difference I couldn’t describe back then:  ‘timber truth’.  Yes, the receiver reproduced music extremely well, and yes, I enjoyed it tremendously; but, in critical listening, the tubes added a visceral ‘sense’ of the timber of instruments in space.  My mother and her friends, all opera singers, heard these differences, especially in the human voice, without a clue about the technology, which I found very evidential.  Those ‘Stereophile words’ used to describe ‘sound’ were now their words, taking on the life and vibrancy of Chaucer in the language of their reality and what they heard.  I now view the notion of 'hearing' differences in components analogous to string theory.  There are dimensions that await measurement and tools that await development to measure what audiophiles hear that others cannot - or will not.  For them, the pragmatic side of the brain dominates, Easter is about eggs and there was no...but wait! 

There are those who see two dimensionally in paintings and see little detail where others see in three dimensions and a wealth of depth.  Alcohol by volume consumed equals the same state of inebriation despite the source, but there is no measurement to determine the subtle nuances in taste differneces of high end wine or well crafted ale.  Ah, that lovely Abott's.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and good drink is in the hands of those who can afford it.  So, let us all then relegate ourselves to paint by the numbers and drink from the egailtarian sameness of audio?  Technically correct notation yields a technically correct score, but can technical correctness equal the playing of Beethoven, Horowitz, Tatum, Peterson or Rubalcaba?

I have accepted the notion that one should audition audio over time in privacy and comfort for proper evaluation, but given the plethora of components and logistics, this can be daunting.  This is why I believe we need audiophiles.  Audiophiles serve as proxy resources for those who believe in differences in components and want to narrow choices by vicariously experiencing a component through words.  In that regard, audiophiles serve as a beacon.  For the other side, judging by their reactions, they serve as a bane who are ‘bamboozling’ the masses out of their money and it is their crusade to save them from the ‘con’ and the damnation of hell.  I find this rather presumptuous given the vast number of people who believe in differences, value their money and simply want to enjoy the experience.  If anything, audiophiles serve to sift through the chaff.  There is resurgence within our youth who believe in these differences and want to hear them.  They understand the utility of IPODs but they also appreciate the best that audio has to offer.  One of my sons, who is a musician, brings his boys over so they can to revel in the old man’s ‘tubes and ribbons’.  The Foo Fighers record in analog and tubes.

I believe that audiophiles are necessary, along with engineers and designers, to help advance our hobby and both have a valid place in the continuum.  It is insulting to dismiss the vast body of audiophiles, who span age, religious, ethnic, geo-political and socio-economic divides - personalities notwithstanding - as lunatics.  There are far too many audiophiles worldwide who ‘hear’ to be dismissed as statistically insignificant phenomena. The debate between objectivity and subjectivity is interesting but has become far too hackneyed and contentious, as promulgated by some, and has taken on the tenor of school yard bullying. 

Ah, yes, I came to respect JA and his staff of writers as insightful and talented.  I have enjoyed them tremendously over the years and would revel in hearing MF's $350K system with him and having a few pints with JA to hear his system and discuss the state of audio when I come East.  Now, if I can just hear the sound of those cable elevators. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-04 05:36:08
Oh carp somebody just went Deepak Chopra on us. You forgot to use quantum entanglement. Or maybe string theory just sounds like a better choice for a totally irrelevant analogy of esoteric scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: keesue on 2009-05-04 05:54:30
Oh carp somebody just went Deepak Chopra on us. You forgot to use quantum entanglement. Or maybe string theory just sounds like a better choice for a totally irrelevant analogy of esoteric scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo?


Nah, just like messin' with your head.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-05-04 06:10:14
As a long-time reader of Audio and Stereo Review, I was staunchly grounded in the laws of measurement, and by extension, the mantra that equal measurements yielded equal sound.

It's important to note that there are two categories of measurement under consideration here -- technical ones and human-discrimination ones. DBT, and the crux of this thread, falls under the human side; most of us will accept that components with published technical specs that seem identical can indeed sound different, perhaps because specs by themselves often don't provide data in enough detail.

Over the course of a few weeks, I went back and forth between the receiver and the tubes because the analytical side of my brain simply would not accept what the creative side was hearing.  It was the conundrum of ‘same-difference’ and I was at war in my own mind.  Was Easter Sunday about eggs, or was I believing in something else?

This really comes across like a process of religious conversion ("war in [one's] own mind") instead of a reasoned one. Anyway DBT can account for left-side/right-side differences -- taken to an extreme, see 2bdecided's earlier challenge to JA about running a long double-blind test that can take days per trial.

Since that time, I have come to appreciate hearing in 3D, instruments occupying their own space, positions and depth within the soundstage, transparency, nuances of the warmth of tubes and that difference I couldn’t describe back then:  ‘timber truth’.  Yes, the receiver reproduced music extremely well, and yes, I enjoyed it tremendously; but, in critical listening, the tubes added a visceral ‘sense’ of the timber of instruments in space.  My mother and her friends, all opera singers, heard these differences, especially in the human voice, without a clue about the technology, which I found very evidential.  Those ‘Stereophile words’ used to describe ‘sound’ were now their words, taking on the life and vibrancy of Chaucer in the language of their reality and what they heard.

Nobody's disputing the fact that good sound systems can truly produce such imaging. The "Stereophile words" that HA is more irked/bored silly by is when such flights of fruity language come across less as principled journalism and more like mental masturbation on the keyboard, especially when used to establish differences in sound that couldn't possibly exist (green marker pens on CDs, anyone?)

I now view the notion of 'hearing' differences in components analogous to string theory.  There are dimensions that await measurement and tools that await development to measure what audiophiles hear that others cannot - or will not.  For them, the pragmatic side of the brain dominates, Easter is about eggs and there was no...but wait!

Umm, if audiophiles can indeed hear such nuances, DBT is more than adequate as a measurement tool. Anyway, personally I find the Easter egg-vs-Christ analogy way off, and the distinction between left-brain/right-brain arbitrary (as well as physiologically a gross oversimplification). Often folks point towards left-brain/right-brain differences instead of admitting they are merely confused / "at war in their own minds".

there is no measurement to determine the subtle nuances in taste differneces of high end wine or well crafted ale.

Of course we haven't the equipment to analyze the chemical composition of wine to the full -- again you're confusing physical measurements with "human" ones. If any wine or audio expert is so confident in their ability to recognize the differences, they should be more than glad to prove this by ABX.

Technically correct notation yields a technically correct score, but can technical correctness equal the playing of Beethoven, Horowitz, Tatum, Peterson or Rubalcaba?

Enormous straw man. If objectivists really thought thus, we'd all be listening to classical music via MIDI files. They're not only miniscule in size, they're "lossless" too! (And truest to the composer's pen.)

One of my sons, who is a musician, brings his boys over so they can to revel in the old man’s ‘tubes and ribbons’.  The Foo Fighers record in analog and tubes.

I always thought that one of the psychological advantages tubes may engender as compared to SS is that sound is being reproduced more mechanically than electronically. Somehow more comforting that way, we're get served by a sort of expensive "boom box" rather than a mere computerised gadget.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-05-04 06:35:58
Oh carp somebody just went Deepak Chopra on us. You forgot to use quantum entanglement. Or maybe string theory just sounds like a better choice for a totally irrelevant analogy of esoteric scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo?

Hehheh, well Deepak Chopra isn't so bad, I actually tend to go for that sort of thing. Of course, "how to live your life" is in a different building than "how good is this piece of equipment?"
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-05-04 06:55:48
Here is an appropriate visual representation of lossy compression artifacts.

The first is a high resolution lossless 24 bit image of 11,2 MB size.
The second is an example of perceptual lossy compression by which its size could be reduced to 2 MB.

Bitmap (http://www.verprime.com/CRW_5706.bmp)
JPEG (http://www.verprime.com/CRW_5706.jpg)

I appreciate your having gone to the trouble, but is this really the best sort of picture to use? JPEG is meant for more "real-world" shots, not smooth flat surfaces that would exaggerate compression artifacts. Nearly like using test-tones instead of real music to evaluate MP3's fidelity.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 07:01:27
Except that I didn't speak, and told the guy in advance why I was staying silent for the duration of each test. I wrote 'A', 'B' and '?' on three pieces of paper. I just held up one at a time.


Ah. Another 4/4 result   

This one with the added feature of near-instantaneous identification of very high bitrate lossy fiels made with the presumably good AAC codec. 

This raises all kinds of flags.

My suggesting: set the friend/client up with a computer or laptop that has a good soundcard (onboard or outboard).  Then he can do his own ABX tests using WinABX or foobar, while running the sound to his 'audiophile' rig.  If it turns out he can do ABX  the MP3s Gag made, then have him makes some with LAME or AAC on his own, and try to ABX those.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 07:08:38
Yes, the pseudo-drugs which actually are either harmful in themselves or keeping people from trying useful medications are indeed a problem. However, your argument ignores those non-scientific remedies which are effective either through the placebo effect or are themselves medicinally effective even despite any scientific endorsement. For instance, just how many people still believe that chicken soup is an effective treatment for the common cold?



If the 'remedies' are onbly 'effective' through the placebo effect, it's not the substance of the remedies that is causing the effect.

And who cares how many believe something that has not been properly tested* except as examples of the power of belief and human gullibility?  If the ubiquity of the belief was enough to serve as 'proof', then scientific testing would not be necessary.  Unfortunately, enough widely-believed 'remedies' have proved to have no effect of their own, that one can't take widespread belief as an indicator of fact.


(*there is scientific evidence for effectiveness of chicken soup against cold)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 07:12:29
I can't tell those apart.  Your pictures must be rigged.


I can.  Therefore all pictures look different. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 07:18:56
Oh carp somebody just went Deepak Chopra on us. You forgot to use quantum entanglement. Or maybe string theory just sounds like a better choice for a totally irrelevant analogy of esoteric scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo?

Hehheh, well Deepak Chopra isn't so bad, I actually tend to go for that sort of thing. Of course, "how to live your life" is in a different building than "how good is this piece of equipment?"


Deepak Chopra is a pseudoscientific fraud (http://www.skepdic.com/chopra.html).  That's 'not so bad' to you?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: itisljar on 2009-05-04 09:41:47
Well, I have to say I don't need audiophiles. I don't mind them having them in community of people I know, but their "knowledge" can be applied to themselves only. I don't need audiophile as someone who can pass that knowledge, because it's totally irrelevant to me an my hearing abilities. And there is no real knowledge now whatsoever.
When I was quite a bit younger, audiophiles were people who knew how stuff works, and could offer some knowledge about pairing speakers and amps so you wouldn't overdrive your amp and blow your speakers. Nowadays, they are people who use CD border markers, swear about glass CDs, lament about coaxial cables that they are fed directly to DAC as opposed to optical, not knowing there is a transformer in between most of the time to compensate for different impedance, but they are the best because TOSlink has jitter because of converting light into electrical... the age of information gave them so much data to process, but unfortunately they missed the point of being educated enough to understand all that data.
That is what Stereophile is doing. Giving people only data, not knowledge. Creating audio idiots listening to high-priced components. They don't know better, they trust the source. There is a great responsibility for that, mr. Atkinson. And with that last show of yours you were saying you are going to perform... it is just a load of misinformation, creating people attending more accepting to advertising in your little magazine telling them what they need. Because if you teach them the truth, advertising wouldn't be enough to pay your bills, now would they?
You are not an audiophile, mr. Atkinson, you are salesman. The problem is that you are influential salesman. And thus your responsibility.
You are to be ashamed of what you are doing. And when knowledgable people tell you you are wrong with your test or demonstration, or whatever you want it to be called, you act as the smartest guy in the world and tell them that you are right in your own way... and your way is being wrong in that matter, so therefore your wrong is right.
You are no audiophile, mr. Atkinson. You are just as misinformed as the rest of your flock.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 11:16:31
There's some vinyl rips from Michael Fremer available here (http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web), so it's possible to get at least some insight into the sound out of his phono preamp.  The downloads are the two "Step Right Up" AIFF files.  I'm not taking sides here, just mentioning this as an FYI.

BTW, I tried these in Foobar and they didn't work, but I don't know why.  Winamp plays them okay though.


What should we compare them to?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-04 11:27:44
Deepak Chopra is a pseudoscientific fraud (http://www.skepdic.com/chopra.html).  That's 'not so bad' to you?


Shrug..."bad" is relative....different circles of "Hell" and all that.  There's new age flake/audiofool/homeopathic/psychic friends network "bad" then there's political and religious authoritarian/murderer/criminal/terrorist "bad". 

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-04 11:53:01
There's new age flake/audiofool/homeopathic/psychic friends network "bad" then there's political and religious authoritarian/murderer/criminal/terrorist "bad".

Those two types of "bad" aren't necessarily distinct. The first can become the latter. For example:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25428078-29277,00.html (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25428078-29277,00.html)
Quote
In the last months of her life, baby Gloria Thomas suffered such terrible eczema her skin would weep and peel, sticking to her clothing when she was changed. Despite her bleeding, crying and malnutrition, her mother and homeopath father failed to get conventional medical help before she died a painful death, a Sydney jury has been told.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 12:24:57
I have posted a number of times on this thread, from its earlier times and long into its decadent phase. It's now more like the last days of the Roman Empire, scattered and embittered. I don't call for the thread to be closed, but I suspect it will serve little further purpose.

As I've said before, I consider myself a 'recovering audiophile' (I attend meetings and I'm up to Step Eight now... "Make a list of all persons who were played Jennifer Friggin Warnes tracks, and become willing to make amends to them all") and I'd hoped to find a way to further free myself from the shackles of audio buffery and buffoonery and the closed-mindedness of those in the audiophile community. Unfortunately, what this thread demonstrates to me is that there are more unresolved questions than there are pithy answers.

I'm not particularly shocked by the animosity on both sides toward the other. The most bitter wars have always between those who feel they have 'right' on their side. No one fights for the right to be wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5WoLnOOlU...feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5WoLnOOlU&feature=related)

There appear to be a priori statements on both sides that are clouding the issue. The one on the audiophile side of things is clearly marked out: We can hear differences, therefore differences exist. But what of the objective side?

The hardware used in ABX tests conducted at HA is considered to be of such low priority as to be mentioned in passing. This presumes a ceteris paribus clause that we may have no right to presume. Can we robustly say that the results of an ABX test conducted on - for example - a pair of Cerwin Vega VE-5M loudspeakers will tally with the same ABX test conducted through a pair of Genelec 1036A loudspeakers built into the large control room of a studio, or a pair of Magico M5 loudspeakers in the listening room of an audiophile? Granted, we can say that ABX tests tally across a wide range of systems, because of the large number of systems used to run ABX tests, but if few of those systems were capable of the performance of the studio and audiophile ones listed above, the 'wide range of systems' remains skewed.

I'd like to see a test conducted with the all the scientific robustness we demand of codec investigations applied to the equipment used to evaluate those investigations. Not to debunk, but to see if there is any level of resolving power extant in these high-end and studio-based systems that is unavailable to more prosaic equipment. So far, it appears that the answer is self-evident (but diametrically opposed) on both sides, but I'm not sure what this is based upon. Published blind listening tests of audio equipment seem to be all based on amplifiers that no longer exist except on eBay. Surely someone can do better than that?

The problem here is that both sides concentrate on individual components and I don't think this serves any purpose other than to create a clash of the orthodoxies. Audiophiles believe they can hear a difference between badge engineered CD players and HA members would dismiss such claims as laughable... testing that out is merely re-starting a paused fight. So instead it should be a systemic test - audiophile system (set up by audiophiles, as high-end, high-resolution and 'system matched' as possible) against prosaic equipment under double-blind and level-matched conditions. ABX test lossless vs. MP3 on one system. Repeat the same test on the other system. Do the same test as many times as possible. Stress upon the listeners that this is not to determine qualities of the systems under test, but instead to see if ABX results are altered by changes in the replay chain itself.

Bellicose intransigence on both sides will only serve to prevent such tests from ever occurring. In fact, this can only occur if both sides talk to one another. I read that the editor of HiFi+ in the UK is considering running blind tests (http://hddaudio.net/?p=449). Maybe he's open to offers of help. Of course, if by 'help', all we do is tell him how much of an idiot he is, don't be surprised if he turns back to the Dark Side.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-04 12:58:45
There's some vinyl rips from Michael Fremer available here (http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web), so it's possible to get at least some insight into the sound out of his phono preamp.  The downloads are the two "Step Right Up" AIFF files.  I'm not taking sides here, just mentioning this as an FYI.

BTW, I tried these in Foobar and they didn't work, but I don't know why.  Winamp plays them okay though.


What should we compare them to?

How about making a high-quality lossy compressed version of each and compare with the original? Obviously it is too late to compare analog and digital versions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-05-04 13:36:56
So while it is reasonable to be skeptical of the results of sighted listening, because their propensity for producing false positives, I feel one should also be skeptical of blind test results because of the possibility of false negatives. In the example of a recent poster to this thread who felt he could hear the difference between lossy and lossless compressed files until he took a DBT, and who now rips using the VBR LAME codec, if that had been me I would stuck with lossless, at least for the primary rips. What happens when he eventually learns to hear that artefact of which he had been previously been oblivious or which had not been unmasked by the program used for the DBT? Is he really going to rip all his CDs for a second time?

No.  Since I was following the advice of more knowledgeable folks who had done this all before, I have a lossless archive stored on an external disk.  If I start to recognize artifacts, I simply spend an afternoon finding a level that is transparent to me and re-encoding my lossless files.  Switching codecs or bitrates couldn't be easier.

People are using lossy files, and without proper education they can end up using them in a way that harms sound quality, or convenience.  As a high profile person in a position to educate folks in how to correctly use these tools, you really should educate yourself in how to use them properly, and then educate your readers in how to do the same. 

Regardless of whether or not you believe that lossy files are for 'serious' listening or not, their convenience should far outweigh any percieved sound quality problems for portable use.  Since i got an iPod, i listen to far more music than when i simply had my home stereo, and lossy music is to thank.  Give your readers the same benefit, and teach them how to make it the best experience possible.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-04 14:08:59
JA will just continue to dodge this issue by telling us that for his intended audience lossless is the correct and only answer (although even that is inferior to analog). The audience that you are referring to doesn't exists in his universe.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 14:13:02
JA will just continue to dodge this issue by telling us that for his intended audience lossless is the correct and only answer (although even that is inferior to analog). The audience that you are referring to doesn't exists in his universe.


Judging by the venom on the Stereophile forum, he may have a point, albeit not one with any rooting in either science or engineering.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-04 14:38:40
So while it is reasonable to be skeptical of the results of sighted listening, because their propensity for producing false positives, I feel one should also be skeptical of blind test results because of the possibility of false negatives. In the example of a recent poster to this thread who felt he could hear the difference between lossy and lossless compressed files until he took a DBT, and who now rips using the VBR LAME codec, if that had been me I would stuck with lossless, at least for the primary rips. What happens when he eventually learns to hear that artefact of which he had been previously been oblivious or which had not been unmasked by the program used for the DBT? Is he really going to rip all his CDs for a second time?

No.  Since I was following the advice of more knowledgeable folks who had done this all before, I have a lossless archive stored on an external disk.


This is what i have recommended also in my writing.

Quote
If I start to recognize artifacts, I simply spend an afternoon finding a level that is transparent to me and re-encoding my lossless files.  Switching codecs or bitrates couldn't be easier.


This is not at odds with what I have written.

Quote
People are using lossy files, and without proper education they can end up using them in a way that harms sound quality, or convenience.  As a high profile person in a position to educate folks in how to correctly use these tools, you really should educate yourself in how to use them properly, and then educate your readers in how to do the same.


Thank you for the suggestion, I addressed it much earlier in the thread. See my loose analogy with fast food.

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Regardless of whether or not you believe that lossy files are for 'serious' listening or not, their convenience should far outweigh any percieved sound quality problems for portable use.


Again,this is not at odds with what I have written. I would note that tradeoff between "perceived sound quality problems" and the degree of compression is a personal one. And again, I don't understand what damage is being done to someone who rips, say, at 256kbps when 192kbps is the current level where he cannot distinguish the MP3 from the uncompressed file? Surely the damage occurs in the opposite direction, when he rips at a lower bit rate than he finds transparent? And nothing I have published would lead to that situation.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-04 14:41:20
It's a not  a "trick," merely a reflection of the reality that with so many asking questions of me in this thread and some even playing "gotcha," such as implying I have hearing damage, I don't have the time to respond to all the posts.

Wow.  I was in no way implying that you have hearing damage, rather to gauge whether you have a measurable advantage in distinguishing hi-res from CDDA or lossy from lossless.  Based on what you said, it doesn't seem like you do.


Thank you for the correction.

I note that no-one other than yourself has offered their own data.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 14:48:46
Ah. Another 4/4 result   


If you are implying dishonesty on my part here, please do so directly. I prefer my criticism bare-faced and up-front.

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This one with the added feature of near-instantaneous identification of very high bitrate lossy fiels made with the presumably good AAC codec. 

This raises all kinds of flags.


Please elucidate. What flags?

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My suggesting: set the friend/client up with a computer or laptop that has a good soundcard (onboard or outboard).  Then he can do his own ABX tests using WinABX or foobar, while running the sound to his 'audiophile' rig.  If it turns out he can do ABX  the MP3s Gag made, then have him makes some with LAME or AAC on his own, and try to ABX those.


Not possible. Mac user here. Self-styled Macvangelist there. Won't have a PC in the house "in case he catches something". Feel free to add 'how convenient' comment here, with rolled eyes icon too if you like - maybe even two; knock yourself out and go to town.

Any Maccy solutions to the above would be gratefully received.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 14:50:00
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The hardware used in ABX tests conducted at HA is considered to be of such low priority as to be mentioned in passing.


That would be a problem that if it exists, is local to HA.

For example, most of the ca. 1990 Stereo Review ABX tests of power amplifiers and CD players were performed using large Magnepan's in a relatively large well-designed room that conformed to the IEC listening room standards of the day.

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This presumes a ceteris paribus clause that we may have no right to presume.


IMO you're worrying about an issue that was settled long ago in a different context. Not only that, but you've excluded a rich middle range of excellent loudspeakers from your discussion.

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Can we robustly say that the results of an ABX test conducted on - for example - a pair of Cerwin Vega VE-5M loudspeakers will tally with the same ABX test conducted through a pair of Genelec 1036A loudspeakers built into the large control room of a studio, or a pair of Magico M5 loudspeakers in the listening room of an audiophile?


I'm familiar with speakers of the kind you mention for your first two alternatives. Used appropriately, the CV's are proabably not all that much less revealing of codec faults than the Genelecs. Besides balance and smoothness, studio monitors generally have a lot more dynamic range than small home speakers, and this can cost serious money to implement. The Magicos are simply rediculous, you can no doubt find something in the Paradigm catalog with a similar design and maybe even better performance, for a few percent of the price. The Genelecs chosen are almost as rediculous as the Magicos. Genelec is best known for studio monitor speakers more of the size and general configuration as the CVs. albeit for about 20 times the money.

Just for those who are unfamiliar with workaday studio monitors, the $35,000 Genelecs are very atypical. Genelec is so well known for small monitors that I almost think that the Genelec model chosen was developed by Genelec to make a statement - being that they are not all about small studio monitors costing *just* a few thousand dollars. Back in the real world, working studio monitors are generally small, and run under $3,000 a pair, often well under. Mackie built a popular and widely-respected semi-clone of some of the smaller Genelec monitors which Mackie  calls the HR 824, which sells for between 2 and 3k per pair. Behringer did a clone of the Mackies hyperbolically called the "Truth"  2030A that sells for more like $300 a pair. I've compared some of those smaller Genelecs to the Behringers in the same room, same music (not level matched and yes sighted) and found that neither seemed to have a strong edge in terms of revealing the subtle details of recordings. OTOH, this listening room was very well-designed. Compared to many audiophile listening rooms, it seemed to be far more revealing of subtle details. Go figure.

I would expect the Paradigms to shed few additional insights into the audible aspects of codec design than the Genelecs or the CVs. The human ear starts loosing resolution above SPLs of 85 dB or so, so the additional dynamic range of the Pradigms or Genelecs or Paradigms will not be an issue when all three types speakers are used reasonably. Most codec faults seem to be present in the middle and upper frequency ranges, so bass extension is not usually a big issue.

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Granted, we can say that ABX tests tally across a wide range of systems, because of the large number of systems used to run ABX tests, but if few of those systems were capable of the performance of the studio and audiophile ones listed above, the 'wide range of systems' remains skewed.


In your experience, per what you are currently saying. 

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I'd like to see a test conducted with the all the scientific robustness we demand of codec investigations applied to the equipment used to evaluate those investigations. Not to debunk, but to see if there is any level of resolving power extant in these high-end and studio-based systems that is unavailable to more prosaic equipment. So far, it appears that the answer is self-evident (but diametrically opposed) on both sides, but I'm not sure what this is based upon. Published blind listening tests of audio equipment seem to be all based on amplifiers that no longer exist except on eBay. Surely someone can do better than that?


It has been done.  No special joy.

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The problem here is that both sides concentrate on individual components


I guess then there are other sides from whom little is being heard. Looking back on the original team of ABX developers, none of us were using speakers in the Cerwin Vega VE-5M category in the day, and none are now. None were bothering with speakers in the > $30,000 category. There is a large range of good sounding speakers between those extremes that has been excluded.  Take for example the Paradigm Studio 100s.  Comapre them to the Magicos. Even Stereophile says:

"At $2300/pair, the Paradigm Reference Studio/100 v.3 offers superb performance with a clean, neutrally balanced presentation and powerful low frequencies. Its lowish impedance will require some care taken with choosing an amplifier or receiver, but set against that will be its above-average sensitivity. This is a true full-range audiophile loudspeaker at a much lower price than you'd expect to pay for a similar design from a boutique brand. Highly recommended."

I think that Gizmodo's mention of Fremer's wildly over-priced speakers with questionable technical performance has skewed some people's perceptions of what it takes to obtain  dynamic, good-sounding and highly revealing loudspeakers.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-04 14:52:35

Since you're the Editor, Big Cheese, Big Kahuna, Head Honcho, etc. that picture was either your own idea or you approved it.  Otherwise it wouldn't be there.  Since the appearance of that image is not remotely analogous to the way that the music of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band actually sounds when presented in mp3 or aac even at the lowly and much maligned 128kbps CBR bitrate and since you are obviously knowledgeable and intelligent enough to be fully aware that your image choice isn't analogous then the only possible conclusion is that the image in question represents a deliberate attempt to mislead and misinform.


With all due respect, you are taking this _way_ too seriously.


Could you elaborate why as regards content? He seems to be correct with slightly exaggerated tone.


It's a) an iillustration, therefore of minor concern, b) an analogy, and will, as I have said, fall aprt when examined too closely. I don't see the need to carry on a debate with multiple posters on something that that I think trivial. YMMV.

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Stereophile's misleading illustration indeed either indicates missing in-house knowledge about lossy compression or the intend to malign. And its not just about one silly picture, but seems to be just a building brick of a larger agenda: Stone age encoders, low bitrates, avoidance of DBTs (which are very easy to do for lossy vs. lossless through Foobar), etc.


Building such an edifice on the evidence of the illustration is, a stretch. You might as well start arguing with me that Stereophile's use of a serif font, which possibly requires more bandwidth to represent as an image, is an example of elitism :-)

And again, you are now presenting your opinion, which is not something I feel open to debate.

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Many posts about the whole complex were very convincing, much more at least than your cherry picking. You are very convincing about proving that you are a very sophisticated rhetorician.


Might it be possible that my responses are not just rhetoric?

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But we did know that much from Stereophile already.


And back we go to the namecalling :-(

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-04 14:53:53
There's new age flake/audiofool/homeopathic/psychic friends network "bad" then there's political and religious authoritarian/murderer/criminal/terrorist "bad".

Those two types of "bad" aren't necessarily distinct. The first can become the latter. For example:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25428078-29277,00.html (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25428078-29277,00.html)

Also, it's not about "bad" and "badder", it's that they're fundamentally the same. The outcome of one may be worse, but they operate from the same principles of deception and your target's ignorance. It's the same with all the different religions, some are more innocuous in practice than others, but their fundamentals are the same. And they all think they're true religions, and the "worse" ones are some kind of "twisted" versions.

BTW Chopra is just about the epitome of pseudoscience. Every time he mentions the word "quantum" a little kitty dies and goes to hell. Lately he's been using "entanglement" as well to "support" his quack ideas just as he uses his "M.D."
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 14:55:57
JA will just continue to dodge this issue by telling us that for his intended audience lossless is the correct and only answer (although even that is inferior to analog). The audience that you are referring to doesn't exists in his universe.


Judging by the venom on the Stereophile forum, he may have a point, albeit not one with any rooting in either science or engineering.


IME, venom is the predictable destination when reliable comparisons using relevant and stable comparands are avoided.

IOW, people who avoid making reliable comparisons end up with little but the vociferousness of the expressions of their opinions to defend and elevate themseleves with.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-04 15:15:24
I now view the notion of 'hearing' differences in components analogous to string theory.  There are dimensions that await measurement and tools that await development to measure what audiophiles hear that others cannot - or will not.

Just wanted to concentrate on this, since different versions of it get tossed around so often in any of these kinds of discussions.
Feynman on the Likelihood of Flying Saucers: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLaRXYai19A)

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[...]Listen. I mean that from the knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence, rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence.
You can apply that to all kinds of pseudoscience.

Oh how would I have loved to have Feynman and Chopra go at it on QM and BS.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-04 15:18:14
Any Maccy solutions to the above would be gratefully received.


Foobar's ABX component runs flawlessly* on Mac OS X through CrossoverMac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/). Just let it run Foobar's installer and don't forget to check the ABX component. The underlying Open Source project Wine would also work, but needs a lot of effort to setup right.

If you insist on a shiny native OS X app, I can write one and open source the code, but would demand a fund raise of about $2000 first.

*File opening dialogs have some lag (in the order of seconds) and it looks a little ugly ducking, that's all.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 15:23:21
There's some vinyl rips from Michael Fremer available here (http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web), so it's possible to get at least some insight into the sound out of his phono preamp.  The downloads are the two "Step Right Up" AIFF files.  I'm not taking sides here, just mentioning this as an FYI.

BTW, I tried these in Foobar and they didn't work, but I don't know why.  Winamp plays them okay though.



Cool Edit Pro had no problem identifying them, and let me save them out as ordinary windows .wav files.

The bit order used was indeed LSB, MSB.

Any idea what the difference is between the two versions?

BTW, it appears that these two "needle drops" truely are needle drops with the system response to the needle striking the vinyl at the beginning of the files.

It appears that the mechanical step input excited considerable resonance in *something*  at around both 116 and 232 Hz.  Actual broadband dynamic range was between 40 and 50 dB. Definately noisy.

AFAK Tom Wait's "Step Right Up" never made it onto a CD from a master tape, which is quite a musical loss.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-04 15:25:01
If the 'remedies' are onbly 'effective' through the placebo effect, it's not the substance of the remedies that is causing the effect.

And who cares how many believe something that has not been properly tested* except as examples of the power of belief and human gullibility?  If the ubiquity of the belief was enough to serve as 'proof', then scientific testing would not be necessary.  Unfortunately, enough widely-believed 'remedies' have proved to have no effect of their own, that one can't take widespread belief as an indicator of fact.

(*there is scientific evidence for effectiveness of chicken soup against cold)

The point you're ignoring is the benefit derived, whether or not it was a placebo. Benefit is benefit. Furthermore, if it helps people to be happier, than it simply can't be dismissed, out of hand, as inconsequential. Just because something doesn't agree with your beliefs doesn't mean it isn't real. It doesn't matter what people believe, what matters is that the effect has been proven to exist in a meaningful way through the rigors of scientific testing. It seems to me as if you're simply ignoring the facts which don't fit in your viewpoint.

... and yes, chicken soup can be beneficial, but I'd bet you're unable to explain the mechanism of that benefit, just as we cannot explain all the interactions in the audio arena.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-04 15:34:21
It's a) an iillustration, therefore of minor concern, b) an analogy, and will, as I have said, fall aprt when examined too closely. I don't see the need to carry on a debate with multiple posters on something that that I think trivial. YMMV.


Since most of your analogies, parables or whatever seem to be on the poor side perhaps you should consider either getting new analogies or trying a different approach.  Anyway, I think that illustrations absolutely do matter.  What if I had a magazine, free weekly or whatever and I had an unflattering article about audiophiles and I ran a cartoon illustration of you in a Pope hat with your arms raised as if delivering some sort of invocation and hordes of audiophiles bowing down to you waving their vinyl lps with, say, a nice big bonfire of iPods in the background?  Let's say you e-mailed me to ask about it and my response was "Oh, it's just a picture.  I know the analogy falls apart if you examine it closely, but I think you're taking this way too seriously." 

Besides, if Mr. Fremer can write an article complaining about the "swiftboating of audiophiles"  then why can't we point out that you seem to be doing a little bit of "swiftboating" of your own?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 15:51:36
The point you're ignoring is the benefit derived, whether or not it was a placebo. Benefit is benefit. Furthermore, if it helps people to be happier, than it simply can't be dismissed, out of hand, as inconsequential. Just because something doesn't agree with your beliefs doesn't mean it isn't real. It doesn't matter what people believe, what matters is that the effect has been proven to exist in a meaningful way through the rigors of scientific testing. It seems to me as if you're simply ignoring the facts which don't fit in your viewpoint.


The point you're ignoring is a big one - reliability.

What is an acceptable level of reliability for say, a MP3 coder upgrade? Well, if taking advantage of the upgrade means recoding several terabytes of FLAC files, then one would hope that the reliability of the upgrade would be very high.

What is an acceptable level of reliability for a new snake bite antidote given the the existing antidote is 95%+ reliable,  readly available for a reasonable cost, and has negligable side-effects?

IME the effectiveness of holistic and other medical treatments whose only known effects are similar to that of placebos is maybe 30%.  Furthermore, the effectiveness of placebo treatments has been reported to decrease as time passes. After all, the inital effectiveness was dependent in suspended disbelief.

The effectiveness of many very expensive high end tweaks is in the same range, decreasing to zero in controlled evaluations.

If you spend $3,000 on a CD player, how reliable should the purported audible benefit be?  Should the purported audible benefit reliable enough to still be perceived after a lengthy discussion with a person who as ABXed a lot of CD players?

People *are* interested in reliability - after all it was the reduced reliability of American and British cars as compared to Japanese cars that decimated the US and British auto industries.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-05-04 15:58:34
Again,this is not at odds with what I have written. I would note that tradeoff between "perceived sound quality problems" and the degree of compression is a personal one. And again, I don't understand what damage is being done to someone who rips, say, at 256kbps when 192kbps is the current level where he cannot distinguish the MP3 from the uncompressed file? Surely the damage occurs in the opposite direction, when he rips at a lower bit rate than he finds transparent? And nothing I have published would lead to that situation.

There is no real 'damage' for using a higher bitrate than is required for transparency.  There is however a loss of convenience.  Portables are size limited.  Your encoded bitrate determines how much music you can take with you.  For a quick example if you can fit 2000 songs on your portable at 256Kbps, then around 2700 will fit at 192Kbps, and 4000 will fit at 128Kbps.  If you can't tell the difference between the bit rates, which is better?  Using 128Kbps just doubled the capacity of my player, with no perceived quality loss.  Assuming i can't tell the difference between 256Kbps and 128Kbps.

Like I said, there's no real damage to using excessive bit rates, but conversely, there's no real cost to making an informed choice personalized to your ears.  A little bit of time testing up front pays dividends in maximizing the size of your portable library, with no loss in perceived quality.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 16:11:43
The problem here is that both sides concentrate on individual components and I don't think this serves any purpose other than to create a clash of the orthodoxies. Audiophiles believe they can hear a difference between badge engineered CD players and HA members would dismiss such claims as laughable... testing that out is merely re-starting a paused fight. So instead it should be a systemic test - audiophile system (set up by audiophiles, as high-end, high-resolution and 'system matched' as possible) against prosaic equipment under double-blind and level-matched conditions. ABX test lossless vs. MP3 on one system. Repeat the same test on the other system. Do the same test as many times as possible. Stress upon the listeners that this is not to determine qualities of the systems under test, but instead to see if ABX results are altered by changes in the replay chain itself.



Except, both 'sides' don't focus on individual components.  One side says that two different modern amps picked at random, and compared level-matched, double-blind, and not being driven into distortion, are more likely than not to sound the same.  Ditto (with appropriate provisos) digital players, cables, preamps.  NOT the case for transducers, analog gear, tube stages.

Btw, Tom Nousaine did a test similar to what you proposed -- he had audiophiles compare a 'high end' system to one composed of mass market stuff.  Guess what the result was.

Also, you commit a common fallacy here -- writing as if the evidence up front supports both sides equally, and therefore the same burden of proof lies on both sides.  You ignore the *reasons why* each side believes what it does.  One side can point to hearing thresholds, experimental evidence for fallibility of perception, measurements of the technology itself and the way the technology works.  The other side points to the 'fact' that it has more discriminating ears than the average listener, has better gear than the average hobbyist, and that science can't measure everything.  Where the measurements indicate little or no likelihood of audible difference, one side accepts that , the other believes that (sighted) report of audible difference trumps measurements.





Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 16:20:30
Ah. Another 4/4 result   


If you are implying dishonesty on my part here, please do so directly. I prefer my criticism bare-faced and up-front.


I'm not implying dishonesty, for god's sake.  I'm saying that a four-trial test won't provide very robust standalone proof of effect....as was noted earlier in this thread, when Fremer and Atkinson reported 4/5 and 5/5 results in an old amplifier DBT, as if htis was slam-dunk proof of claim.

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This one with the added feature of near-instantaneous identification of very high bitrate lossy fiels made with the presumably good AAC codec. 

This raises all kinds of flags.


Please elucidate. What flags?


Methodological ones.  When suddenly a result appears that is not just unusual, but almost 180 degrees in apposition to the bulk of previous results, one first checks carefully that the method was not flawed.
And I'm talking more about the ease of detection here, not the 4/4 result itself.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 16:23:37
Again,this is not at odds with what I have written. I would note that tradeoff between "perceived sound quality problems" and the degree of compression is a personal one.


But that tradeoff is not well-assessed by sighted comparison, or by the graphs you showed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-04 16:34:01
There's some vinyl rips from Michael Fremer available here (http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web), so it's possible to get at least some insight into the sound out of his phono preamp.  The downloads are the two "Step Right Up" AIFF files.  I'm not taking sides here, just mentioning this as an FYI.

BTW, I tried these in Foobar and they didn't work, but I don't know why.  Winamp plays them okay though.


Cool Edit Pro had no problem identifying them, and let me save them out as ordinary windows .wav files.

The bit order used was indeed LSB, MSB.

Any idea what the difference is between the two versions?


Hehe, you'll love this .  The link to these files was originally posted by Michael Fremer over in the "Furutech demag" thread at the Stereophile forum.  One of the files was taken after "LP demagnetization"  and the other not.  If I recall correctly, Axon looked at these and found a 0.6 percent speed difference, which in itself raises some questions ("hey, what do you want from a $100,000 turntable anyway?").

Regarding your earlier question of what these should be compared to, I probably should have put more disclaimers in my original post in which they were linked.  "Not intended for scientific purposes", etc.  My purpose in listening to them was to get some idea of the extent of vinyl artifacts present.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 16:56:03
If the 'remedies' are onbly 'effective' through the placebo effect, it's not the substance of the remedies that is causing the effect.

And who cares how many believe something that has not been properly tested* except as examples of the power of belief and human gullibility?  If the ubiquity of the belief was enough to serve as 'proof', then scientific testing would not be necessary.  Unfortunately, enough widely-believed 'remedies' have proved to have no effect of their own, that one can't take widespread belief as an indicator of fact.

(*there is scientific evidence for effectiveness of chicken soup against cold)


The point you're ignoring is the benefit derived, whether or not it was a placebo. Benefit is benefit.


I'm not ignoring that.  I'm pointing out that erroneous conclusions of cause/effect can be, and often are, extrapolated from subjectively-perceived benefit.  If someone says "I felt better after I took that pill" it's a different claim than "Something in that pill cured me."  The latter claim is a common leap of faith that is THE VERY REASON WHY EXPERIMENTAL CONTROLS EXIST.

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Furthermore, if it helps people to be happier, than it simply can't be dismissed, out of hand, as inconsequential. Just because something doesn't agree with your beliefs doesn't mean it isn't real. It doesn't matter what people believe, what matters is that the effect has been proven to exist in a meaningful way through the rigors of scientific testing. It seems to me as if you're simply ignoring the facts which don't fit in your viewpoint.


It seems to me you aren't understanding what I, and some others, are writing, if you believe that.  I am in full agreement that effects should be properly proven to exist if they are claimed to exist.  Scientists are also concerned with correctly ascribing a cause to an effect.    If a listener reports that A 'sounds' better than B from a 'sighted' comparison, that preference (effect) may not be due to an actual audible difference (cause), but rather due to other aspects of A.  So claiming that the *sound* of A 'caused' the effect, without further evidence, only confuses the issue.

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... and yes, chicken soup can be beneficial, but I'd bet you're unable to explain the mechanism of that benefit, just as we cannot explain all the interactions in the audio arena.


I'm surprised that you, who seems to get all his information from Wikipedia, missed the proposed, not at all mysterious, mechanism for immunological benefits of chicken soup, offered by the scientists (http://www.chestjournal.org/content/118/4/1150.long) who studied it.  It's cited on the 'chicken soup' wiki page.  The point is that unlike audio, no recourse is made to 'what science can't measure'.

And that's enough from me for THIS particular pointless tangent of yours...you've already littered the thread with enough of that lately and I decline to get entangled.  There are much bigger fish to fry.

Would it be too much to hope that others here follow my lead on this?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 16:56:37
most of the ca. 1990 Stereo Review ABX tests of power amplifiers and CD players were performed using large Magnepan's in a relatively large well-designed room that conformed to the IEC listening room standards of the day.


Granted, but sadly such tests remain a thing of the past. If the only sources of information on hardware don't seem willing to discuss the products on the basis of blind testing, aren't our hardware selection processes dreadfully arbitrary?

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IMO you're worrying about an issue that was settled long ago in a different context. Not only that, but you've excluded a rich middle range of excellent loudspeakers from your discussion.


Very possibly and that's something I would like to explore in greater depth, but feel there is no realistic place to explore such products any more. It seems that audio magazines and webzines mostly fall back on creative writing to describe products, while more objective places seem to have a knee-jerk response dismissing the hardware side of things (because there's so little hardware testing that's thorough enough to make the grade).


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I'm familiar with speakers of the kind you mention for your first two alternatives. Used appropriately, the CV's are proabably not all that much less revealing of codec faults than the Genelecs. Besides balance and smoothness, studio monitors generally have a lot more dynamic range than small home speakers, and this can cost serious money to implement. The Magicos are simply rediculous, you can no doubt find something in the Paradigm catalog with a similar design and maybe even better performance, for a few percent of the price. The Genelecs chosen are almost as rediculous as the Magicos. Genelec is best known for studio monitor speakers more of the size and general configuration as the CVs. albeit for about 20 times the money.


I was plucking examples out of the internet, yes. CV no longer has a presence in my country - I remember them purely as 'LOUDspeakers' (the company's own marketing) and being particularly vexatious, but this might be due to the musical tastes and high volume levels preferred by those who bought them. I have 'little' (read: 'no') knowledge of studio design, but remember someone mentioning Genelec as being 'not a pair of Yamaha NS10s'. The Magicos I plucked from TAS's website, and chose them as being particularly OTT examples of genus audiophilus carus. So yes, I suppose I was making a statement here.

With more background work, I could likely find a trio of loudspeakers (real-world, studio and audiophile) that would be a closer match to one another. Here's a possibility:

Real-World: Tannoy Custom F1
Studio: Behringer B2030P
Audiophile: Revel M22

All three are two-way standmount speakers (I'm not sure if the last is ported), ideal for similarly sized small rooms. The UK prices make the real-world model some 12x cheaper than the audiophile model. Given the price differential (and under controlled conditions), should I expect the Revel to, er, reveal more information about the signal it receives? Problem is, today there's no one running test protocols with the sort of thoroughness to answer this.

You may already have the answers here. Forgive me if I want to discover them for myself.

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Most codec faults seem to be present in the middle and upper frequency ranges, so bass extension is not usually a big issue.


However, if you attempt to verify this on a loudspeaker system with inconsistent bass extension, how could you tell this reliably? A lot of (ported) loudspeakers put out extra energy in the 50-80Hz region to make them appear to have deeper bass. This comes at the expense of decent definition from 100Hz or lower. Could codec faults be masked by a port swamping the sub-100Hz region with an 80Hz boom?

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In your experience, per what you are currently saying.


Yes, I see the potential fallacy in that reasoning. However, we could be a bunch of econobox owners wondering about high-octane fuel. Shouldn't we also be open to the existence of Ferraris and their requirements? 

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It has been done.  No special joy.


Again, forgive me if I want to discover this for myself. Perhaps the problem is that the 'been there, done that' nature of this testing needs a periodic re-run. Ideally, of course, that should be the job of the audio magazines...

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I think that Gizmodo's mention of Fremer's wildly over-priced speakers with questionable technical performance has skewed some people's perceptions of what it takes to obtain  dynamic, good-sounding and highly revealing loudspeakers.


This is highly likely. And ultimately damaging for audio - if the price of admission to top-class sound is said to be hundreds of thousands but is in fact hundreds or thousands, this makes a mockery of the whole thing.

And if I didn't think that through, there must be thousands of less-interested people ignoring the audiophile party altogether.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 17:01:13
most of the ca. 1990 Stereo Review ABX tests of power amplifiers and CD players were performed using large Magnepan's in a relatively large well-designed room that conformed to the IEC listening room standards of the day.


Granted, but sadly such tests remain a thing of the past. If the only sources of information on hardware don't seem willing to discuss the products on the basis of blind testing, aren't our hardware selection processes dreadfully arbitrary?



Not necessarily.  You seem to think published DBTs (or lack of same) are our ONLY sources of information on hardware.  This implies that measured performance of hardware never indicates whether it will be audibly different.  Is that what you believe?

It also implies that the sound of the hardware is the only criterion we use for selecting hardware....is that what you believe?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 17:03:25
I'm not implying dishonesty, for god's sake.  I'm saying that a four-trial test won't provide very robust standalone proof of effect....as was noted earlier in this thread, when Fremer and Atkinson reported 4/5 and 5/5 results in an old amplifier DBT, as if htis was slam-dunk proof of claim.


I made no suggestion of this being 'proof' of anything. Proof is best left to whiskey bottles in this context.

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Methodological ones.  When suddenly a result appears that is not just unusual, but almost 180 degrees in apposition to the bulk of previous results, one first checks carefully that the method was not flawed.
And I'm talking more about the ease of detection here, not the 4/4 result itself.


Fair point. I thought the ease of detection odd, too, given my home results. It's not as though I suddenly grew better ears.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 17:38:57
Except, both 'sides' don't focus on individual components.  One side says that two different modern amps picked at random, and compared level-matched, double-blind, and not being driven into distortion, are more likely than not to sound the same.  Ditto (with appropriate provisos) digital players, cables, preamps.  NOT the case for transducers, analog gear, tube stages.


I think you miss my point (or maybe I buried it, which is likely). A system-vs-system test (expressed as such from the outset, possibly like the one you suggest Tom Nousaine conducted) is one of the few ways you can potentially expose potentially nonsense audiophile ideas for what they are. If this has been done, it needs to be done again. And again.

Despite all this the audiophiles will cry foul simply because of the test methodology and because it does not necessarily generate the result they would like.

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Also, you commit a common fallacy here -- writing as if the evidence up front supports both sides equally, and therefore the same burden of proof lies on both sides.  You ignore the *reasons why* each side believes what it does.  One side can point to hearing thresholds, experimental evidence for fallibility of perception, measurements of the technology itself and the way the technology works.  The other side points to the 'fact' that it has more discriminating ears than the average listener, has better gear than the average hobbyist, and that science can't measure everything.  Where the measurements indicate little or no likelihood of audible difference, one side accepts that , the other believes that (sighted) report of audible difference trumps measurements.


The problem is not one of proof, IMO. It's one of 'truthiness', and the audible difference brigade are good at making statements that are full of it (truthiness, that is). Which is why you need to ignore the reasons why people hold to their ideas, but try to explain and demonstrate how their ideas are flawed. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-05-04 17:54:51
Lost cause, probably, but I'm insomniac, so:

Could people please look again at Gag Halfrunt's proposal. What he wants to do is to run a series of ABX tests (of the same samples, I assume) on systems of differing price levels, and presumably different levels of quality, to see if the results come out differently. To make it concrete: can you ABX V3 from lossless on an expensive system, but only V5 on a cheapie, or vice versa.

There is a real question here, one that seems not to have been investigated, or at least still allows two different positions to be expressed on HA without being ToS-8ed: the first is the intuitively plausible one, that you can hear better with a good system, so you can ABX higher quality lossy. The second position is counter-intuitive, and hence more appealing: that the bad system disrupts the assumptions about masking etc. in the psy-model, so you can ABX more decisively with crap.

This would seem to be something that cries out for empirical investigation, and I've been thinking about trying it myself. I will now do so, even though I have cloth ears and equipment which at best is mediocre, in the hope of stirring up the better-equipped to do their own tests.

If this is not a good idea, noting that it is purely a test of if, and if so, how far, changing equipment affects ability to ABX, please to explain, remembering that I am not advocating voodoo-dust or challenging the virtue of my forefathers who died in the ABX wars for the sake of happy iPod users like me.

Edit: while I was composing this, G H was speaking for himself. I'm relieved that I seem to have read his intentions correctly.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-04 18:16:36
Could people please look again at Gag Halfrunt's proposal.


German c't magazine has tried this (MP3 vs. CD audio) with 12 listeners out of 300 who had applied in 2000. Equipment was a pair B&W Nautilus 803 speakers, a Marantz CD14 as DAC and a Marantz PM14 integrated amp. The test was supervised by a recording engineer of Deutsche Grammophon. It was a huge success for MP3, which was still in early stages when compared to todays tuned encoders. MP3 at 256kbit/s reached exactly the same statistical score as CD audio (501 points) and MP3 at 128kbit/s was slightly off (439) with only 1% probability of error. Most of the time, when differences between MP3-128 and CDA could be perceived, MP3 was rated higher than CD audio. All attendees had expressed to have better than average ears before the test and had to provide some proof of qualification to get into the final selection. AAC wasn't available to the public back then.

I would also like to see a new round of this with current encoders.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ff123 on 2009-05-04 18:30:04
Could people please look again at Gag Halfrunt's proposal.


German c't magazine has tried this (MP3 vs. CD audio) with 12 listeners out of 300 who had applied in 2000. Equipment was a pair B&W Nautilus 803 speakers, a Marantz CD14 as DAC and a Marantz PM14 integrated amp. It was a huge success for MP3, which was still in early stages when compared to todays tuned encoders. MP3 at 256kbit/s reached exactly the same statistical score as CD audio (501 points) and MP3 at 128kbit/s was slightly off (439) with only 1% probability of error. Most of the time, when differences between MP3-128 and CDA could be perceived, MP3 was rated higher than CD audio. All attendees had expressed to have better than average ears before the test. AAC wasn't available to the public back then.

I would also like to see a new round of this with current encoders.


I think we'd find that listener selection, listener training, and sample selection would be much more important than the listening hardware (assuming it's at least fairly competent).  Just my guess.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 18:37:41
You seem to think published DBTs (or lack of same) are our ONLY sources of information on hardware.  This implies that measured performance of hardware never indicates whether it will be audibly different.  Is that what you believe?

It also implies that the sound of the hardware is the only criterion we use for selecting hardware....is that what you believe?


No... and no.

That being said, I am highly suspect of measured performance ratings made by less than scrupled loudspeaker manufacturers. SoundStage AV is a useful source of information, but for a UK buyer it leaves one with a very small pool of products. I'm not sure I trust the measurements of magazines otherwise.

However, I am also aware that this means many people use no selection process whatsoever apart from price, because there's nothing other than the creative writing versions of audio magazines these days.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 18:55:20
I know some people actually believe that, but in fact that is an idealistic expectation.  It is all about image. Look at how Atkinson cherry-picks points to reply to. Look at how people here get distracted by that.


Actually, Mr. Atkinson's evasiveness has been repeatedly commented on, and seems to be quite apparent to most here. I don't think he's scoring any points at all with that little trick.


I think that might be true of the majority, but notice how the poster right after me responded.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 18:57:48
You seem to think published DBTs (or lack of same) are our ONLY sources of information on hardware.  This implies that measured performance of hardware never indicates whether it will be audibly different.  Is that what you believe?

It also implies that the sound of the hardware is the only criterion we use for selecting hardware....is that what you believe?


No... and no.

That being said, I am highly suspect of measured performance ratings made by less than scrupled loudspeaker manufacturers. SoundStage AV is a useful source of information, but for a UK buyer it leaves one with a very small pool of products. I'm not sure I trust the measurements of magazines otherwise.

However, I am also aware that this means many people use no selection process whatsoever apart from price, because there's nothing other than the creative writing versions of audio magazines these days.



Please don't lump loudspeakers in with all other classes of home audio hardware.  Every 'objectivist' accepts that loudspeakers (and to an extent other transducers) are likely going to 1) sound different ; 2) be particularly difficult to set up a good DBT for  and 3) have less definite metrics for judging sound quality than we have for mere difference.  (But even given that, Stereophile itself usually publishes substantial and useful bench tests of loudspeakers...far more comprehensive than most other audio journals I've seen)

For CD players, cables, amps, preamps, however, the question is present at the start : do the really sound differemt at all?  And there we have more than just DBT results from which to make reasonable predictions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 19:04:20
German c't magazine has tried this (MP3 vs. CD audio) with 12 listeners out of 300 who had applied in 2000. Equipment was a pair B&W Nautilus 803 speakers, a Marantz CD14 as DAC and a Marantz PM14 integrated amp. The test was supervised by a recording engineer of Deutsche Grammophon. It was a huge success for MP3, which was still in early stages when compared to todays tuned encoders. MP3 at 256kbit/s reached exactly the same statistical score as CD audio (501 points) and MP3 at 128kbit/s was slightly off (439) with only 1% probability of error. Most of the time, when differences between MP3-128 and CDA could be perceived, MP3 was rated higher than CD audio. All attendees had expressed to have better than average ears before the test and had to provide some proof of qualification to get into the final selection. AAC wasn't available to the public back then.

I would also like to see a new round of this with current encoders.


OK, I did not know that. It sounds as if it really would be academic to push for 'special magic audiophile toys'. Of course, by high-end standards, this is equivalent to two tin-cans tied up with string... at least in price terms.

Maybe it's time to go retracting some statements. Although I still maintain that the only way this will ever trickle down to the audiophile mind-set is by taking the argument right to the very core and running the test on kit that costs as much as a private jet. Once this particular folk devil gets exorcised at the top down, perhaps it'll reach the rank-and-file audioloon.

Failing that, someone will invent a Ward-Off MP3 spell they can cast.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 19:09:52


Any idea what the difference is between the two versions?


Hehe, you'll love this .  The link to these files was originally posted by Michael Fremer over in the "Furutech demag" thread at the Stereophile forum.  One of the files was taken after "LP demagnetization"  and the other not.  If I recall correctly, Axon looked at these and found a 0.6 percent speed difference, which in itself raises some questions ("hey, what do you want from a $100,000 turntable anyway?").


OK then the comparison is that they are before and after processing by the Furutech LP demagnetizer.

Or alternatively, they are the results of two successive playings of the same LP.

I did my own matching of lengths and found the lengths to be:

1 (before)  5:39.984  339.984 seconds
2 (after)      5:39.758  339.758 seconds

Because the end of the needle drop is a fade out (presumably from the LP) figuring out the end of the LP is somewhat subjective. I used a pretty clearly defined peak about 2.85 sec before the actual end as my benchmark.

The lengths I obtained (above) were about 0.06% different.

Overall levels matched within 0.01 dB.

However there was a measurable difference above 4 KHz that reached about 3 dB at 10 KHz and seemed to be far, far more (> 9 dB) above 15 KHz.  I atrribute this to unrecovered groove deformation.

I asked what people thought the difference was on the SP forum, and received ummm, inconclusive answers.

I tried a very fast ABX and obtained 20/30 which should make the believers in 95% confidence think a bit. I' like to see some younger listeners try it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MordredKLB on 2009-05-04 19:20:50
Failing that, someone will invent a Ward-Off MP3 spell they can cast.
You jest but I wrote an MP3 renaming program which inexplicably makes every MP3 I rename with it sound fuller, with a more clearly defined soundstage and exceptional 3-dimensional location. The highs of course sound noticeably more transcendant than before. It's really night-and-day.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 19:50:36
Please don't lump loudspeakers in with all other classes of home audio hardware.  Every 'objectivist' accepts that loudspeakers (and to an extent other transducers) are likely going to 1) sound different ; 2) be particularly difficult to set up a good DBT for  and 3) have less definite metrics for judging sound quality than we have for mere difference.  (But even given that, Stereophile itself usually publishes substantial and useful bench tests of loudspeakers...far more comprehensive than most other audio journals I've seen)

For CD players, cables, amps, preamps, however, the question is present at the start : do the really sound differemt at all?  And there we have more than just DBT results from which to make reasonable predictions.


I don't lump loudspeakers in with other audio hardware. What I've been discussing is loudspeaker-based. And yes, Stereophile does seem to do good work here, but much of the work it does seems irrelevant to me as I don't have tens of thousands to spend on a loudspeaker. My problem is that few audiophiles get this at all, but to disabuse them of this at the same time as trying to shake their firm belief in the supremacy of the uncompressed file seems to be asking too much. Which is why I am (was) suggesting a systemic approach.

If you establish an audio system that uses a good pair of loudspeakers ('good' in this context implies it performs well from both audiophile and objective standings) but then connect it to what audiophiles would dismiss as a ho-hum design (because it doesn't have the right label or doesn't weigh enough), you are simply giving them ammo to shoot down the test. Even if their ammo is nothing but blanks, it still makes a loud noise to other audiophiles. So, you make the test as audiophile-friendly as possible, using expensive cables, tables and the rest (albeit you make it clear you are doing so under sufferance). Turn your nose up at the temple bells, though.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 20:13:15
If you establish an audio system that uses a good pair of loudspeakers ('good' in this context implies it performs well from both audiophile and objective standings) but then connect it to what audiophiles would dismiss as a ho-hum design (because it doesn't have the right label or doesn't weigh enough), you are simply giving them ammo to shoot down the test.


We played that game back inthe late 80s when we did the amplifier and CD player tests. That was followed by an onslaught on the basic idea of blind tests, which is going strong through today. AFAIK, there has been no new golden ear doctrine in this area since then. None needed, it seems.

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Even if their ammo is nothing but blanks, it still makes a loud noise to other audiophiles.


Which is also true. I see the basic HE doctrine which became well-defined in the early 90s, on audiopile forums wherever I look.

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So, you make the test as audiophile-friendly as possible, using expensive cables, tables and the rest (albeit you make it clear you are doing so under sufferance). Turn your nose up at the temple bells, though.


In the end people will believe whatever they want to believe. There are very few new Christians taken from the ranks of confirmed atheists, and vice-versa.  The only place where traction is possible to a useful extent is among the truely undecided.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 20:31:12
OK then the comparison is that they are before and after processing by the Furutech LP demagnetizer.


Whoa! Back up a moment, please. Furutech LP demagnetizer?

I don't think my credulity gland can take that much stretching in a single day. I did not know vinyl had magnetic properties, especially ones that require demagnitizing. Or is it a special machine that magnetically extracts money from people's wallets?

I just checked: $1,800 to do something no-one ever suspected needed doing to something that doesn't need it doing to in the first place. P.T. Barnum would have been proud.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 20:34:52
In the end people will believe whatever they want to believe. There are very few new Christians taken from the ranks of confirmed atheists, and vice-versa.  The only place where traction is possible to a useful extent is among the truely undecided.


I guess so. Even so, if there's a windmill, I tend to tilt at it.

Pity I have no idea how to tilt at a windmill, or what part I have to tilt or even where my nearest windmill is so that I can tilt something at it. But you get my drift.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 20:35:37
Please don't lump loudspeakers in with all other classes of home audio hardware.  Every 'objectivist' accepts that loudspeakers (and to an extent other transducers) are likely going to 1) sound different ; 2) be particularly difficult to set up a good DBT for  and 3) have less definite metrics for judging sound quality than we have for mere difference.  (But even given that, Stereophile itself usually publishes substantial and useful bench tests of loudspeakers...far more comprehensive than most other audio journals I've seen)

For CD players, cables, amps, preamps, however, the question is present at the start : do the really sound differemt at all?  And there we have more than just DBT results from which to make reasonable predictions.


I don't lump loudspeakers in with other audio hardware. What I've been discussing is loudspeaker-based.


Then please don't attribute a lack of guidance for the consumer who wants to choose *audio hardware*, to a lack of DBT information, as you did a few posts previously.  If you are only referring to loudspeakers, refer to loudspeakers.  Because for most classes of audio hardware, one can make reasonable assumptions about the existence of difference -- or lack thereof -- from the way such gear works, and how it has tested out on the bench.  And with particular instances of such gear, where a DBT *has* authenticated a sonic difference, and the gear has been measured either before or afterwards, the measurements have always supported a mundane explanation. 

Loudspeakers really do constitute a special case of audio hardware.  We predict that they will typically sound different, they DO typically sound different in controlled comparisons, and thus the question advances to how to correlate measured performance to quality, as Toole and Olive have been doing.  For most other classes of audio gear, the question hasn't gotten to that point yet.  There's still a fundamental question of whether real differences are being heard in the first place.

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And yes, Stereophile does seem to do good work here, but much of the work it does seems irrelevant to me as I don't have tens of thousands to spend on a loudspeaker. My problem is that few audiophiles get this at all, but to disabuse them of this at the same time as trying to shake their firm belief in the supremacy of the uncompressed file seems to be asking too much. Which is why I am (was) suggesting a systemic approach.



First, Stereophile does review the occasional sub-10 grand loudspeaker set.  Second, I have no hard data, but I would bet that there are many Stereophile readers who don't have $10,000 loudspeakers yet claim that mp3s sound horrible to them.  So why would an 'audiophile friendly test' using $10K loudspeakers make a difference to them?  They already think their gear is ''resolving'' ENOUGH to tell the difference!


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If you establish an audio system that uses a good pair of loudspeakers ('good' in this context implies it performs well from both audiophile and objective standings) but then connect it to what audiophiles would dismiss as a ho-hum design (because it doesn't have the right label or doesn't weigh enough), you are simply giving them ammo to shoot down the test. Even if their ammo is nothing but blanks, it still makes a loud noise to other audiophiles. So, you make the test as audiophile-friendly as possible, using expensive cables, tables and the rest (albeit you make it clear you are doing so under sufferance). Turn your nose up at the temple bells, though.


If audiophiles shoot ammo from a position of mulish irrationality, it's not our job to cater to every foolishness they request.  Suppose you ran a test with high end rig and found no difference.  They have three choices; they can either decide their own gear/ears aren't as good as that, and therefore they're probably imagining things; they can simply say that things are different on *their* rigs with *their* ears, and therefore the 'definitive' test 'proves nothing'; or they can claim the test itself is flawed, either inherently ('DBTs mask differences') or in this particular case. Wanna bet which of those will lose out?

Far better to suggest that they perform their own tests using their own gear, if they can.  It is easier to do this for mp3 vs lossless than for any gear-to-gear comparison. 

What we *can* do is expose the fallacies and apparent biases in purportedly educational articles like JA's and Fremer's.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-04 20:38:05
OK then the comparison is that they are before and after processing by the Furutech LP demagnetizer.


Whoa! Back up a moment, please. Furutech LP demagnetizer?


Yes. Atkinson's ragazine is alleged to have gone ga-ga over it.

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I don't think my credulity gland can take that much stretching in a single day. I did not know vinyl had magnetic properties, especially ones that require demagnitizing. Or is it a special machine that magnetically extracts money from people's wallets?


Ummm,  the true believers over at the SP forum pooh-pooh that. You know what about all those LPs with magnetic ink in their labels (or the labels that ground up the previous times they recycled the LPs).

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I just checked: $1,800 to do something no-one ever suspected needed doing to something that doesn't need it doing to in the first place. P.T. Barnum would have been proud.


The irony is that the data before me suggests that the Fremer needle drops that I downloaded are evidence that *something* changed pretty significantly between two playings of the same LP.

There was a demagnetization step in-between.

So I might think that there was some unrecovered deformation of the vinyl, but someone else might offer some other explanation.  ;-)

Go figure!

Maybe someone wants to repeat my technical tests and ABX test and confirm or deny?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 20:40:17
Failing that, someone will invent a Ward-Off MP3 spell they can cast.
You jest but I wrote an MP3 renaming program which inexplicably makes every MP3 I rename with it sound fuller, with a more clearly defined soundstage and exceptional 3-dimensional location. The highs of course sound noticeably more transcendant than before. It's really night-and-day.




Ah, but does it add 'inky black silences' or 'limpid pools of pellucidity'? Or better still, 'inky limpid silence pools of black pellucidity'?

I like those, they are limpid, and black, and pooly.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 21:00:13
Then please don't attribute a lack of guidance for the consumer who wants to choose *audio hardware*, to a lack of DBT information, as you did a few posts previously.  If you are only referring to loudspeakers, refer to loudspeakers.  Because for most classes of audio hardware, one can make reasonable assumptions about the existence of difference -- or lack thereof -- from the way such gear works, and how it has tested out on the bench.  And with particular instances of such gear, where a DBT *has* authenticated a sonic difference, and the gear has been measured either before or afterwards, the measurements have always supported a mundane explanation.


Good point. Duly noted. 

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Loudspeakers really do constitute a special case of audio hardware.  We predict that they will typically sound different, they DO typically sound different in controlled comparisons, and thus the question advances to how to correlate measured performance to quality, as Toole and Olive have been doing.  For most other classes of audio gear, the question hasn't gotten to that point yet.  There's still a fundamental question of whether real differences are being heard in the first place.




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First, Stereophile does review the occasional sub-10 grand loudspeaker set.


Very, very few of which have any relevance to my country, but I agree

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Second, I have no hard data, but I would bet that there are many Stereophile readers who don't have $10,000 loudspeakers yet claim that mp3s sound horrible to them.  So why would an 'audiophile friendly test' using $10K loudspeakers make a difference to them?  They already think their gear is ''resolving'' ENOUGH to tell the difference!


Therein lies their own get out clause, potentially. IMO, you either take such a test to the pinnacle of audiophilia, or you risk someone dismissing the test because it 'only' featured $25,000 loudspeakers. Suddenly the rest of the pack will climb aboard that argument. Even those with $2,000 loudspeakers.


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If audiophiles shoot ammo from a position of mulish irrationality, it's not our job to cater to every foolishness they request.  Suppose you ran a test with high end rig and found no difference.  They have three choices; they can either decide their own gear/ears aren't as good as that, and therefore they're probably imagining things; they can simply say that things are different on *their* rigs with *their* ears, and therefore the 'definitive' test 'proves nothing'; or they can claim the test itself is flawed, either inherently ('DBTs mask differences') or in this particular case. Wanna bet which of those will lose out?


Every foolishness... no. There has to be a middle ground, though.

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Far better to suggest that they perform their own tests using their own gear, if they can.  It is easier to do this for mp3 vs lossless than for any gear-to-gear comparison.


And then you run the risk of very poorly managed tests confirming the biases they bring to the party. As I've demonstrated by running a test with some inconsistencies that I already noted and you highlighted; by audiophile standards, that was full on lab-coat stuff. 

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What we *can* do is expose the fallacies and apparent biases in purportedly educational articles like JA's and Fremer's.


Agreed
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MordredKLB on 2009-05-04 21:15:13
Second, I have no hard data, but I would bet that there are many Stereophile readers who don't have $10,000 loudspeakers yet claim that mp3s sound horrible to them.  So why would an 'audiophile friendly test' using $10K loudspeakers make a difference to them?  They already think their gear is ''resolving'' ENOUGH to tell the difference!


Therein lies their own get out clause, potentially. IMO, you either take such a test to the pinnacle of audiophilia, or you risk someone dismissing the test because it 'only' featured $25,000 loudspeakers. Suddenly the rest of the pack will climb aboard that argument. Even those with $2,000 loudspeakers.
Because one day, like every good audiophile, they hope to be able to afford the $65k speakers. I don't think what you're proposing is unreasonable because it does remove more potential complaints about the test.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: kinnerful on 2009-05-04 22:12:00
I don't understand why this becomes a 41-page, 1000+posts monster.

For vinyl lovers:
Use the same system to abx a vinyl, a CD and a V0 mp3 of the same music.
If you can do this, you win.

For $350k system lovers:
Use the same audio source (cd, vinyl, mp3 etc.) to abx two systems.
If you can point out the expensive one is better, you win.

And that's it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-04 22:17:39
OK then the comparison is that they are before and after processing by the Furutech LP demagnetizer.


Whoa! Back up a moment, please. Furutech LP demagnetizer?

I don't think my credulity gland can take that much stretching in a single day. I did not know vinyl had magnetic properties, especially ones that require demagnitizing. Or is it a special machine that magnetically extracts money from people's wallets?

I just checked: $1,800 to do something no-one ever suspected needed doing to something that doesn't need it doing to in the first place. P.T. Barnum would have been proud.


Stereophile has a Recommended Components List addendum on the web here (http://www.stereophile.com/features/409recommended_components/).  The second item on the list is the Acoustic Revive LP demagnetizer for $2350.  So it isn't simply a case of Stereophile claiming that the concept of LP demagnetization is valid.  They actually recommend that you buy one .

In my system, I have speakers that cost me $2400 for the pair.  Should I have gotten speakers that cost $50 for a pair, along with a $2350 LP demagnetizer instead?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-05-04 22:20:37
[quote name='Gag Halfrunt' post='632092' date='May 4 2009, 13:In my system, I have speakers that cost me $2400 for the pair.  Should I have gotten a $50 per pair set of speakers and a $2350 LP demagnetizer instead?


Heh.

My new (homedesigned) speakers cost way less than that  too.

Demagnetize aluminium. Or lexan. My brain hurts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 22:23:10
Because one day, like every good audiophile, they hope to be able to afford the $65k speakers. I don't think what you're proposing is unreasonable because it does remove more potential complaints about the test.


Of course, what I'm proposing is entirely untenable because what manufacturer, group of manufacturers or magazine is going to risk sacrificing their 'good reputation' and standing within the whole high-end knitting circle by agreeing to such a test?

Thinking about it, if the putative $65k loudspeakers (partnered, of course, with the 'right' $50k amplifier and the 'right' $10k worth of wire) don't reveal the difference between compressed and uncompressed formats, the audiophiles will have to blame something. And, along with the test methodology, those pesky scientists, the codec, computers, the people running the test, their parents for never marrying, the electrical company for using the bad kind of electricity at key moments, liberal conservatives, the record companies, the grey aliens, global warming, non-aligned screws, a gust of bad karma across the back of the room, someone turning the water faucet in the wrong direction and Mexican pig flu... the system had to be to blame.

But never that A and B might be indistinguishable. That just can't possibly happen.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-05-04 22:39:45
Could people please look again at Gag Halfrunt's proposal.


German c't magazine has tried this (MP3 vs. CD audio) with 12 listeners out of 300 who had applied in 2000. Equipment was a pair B&W Nautilus 803 speakers, a Marantz CD14 as DAC and a Marantz PM14 integrated amp.


I'm sorry, but this is exactly NOT what I was proposing, nor I think what G H was suggesting. I am not interested in the quality of lossy encoders, as such, but whether the undoubted imperfections in low rate lossy files are MORE or LESS apparent with different equipment.

When I do this test, I shall start at V9 because I want to know that, at some point, I will be sure of hearing a difference.

One of the things that has gone wrong with this thread is people responding to what they think someone has said, not what they actually said.

And, yes, I know my prose is a bit convoluted for non-native users of English: I really do apologise for that, but it was 4 am when I posted.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Gag Halfrunt on 2009-05-04 22:45:05
Stereophile has a Recommended Components List addendum on the web here (http://www.stereophile.com/features/409recommended_components/).


Oh, thank you so much for that. I like the $2,800 wooden puck that clamps your LP, "It produced a richness, clarity, three-dimensionality, natural liveliness, and harmonic rightness that must be heard to be appreciated," states an occasional HA member.

Wow, three 'ness's in a single sentence. In imperial units, that's approximately 1.7 milliFremers of hyperbole. That's nowhere near toxicity, but you should make sure you are wearing gloves and a mask while handling the website.




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-04 22:45:48
With all due respect, you are taking this _way_ too seriously.
And you've not taking lossy codecs seriously enough.

Huge swathes of content will never be available in a lossless format - broadcast content, for example.

Radio in the USA might be largely wall-to-wall junk with poorly funded NPR at one end of the band, and TV might be even worse unless you subscribe to HBO - but just imagine for a second that there are some broadcasts somewhere that are worth listening to

They will only be available via some lossy format. Disengaging from lossy because it's not high-end enough does everyone a dis-service - it makes your readers think there's no enjoyment to be gained from listening to these broadcasts; it also makes your readers think "lossy = bad", meaning they're unable to engage in the debate about whether what's provided is "good" lossy or "bad" lossy, and that leaves the broadcasters free to be unchallenged on their quality - where they could be providing something that's essential transparent, but because all the people who care about audio are brain washed to believe "lossy = bad", they go ahead and provide junk audio anyway.


Of course, some of your readers listen to these broadcasts anyway. They notice some sound great, others sound terrible, but unless they escape from your little world and learn something from, say, Hydrogenaudio, they won't have the language to complain to the broadcasters about the mistakes or coding choices which cause audio problems.

128kbps mp3s in discrete stereo, for example(!), vs 192kbps AAC. Both lossy. Both not worth listening to as far as Stereophile is concerned. Well guess what? If you want to listen to the BBC Proms, you'd better hope they use the latter, rather than the former!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 22:50:08
I don't understand why this becomes a 41-page, 1000+posts monster.

For vinyl lovers:
Use the same system to abx a vinyl, a CD and a V0 mp3 of the same music.
If you can do this, you win.


For $350k system lovers:
Use the same audio source (cd, vinyl, mp3 etc.) to abx two systems.
If you can point out the expensive one is better, you win.

And that's it.



er...you mean a CDR of a digital capture of the vinyl, and then an mp3 of that, right?

Because a commercial CD and its LP counterpart will almost certainly be ABX-able, due to mastering differences and the noise levels of LP vs CD.
No 'win' there, it's a giveaway.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-04 22:57:04
Wow, three 'ness's in a single sentence. In imperial units, that's approximately 1.7 milliFremers of hyperbole. That's nowhere near toxicity, but you should make sure you are wearing gloves and a mask while handling the website.

LOL!  By the way, does your preamp have musical joie de vivre (http://stereophile.com/solidpreamps/mark_levinson_no38_preamplifier/index6.html)?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-04 23:02:34
Stereophile has a Recommended Components List addendum on the web here (http://www.stereophile.com/features/409recommended_components/).  The second item on the list is the Acoustic Revive LP demagnetizer for $2350.


OK...I try to be respectful of people's different views and keep an open mind.  However, with that ridiculous list Stereophile and anybody associated with the mag has officially forfeited any expectations that I accept a single word they say with anything other than the deepest skepticism.  LP demagnetizer?  That goes completely and totally beyond the pale.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 23:07:55
OK then the comparison is that they are before and after processing by the Furutech LP demagnetizer.


Whoa! Back up a moment, please. Furutech LP demagnetizer?



Yes.  The one Michael Fremer gave the enthusiastic thumbs up to in the Oct 2006 Stereophile  -- as quoted on the Furutech website:

"…demagnetizing an LP definitively removed a high-frequency glaze or glare and seemed to enrich the midband…Demagnetizing LPs works. Better yet, once a record has been demagnetized, it seems to stay that way…And do not try one of these devices unless you're prepared to buy it." – Michael Fremer, Stereophile.

They left out the part where he wrote he can't explain *how* it could work,  "but it does!" 

After all, he *heard* it.  And after him, so did the rest of the usual audiophool reviewers, from 6moons to Soundstage to ToneAudio.  Not one did a blind comparison. Stereophile honored it with a place on its annual REcommended list.


(Subsequently audiophiles have chimed in with more or less ridiculous pseudoscientific explanations involving the carbon in LPs.)

This remarkable LP demagnetizer can be yours for just  ~$1900, btw.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-04 23:11:52
OK...I try to be respectful of people's different views and keep an open mind.  However, with that ridiculous list Stereophile and anybody associated with the mag has officially forfeited any expectations that I accept a single word they say with anything other than the deepest skepticism.  LP demagnetizer?  That goes completely and totally beyond the pale.

I like to think of it as being somewhat like the case of Clever Hans, in which inadequate experimental controls can lead to conclusions that are completely preposterous.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-04 23:13:03
And then you run the risk of very poorly managed tests confirming the biases they bring to the party. As I've demonstrated by running a test with some inconsistencies that I already noted and you highlighted; by audiophile standards, that was full on lab-coat stuff.


We run less of that risk if our recommendations spell out the requirements for a WELL-managed DBT.  And actually, with ABX comparator software, those recommendations become even simpler. 

If *THEY* still choose to run a poor DBT, then *we* can point out how they didn't follow our instructions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-04 23:14:46
I'm sorry, but this is exactly NOT what I was proposing, nor I think what G H was suggesting. I am not interested in the quality of lossy encoders, as such, but whether the undoubted imperfections in low rate lossy files are MORE or LESS apparent with different equipment.


HA's codec developers would  confirm that non linear frequency response increases the probability of perceivable artifacts. Codecs are optimized for flat FR and any deviation invalidates assumptions about what would get masked. The only thing preventing cheap gear from massively uncovering artifacts is noise (or enough bitrate headroom). Once you eliminate the noise chances to detect artifacts only decrease when you improve your system's frequency response, because you're increasing the accuracy of your encoder's predictions. The best bet to find artifacts would be an audiophile system with excellent SNR, but an intentional non-flat FR. There might be a few 'audiophile' (price-) class systems, that are exactly doing that to get a characteristic sound.

What else would you expect? There's no such thing as audible 'resolution', which wouldn't be a function of frequency response. High resolution in a low noise setup is usually just an expression to describe a broad, flat frequency response without major dips.

There is no common property or intersection of cheap systems except noise, that could hide an encoder's artifacts better than a high end system could.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-05-04 23:47:59
The point you're ignoring is a big one - reliability.

What post was it that gave you the idea I was ignoring reliability? As far as I'm aware, the placebo effect works very reliably. According to the study I quoted, the effect was so reliable that it even demonstrated the ability to manifest despite the subjects knowing there was no actual effect. As, well, I'd like to point out that the whole "it's just all in your head" argument you personally often use is exactly that reliable psychoactive placebo effect happening that so skews people in a sighted evaluation. That certain seems reliable, wouldn't you say?

Quote
IME the effectiveness of holistic and other medical treatments whose only known effects are similar to that of placebos is maybe 30%.  Furthermore, the effectiveness of placebo treatments has been reported to decrease as time passes. After all, the inital effectiveness was dependent in suspended disbelief.

I understand that that may have been your experience. Can you post a reference to prove that the effectiveness of placebo treatments being reported decreases as time passes? Personally, I wouldn't doubt it, however, the placebo effect still reliably exist, even if it decreases with time. In fact, most visceral pleasures suffer exactly the same fate. Thrills just don't seem to last.

Quote
The effectiveness of many very expensive high end tweaks is in the same range, decreasing to zero in controlled evaluations.

I could believe it if you'd provide a reference.

Quote
If you spend $3,000 on a CD player, how reliable should the purported audible benefit be?  Should the purported audible benefit reliable enough to still be perceived after a lengthy discussion with a person who as ABXed a lot of CD players?

Wouldn't that, of course, depend upon the purchaser? For some people, ignorance is bliss, for others, it is agony.

Quote
People *are* interested in reliability - after all it was the reduced reliability of American and British cars as compared to Japanese cars that decimated the US and British auto industries.

I've never argued otherwise. Indeed I relish reliability. Did I ever give you any reason to think otherwise?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-05 00:49:03
OK then the comparison is that they are before and after processing by the Furutech LP demagnetizer.


Whoa! Back up a moment, please. Furutech LP demagnetizer?



Yes.  The one Michael Fremer gave the enthusiastic thumbs up to in the Oct 2006 Stereophile  -- as quoted on the Furutech website:

"…demagnetizing an LP definitively removed a high-frequency glaze or glare and seemed to enrich the midband…Demagnetizing LPs works. Better yet, once a record has been demagnetized, it seems to stay that way…And do not try one of these devices unless you're prepared to buy it." – Michael Fremer, Stereophile.

They left out the part where he wrote he can't explain *how* it could work,  "but it does!"



I've got one idea about how its use can be part of a demonstation of an audible difference, when used between playings.

Quote
After all, he *heard* it.  And after him, so did the rest of the usual audiophool reviewers, from 6moons to Soundstage to ToneAudio.  Not one did a blind comparison. Stereophile honored it with a place on its annual REcommended list.

(Subsequently audiophiles have chimed in with more or less ridiculous pseudoscientific explanations involving the carbon in LPs.)

This remarkable LP demagnetizer can be yours for just  ~$1900, btw.


Did you catch the part where I downloaded Fremer's *before* and *after* .wav files and quikcly ABX'd them 20 out of 30 (< .05)?  They quite clearly measure to have different spectral balance > 5 KHz.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-05 02:58:50
I'm sorry, but this is exactly NOT what I was proposing, nor I think what G H was suggesting. I am not interested in the quality of lossy encoders, as such, but whether the undoubted imperfections in low rate lossy files are MORE or LESS apparent with different equipment.


HA's codec developers would  confirm that non linear frequency response increases the probability of perceivable artifacts. Codecs are optimized for flat FR and any deviation invalidates assumptions about what would get masked. The only thing preventing cheap gear from massively uncovering artifacts is noise (or enough bitrate headroom). Once you eliminate the noise chances to detect artifacts only decrease when you improve your system's frequency response, because you're increasing the accuracy of your encoder's predictions. The best bet to find artifacts would be an audiophile system with excellent SNR, but an intentional non-flat FR. There might be a few 'audiophile' (price-) class systems, that are exactly doing that to get a characteristic sound.



IIRC one example came up here : PA systems.  Someone who worked in sound reinforcement said they had an easier time telling mp3s from source over a PA (which tend to emphasize brute SPL over flat frequency response) than at home.  One of the developers (?) replied to the effect that mp3s weren't designed to be 'transparent' over such systems....I wonder how many DJs know that?  ;>
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-05 03:41:26
The point you're ignoring is a big one - reliability.

As far as I'm aware, the placebo effect works very reliably.

That is completely untrue.

For example:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39...9618.25v1?rss=1 (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39524.439618.25v1?rss=1)

"The proportions of patients reporting moderate or substantial improvement on the global improvement scale were 3% (waiting list), 20% (limited), and 37% (augmented) (P<0.001)."

IOW, depending on the context, the effectiveness of placebo treatment ranged from 3 to 37%. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rick.hughes on 2009-05-05 04:43:47
I'm interested in what the HA community thinks about this new Gizmodo article...

Successful troll is successful?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-05-05 05:38:43
I'm sorry, but this is exactly NOT what I was proposing, nor I think what G H was suggesting. I am not interested in the quality of lossy encoders, as such, but whether the undoubted imperfections in low rate lossy files are MORE or LESS apparent with different equipment.


HA's codec developers would  confirm that non linear frequency response increases the probability of perceivable artifacts. Codecs are optimized for flat FR and any deviation invalidates assumptions about what would get masked.


Well, that's what I was looking for, but the tests that show this are not referred to very often. I'd be glad if someone could document them.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: K.IlpoP on 2009-05-05 10:00:58
Just for those who are unfamiliar with workaday studio monitors, the $35,000 Genelecs are very atypical. Genelec is so well known for small monitors that I almost think that the Genelec model chosen was developed by Genelec to make a statement - being that they are not all about small studio monitors costing *just* a few thousand dollars.


Not so. 1036A was not designed as a statement. Genelec 1035A was developed in 1988 and was made available in 1989 for large recording studios like Townhouse, Olympic, JVC etc. 1036A is an upgrade with same amplifier and MF/HF section but dual 18" woofers for lower cutoff frequency with same spl as 1035A. 1035A was scaled down in 1989 to dual 12" 1034A, then to dual 10" 1033A in 1990. All used the same amp chassis and power modules.
The much smaller 1031A, 8" two-way with DCW (waveguide) was developed in 1991 and the 6.5" two-way 1030A in 1994. Mackie made their HR824 in late 90's and Behringer their Truth 2031 and Truth 2030 still later.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-05 10:17:49
BTW, it appears that these two "needle drops" truely are needle drops with the system response to the needle striking the vinyl at the beginning of the files.
No, that's the AIFF header, misinterpreted by CEP as audio data.

(I assume your copy of CEP, like mine, asked for the sample rate, bit depth, and byte order? Meaning it's interpreting the whole file as raw audio data).

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-05 10:21:42
[quote name='Gag Halfrunt' post='632092' date='May 4 2009, 13:In my system, I have speakers that cost me $2400 for the pair.  Should I have gotten a $50 per pair set of speakers and a $2350 LP demagnetizer instead?


Heh.

My new (homedesigned) speakers cost way less than that  too.
Now they would be worth reading about.

(It's amazing how many topics of greater importance have reared their heads in this thread!  )

Cheers,
David.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-05 10:52:38
http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web (http://idisk.mac.com/musicangle-Public?view=web)

Interesting. The background noise at the end suggests that the record itself isn't free from wear, yet the sibilance is well controlled. I guess that's what you get by setting a good turntable up correctly. Well, at least with some records.

It may be my philistine tendencies, but I'd want to EQ that to listen to it. As well as needing the usual smile EQ (which is less/not necessary with better systems), I swear there's a region in the mid-top range which is too pronounced.

It's a nice transfer though.


I'm confused as to the point of providing 44.1kHz 16-bit files. I mean, if we can hear whatever qualities we're supposed to be listening for in such files, then we can hear it on CD too - and better still if we go master tape > CD, and avoid cutting and playing a record!

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-05 11:44:03
The point you're ignoring is a big one - reliability.

As far as I'm aware, the placebo effect works very reliably.

That is completely untrue.

For example:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39...9618.25v1?rss=1 (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39524.439618.25v1?rss=1)

"The proportions of patients reporting moderate or substantial improvement on the global improvement scale were 3% (waiting list), 20% (limited), and 37% (augmented) (P<0.001)."

IOW, depending on the context, the effectiveness of placebo treatment ranged from 3 to 37%.


Seriously...If the placebo effect is so damned great then why don't we just ditch all R&D on new drugs, medical treatments and such and go all placebo all the time?  Wouldn't that bring us one step closer to a Roddenberryesque utopia?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-05 12:16:48
The point you're ignoring is a big one - reliability.

As far as I'm aware, the placebo effect works very reliably.

That is completely untrue.

For example:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39...9618.25v1?rss=1 (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.39524.439618.25v1?rss=1)

"The proportions of patients reporting moderate or substantial improvement on the global improvement scale were 3% (waiting list), 20% (limited), and 37% (augmented) (P<0.001)."

IOW, depending on the context, the effectiveness of placebo treatment ranged from 3 to 37%.


Seriously...If the placebo effect is so damned great then why don't we just ditch all R&D on new drugs, medical treatments and such and go all placebo all the time?  Wouldn't that bring us one step closer to a Roddenberryesque utopia?


I don't know about you, but a 3 to 37% success rate for system upgrades does very little for me.

Failure rates of from 63 to 97% should scare the $#@!! out of people.

Another interesting text I found was this one:

The Placebo Effect, an Interdisciplinary Exploration compiled by Anne Harrington. Chapter Six about "The Combination and Desire and Learning..."

...describes  how people's state of mind and experience influence their susceptibility to the placebo effect. Many of the influences described there remind me of the high end press fans audiophile susceptibility to the placebo effect.

We know that there are people who work for high end publications who have formal traning in related  areas like psychiatry. I wonder if any of them consciously or unconsciously are applying what they learned from legitimate science to the high end publications that they work for.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-05 13:50:19
I don't know about you, but a 3 to 37% success rate for system upgrades does very little for me.

Failure rates of from 63 to 97% should scare the $#@!! out of people.


IMHO people just need to watch more baseball so that their expectations will be more in line with the results delivered by these scams, erm, revolutionary new developments in science and technology.  A batter who succeeds 37% of the time would be a perennial All Star and a probably Hall Of Famer.  We need to let go of these unrealistically high expectations we have that the things we buy work.  It's bad for the global economy.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Slipstreem on 2009-05-05 13:51:22
Another builder of his own homemade self-designed speakers here!

That was over 15 years ago and they're still comfortably outperforming (according to my ears and listening room) anything else I could sensibly afford to replace them with, so I stick with them now as the front speaker pair of a PC media centre S/PDIF-driven standalone 5.1 surround system. Without any special EQ-ing they match the overall tonal quality of the Gale 3010s used as the back pair just with an extra few octaves of bass extension. Not bad out of a pair of boxes that only stand 0.5 metres tall but with slotted front ports at the bottom tuned fairly well by ear to provide decent loading for the 11cm by 11cm flat, square bass drivers. You don't need to put vast amounts of EQ in at any point to make them sound reasonably neutral, so they seem to work very well with MP3 material. Could this really be because the expected masking is approximately happening how it should happen and when it should?

Maybe that has some influence on why I find -V3 to be more than adequate very nearly all of the time and use nothing else but -V3 for private listening in total aural comfort? Is the system inherently 'kind' to MP3 in some way?

Impedance correction networks were fitted directly across the speaker terminals inside the cabinets. These consisted of a 10 Ohm resistor and a 1uF non-polarised capacitor of 'dry' construction (ie, non-electrolytic) placed in series as close to the crossover network as possible. This was enough to keep the load impedance seen by the amplifier when driving them within a range of roughly 6 Ohms to 15 Ohms from 20Hz to 20kHz. I've seen better but I've also seen far worse commercially. Maybe it's just placebo that such a simple correction network is actually doing anything useful in terms of perceived audio quality. Any opinions on that before I trip over TOS#8 and hurt myself?

I'm sure that less than 1/1000th of the mathematics went into the design of these compared to Woodinville's and his will sound much better, but these were designed to be built using typical off-the-shelf DIY store materials like wooden sheet or prefabricated wood-finish chipboard shelving and to have a solid timber skeleton frame to screw and bond all the external panels to in order to make a completely airtight container (where it needs to be airtight anyway) that's tuned approximately correctly for these specific bass drivers by gleaning as much information from the (now defunct) manufacturer's fairly comprehensive datasheet at the time.

The tweeters were just low-priced but surprisingly high spec (supposedly 2kHz to 28kHz +/-3dB, an SPL of 87dB at 1W/1m and a 16g magnet) generic dome tweeters with contoured Mylar domes that worked more like a cross between a cone and a dome in reality and had good directionality. This seemed to make a good match for the slightly unusual dispersion pattern of the flat woofers. The passive crossovers were bought as ready-built PCBs with inductors and capacitors already present from a nationwide electronics hobby outlet. One of the inductors was re-wound to better suit the bass driver and a capacitor value was changed to better suit the tweeter.

The crossover point seemed best up somewhere around 4kHz if memory serves so was eventually fixed at this. Once again, this seemed to suit the drivers in question in this enclosure when playing a swept sinewave in my usual listening room and the tweeters have no tendency to sound 'squawky'. There is no obvious lump or trough as it passes the crossover frequency, so I guess it's working pretty much as intended. The ultimate plan at the time was to start offering them in flat-pack kits ready-drilled with a bag of screws, a tube of silicone sealant, the drivers, custom-modified crossovers, etc, but it didn't ever seem to happen like some things never do.

I seldom sit more than 3 metres away from my speakers with the way my living room is laid out, but it is easy to sit in the sweetspot and that seems to be exactly where my sofa already happens to be. Lucky coincidence? It also means that the subwoofer in the sofa is pushing air around in the sweetspot too. I suppose they're behaving more like near-field speakers and maybe that suits my relatively small listening space and specific 5.1 setup better because the room sounds absolutely enormous if you close your eyes and listen to well encoded 5.1 surround sound via S/PDIF out to an external DAC in a £300 (£150 to me in a sale) JVC standalone surround amplifier.

This setup definitely represents the best value for money I've ever had out of any setup I've owned in nearly 30 years of being a keen music fan. With the exception of the homemade stereo power amplifier that went into retirement to make way for the 5.1 channel JVC surround amp, I wouldn't want to resurrect any of my previous amplifiers in preference to this one. It ticks nearly all the right boxes for me, does almost anything I could sensibly want it to do, and it left me with enough money to afford to eat after I'd paid for it... which was nice.

I'll politely refuse any considerate offers from Woodinville to let me play my speakers to him trans-Atlantic via a mobile phone from the UK for him to compare to his speakers live at his end. It's a fair cop. You win!

Cheers, Slipstreem. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-05 14:12:05
I don't know about you, but a 3 to 37% success rate for system upgrades does very little for me.

Failure rates of from 63 to 97% should scare the $#@!! out of people.


IMHO people just need to watch more baseball so that their expectations will be more in line with the results delivered by these scams, erm, revolutionary new developments in science and technology.  A batter who succeeds 37% of the time would be a perennial All Star and a probably Hall Of Famer.  We need to let go of these unrealistically high expectations we have that the things we buy work.  It's bad for the global economy.


Baseball is a game, a sport like NASCAR. Both are artificially contrived to create an enjoyable competition. Love 'em both!

When I buy a highly recommended audio component, I'm not interested in playing games.  If a roomful of experts says that it does thus and so, I'm not expecting a 97% chance of failure after I put down my cash.

Sure, the odds of a new idea failing are tremendous. I'm seriously hoping that that is largely sorted out by the time the product is put to market.

This *attitude* of mine has been rewarded in the past. CD, DVD, Blu Ray, Flash, and the rest of digital media; T/S parameters, advances in crossover design, stereo, multichannel, solid state, perceptual coding of audio and video, integrated circuits, digital controls, advances in driver design, etc., etc..  Many of these technologies like CD and DVD hit the ground running, and a few of the older ones like perceptual coding and solid state got there in a few years.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-05-05 14:53:23
We know that there are people who work for high end publications who have formal traning in related  areas like psychiatry. I wonder if any of them consciously or unconsciously are applying what they learned from legitimate science to the high end publications that they work for.


A bit more broadly, here's a very entertaining series on the role of psychiatry in areas such as, marketing, public relations, and the development of consumer culture:

Visit My Website (http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=8339)

I'm not familiar with this site, but it provides a convenient link to the four part BBC series "The Century of the Self" that's available on GoogleVideo.
Freud's cousin, Edward Bernays is widely under appreciated for his influence on shaping our times. All the more reason to cast a sceptical eye on what we are being sold.

Edit: While the series deals much with politics, and has it's own political perspective, I trust people can see around that, and find much that's interesting and fairly relevant to this thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-07 16:49:14
I'll politely refuse any considerate offers from Woodinville to let me play my speakers to him trans-Atlantic via a mobile phone from the UK for him to compare to his speakers live at his end. It's a fair cop. You win!

Cheers, Slipstreem. 


Loudspeaker comparison is probably the only gear comparison I'd find truly 'fun'.  I'd love to hear yours, Woodinville's, and this guy's (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=560416&postcount=32)'' (he's an HA poster too, but hasn't been on this thread).

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Slipstreem on 2009-05-07 17:03:29
OK. He wins!

Cheers, Slipstreem. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-07 21:30:45
BTW, it appears that these two "needle drops" truely are needle drops with the system response to the needle striking the vinyl at the beginning of the files.
No, that's the AIFF header, misinterpreted by CEP as audio data.

(I assume your copy of CEP, like mine, asked for the sample rate, bit depth, and byte order? Meaning it's interpreting the whole file as raw audio data).


That was pointed out to me by John, but yeah, I guessed wrong about that.  Didn't look quite right, but I didn't know what else it could be. First time I've had to import an unsupported file. Live and learn! ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-07 21:33:15
I'd love to hear yours, Woodinville's, and this guy's (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=560416&postcount=32)'' (he's an HA poster too, but hasn't been on this thread).


I'm not impresed, insufficient directity control - way too wide.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-08 06:58:42
I'd love to hear yours, Woodinville's, and this guy's (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=560416&postcount=32)'' (he's an HA poster too, but hasn't been on this thread).


I'm not impresed, insufficient directity control - way too wide.



You determined this how?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: singaiya on 2009-05-08 09:04:57
I'm sorry, but this is exactly NOT what I was proposing, nor I think what G H was suggesting. I am not interested in the quality of lossy encoders, as such, but whether the undoubted imperfections in low rate lossy files are MORE or LESS apparent with different equipment.


HA's codec developers would  confirm that non linear frequency response increases the probability of perceivable artifacts. Codecs are optimized for flat FR and any deviation invalidates assumptions about what would get masked. The only thing preventing cheap gear from massively uncovering artifacts is noise (or enough bitrate headroom). Once you eliminate the noise chances to detect artifacts only decrease when you improve your system's frequency response, because you're increasing the accuracy of your encoder's predictions. The best bet to find artifacts would be an audiophile system with excellent SNR, but an intentional non-flat FR. There might be a few 'audiophile' (price-) class systems, that are exactly doing that to get a characteristic sound.



IIRC one example came up here : PA systems.  Someone who worked in sound reinforcement said they had an easier time telling mp3s from source over a PA (which tend to emphasize brute SPL over flat frequency response) than at home.  One of the developers (?) replied to the effect that mp3s weren't designed to be 'transparent' over such systems....I wonder how many DJs know that?  ;>


Anecdotally, I've been unable to notice obvious deficiencies in mp3s on a PA system which was in a club where the sound guy let me jack my ipod into the mixer to "dj" between bands. Most people are busy drinking and jabbering, even though the system is playing really loud. In fact, usually you need to almost yell to talk to the person next to you. Every now and again (when not in conversation) I try to listen for any problems but there isn't anything obvious. Not the best environment to listen critically, but the system is way loud and there are about 30-100 people in the audience. My ipod has a mix of mp3 and aac between 100 kbps (aac) and 192 kbps that is transparent in a normal system. I've done this type of "dj'ing" over a dozen times with no standout artifacts heard, but I'd love to be able to do some more controlled testing because I'm still not convinced that there's no difference to be heard, and if only I could control the situation more maybe I'd hear it
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-08 09:30:39
I'd love to hear yours, Woodinville's, and this guy's (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=560416&postcount=32)'' (he's an HA poster too, but hasn't been on this thread).


I'm not impresed, insufficient directity control - way too wide.



You determined this how?


What the man said. Speakers for critical listening in a home audio system should have directivity on the order of 50-60 degrees total. Otherwise, too much of the listening room is engaged.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-08 10:02:49
What the man said. Speakers for critical listening in a home audio system should have directivity on the order of 50-60 degrees total. Otherwise, too much of the listening room is engaged.
Is that universally true? Can't you get good results from, well, even omnis - the main requirements being that off axis response is smooth (preferably flat) and that the listening room is suitably laid out - i.e. to ensure the direct sound reaches you well before any early reflections, and that there aren't any dominant nasty early reflections. Easier to do with directional speakers, but not impossible even with omnis.

I don't know - I haven't tried it myself - I'm just asking.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-05-08 10:35:41
I'd love to hear yours, Woodinville's, and this guy's (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=560416&postcount=32)'' (he's an HA poster too, but hasn't been on this thread).


I'm not impresed, insufficient directity control - way too wide.



You determined this how?


What the man said. Speakers for critical listening in a home audio system should have directivity on the order of 50-60 degrees total. Otherwise, too much of the listening room is engaged.

Isn't this blind testing taken to the extreme?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-08 12:21:53
What the man said. Speakers for critical listening in a home audio system should have directivity on the order of 50-60 degrees total. Otherwise, too much of the listening room is engaged.


Is that universally true? Can't you get good results from, well, even omnis - the main requirements being that off axis response is smooth (preferably flat) and that the listening room is suitably laid out - i.e. to ensure the direct sound reaches you well before any early reflections, and that there aren't any dominant nasty early reflections. Easier to do with directional speakers, but not impossible even with omnis.

I don't know - I haven't tried it myself - I'm just asking.



What it comes down to is that if you wish, you can pick speakers that force you to have a perfect room in order to have good sound, or you can pick speakers that are more tolerant of a less-perfect room.

Remember that after guys like Earl Geddes do all that work on their listening rooms, they choose speakers with very well-defined and fairly narrow radiation patterns. In Earl's case the speakers came second, after the room. The first speakers in that room were JBLs that were already quite directive. He worked over the room until he felt he was at the point of diminishing returns, and then he designed the ideal speakers for it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-08 12:36:35
But it doesn't sound bad does it?

What I mean is, if the off axis response is nasty, then it sounds bad. Whereas if the off axis response is fairly flat, then all that extra energy in a decent room just sounds, well, different rather than bad.

There's a bit of a they-are-here vs you-are-there thing I suppose - the latter is harder to achieve. The former still works very nicely.

(speculation).

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-08 13:12:38
But it doesn't sound bad does it?


That of course depends on the room.

There are two extremes - build an omni directional speaker that tries hard to engage everything within earshot into the sonic picture it paints, or build a speaker with narrow and controlled directivity, that essentially tries to leave the room out of the equation as much as possible.

So far, I've heard no cases where too much of the room was left out of the sonic picture (other than of course true anechoic chambers). If it ever happened, it would be possible to put as much of the room as desired back into the sonic picture by various means.  I find it telling that a friend of mine who has long had highly directional speakers in a fairly well-padded room is migrating to multichannel and hanging a lot of absorbtive panels. Multichannel's goal is to replace the sonics of the real room with the virtual scene from the media.  I've never heard mulitchannel in an anechoic chamber, but it coud work a whole lot better than stereo. Besides, a lot of the lore about listening to music in an anechoic chamber is colored by the fact that unless you take some very intentional steps, the spectral balance is going to be all wrong because most speakers are designed to work in half-spaces or quarter-spaces or whatever.

Quote
What I mean is, if the off axis response is nasty, then it sounds bad. Whereas if the off axis response is fairly flat, then all that extra energy in a decent room just sounds, well, different rather than bad.


Rooms often do nasty things to the reflections besides just shoot them back at you.

Quote
There's a bit of a they-are-here vs you-are-there thing I suppose - the latter is harder to achieve. The former still works very nicely.


In the end, they-are-here can't work very well in the typical listening room for ensembles of any size. Even a rock quartet is designed to work in medium to large sonic contexts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-08 15:30:17
I'd love to hear yours, Woodinville's, and this guy's (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=560416&postcount=32)'' (he's an HA poster too, but hasn't been on this thread).


I'm not impresed, insufficient directity control - way too wide.



You determined this how?


What the man said. Speakers for critical listening in a home audio system should have directivity on the order of 50-60 degrees total. Otherwise, too much of the listening room is engaged.



What the man  said is based on extensive knowledge of the sorts of hard data Floyd Toole summarizes in his books -- including Toole's own work.  And as you maybe know, Toole breaks from the typical view re: room reflections.  Note that WmAx's loudspeakers have extraordinary off-axis performance.

Plus, WmAx is one of the few DIYers I know who *has* blind-tested his gear (including loudspeakers, though not necessarily these).  Gotta admire that.  But in any case it'd be better for him to defend his work himself, than for me to do it secondhand.  He hasn't posted to HA since March but maybe I can rustle him up for this thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-09 21:23:00
Hmm interesting, the author of this dismally scientifically failed article is going to be editor of popsci.com (http://gizmodo.com/5246210/bye-bye-giz-earth-its-been-great). Yeah, I still read gizmodo, but it doesn't pretend (too much) to be a science blog. I don't read popsci, but I know it's well known. It kind of makes me think I (and YOU, and YOU, and YOU...) could be an editor too! (no disrespect).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-13 09:27:56
Hmm interesting, the author of this dismally scientifically failed article is going to be editor of popsci.com (http://gizmodo.com/5246210/bye-bye-giz-earth-its-been-great). Yeah, I still read gizmodo, but it doesn't pretend (too much) to be a science blog. I don't read popsci, but I know it's well known. It kind of makes me think I (and YOU, and YOU, and YOU...) could be an editor too! (no disrespect).


Maybe he'll finally get some adult supervision, or maybe he'll become the next John Atkinson, and Popular Science will slide down the slippery slope that Stereophile did under JA.  Who knows?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-15 00:38:22
OK, I don't know why (maybe there's a god after all, but he's a prankster), I keep stumbling upon stuff related to this giz article.

It seems I'll be switching my gadget news blog too, I mean just the titles are hilarious. There's a post (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/15/gizmodo-audiophile.html) about the giz post at Boing Boing gadgets.

And Our Hero responds (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/06/on-being-gizmodoed-b.html) do defend his, um, honor, by NOT cupping dogs' balls!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-15 02:15:10
            

I think Fremer should update his HA profile (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showuser=69237):

Quote
I am senior contributing editor at Stereophile. I have never been forcibly dragged from a room. I own the stereo I have. I am not a trust fund baby. I do not feel dog balls to be sure both have descended. I have produced two very successful DVDs on turntables and analog. I supervised the Academy Award nominated soundtrack to the movie "TRON."
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Squeller on 2009-05-15 05:20:51
Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables

Has there ever been a statistically valid proof? Would you please point me to one? It should be easy to conduct.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-15 16:30:01
OK, I don't know why (maybe there's a god after all, but he's a prankster), I keep stumbling upon stuff related to this giz article.

It seems I'll be switching my gadget news blog too, I mean just the titles are hilarious. There's a post (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/15/gizmodo-audiophile.html) about the giz post at Boing Boing gadgets.


I'm afraid the author there makes a dubious assumption of his own
Quote
His tests, of course, were entirely subjective. Mahoney's conclusions emerge with an unremarkable discovery--that a 256kbs MP3 played on an iPod doesn't sound as good as a well-kept vinyl record on high-end gear.


why is that *unremarkable*? A high-bitrate mp3 via an iPod, *if* fed to the same high-end gear, would likely sound very good indeed. It will of course likely sound DIFFERNT from the LP, but that's for other reasons than format and playback gear quality.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-15 23:35:30
Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables

Has there ever been a statistically valid proof? Would you please point me to one? It should be easy to conduct.


For the record, Michael did accept Randi's challenge, but Randi backed out.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-16 00:09:41
Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables

Has there ever been a statistically valid proof? Would you please point me to one? It should be easy to conduct.


For the record, Michael did accept Randi's challenge, but Randi backed out.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

They couldn't agree to terms, it's not that one of them backed out. Of course most Randi supporters would say that Fremer backed out. I've read discussions back and forth on who backed out, but someone must be lying or at least distorting the truth a bit.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-16 00:11:59
Heaven forbid someone shilling for vinyl demagnetizers would distort the truth.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: m0rbidini on 2009-05-16 00:21:47
Was this the test? According to the Wired article, it doesn't seem that "Randi backed out".


http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/10/10-tips-for-dea/ (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/10/10-tips-for-dea/)

Quote
In this latest funhouse, Michael Fremer, audiophile and Stereophile editor, accepted a challenge, with the backing of Pear Cables, to prove that the firm’s $7,000 leads are better than standard-fare one can pick up at Best Buy. It’s not gone well for the challengers, with Pear backing out and Fremer frustrated by the all-too-public negotiations between Randi and himself.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-16 00:23:13
Fremer wasnt' going to use Pear cables.  He wanted to use cables of his own choosing.  Randi 'backed out' when he was informed, quite reasonably, that Fremer's terms would potentially allow use of cables with crude built-in equalizers -- one of the high-end's many hilarious 'improvements' to well-functioning technology (LP demagnetizers? Tice clocks?  mpingo discs? cable lifters? People touting such things should be ashamed of themselves).  As such any credible test of cables with little boxes in line would include a bench test.  The negotiations foundered over which cables would actually test the proposition that cables sound different.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-05-16 00:31:32
krab can you link to those discussions as far as where the breakdown occurred? I honestly could not figure out exactly how that happened.

Are there any known interconnects that have impedance networks in them besides MIT?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-16 02:37:19
m0rbidini and krabapple have it right. Actually the ones who backed out were Pear, and then it all went to hell. The irony of all this is that Gizmodo themselves were the ones who brought the Pear nonsense out into attention, and the ones mocking audiophools. That writer is no longer with Gizmodo though, it's been a while.

Axon you might want to go to randi.org and do a search there for pear cable or audiophool. The subject had been covered too by Gizmodo and other popular gadget blogs/sites.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 12:16:18
Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables

Has there ever been a statistically valid proof? Would you please point me to one? It should be easy to conduct.


For the record, Michael did accept Randi's challenge, but Randi backed out.

They couldn't agree to terms, it's not that one of them backed out. Of course most Randi supporters would say that Fremer backed out. I've read discussions back and forth on who backed out, but someone must be lying or at least distorting the truth a bit.


See krabbaples's post below yours. He agrees that Randi backed out, the reason being that he felt that the cables Michael Fremer wished to feature in the test once Pear Cables had backed out included "equalizers" (though I don't believe anyone has shown that the cable boxes introduce changes in the audioband response).

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-16 13:19:22
See krabbaples's post below yours. He agrees that Randi backed out, the reason being that he felt that the cables Michael Fremer wished to feature in the test once Pear Cables had backed out included "equalizers" (though I don't believe anyone has shown that the cable boxes introduce changes in the audioband response).


Well, luckily there are still sane people around. To test the assertion that cables do sound different - as claimed many times by Fremer and your magazine - it is just reasonable scientific methodology to exclude all interference, that is not central to the assertion in question. For example, why would you allow cable boxes, if the basic claim already covered plain cables?

If Fremer was trustworthy he could have allowed Randi to pick any of those cables for which he has claimed to hear a clear difference in public (e.g. in Stereophile).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-16 14:20:06
Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables

Has there ever been a statistically valid proof? Would you please point me to one? It should be easy to conduct.


For the record, Michael did accept Randi's challenge, but Randi backed out.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

LOL! That's what all charlatans say happened. More likely, Fremer refused to be tested in controlled conditions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-16 15:20:12
See krabbaples's post below yours. He agrees that Randi backed out, the reason being that he felt that the cables Michael Fremer wished to feature in the test once Pear Cables had backed out included "equalizers" (though I don't believe anyone has shown that the cable boxes introduce changes in the audioband response).


If Fremer was trustworthy he could have allowed Randi to pick any of those cables for which he has claimed to hear a clear difference in public (e.g. in Stereophile).


Agreed.

It appears that the posts related to the Fremer/cable challenge are no longer at Randi's site. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

I did go over a number of other challenges that were proposed but never happened. Invariably there is considerable backpedalling on the part of the people who come foreward to meet the chanllenge. Usually this results in them proposing some kind of complexified test with questionable relevance and/or blindness, as compared to their initial proposal. In the end, people often try to blame their failure to "man up" on Randi or one of his agents. Some times they get pretty violent about it.  No surprise.

Blind cable comparisons are not rocket science. Larry Greeenhill did some pretty good ones with the Audiophile Society of Westchester County back in the 1980s, if memory serves. Of course they failed to produce the *desired* results from the standpoint of the "all cables sound different" advocates.

That all cables have non-subtle characteristic colorations and masking has not been audioiphile *revealed truth* for all time. If memory serves, this urban legend  emerged about the same time that we started getting goodly amounts of ink about ABX. As the argument goes, no ABX swtichbox can possibly be sonically transparent because it necessarily adds some cabling and those horrible inherently masking relay or switch contacts. This bedtime tale must not have sold well enough because it was shortly followed by the newer audiophile revealed truth about DBTs, which is that all ABX comparisons involve hurried comparisons of vanishingly small snippets of music, and are therefore inherently flawed. That was followed by Moncrieff's epistles about performance anxiety, etc.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 15:29:40

For the record, Michael did accept Randi's challenge, but Randi backed out.

LOL! That's what all charlatans say happened. More likely, Fremer refused to be tested in controlled conditions.


With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you shouldn't be so dismissive unless you have read what's in the record. Michael didn't refuse to be tested under controlled condition, neither did he back out from Randi's Challenge. Instead, he suggested the methodology of the test be designed by editors of Scientific American magazine with whom, I believe, both he and James Randi were acquainted.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-16 17:15:13
With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you shouldn't be so dismissive unless you have read what's in the record. Michael didn't refuse to be tested under controlled condition, neither did he back out from Randi's Challenge. Instead, he suggested the methodology of the test be designed by editors of Scientific American magazine with whom, I believe, both he and James Randi were acquainted.


Where might someone find an reliable version of that record?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-16 17:49:15
With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you shouldn't be so dismissive unless you have read what's in the record. Michael didn't refuse to be tested under controlled condition, neither did he back out from Randi's Challenge. Instead, he suggested the methodology of the test be designed by editors of Scientific American magazine with whom, I believe, both he and James Randi were acquainted.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

With respect, you are disrespecting James Randi's long standing record of being able to discover and discern charlatanism in all its forms. Spoon bending, faith healing, homoeopathy, audiophile nonsense, he has seen it all.

ShowsOn

Thankfully Not the Editor of Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 18:56:00
With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you shouldn't be so dismissive unless you have read what's in the record. Michael didn't refuse to be tested under controlled condition, neither did he back out from Randi's Challenge. Instead, he suggested the methodology of the test be designed by editors of Scientific American magazine with whom, I believe, both he and James Randi were acquainted.


Where might someone find an reliable version of that record?


It used to be archived on Randi's website, but appears, as you point out Mr. Krueger, to have been deleted. (At least I can no longer find them.) I do have copies of the relevant pages from the Randi site archived. My point remains that a) despite the religious belief some have expressed on this forum in James Randi's actions, it was Randi, not Fremer, who backed down, and b) far from refusing to be tested under blind conditions, Michael himself suggested responsible third parties who would design and proctor the test.

I fail to understand why you guys live in such a binary world. Let's hypothesize that Michael is wrong about cables and Randi is correct. Nevertheless, Michael lives his life an an admirably ethical manner and James Randi appears, at least from my own interactions with him, to be an unrepentant, dishonorable old carnie, earning a living from fleecing the marks who flock to his church.

John Atkinson
Edtor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-16 19:12:31
With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you don't project much, do you John?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-16 19:21:36
...anyway it appears that Randi issued a challenge and Michael wouldn't accept his terms.  It's disingenuous to say this constitutes "backing out".
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 20:18:06
Quote

James Randi appears, at least from my own interactions with him, to be an unrepentant, dishonorable old carnie, earning a living from fleecing the marks who flock to his church.

With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you don't project much, do you John?


Assuming you are referring to this text I wrote, in all my personal dealings with James Randi, the man appeared to be as crooked as a $9 bill. If he told me the sun came up in the East, I would check. If you wish, I would be happy to post the entire email exchange I had with Randi to this forum, so you can judge for yourself what kind of man he is. (It has already been posted to rec.audio.high-end back in 2007, and partially by Randi on his website, so I wouldn't be breaking any confidences.)

Regarding my opinion of Randi's business activities, I note that his sole source of income appears to be fees from speaking engagements and donations to his foundation from those who believe he shares their skeptical views. His actions and behavior are intended, in my opinion, therefore to maximize that source of income. Hence, at least when it comes to audiophiles, it appears that he goes after those with the highest public profile _regardless of whether those he attacks have actually behaved as he has described on his website_.

Why else would he challenge a high-profile contributor, Michael Fremer, to the highest-profile audio magazine, Stereophile? Michael had never tried the Pear cables featured in the Challenge, nor had Stereophile ever published anything on Pear cables.  It was instead David Clark who actually reviewed the Pear cables for a relatively low-profile webzine called Positive Feedback Online. Not much mileage there for a publicity vampire like Mr. Randi to entertain his true believers, eh? Hence my disdain for the man.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-16 20:25:33
Am I the only one who finds this response ironic?

John, I said putting aside name-calling.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 20:49:24
Am I the only one who finds this response ironic?


I have no idea.

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John, I said putting aside name-calling.


Your exact words were "putting to one side your _shoot-from-the-hip_ namecalling." I was trying to demonstrate, unsuccessfully it seems, that my characterization of Mr. Randi's behavior may have appeared to be "namecalling," but it was hardly "shoot-from-the-hip." I have formed my opinion of Mr. Randi over several years of  interacting with the man.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-16 21:33:59
They couldn't agree to terms, it's not that one of them backed out. Of course most Randi supporters would say that Fremer backed out. I've read discussions back and forth on who backed out, but someone must be lying or at least distorting the truth a bit.


See krabbaples's post below yours. He agrees that Randi backed out, the reason being that he felt that the cables Michael Fremer wished to feature in the test once Pear Cables had backed out included "equalizers" (though I don't believe anyone has shown that the cable boxes introduce changes in the audioband response).

Well, see also how he put quotes around how Randi "backed out". Pear backed out, and they couldn't then agree about terms.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-16 21:42:00
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James Randi appears, at least from my own interactions with him, to be an unrepentant, dishonorable old carnie, earning a living from fleecing the marks who flock to his church.

With respect and putting to one side your shoot-from-the-hip namecalling, you don't project much, do you John?


Assuming you are referring to this text I wrote, in all my personal dealings with James Randi, the man appeared to be as crooked as a $9 bill. If he told me the sun came up in the East, I would check. If you wish, I would be happy to post the entire email exchange I had with Randi to this forum, so you can judge for yourself what kind of man he is. (It has already been posted to rec.audio.high-end back in 2007, and partially by Randi on his website, so I wouldn't be breaking any confidences.)



Randi considers you the charlatan.  Unhappily for you, he's the one with the proven record of exposing them. 

Before you claim to have sussed out Randi, let's remember that you didn't even have a clue who you were dealing with then. Indeed, when this was all going down Stereophile tried to make an issue of the fact that 'Randi' isn't his real name -- as if that was proof that Randi wasn't on the level.  That was pathetic


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Regarding my opinion of Randi's business activities, I note that his sole source of income appears to be fees from speaking engagements and donations to his foundation from those who believe he shares their skeptical views. His actions and behavior are intended, in my opinion, therefore to maximize that source of income. Hence, at least when it comes to audiophiles, it appears that he goes after those with the highest public profile _regardless of whether those he attacks have actually behaved as he has described on his website_.


Again, regardless of your specious reasoning from what 'appears' to be the case to you, you really don't know who you're talking about here.

By your reasoning, btw, your own occupation hardly suggest you to be free from financial interest in the causes YOU champion.


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Why else would he challenge a high-profile contributor, Michael Fremer, to the highest-profile audio magazine, Stereophile? Michael had never tried the Pear cables featured in the Challenge, nor had Stereophile ever published anything on Pear cables.  It was instead David Clark who actually reviewed the Pear cables for a relatively low-profile webzine called Positive Feedback Online. Not much mileage there for a publicity vampire like Mr. Randi to entertain his true believers, eh? Hence my disdain for the man.



'High profile"?  Don't flatter yourself.  There's a world of idiocy out there begging for debunking -- and someone who's been called on the past by Nature magazine to debunk junk science, as Randi has, really does have bigger fish to fry than the audiophile fringe you cater to.  Randi had no more clue who you guys were that you did of him.  He couldn't possibly personally seek out every species of nonsense that humanity barfs up. He was *informed* by skeptics of the arrant nonsense that gets published in in your magazine and other 'audiophile' journals, and that was all after he was tipped off to the Pear Cables nonsense.  If you actually read his columns on his site, you'd know this; people are always sending him links to nutty stuff.

(Btw, one of the frequent contributors to Randi's website forum is that renowned sheep and 'true believer', and friend of yours if I'm not mistaken, JJ. )
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-16 21:50:44
Regarding my opinion of Randi's business activities, I note that his sole source of income appears to be fees from speaking engagements and donations to his foundation from those who believe he shares their skeptical views. His actions and behavior are intended, in my opinion, therefore to maximize that source of income. Hence, at least when it comes to audiophiles, it appears that he goes after those with the highest public profile _regardless of whether those he attacks have actually behaved as he has described on his website_.

Why else would he challenge a high-profile contributor, Michael Fremer, to the highest-profile audio magazine, Stereophile? Michael had never tried the Pear cables featured in the Challenge, nor had Stereophile ever published anything on Pear cables.  It was instead David Clark who actually reviewed the Pear cables for a relatively low-profile webzine called Positive Feedback Online. Not much mileage there for a publicity vampire like Mr. Randi to entertain his true believers, eh? Hence my disdain for the man.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

There's actually a pretty obvious reason to "challenge" high-profile pseudoscience peddlers, like Sylvia Browne, Uri Geller, Peter Popoff and that actual scientist who "came up" with actual positive results for homeopathy (sorry, forget his name), among many others. And it's not the reason you so cynically say. He's gotta counter the Oprah effect (think The Secret or Jenny McCarthy's antivaccination scheme lately).

Just for debunking those four frauds I think Randi deserves all the publicity he gets, and more. Not to say all the others. He needs to be on network TV regularly.

Randi may or may not be a nasty person (All evidence I've seen is to the contrary, but he might not like you particularly either), but as the discussion some pages ago went, nice or rude or just being an ass doesn't make truth claims right or wrong.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-16 21:53:45
I have no idea.

Yes, and it is obvious.  You might want to read krabapple's reply; he surely understood the irony.

Hint: When I suggested you don't project much I was being sarcastic.  It had nothing to do with you ad hominem remarks about Randi.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-16 21:56:25
By the way, I'm not sure about the forums, but you can still find official information on the Randi site newsletter. Luckily Fremer is an unusual name:

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/compon...earchphrase=all (http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/search/fremer.html?ordering=&searchphrase=all)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 22:56:09
Randi considers you the charlatan.  Unhappily for you, he's the one with the proven record of exposing them.


Except, if you read his criticisms of me on his website, they don't actually involve anything I have done or written. That makes him careless and deceptive at best and a fraud at worst.

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Before you claim to have sussed out Randi, let's remember that you didn't even have a clue who you were dealing with then. Indeed, when this was all going down Stereophile tried to make an issue of the fact that 'Randi' isn't his real name -- as if that was proof that Randi wasn't on the level.  That was pathetic.


In Art Dudley's article where this point was made, this was clearly an attempt at humor. Consider it a blind test for a sense of humor: if someone took it seriously - as you have done - the presence of a sense of humor was not detected (under the circumstances of the test, of course).

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Regarding my opinion of Randi's business activities, I note that his sole source of income appears to be fees from speaking engagements and donations to his foundation from those who believe he shares their skeptical views. His actions and behavior are intended, in my opinion, therefore to maximize that source of income. Hence, at least when it comes to audiophiles, it appears that he goes after those with the highest public profile _regardless of whether those he attacks have actually behaved as he has described on his website_.


Again, regardless of your specious reasoning from what 'appears' to be the case to you, you really don't know who you're talking about here.


I am offering my inferences from observing Mr. Randi's behavior and reading his writings over many years. I was even a subscriber to The Skeptical Inquirer for many years. If I am wrong about Mr. Randi's source of income, please tell me how he makes a living if not from personal appearances and donations.

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By your reasoning, btw, your own occupation hardly suggest you to be free from financial interest in the causes YOU champion.


Not at all. Mr. Randi is selling his opinions. By contrast, I sell physical products - magazines, CDs, SACDs, and LPs - that people find stimulating, informative, entertaining, and even educational. The continued success of my activities suggests that those who buy those products are in the main satisfied that they get a good value for the expense.

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Why else would he challenge a high-profile contributor, Michael Fremer, to the highest-profile audio magazine, Stereophile? Michael had never tried the Pear cables featured in the Challenge, nor had Stereophile ever published anything on Pear cables.  It was instead David Clark who actually reviewed the Pear cables for a relatively low-profile webzine called Positive Feedback Online. Not much mileage there for a publicity vampire like Mr. Randi to entertain his true believers, eh? Hence my disdain for the man.


'High profile"?  Don't flatter yourself.  There's a world of idiocy out there begging for debunking -- and someone who's been called on the past by Nature magazine to debunk junk science, as Randi has, really does have bigger fish to fry than the audiophile fringe you cater to.


But why then should he have devoted so much time to my magazine? And please explain why he goes out of his way to attack Stereophile and Fremer rather than PFO and David Clark as mentioned above, if it is not to ride on our not-insubstantial coat-tails?

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Randi had no more clue who you guys were that you did of him.  He couldn't possibly personally seek out every species of nonsense that humanity barfs up. He was *informed* by skeptics of the arrant nonsense that gets published in in your magazine and other 'audiophile' journals, and that was all after he was tipped off to the Pear Cables nonsense.  If you actually read his columns on his site, you'd know this; people are always sending him links to nutty stuff.


I do know how he gets his information, But even the slowest student at journalism school knows that you still need do the appropriate amount of fact-checking. That Mr. Randi does _no_ fact-checking, gets names, attributions, and even supposedly direct quotations wrong supports my characterization. Or do you agree with a high-profile writer for a mainstream audio magazine who wrote on Usenet that it is acceptable to practice deceit when you attack those whom you feel deceitful?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-16 23:08:21

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Am I the only one who finds this response ironic?

I have no idea.

Yes, and it is obvious.  You might want to read krabapple's reply; he surely understood the irony.


Your question was ambiguous. There was the surface meaning -  "Am I the only one...?" - to which I thought it clear my literally correct response was referring.

There's the first level of irony - I am calling the inestimable James Randi names in the same thread in which I have referred to the fact that some HA posters have itchy trigger fingers when it comes to calling _me_ names - perhaps that was to what you were referring?

Then there's a deeper level of irony -  that I, whom some HA posters have made it clear they feel is a charlatan, am developing the case that _Mr. Randi_ is a charlatan.

I figgered that that last level of meaning was beyond you and that the previous one was not worthy of a response, so I gave you the correct answer to the obvious question. Sorry for descending to your level. :-)

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Hint: When I suggested you don't project much I was being sarcastic.  It had nothing to do with you ad hominem remarks about Randi.


Of course you were. Though I thought moderators were supposed to stay out of the ring.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-16 23:41:33
I must admit I'm impressed.

If you look at the facts, the situation is pretty clear: Atkinson is selling a magazine repeatedly claiming that audible differences between many cables exist (besides all other kind of snake oil). Just focus onto this fact and then think about which one of the two qualifies for the bigger charlatan

Then read the recent discussion and acknowledge how well this man is able to pursue a debate on top of this sandy ground. I wouldn't say such makes one deserve having success, but it can at least help to explain it.

Aside from not agreeing to what he is saying, it is a really interesting and enjoyable read time and time again.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: m0rbidini on 2009-05-16 23:42:25
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Not at all. Mr. Randi is selling his opinions. By contrast, I sell physical products - magazines, CDs, SACDs, and LPs - that people find stimulating, informative, entertaining, and even educational. The continued success of my activities suggests that those who buy those products are in the main satisfied that they get a good value for the expense.


Sir, sorry for the wake up call, but *you* sell opinions and nothing more. It doesn't matter if those opinions are in magazines or in a web site. Randi sells facts and myth debunking. I just had to say this.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-17 01:21:36
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Not at all. Mr. Randi is selling his opinions. By contrast, I sell physical products - magazines, CDs, SACDs, and LPs - that people find stimulating, informative, entertaining, and even educational. The continued success of my activities suggests that those who buy those products are in the main satisfied that they get a good value for the expense.


Sir, sorry for the wake up call, but *you* sell opinions and nothing more. It doesn't matter if those opinions are in magazines or in a web site. Randi sells facts and myth debunking. I just had to say this.

Wow, there's a huge-ass claim implied there, that Stereophile somehow is educational, and furthermore, even more than Randi? His whole foundation is based on education, more than myth debunking just for debunking's sake. Freaking Phil Plait is gonna be his successor. He's like Internet Carl Sagan.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-05-17 02:38:24
that Stereophile somehow is educational
Just to name a quick example, the anechoic-chamber frequency-analysis plots that Stereophile provides are certainly worth something. To say that the magazine is devoid of educational value seems quite myopic to me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-17 04:48:11
that Stereophile somehow is educational
Just to name a quick example, the anechoic-chamber frequency-analysis plots that Stereophile provides are certainly worth something. To say that the magazine is devoid of educational value seems quite myopic to me.

But do you think a publication that purports to be educational is allowed to engage in crass intellectual dishonesty and still get to be called educational, just because they do something right?

Just asking... maybe it is.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ExUser on 2009-05-17 06:20:38
But do you think a publication that purports to be educational is allowed to engage in crass intellectual dishonesty and still get to be called educational, just because they do something right?

Just asking... maybe it is.
Really depends on the function you use to combine educational values of sections of a publication into an overall assessment. If "crass intellectual dishonesty" is given a -1 and "superlative scientific experimentation and analysis" is given a +1, and there is only one +1 in a sea of -1s in some magazine, does that make the one +1 any less good? I would say that the publication is still educational, if only for the one article.

I'm not implying any particular distribution of scores in Stereophile magazine, just that the anechoic chamber tests fascinate me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-17 11:54:39
But do you think a publication that purports to be educational is allowed to engage in crass intellectual dishonesty and still get to be called educational, just because they do something right?



I agree that Stereophile occasionaly and even frequently publishes valid and relevant technical informations. For example, when I was developing a speaker simulator for testing loudspeakers, I referred to the Stereophile Web site's extensive collection of loudspeaker impedance curves. Ironically, I found that a reasonable interpretation of that data suggested very strongly that Sterophile's current loudspeaker simulator for amplifier testing was not nearly stressful enough to be representative of the lousdpeakers that Stereophile recommends be used with the amplifiers they test.

But I digress, my speaker simulator controversy is a disagreement in the interpretation of valid technical information, IMO much of what Steroephile publishes is unsupported and unsupportable fantasy presented as if it were reliable scientific and/or technical facts.

If you study the means that have historically used to perpetrate frauds and charlantry, selected truths are generally part of the mix.

Furthermore every source of reliable scientific information will make occasional errors if they are operation long enough.

However, Stereophile does not make just occasional errors, but in my opinon and the opinion of many, Stereophile uses a large body of reliable scientific facts to create the impression that they are a source of reliable information in order to systematically convince consumers that wild fantasies and technical charlantry are actually true and reliable facts that can be used to support purchase decisions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-17 13:43:24
Not at all. Mr. Randi is selling his opinions. By contrast, I sell physical products - magazines, CDs, SACDs, and LPs - that people find stimulating, informative, entertaining, and even educational. The continued success of my activities suggests that those who buy those products are in the main satisfied that they get a good value for the expense.


Gentlemen...It seems to me as though Mr. Atkinson has just openly admitted that he is a primarily a product salesman and not a journalist.  IMHO a true journalist interested in reporting the unvarnished truth would have nothing to fear from Randi.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-17 14:14:39
Incidentally, notice how the Stereophile cats shifted the focus of this matter into a character referendum on James Randi while the initial and far more important question about whether or not the Pear cables actually produce an audible difference in sound quality is left by the wayside.  That is precisely what a product salesman (or Dick Cheney) would do.  A journalist would find a way to get to the bottom of things, with or without Randi's participation.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-17 14:38:52
... in all my personal dealings with James Randi, the man appeared to be as crooked as a $9 bill.

WOW! So your opinion of Randi is ANOTHER thing you have in common with Uri Geller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller) and Peter Popoff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Popoff)! Where will the similarities end!?
If he told me the sun came up in the East, I would check.

Shouldn't you KNOW that the sun rises in the East?
Regarding my opinion of Randi's business activities, I note that his sole source of income appears to be fees from speaking engagements and donations to his foundation from those who believe he shares their skeptical views.

You sound jealous!
His actions and behavior are intended, in my opinion, therefore to maximize that source of income. Hence, at least when it comes to audiophiles, it appears that he goes after those with the highest public profile _regardless of whether those he attacks have actually behaved as he has described on his website_.

And you publish glowing reviews of rediculously priced crap because that's what the readers of your magazine want to read.

It is funny how often you accuse people of doing things that you do every day!

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-17 19:50:23
Incidentally, notice how the Stereophile cats shifted the focus of this matter into a character referendum on James Randi...


I didn't raise the issue of the Randi Challenge; that was "squeller," who wrote "Because Fremer has so many years experience in comparing audio, I suggest, he should take the James Randi challenge to earn the million dollars and to prove finally, that somebody can listen (not see) a difference between different audio cables." I was a) explaining that Michael _had_ accepted Mr. Randi's Challenge, b) correcting the misstatement that it was Michael Fremer who backed out of the Challenge, and c) pointing out that the almost religious belief some HA posters have in the purity of Mr. Randi's motives and behavior is contradicted by  reality.

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... while the initial and far more important question about whether or not the Pear cables actually produce an audible difference in sound quality is left by the wayside.


As I have repeatedly said, neither Stereophile nor its writers hold any opinions whatsoever on the Pear cables. None of us have tried them out and none of us have written about them, despite Mr. Randi's projections. We remain agnostic.

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A journalist would find a way to get to the bottom of things, with or without Randi's participation


Thank you for the sermon, but as far as I am aware. Pear cables don't qualify for coverage in Stereophile because of the company's lack of retailers who stock and sell them; see http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/307awsi/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/307awsi/) for an explanation of my policy on how we select products for review in Stereophile.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-17 20:17:38
I was a) explaining that Michael _had_ accepted Mr. Randi's Challenge,

You have not demonstrated that Fermer accepted _Randi's_ challenge.  I really wish you'd stop bending the truth over this matter.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-17 20:29:00
I was a) explaining that Michael _had_ accepted Mr. Randi's Challenge,

You have not demonstrated that Fermer accepted _Randi's_ challenge.  I really wish you'd stop bending the truth over this matter.


I am sorry for being blunt, but I am really not responsible for your lack of reading comprehension. The email exchange between Randi and Fremer that Randi published clearly showed that Fremer accepted the Challenge. Pear Cables backed out, then Randi backed out, but as far as Michael is concerned, he is still ready and willing to cooperate along the terms he has outlined, including the participation of the test designers and proctors from Scientific American.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-17 20:32:25
My lack of reading comprehension is fine, certainly better than your honesty (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=634622).

Fermer's willing to accept a challenge based on _his_ terms, not Randi's.  As far as "backing out", how is it Randi's fault that Pear would not put up their cables?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-17 21:23:05
My lack of reading comprehension is fine, certainly better than your honesty (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71245&view=findpost&p=634622).


Nothing I said in that earlier post contradicts what I have said today. And for a moderator, greynol, you sure are willing to get down and dirty. If you really wish to get involved in the argument, perhaps you need to step down as a moderator of the forum?

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Fremer's willing to accept a challenge based on _his_ terms, not Randi's.


Surely you would agree that negotiation of the terms of the Challenge was legitimate, particularly as Randi had already declared that he would never have to pay out the $1 million. By passing the design of the test and its proctoring over to responsible and dispassionate third parties, in the form of editors for Scientific American. this would have eliminated any temptation on Randi's part to load the dice, surely. Or do you feel that people should trust Randi always to do the right thing, regardless of his track record of dissembling and deceit?

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As far as "backing out", how is it Randi's fault that Pear would not put up their cables?


No-one said it was. There's that reading comprehension thing of yours again, greynol. But why would Randi insist that the Challenge  be restricted to the Pear cables when Michael Fremer, as  am getting weary of explaining, had never tried the Pear cables, had never written about them? Yes Pear backed out, Randi backed out, but Fremer did not.

Those who keep claiming that Fremer backed out are just plain wrong. You and others on this forum seem to find it impossible to comprehend that someone whose beliefs align with your own, Randi, nevertheless behaves dishonestly, and that someone whose beliefs and actions are at odds with yours, Fremer, has behaved with integrity in this matter. What a peculiar, bipolar, black and white world you all live in. :-)


John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-17 22:41:51
In Art Dudley's article where this point was made, this was clearly an attempt at humor. Consider it a blind test for a sense of humor: if someone took it seriously - as you have done - the presence of a sense of humor was not detected (under the circumstances of the test, of course).


Ah, so it was just a joke?  IMO, that's ripe bullshit, sir.  Certainly it was shot through with hammer-subtle sarcasm, but  the article was hardly just an attempt at humor.  But I'm happy to let HA judge for itself.  Here's what Dudley wrote in your Nov 2004 issue:

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The Amazing Artie
Robert Zimmerman, Gordon Sumner, Reiner Frigyes, Roberta Joan Anderson, and Bill Harkleroad (footnote 2) all discarded the names they were born with in favor of newer, better ones, as their performing careers took off. Now we can add another name to the list: Randall Zwinge. Think of Zwinge as a brass player: He toots the same horn over and over, desperately hoping that the audience will notice him instead of the other performers on the stage.

Zwinge is an illusionist—a self-described liar and con artist—who discovered early in his career that he could make more money by debunking the work of other illusionists. So he reinvented himself as James Randi and hit the road as—èt ready for it—The Amazing Randi.

In one of those lucky-for-us-but-unlucky-for-him twists of fate, the bottom pretty much fell out of the debunking industry, and Mr. Zwinge came to realize that only a steady stream of publicity would ensure his continued income. So Zwinge the showman has been forced to hit the rhetorical road, as it were, moving from town to town, looking for new stones to overturn. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has stumbled on our little world.

I'll spare you the details of the latest yawn-inducing and intellectually dishonest "Randi Challenge"—anyone who's ever heard of Shakti Stones can probably guess what it involves (footnote 3). My point in writing this is to issue a taunt of my own, which I hereby dub "The Artie Challenge." I will personally give Randall Zwinge a hundred billion zillion dollars of my own money if he can answer two questions to my satisfaction:

1) Why is it that a tough-minded seeker of the truth finds it necessary to change his name?

2) When he signs his name as "Randi," does he dot the "i" or draw a little heart over it?

Answers may be submitted to me via e-mail only, care of John_Atkinson@Primediamags.com. Thank you.



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I am offering my inferences from observing Mr. Randi's behavior and reading his writings over many years. I was even a subscriber to The Skeptical Inquirer for many years. If I am wrong about Mr. Randi's source of income, please tell me how he makes a living if not from personal appearances and donations.


You DO love to move those goalposts, don't you?  Please tell me why that would matter at all here...or matter any more than your making a living from editing a magazine that shills high-end gear.

Btw, I read the New York Post regularly on the premise that one should know one's enemy.  What's your rationale for having subscribed to SI?


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By your reasoning, btw, your own occupation hardly suggest you to be free from financial interest in the causes YOU champion.


Not at all. Mr. Randi is selling his opinions. By contrast, I sell physical products - magazines, CDs, SACDs, and LPs - that people find stimulating, informative, entertaining, and even educational. The continued success of my activities suggests that those who buy those products are in the main satisfied that they get a good value for the expense.


I have to admit puzzlement at this nonsequitur.  But I'll try to run with it.  You mainly 'sell' a magazine that sells opinions --yours included -- on audio, and which is supported largely by advertising by makers of audio gear.  And if 'continued success' at that is some sort of validation of the opinions expressed -- including opinions about matters that couldn be scientifically tested -- then  surely Randi's decades of success is no less validating.  Which stance, is , of course, nonsense, because charlatans can have long-standing careers.


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'High profile"?  Don't flatter yourself.  There's a world of idiocy out there begging for debunking -- and someone who's been called on the past by Nature magazine to debunk junk science, as Randi has, really does have bigger fish to fry than the audiophile fringe you cater to.


But why then should he have devoted so much time to my magazine? And please explain why he goes out of his way to attack Stereophile and Fremer rather than PFO and David Clark as mentioned above, if it is not to ride on our not-insubstantial coat-tails?


Devoted 'so much time'?  What proportion of Randi's efforts over a debunking careers spanning decades, do you believe he has devoted to audio? Im quite sure it's miniscule. And he actually did call out David Clark and others, in this excerpt from a JREF post  ( note from following the link that audio constitutes a small fraction of the content):
http://www.randi.org/jr/111204hot.html#7 (http://www.randi.org/jr/111204hot.html#7)

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LOTS OF NOISE BUT NO ACTION

I'm told that I'm referred to as a "self-described liar and con artist," and "intellectually dishonest," by columnist Art Dudley in the November issue of Stereophile Magazine. More of that, later, when I undertake to educate Dudley — not an easy task, I can assure you. His article is a perfect example of waffling and obfuscation by an "expert" who apparently escaped committing himself on the Shakti Stones' ability to improve audio quality. He is not one of the mavens that I originally challenged to take the JREF million-dollar prize for accepting and endorsing the product, but I now add him to the list, along with Frank Doris at "The Absolute Sound"; Clay Swartz, Clark Johnson, and David Robinson at "Positive Feedback"; Larry Kaye, Wayne Donnelly, and Bill Brassington at "fi"; Bascom King at "Audio"; Wes Phillips at "SoundStage"; Jim Merod at "Jazz Times"; Dick Olsher at "Enjoy The Music"; Peter and May Belt at "P.W.B. Electronics"; and Benjamin Piazza at "Shakti Innovations," where they make this inane product. You know, not one of these fourteen vociferous commentators have even responded, in any way, to the challenge I sent them, individually, and published here on August 5th, 2004 — fourteen weeks ago! — at www.randi.org/jr/080504string.html#8. Strange, isn't it?


What, btw, is your view of Shakti Stones and such Shakti devices as the Hallograph (http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm), Mr. Atkinson?  Do they really change -- they claim to IMPROVE it, but let's start from basics -- the sound in an audible manner, and if so, how?


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I do know how he gets his information, But even the slowest student at journalism school knows that you still need do the appropriate amount of fact-checking. That Mr. Randi does _no_ fact-checking, gets names, attributions, and even supposedly direct quotations wrong supports my characterization. Or do you agree with a high-profile writer for a mainstream audio magazine who wrote on Usenet that it is acceptable to practice deceit when you attack those whom you feel deceitful?


Or, that he got *your* name wrong and mangled quotes from an AudioAsylum thread indicates not so much 'deceit' as that he just doesn't have much respect for your operation or the high-end generally (nor perhaps experience deciphering forum quote-nesting).  The first sort of oversight, perhaps, is an occupational hazard of dealing with charlatans on a daily basis. Such contempt, btw, was apparently returned by your own erroneous , poorly-researched characterization of the $1 million challenge when you wrote on AudioAsylum (http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/critics/messages/4301.html):

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With respect to the Randi Challenge, it is worked so that the only way someone can collect the $1 million is to prove that they can detect the Device Under Test by purely 'psychic' means. If there is a real cause for the sonic difference, then Randi doesn't have to pay up, even if the test produces positive results. As Art wrote, "intellectually dishonest


I would advise HA readers to peruse that whole AA thread -- which both JA and Randi participated in -- to get more of the flavor of what Randi was dealing with (e.g., morons like Rob Doorack, whose repeated hysterical claims that the JREF challenge is 'rigged' merely echoed what Atkinson and Dudley were claiming with less aggro but more poison)

Regarding what some mainstream audio magazine writer wrote, you'd really best quote'n'link when you make such claims, so we can be sure you  aren't decontextualizing out all out of recognition.

Finally, for you do dun people for doing 'poor research' when your main apparent source of income is derived from editing a magazine whose methods of validating audio difference fly directly in the face of well-established scientific methodology, takes some yarbles.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-17 23:09:26
The terms of the $1million challenge boil down to asking that the 'claimant' perform as claimed WITHOUT there being a known, measureable, i.e., 'natural', explanation to account for it.  To the extent I made my voice heard at JREF forum, it was to argue that Randi should insist that any cables chosen for the challenge -- by Fremer or anyone -- be tested first to show that they don't have some readily-measured, likely-to-be audible 'coloring' effect on the signal -- which is to say, *distortion* -- either by design or misdesign or misapplication (e.g., 22 g wire in a 100 meter installation).  Most cables would pass such a test.  Some 'high end' cables will not.  No one says no two cables can ever sound different.  But there is no reason why most should.  Cables that show no objective reason to sound different, yet are claimed to sound different, are the only fair game.  The other cables are just examples of audiophile silliness, along the lines of SET amps, NOS DACs, and rah-rah over LPs.  Yes, they are more likely to sound different, and we can predict that from measurements, and so f*cking what?


Regarding the whole Scientific American angle,  that was news to me, and I have to wonder why SA, which is a respectable popular science magazine but one with no particular technical expertise in either audio, sensory testing methodology, or debunking, would be considered the best 'third party' for this?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-18 00:39:46
In Art Dudley's article where this point was made, this was clearly an attempt at humor. Consider it a blind test for a sense of humor: if someone took it seriously - as you have done - the presence of a sense of humor was not detected (under the circumstances of the test, of course).


Ah, so it was just a joke?  IMO, that's ripe bullshit, sir.  Certainly it was shot through with hammer-subtle sarcasm, but  the article was hardly just an attempt at humor. 


As demonstrated by the text you quoted, you must be yet another HA poster who lacks either reading comprehension or a sense of humor. Yes, it was humorous, unless you believe the question "When he signs his name as 'Randi,' does he dot the 'i' or draw a little heart over it?" was deathly serious. Art was clearly poking fun at a man who takes himself _far_ too seriously.

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I am offering my inferences from observing Mr. Randi's behavior and reading his writings over many years. I was even a subscriber to The Skeptical Inquirer for many years. If I am wrong about Mr. Randi's source of income, please tell me how he makes a living if not from personal appearances and donations.


You DO love to move those goalposts, don't you?  Please tell me why that would matter at all here...


No goalposts moved at all. I am supporting my assertion that Randi is a publicity-seeking fraud with relevant questions about how he makes a living. I am still waiting for someone to prove that Mr. Randi does _not_ maintain his lifestyle from fees from personal appearances and soliciting donations to his foundation, both of which benefit from his habit of throwing red meat to true believers such as yourself on a regular basis.

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...or matter any more than your making a living from editing a magazine that shills high-end gear.


More of the apparently obligatory namecalling. What, are you 10 years old?

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Btw, I read the New York Post regularly on the premise that one should know one's enemy.  What's your rationale for having subscribed to SI?


Why does it matter to you? More in my next response.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-18 00:50:44
Surely you would agree that negotiation of the terms of the Challenge was legitimate, particularly as Randi had already declared that he would never have to pay out the $1 million.

Fermer should have a hand at negotiating terms if he actually had something to lose besides his reputation.

regardless of his track record of dissembling and deceit?

Something about pots and kettles or stones and glass houses is coming to mind again.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-18 00:51:54

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Randi has, really does have bigger fish to fry than the audiophile fringe you cater to.


But why then should he have devoted so much time to my magazine? And please explain why he goes out of his way to attack Stereophile and Fremer rather than PFO and David Clark as mentioned above, if it is not to ride on our not-insubstantial coat-tails?


Devoted 'so much time'?  What proportion of Randi's efforts over a debunking careers spanning decades, do you believe he has devoted to audio? Im quite sure it's [minuscule]. And he actually did call out David Clark and others, in this excerpt from a JREF post  (note from following the link that audio constitutes a small fraction of the content):
http://www.randi.org/jr/111204hot.html#7 (http://www.randi.org/jr/111204hot.html#7)

LOTS OF NOISE BUT NO ACTION

I'm told that I'm referred to as a "self-described liar and con artist," and "intellectually dishonest," by columnist Art Dudley in the November issue of Stereophile Magazine. More of that, later, when I undertake to educate Dudley — not an easy task, I can assure you. His article is a perfect example of waffling and obfuscation by an "expert" who apparently escaped committing himself on the Shakti Stones' ability to improve audio quality. He is not one of the mavens that I originally challenged to take the JREF million-dollar prize for accepting and endorsing the product, but I now add him to the list, along with Frank Doris at "The Absolute Sound"; Clay Swartz, Clark Johnson, and David Robinson at "Positive Feedback"; Larry Kaye, Wayne Donnelly, and Bill Brassington at "fi"; Bascom King at "Audio"; Wes Phillips at "SoundStage"; Jim Merod at "Jazz Times"; Dick Olsher at "Enjoy The Music"; Peter and May Belt at "P.W.B. Electronics"; and Benjamin Piazza at "Shakti Innovations," where they make this inane product. You know, not one of these fourteen vociferous commentators have even responded, in any way, to the challenge I sent them, individually, and published here on August 5th, 2004 — fourteen weeks ago! — at www.randi.org/jr/080504string.html#8. Strange, isn't it?


There goes your lack of reading comprehension again, krabapple.  I don't see David Clark's name anywhere in that quoted text. And there goes old Randi again, shooting from the hip - perhaps you could ask Mr. Randi when exactly it _was_ that Art Dudley reviewed the Shakti Stones?

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What, btw, is your view of Shakti Stones and such Shakti devices as the Hallograph (http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm), Mr. Atkinson?  Do they really change -- they claim to IMPROVE it, but let's start from basics -- the sound in an audible manner, and if so, how?


As I have never tried either of these devices, I am agnostic on what effect they may have. Why don't you address your questions to someone who has tried them, krabapple?

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I do know how he gets his information, But even the slowest student at journalism school knows that you still need do the appropriate amount of fact-checking. That Mr. Randi does _no_ fact-checking, gets names, attributions, and even supposedly direct quotations wrong supports my characterization. Or do you agree with a high-profile writer for a mainstream audio magazine who wrote on Usenet that it is acceptable to practice deceit when you attack those whom you feel deceitful?


Or, that he got *your* name wrong and mangled quotes from an AudioAsylum thread indicates not so much 'deceit' as that he just doesn't have much respect for your operation or the high-end generally (nor perhaps experience deciphering forum quote-nesting).


If you wish to explain Mr. Randi's endless errors in this manner, explaining that he is careless, sloppy, and incompetent rather than dishonest, sure, why not. It seems a self-defeating defense, but you're the true believer in this instance.

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The first sort of oversight, perhaps, is an occupational hazard of dealing with charlatans on a daily basis.


No, it's circular reasoning: "I believe you are a charlatan therefore I will not do any due diligence in examining the evidence that will prove you are a charlatan." I can't believe that someone who subscribes to HA, who, it must be assumed, believes in logical argument, cannot realize this.

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Such contempt, btw, was apparently returned by your own erroneous , poorly-researched characterization of the $1 million challenge when you wrote on AudioAsylum (http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/critics/messages/4301.html):

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With respect to the Randi Challenge, it is worked so that the only way someone can collect the $1 million is to prove that they can detect the Device Under Test by purely 'psychic' means. If there is a real cause for the sonic difference, then Randi doesn't have to pay up, even if the test produces positive results. As Art wrote, "intellectually dishonest


But you yourself, krabapple, just wrote "The terms of the $1million challenge boil down to asking that the 'claimant' perform as claimed WITHOUT there being a known, [measurable], i.e., 'natural', explanation to account for it." Doesn't that mean that my "poorly researched" description of the Randi Challenge was correct, that the testee detect the Device by _un_natural, ie _psychic_ means? You seem to be arguing with yourself here.

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Finally, for you do dun people for doing 'poor research' when your main apparent source of income is derived from editing a magazine whose methods of validating audio difference fly directly in the face of well-established scientific methodology, takes some yarbles.


Not at all. I am merely pointing out that judged by the standards of my own profession, let alone those of science, James Randi fails pathetically. That you agree with him on just about everything he writes does not change that fact.

As I said, you people live in a peculiarly black and white world. There are people with whom I disagree, Sean Olive, for example, or JJ, that I have immense respect for. There are also people who agree with much of what I believe whom I would cross the street to avoid. People are complex beings with multidimensional worldviews, something that does not appear to be appreciated by the emotionally stunted such as yourself, krabapple. :-(

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-18 00:57:23
Surely you would agree that negotiation of the terms of the Challenge was legitimate, particularly as Randi had already declared that he would never have to pay out the $1 million.

[Fremer] should have a hand at negotiating terms if he actually had something to lose besides his reputation.


How does that legal phrase go? "Assumes facts not in evidence."

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regardless of his track record of dissembling and deceit?

Something about pots and kettles or stones and glass houses is coming to mind again.


Yawn. Get back to me when you have something offer other than juvenile namecalling, greynol. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-05-18 01:33:07
Surely you would agree that negotiation of the terms of the Challenge was legitimate, particularly as Randi had already declared that he would never have to pay out the $1 million.
[Fremer] should have a hand at negotiating terms if he actually had something to lose besides his reputation.

How does that legal phrase go? "Assumes facts not in evidence."

Pardon my usage of the word had; I mean has.

Fremer should have a hand at negotiating terms if he actually has something to lose besides his reputation.

What is your understanding of the consequences should Fremer fail?

When it comes to demonstrating an audible difference between speaker wire in a properly designed test, I am supremely confident that Fremer would fail.  For Randi to declare that he would never have to pay out could be interpreted as expressing a similar level of confidence instead of being interpreted that Randi was going to rig the test, could it not?

Get back to me when you have something offer other than juvenile namecalling, greynol.

I really don't want to belabor the point, but shall we tally a list of namecalling in this discussion and see whose is the biggest? 

From where I sit it appears you're only reinforcing my suggestion that you like to project your faults onto others.

Let's have another crack at this, shall we?
Incidentally, notice how the Stereophile cats shifted the focus of this matter into a character referendum on James Randi...
I didn't raise the issue of the Randi Challenge

I think Frumious B is trying to put some focus on the way you've decided to handle the topic.  "Namecalling" seems to be the bulk (if not the totality) of it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-05-18 02:35:30
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What, btw, is your view of Shakti Stones and such Shakti devices as the Hallograph (http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm), Mr. Atkinson?  Do they really change -- they claim to IMPROVE it, but let's start from basics -- the sound in an audible manner, and if so, how?


As I have never tried either of these devices, I am agnostic on what effect they may have. Why don't you address your questions to someone who has tried them, krabapple?


OK, so this guy Atkinson's not serious.

Please, people, DO NOT FEED THE TROLL
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-18 03:11:38
There goes your lack of reading comprehension again, krabapple.  I don't see David Clark's name anywhere in that quoted text. And there goes old Randi again, shooting from the hip - perhaps you could ask Mr. Randi when exactly it _was_ that Art Dudley reviewed the Shakti Stones?



You got me there, sir; I really should have omitted 'David Clark' from my post.  But reading comprehension requires that we note the Randi says Dudley *escaped* committing himself on the Shakti Stones' abilities-- and that Dudley was NOT one of the 'mavens' that Randi originally challenged.  Randi's note above is, in fact, simply a response to Dudley.  Randi had already denounced Shakti Stones as the nonsense they are, and Dudley failed to engage that, whilst unloading a pile of...just good fun, according to you ...on Randi.  If Dudley has no interest in committing himself to Shakti Stone powers, I'm confident one could find something inane that Dudley has endorsed...maybe LP or CD demagnetizers?


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What, btw, is your view of Shakti Stones and such Shakti devices as the Hallograph (http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm), Mr. Atkinson?  Do they really change -- they claim to IMPROVE it, but let's start from basics -- the sound in an audible manner, and if so, how?


As I have never tried either of these devices, I am agnostic on what effect they may have. Why don't you address your questions to someone who has tried them, krabapple?



What earthly point would there be in that, sir, unless they had tried them under controlled conditions?  And as for agnosticism, that's really appropriate when there is no weight of evidence on one side or another; one could claim to be 'agnostic' about a report of a perpetual motion device, but that would not make one admirably open minded. 


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If you wish to explain Mr. Randi's endless errors in this manner, explaining that he is careless, sloppy, and incompetent rather than dishonest, sure, why not. It seems a self-defeating defense, but you're the true believer in this instance.


Mr. Randi's supposedly endless' errors on a matter that constituted a fraction of the items on JREF's plate during a brief span of its existence, really pale beside the whopper of an error underlying your chosen profession.  And your endless attempts to shift the onus onto Mr. Randi, who is merely one of the more famous skeptics to note the emperor's-clothes aspect of audiophilia, are transparent politics.

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No, it's circular reasoning: "I believe you are a charlatan therefore I will not do any due diligence in examining the evidence that will prove you are a charlatan." I can't believe that someone who subscribes to HA, who, it must be assumed, believes in logical argument, cannot realize this.


Oh, come now sir; like the Red Queen you apparently can believe ---or at minimum remain 'agnostic' about  -- at least six dubious things before breakfast....otherwise how could you possibly continue in your job editing an 'audiophile' magazine? Compared to that, surely championing Randi despite errors of detail, because he is fundamentally correct about what is wrong with the high-end, of which you are a prominent representative if there can be said to be any at all, is not beyond the pale?  Gordon Holt, on the basis  of the essay of his lambasting the high-end, would have gotten the details right, but STILL have made the same point as Randi.  A more important difference is that Randi is willing to put money on it.


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Such contempt, btw, was apparently returned by your own erroneous , poorly-researched characterization of the $1 million challenge when you wrote on AudioAsylum (http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/critics/messages/4301.html):

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With respect to the Randi Challenge, it is worked so that the only way someone can collect the $1 million is to prove that they can detect the Device Under Test by purely 'psychic' means. If there is a real cause for the sonic difference, then Randi doesn't have to pay up, even if the test produces positive results. As Art wrote, "intellectually dishonest


But you yourself, krabapple, just wrote "The terms of the $1million challenge boil down to asking that the 'claimant' perform as claimed WITHOUT there being a known, [measurable], i.e., 'natural', explanation to account for it." Doesn't that mean that my "poorly researched" description of the Randi Challenge was correct, that the testee detect the Device by _un_natural, ie _psychic_ means? You seem to be arguing with yourself here.



No, sir, that's another bit of sophistry on your part.  Leaving aside that Randi himself corrected your misapprehension of the challenge, if you and Fremer are claiming to hear difference from cables due to known physical properties, then by all means say so and also describe what these properties are, so those claims can be tested; but do not expect to qualify for the $ million challenge for, e.g., hearing a difference between a cable with an equalizer inline versus one without.  However, if you are claiming that the causes of difference are natural but are as yet unmeasured/unknown, then the $1 million could be yours.  The only remaining alternative is something forever beyond the powers of science to verify -- i.e., supernatural. So in both of the latter two cases -- where your detection powers would be real, yet fly in the face of known science -- you could qualify for the challenge, and if you proved your case, JREF would have to pay up.  So why not go for it?


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Not at all. I am merely pointing out that judged by the standards of my own profession, let alone those of science, James Randi fails pathetically. That you agree with him on just about everything he writes does not change that fact.


The 'standard' of your own profession is to be in constant denial of -- and occasional polemical war with -- the value of a basic scientific method that goes to the core of your professional activities.  This isn't about whether I agree with everything, or 90% , or 50% of what Randi writes.  It's about whether audiophiles are willing to test their more dubious claims of audible difference.  Are you?

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As I said, you people live in a peculiarly black and white world. There are people with whom I disagree, Sean Olive, for example, or JJ, that I have immense respect for. There are also people who agree with much of what I believe whom I would cross the street to avoid. People are complex beings with multidimensional worldviews, something that does not appear to be appreciated by the emotionally stunted such as yourself, krabapple. :-(


While you wonder at my emotional stature and the palette of my world, I marvel at how someone with a physicist's training could sleep at night, doing what you do every month.  So call us even.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-18 03:27:36
When it comes to demonstrating an audible difference between speaker wire in a properly designed test, I am supremely confident that Fremer would fail.  For Randi to declare that he would never have to pay out could be interpreted as expressing a similar level of confidence instead of being interpreted that Randi was going to rig the test, could it not?


Of course it could.  And that is probably how someone employing unbiased reading comprehension -- and certainly if it's in the context of what else Randi has written -- would interpret it.  It is not always arrogant to assume nonsense will turn out to be nonsense.

From what I've seen over the years, this attempt to paint Randi as someone who would never pay out, is utterly typical of true believers in various beliefs whom Randi/JREF has 'aroused', most of whom never seem to have read the full terms of the challenge in the first place.  Again and again, on the JREF forum and elsewhere, big pants swagger in to claim the challenge is 'rigged' and again and again they are pointed to the terms of the challenge that refute their claim.

The AudioAsylum thread I linked to hashes this particular aspect of Mssrs. Dudley and  Atkinson's sophistry out more fully.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-18 11:35:52
Oh for goodness sake.

HA descends further into rec.audio.opinion.


This is all argument about argument. The point, if there ever was one (post 1067 nearly got back to it!) has disappeared over the horizon.



When someone blind-tests two cables that measure the same in the audio band, do nothing silly that would upset an amplifier, using a well designed amplifier and sensible speakers - and someone actually proves they hear a difference - then we'll have something to talk about.

So far, all the claims we see are as scientificly proven as saying "the earth is a triangle", and have the same cost/benefit as the Emperor's New Clothes.

If there's an audible difference, prove it.

If you can't prove it, shut up or get banned.


David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-18 11:48:45
As I have repeatedly said, neither Stereophile nor its writers hold any opinions whatsoever on the Pear cables. None of us have tried them out and none of us have written about them, despite Mr. Randi's projections. We remain agnostic.


Ah, but I assume that there are other brands of extremely costly cables on which you are not agnostic that do get coverage in Stereophile.  If Pear were demonstrated not to produce any audible difference in sound quality then wouldn't that also cast some reasonable doubt on the brands that you do endorse?  Now a journalist wouldn't care one lick about that sort of thing and would just want to expose the truth wherever it led because his readers would undoubtedly have an interest in finding out whether the high priced cables were actually any better than Radio Shack cables.  They would want to know if their money might not be better spent on other things.  A product salesman, on the other hand, would want to circle the wagons to protect his interests, especially if he didn't have confidence that the product would stand up to investigation.  Incidentally, you all ready told us you were a product salesman on the previous page of this thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-18 12:49:11
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What, btw, is your view of Shakti Stones and such Shakti devices as the Hallograph (http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm), Mr. Atkinson?  Do they really change -- they claim to IMPROVE it, but let's start from basics -- the sound in an audible manner, and if so, how?


As I have never tried either of these devices, I am agnostic on what effect they may have. Why don't you address your questions to someone who has tried them, krabapple?


OK, so this guy Atkinson's not serious.


I don't get your point. I might be skeptical about, for example, the Hallograph. However, despite James Randi's mistaken allegation that Stereophile has reviewed the Hallograph, I have never tried it. So how can I have any opinion of it?

So let me get this straight:

If I truthfully say that I am agnostic about these products because I have never tried them, I am "not serious." But if I say they do or do not have an effect without having tried them, I would be foolish. And if I said they can't work, despite not having tried them, I would be arrogant. So, yes, krabapple's troll would appear effective. However I respond, that response can be condemned.

The latter position is arrogant, BTW, because it assumes I am in all possession of _all_ relevant knowledge. It is usually expressed along the lines of "I can't think of any reason why this product should have an audible effect, therefore it doesn't." That strikes me as hubris.

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Please, people, DO NOT FEED THE TROLL


Surely the troll is the person who asked me about the  Shakti products?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-18 12:52:37
About Atkinson's chutzpah of accusing others of charlatanry, some excerpts from his magazine:

JPS Labs Aluminata interconnect, speaker cable, AC cord (http://stereophile.com/cables/407jps/index.html), $2900 per meter:

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Taken together, these unusual interconnect, loudspeaker, and AC cables brought a new measure of spaciousness, scale, smoothness, heretofore unimagined detail, and overall musical ease and naturalness to my music system. And they did it while sounding neither dull nor bright—just right.


Nordost Valhalla interconnect & speaker cable (http://stereophile.com/cables/1101nordost/index.html), $4200/m pair with banana-plug or spade termination; additional length, $1900/m. Interconnect: $3300/m pair with RCA termination.

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It was immediately obvious that the Valhalla interconnects were something special. They had a clean, open, airy sound, and moved the soundstage boundaries out, to farther than I had ever heard in my system. They opened up the spaces between orchestral sections as well, and even the spaces between individual instruments within the sections. One very clear example that I noted was in Heifetz's performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto, with Walter Hendl conducting the Chicago Symphony (RCA LSC-2435). In the first movement are some double-bass passages that clearly define the adjacent side and back walls. With the Valhalla cables, the walls were much more tangible and farther out, and the space itself was better illuminated than with my reference Nirvana SX-Ltds.


While usually not being too shy to publish measurements, even if the accompanying interpretation seems often questionable, Stereophile does not publish measurements for cables like the above. I guess we all know why.  There is an exception though: Sometimes measurements are so fcuked up, that they do publish them (Harmonic Technology CyberLight (http://stereophile.com/cables/805harm/index3.html)) to underline what a trustworthy source they are. Just to continue the charlatanry in the next issue without measurements again.

John Atkinson:
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I am puzzled that Harmonic Technology, which makes good-sounding, reasonably priced conventional cables, would risk their reputation with something as technically flawed as the CyberLight.


This also brought up a little anecdote about how much you can trust Fremer's DBT rejecting, golden ears. Here is what he had to say about the same product:
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I'm not yet ready to give up, but I am prepared to risk jumping into hyperbole hell. I believe that what I think now, and have thought almost since I first installed Harmonic Tech's new CyberLight Wave and P2A LAM cables in my system, is true: The CyberLights represent one of the greatest technological breakthroughs in high-performance audio that I have experienced in my audiophile lifetime. Gulp.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-18 13:06:00

If you wish to explain Mr. Randi's endless errors in this manner, explaining that he is careless, sloppy, and incompetent rather than dishonest, sure, why not. It seems a self-defeating defense, but you're the true believer in this instance.


Mr. Randi's supposedly endless' errors on a matter that constituted a fraction of the items on JREF's plate during a brief span of its existence, really pale beside the whopper of an error underlying your chosen profession.


Yet the errors are a large proportion of Randi's writings about Stereophile. I must assume that if he is careless with the truth when it comes to his examination of me and my magazine, he is probably equally careless about all he writes about.

Quote
And your endless attempts to shift the onus onto Mr. Randi, who is merely one of the more famous skeptics to note the emperor's-clothes aspect of audiophilia, are transparent politics.


I am trying to get true believers, such as you appear to be, to examine Mr. Randi's writings objectively and dispassionately.

Quote
Quote
No, it's circular reasoning: "I believe you are a charlatan therefore I will not do any due diligence in examining the evidence that will prove you are a charlatan." I can't believe that someone who subscribes to HA, who, it must be assumed, believes in logical argument, cannot realize this.


Oh, come now sir; like the Red Queen you apparently can believe ---or at minimum remain 'agnostic' about  -- at least six dubious things before breakfast....otherwise how could you possibly continue in your job editing an 'audiophile' magazine? Compared to that, surely championing Randi despite errors of detail, because he is fundamentally correct about what is wrong with the high-end, of which you are a prominent representative if there can be said to be any at all, is not beyond the pale?


And this sums up the disagreement we have, krabapple. Your position devolves to trusting Randi in the face of evidence to the contrary, despite his untrustworthiness on details, because you agree with his opinion of the larger picture. My position is that if Mr. Randi can be so careless about presenting facts correctly, his opinion on the larger picture is open to question. I don't see how those two positions can be reconciled.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-05-18 13:20:06
When someone blind-tests two cables that measure the same in the audio band, do nothing silly that would upset an amplifier, using a well designed amplifier and sensible speakers - and someone actually proves they hear a difference - then we'll have something to talk about.

Hear hear.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-18 13:56:46
Thanks for sharing the link...
http://stereophile.com/cables/805harm/index.html (http://stereophile.com/cables/805harm/index.html)

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
If you hear what I heard, for the first time in your life you'll hear no cables whatsoever. When you switch back to any brand of metal conductors, you'll know you're hearing cables—because what's transmitted via CyberLight will be the most gloriously open, coherent, delicate, extended, transparent, pristine sound you've ever heard from your system


Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise against signal level:
(http://stereophile.com/images/archivesart/805CYBFIG2.jpg)

Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise against frequency:
(http://stereophile.com/images/archivesart/805CYBFIG3.jpg)

So there you have it - Fremer thinks 1% THD and 72.8dB SNR is "pristine sound".

I guess this little cable is like a vinyl simulator!


You can't say Stereophile is all bad. They published this!

You could argue it's to prove what a trustworthy source they are, but I think they're just having a bloody good laugh at their readers. I'm sure they know the score, but they also know their readers are too science-shy to understand the implications - the main one being that their highly respected reviewers like easily audible noise and distortion, and hate untarnished sound.

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-18 13:59:40
And this sums up the disagreement we have, krabapple.


???????????????

No!  The disagreement that many of us have with you John, is *not* limited to whether or not John Atkinson can distract people with well-wriiten nit-picking sessions.

Our disagreement is with those put the pursuit of good sound reproduction and intellectual honesty behind their personal desire for personal fame and profit.

Quote
Your position devolves to trusting Randi in the face of evidence to the contrary, despite his untrustworthiness on details, because you agree with his opinion of the larger picture. My position is that if Mr. Randi can be so careless about presenting facts correctly, his opinion on the larger picture is open to question. I don't see how those two positions can be reconciled.


The whole Randi/Stereophile affair is just another example of how certain people disemble and distract rather than honestly face the facts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-18 14:21:50
Thanks for sharing the link...
http://stereophile.com/cables/805harm/index.html (http://stereophile.com/cables/805harm/index.html)

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
If you hear what I heard, for the first time in your life you'll hear no cables whatsoever. When you switch back to any brand of metal conductors, you'll know you're hearing cables—because what's transmitted via CyberLight will be the most gloriously open, coherent, delicate, extended, transparent, pristine sound you've ever heard from your system


Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise against signal level:
(http://stereophile.com/images/archivesart/805CYBFIG2.jpg)

Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise against frequency:
(http://stereophile.com/images/archivesart/805CYBFIG3.jpg)

So there you have it - Fremer thinks 1% THD and 72.8dB SNR is "pristine sound".

I guess this little cable is like a vinyl simulator!


Based on various measurements of vinyl playback that I'm familiar with, the Harmonic Tech device might even be *worse* than vinyl. Certainly, that general trend of 1% THD with signficiant amounts of harmonics greater than third, should sound worse than a well setup vinyl system.


Not all of the SP reviewers seem to be as insensitive to rather large amounts of nonlinear distortion as Fremer. John wrote:

"... there  was a"hummy" quality to the sound of bass guitar, with the tonal emphasis shifted away from the fundamental to the harmonics, and closely miked voices, such as Willie Nelson's on "Stardust," took on a bit of a bark. Dynamics seemed exaggerated, with climaxes sounding louder than I was expecting. In the long term, I found the CyberLight's presentation rather relentless."

However this prefaced with the following:

"There was a coherence to the stereo image, a nice three-dimensionality to the sonic objects within the soundstage, and a vivid overall presentation."

This might be a clue to what vinylphiles appear to like so much about vinyl. "...three-dimensionality to the sonic objects within the soundstage, and a vivid overall presentat..." is their interpretation of an artificially colored sound that many of us perceive as being "gritty, nasty, and grundgy".

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-18 15:49:22
And your endless attempts to shift the onus onto Mr. Randi, who is merely one of the more famous skeptics to note the emperor's-clothes aspect of audiophilia, are transparent politics.

I am trying to get true believers, such as you appear to be, to examine Mr. Randi's writings objectively and dispassionately.

Ha! Surely your use of the words "objectively" and "dispassionately" were added to this post as some kind of in-joke. When do you ever exhibit these tendencies when testing equipment?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-18 16:29:59
I am trying to get true believers, such as you appear to be, to examine Mr. Randi's writings objectively and dispassionately.

Ha! Surely your use of the words "objectively" and "dispassionately" were added to this post as some kind of in-joke. When do you ever exhibit these tendencies when testing equipment?


This question has been knocked around SE Michigan for about 30 years, ever since we starting doing ABX tests of audio equipment.

*The question* simplified to this: "What are these guys thinking"?

Afer about 30 years of watching JA & associates dissemble, up front and pesonal for the last 10 or so, I would like to share the following:

(1) Very few people who are doing things that are very wrong and destructive are actually sociopathic enough to admit to you that they know they are doing wrong and will tell you that they don't care and are going to keep on doing it.  Of course their behavior tells a different story.

(2) The vast minority of people will not readily resort to personal behavior modification to resolve even a severe crisis. Look at the recidivism among crimiinals and addicts.

(3) Most people, heck almost all people,  even when faced with absolute proof that they have done or are doing wrong, will try to cut themselves out an exceptional case that justifies their situation.

In the case of audiophilia, as I have previously mentioned some of the better minds around are trying to resolve personal crisises created by irrational beliefs related to audio.  They've got just about every world view and philosophy at their disposal.  Post-modernism is just one of many.

Notice the conveneient change-up. Atkinson seems to truly believe that your average HA reader-skeptic is a "True Believer".  The object of this "True Believer"-ship is variously Randi-ism, Scientism, or simply being too cheap to beleive that what Atkinson sells isn't overpriced audio jewelry and/or snake oil.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-18 16:45:53
And this sums up the disagreement we have, krabapple.


???????????????

No!  The disagreement that many of us have with you John, is *not* limited to whether or not John Atkinson can distract people with well-wriiten nit-picking sessions.


Which nits amount to things like, getting the name of the Tice clock wrong, and attributing an eyebrow-raising AudioAsylum sentence Stereophile columnist Art Dudley wrote about dowsing (http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=critics&n=4310), to Stereophile editor John Atkinson, who was participating in the same thread...along with some rabid pro-Stereophile posters.

Meanwhile, month in and out, Stereophile and TAS represent 'authority' in the 'high end', on the basis of patently flawed methods for determining audio quality.

2bdecided has, of course, gotten to the same nub of it that Randi got to regarding such 'authoritative' reviews of cables, tweaks, CDPs, amps, and as we've seen, lossy encoding:  show us that these differences either SHOULD (measurements) or DO (DBTs) exist under properly controlled, nonpathological  conditions.  If you won't because you know you can't, you're frauds or mere profiteers.  If you won't because you believe 'it won't work' or you 'don't believe in DBTS' , you're ignorant of science and should desist from propagandizing against things you don't understand (like mp3s, apparently).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-18 17:41:14
In the case of audiophilia, as I have previously mentioned some of the better minds around are trying to resolve personal crisises created by irrational beliefs related to audio.  They've got just about every world view and philosophy at their disposal.  Post-modernism is just one of many.

It seems to me that Stereophile uses graphs and charts to create an impression for uninformed readers, and perhaps a feeling for themselves, that they are doing something with scientific rigour. When actually they seem to have absolutely no idea what the graphs illustrate. (e.g. the use of graphs to measure the performance, rather than the operation, of lossy encoders).

Some post-modernist writing in the Humanities shares similar traits. In some articles of this sort, charts, diagrams, graphs, and strange symbols are included seemingly to give the work the appearance of scientific rigour, of course applied for completely unscientific ends.

The free associative nonsense on this page (http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina64.htm) that supposedly explains how a particular piece of audiophile quackery (MachinaDynamica's Intelligence Chip (http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina62.htm)) works is firmly in a post-modernist tradition. It contains all sorts of scientific, pseudo-scientific, science fiction, and out right nonsense terms surrounding diagrams of Schrodinger's cat and Harry Houdini (I kid you not) pasted together in a way that ultimately explains absolutely nothing.

So I do think that ONE motivation for audiophilia quackery is a firm belief by some that they are doing something scientific.

Of course others are straight out con-artists.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-18 18:27:13
While Atkinson's crusade against charlatanry is funny and contradictory, he is somewhat right about the black & white attitude around here. It's a thin line to sustain a financially successful audio magazine over decades. As much as you demand a strictly objective publication, how many of those are still around? Atkinson has succeeded where many have failed. He is serving a very broad audience under the Stereophile umbrella, idiots and informed readers and it has worked out quite well over the years. Idiots find the prose they need to enjoy their overpriced ego extensions and some of us find valuable measurement data. Is it envy that aroused so much negative energy?

Stereophile is a very valuable brand and I think it is threatened by the internet much more today than it was during usenet times. There is an explosion of opinion everywhere and even when printed on glossy paper opinion alone won't sell forever. So I think we are going to see a shift towards more objective audio journalism anyway. No matter how loud we bark at him or not. Anechoic chambers and expensive measuring equipment and expertise will become more important to contrast the web crowd.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-18 18:36:22
And this sums up the disagreement we have, krabapple.


???????????????

No!  The disagreement that many of us have with you John, is *not* limited to whether or not John Atkinson can distract people with well-wriiten nit-picking sessions.


Which nits amount to things like, getting the name of the Tice clock wrong, and attributing an eyebrow-raising AudioAsylum sentence Stereophile columnist Art Dudley wrote about dowsing (http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=critics&n=4310), to Stereophile editor John Atkinson, who was participating in the same thread...along with some rabid pro-Stereophile posters.


Interesting stuff in that post...

"I did *not* accept the challenge, not only because I've never tried Shakti Stones (and have no real interest in doing so at this time), but because the challenge is obviously a sham. All I did in my column was to ridicule Zwinge's meaningless and ultimately dishonest challenge by issuing an equally absurd challenge of my own.

"It isn't that I wouldn't be interested in a million bucks (sorry for the double negative), but that Zwinge would never *pay* a million bucks: The game is rigged.

I would agree that Randi's game is rigged, in the sense that games are invariably rigged in favor of the house by means of the application or mis-application of science. Randi *rigged his game* by demanding that science as we know it today be violated. I'm very  happy that science as we know it today is reliable enough that this sort of *rigging* can be safe enough that people are willing to stake interesting amounts of cash on it. Back in the day, when accepted science said that heavy objects dropped faster than light ones and that the world was flat, science wasn't such a sure thing.

"Even if I could read minds or bend spoons by whistling "Turkey in the Straw," I wouldn't bother accepting a challenge that's impossible to win under any circumstances.

In the above sentence we might see a Freudian slip indicating that Art Dudly agrees with our opinion of Stereophile.

"Zwinge and I actually have some things in common: I earn money by helping a relatively small audience feel good about their love of music and expensive (and sometimes weird) audio equipment.

Dudly shows his ignorance of English Etymology at this point. Love of music is Musicophilia, Audiophilia is something else which is inclusive of but not limited to audio gear that is either expensive or weird. He justfies his weird behavior on the grounds that it makes a small group of people feel good. Very giving and theraputic of him, no? ;-)

"Zwinge earns money by helping a relatively small audience feel good about hating people they consider superstitious.

A little bit of  projection here? Who said anything about hatred before Dudly blurted it out? Apparently Dudly was slipping on Freud's banana peel several times when he made that post...

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Frumious B on 2009-05-19 11:43:35
While Atkinson's crusade against charlatanry is funny and contradictory, he is somewhat right about the black & white attitude around here. It's a thin line to sustain a financially successful audio magazine over decades. As much as you demand a strictly objective publication, how many of those are still around? Atkinson has succeeded where many have failed. He is serving a very broad audience under the Stereophile umbrella, idiots and informed readers and it has worked out quite well over the years. Idiots find the prose they need to enjoy their overpriced ego extensions and some of us find valuable measurement data. Is it envy that aroused so much negative energy?


I don't think anyone is calling for Stereophile to go full on Spock or anything like that.  OK, maybe SOME are calling for full on Spock, but I'm sure as heck not.  However, it's certainly entirely impossible to publish an informative, lively and entertaining magazine that doesn't bullshit its readers and talk up bogus products like LP demagnetizers and such.  The subjective vs. objective argument seems to be one facet that people have latched onto here, but the issue really strikes me as more about honesty vs. dishonesty.  You can be subjective and still be honest.  As far as I'm concerned someone can be as subjective as the day is long if that's what floats their boat.  Just don't try to mask your subjectivity with a bunch of graphs to give an illusion of objectivity and don't lie to me in an effort to sell me crap.  I just want good advice, honest opinions and products that deliver something rather than nothing.  That doesn't sound like a recipe for a magazine/e-zine/blog that nobody would latch onto to me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-19 16:09:00
The subjective vs. objective argument seems to be one facet that people have latched onto here, but the issue really strikes me as more about honesty vs. dishonesty.  You can be subjective and still be honest.  As far as I'm concerned someone can be as subjective as the day is long if that's what floats their boat.  Just don't try to mask your subjectivity with a bunch of graphs to give an illusion of objectivity and don't lie to me in an effort to sell me crap.

Haven't you just pointed out that honesty and the subjective / object debate are inter-related?  You can't be honest about your subjective opinions, unless you know the limit of your opinions. Objective testing determines what those limits are, in a way that is honest to the people who read your claims.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-19 16:54:07
So, do you think that JA has won many converts here at HA to his way of thinking?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: DocBeard on 2009-05-19 17:27:08
Of course you can be honest about a subjective opinion. (Redundant: all opinions are by definition subjective.) "I like X better than Y" is certainly subjective, but how is it in any way dishonest? (Unless I'm lying, obviously.)

It's when trying to present opinion as fact that the question of honesty can enter. "X is better than Y" may be demonstrable scientifically, it may be a statement of opinion, it may be (almost certainly is, I'd wager) an argument a-brewing about those two possibilities. But even then, if I say that, for example, uncompressed WAV files played over cables constructed by Achmed The Mad 1500 years ago and sealed up in the vaults of the Ancient City Of Mu until they were unearthed in a tale far too long and grisly to relate here sound better than VBR Mp3 files, and that I can prove it with manuscripts from the Elders of Mu, I may still be entirely honest. (And mistaken. And probably insane. But not actually lying.)

(Edit to add: I now realize I misread the earlier post, and I more-or-less agree that you need to understand your opinions and their limits to be honest about them. But the Elders of Mu demand that my post remain. So it goes.)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-19 17:47:40
So, do you think that JA has won many converts here at HA to his way of thinking?

No. I came away thinking that he was just really jealous of James Randi.

But that's just my subjective opinion.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-19 17:48:59
Stereophile is a very valuable brand and I think it is threatened by the internet much more today than it was during usenet times. There is an explosion of opinion everywhere and even when printed on glossy paper opinion alone won't sell forever. So I think we are going to see a shift towards more objective audio journalism anyway. No matter how loud we bark at him or not. Anechoic chambers and expensive measuring equipment and expertise will become more important to contrast the web crowd.


At this time, it might be interesting for those words to be held up to a comparison between Tone Audio and Stereophile.

http://www.tonepublications.com/ (http://www.tonepublications.com/)

http://www.stereophile.com/ (http://www.stereophile.com/)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-19 18:04:01
Of course you can be honest about a subjective opinion. (Redundant: all opinions are by definition subjective.) "I like X better than Y" is certainly subjective, but how is it in any way dishonest? (Unless I'm lying, obviously.)

It's when trying to present opinion as fact that the question of honesty can enter. "X is better than Y" may be demonstrable scientifically, it may be a statement of opinion, it may be (almost certainly is, I'd wager) an argument a-brewing
about those two possibilities.


In my thinking, everything we think and say has some irreducable degree of subjectivity. For example, I can read a meter and report the power output of an amplifier at clipping, but the determination of clipping, the reading of the meter, and how to set the experiment up are all somewhat dependent on my opinions.

Where most audiophile opinons go awry is not when people say "I like A better than B"  or when people say "I like A better than B because A is crisper sounding", not even when people say  "I like A better than B because A is crisper sounding because I demagnetized the CD", but when they say "I like A better than B because A is crisper sounding because I demagnetized the CD which changed how the CD sounds to anybody who has a sufficiently good audio system and discerning ears".

Even saying: "I like A better than B because A is crisper sounding because I demagnetized the CD" does not rest on whether or not demagnetizing the CD actually changed it.  Saying that the change to the CD should or will affect a broad class of people in a certain way (the usual way = improvement) presupposes that the CD was not only changed but improved.

Am I the only one who is amazed by all of the claims that so many things that are scientifically either no change or a random change, *always* turn out to be improvements?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-19 22:45:29
I don't think anyone is calling for Stereophile to go full on Spock or anything like that.  OK, maybe SOME are calling for full on Spock, but I'm sure as heck not.  However, it's certainly entirely impossible to publish an informative, lively and entertaining magazine that doesn't bullshit its readers and talk up bogus products like LP demagnetizers and such.  The subjective vs. objective argument seems to be one facet that people have latched onto here, but the issue really strikes me as more about honesty vs. dishonesty.  You can be subjective and still be honest.  As far as I'm concerned someone can be as subjective as the day is long if that's what floats their boat.  Just don't try to mask your subjectivity with a bunch of graphs to give an illusion of objectivity and don't lie to me in an effort to sell me crap.  I just want good advice, honest opinions and products that deliver something rather than nothing.  That doesn't sound like a recipe for a magazine/e-zine/blog that nobody would latch onto to me.


I don't suspect all Stereophile/TAS/high-end folk of being dishonest.  (Though I suspect some are.)  I take them to be more or less sincere in their beliefs, just as we take someone's A/B reports as sincere, even if ABX shows them to be 'mistaken'.  I don't doubt Jason Serinus (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-victor-serinus/8/487/218) really believes that whistling has healing powers (http://www.jasonserinus.com/pages/healing.html) either.

It's not that the products deliver nothing (except in cases where that's true (http://www.musicdirect.com/product/74266)), it's that what they deliver may not really be different, despite what the reviewer claims.  And that's where DBTs come in.

If the editor of Goodsound can 'come out' in favor of DBTs (http://www.goodsound.com/editorial/200905.htm) -- and commit to start using them in reviews -- and Stereophile's own founder (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/) can excoriate the high end for NOT using DBTs, and every month Stereophile can put stock in objective measurements (but not too much),  then is it too much to ask why they are so persistently averse to using DBT methods in their reviews?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-19 22:54:28
Stereophile is a very valuable brand and I think it is threatened by the internet much more today than it was during usenet times. There is an explosion of opinion everywhere and even when printed on glossy paper opinion alone won't sell forever. So I think we are going to see a shift towards more objective audio journalism anyway. No matter how loud we bark at him or not. Anechoic chambers and expensive measuring equipment and expertise will become more important to contrast the web crowd.


At this time, it might be interesting for those words to be held up to a comparison between Tone Audio and Stereophile.

http://www.tonepublications.com/ (http://www.tonepublications.com/)

http://www.stereophile.com/ (http://www.stereophile.com/)


I presume your point is that the two are just two species of the same genus.  Stereophile, Tone Audio and their ilk can probably duke it out for some time in the anti-science arena.

But ironically  it's some *online* resources that are incorporating more 'facty' stuff.  Soundstage!  already farms out its loudspeaker measurements to the NRC.  Goodsound says it's going to start using DBT methods.    Audioholics published (but does not necessarily adhere to in its reviews)  no-nonsense articles about audio. And (if you know the right names to follow) the professional , technical, hard-science expertise available on sites like AVSforum, here, Audioholics, ProSoundweb, ans some others, is far beyond what the high end mags have been offering.







Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-19 23:53:51
I don't suspect all Stereophile/TAS/high-end folk of being dishonest.


I agree. The keep some very subjective animals with excellent writing skills and I think those actually do believe what they write. And they keep those for a specific share of their audience that is really out for such things. High end audio is not necessarily about 0.0001% THD differences and true DBT results. It's a lifestyle industry selling more than just physical boxes with certain specs.

Just like Coca Cola. Personally I'm able to ABX Coke and Pepsi while probably many people are not. Still I would never try to push an agenda that double blind testing would be the only appropriate way to find your favorite cola. I prefer Coca Cola, including their commercials and the white on red label. For some people high end audio is as affordable as Coke is for me. They enjoy reading classy audio magazines and are happy when they can identify their personal taste with an original like Fremer. They try this and that, choose gear with their guts and enjoy browsing through colorful reviews. It's their free time and not a truth tribunal. And they can probably either afford to make "false" buying decisions or their dealer serves in a class with a non questions ask refund policy and even picks  the stuff up at your house.

Stereophile doesn't tell you that affordable gear sounds like shit. Particular writers may others don't. If you're out for reasonable gear, look at the published measurements and what some of the saner writers have to say about it. I also often chime in to 'educate' (or rather make fun of) the hardcore fundamentalistic faction. And I also sometimes enjoy debating against Atkinson (or Fremer before we scared him away) and take a stand. But I can't really comprehend the whole Stereophile bashing thing or that some people even cheer over a bankruptcy (in the other thread). Why do you even care? Just don't buy it. There's so much 'better' to be angry about in this world than glossy magazines.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 05:07:02
Stereophile doesn't tell you that affordable gear sounds like shit. Particular writers may others don't. If you're out for reasonable gear, look at the published measurements and what some of the saner writers have to say about it. I also often chime in to 'educate' (or rather make fun of) the hardcore fundamentalistic faction. And I also sometimes enjoy debating against Atkinson (or Fremer before we scared him away) and take a stand. But I can't really comprehend the whole Stereophile bashing thing or that some people even cheer over a bankruptcy (in the other thread). Why do you even care? Just don't buy it. There's so much 'better' to be angry about in this world than glossy magazines.


I'd say I've been participating in audiophilia seriously since the early-mid-80s.  From this long view I bash Stereophile and its ilk because I think they have been actively *bad* for home audio in the same way that quack 'authorities' about medicine -- say, Jenny McCarthy re: vaccination or Deepak Chopra re: anything -- are *bad* for public awareness of medical science.  They're NOISE when we need more signal.  (Which isn't to say that the consequences of quack audio are anywhere near as heinous as quack medicine.)  There;s also an element of personal offense for me, as a scientist, at anti-science and pseudoscience, being fostered in 'my' hobby.

That some of its readership has more money than reason, is not much of an excuse; I don't consider that automatically benign, especially since in this country, money too often translates to influence and 'tastemaking'.  Then there's the less economically lofty contingent that reads for information, wanting the best sound for their money, and is taught nonsense like Robert Harley's views on the proper crystal structure of cables, or how LP/CD demagnetizers really work ("who knows why? THEY JUST DO!"), or that CD player A sounds 'not quite as good' as B (with B almost always being the more expensive gear) .  Oh, and let's not forget, double blind comparisons that have been done are corrupt, and the ones that could be done are pointless, so don't bother us about that.

As for not telling its readers what sounds like shit, lately Stereophile is implying that mp3s sound the way a grossly pixellated image looks; and Stereophile has for decades been denigrating CD sound at the expense of....*LP*, and later, 'high rez'.  It's actually not even argued at this point, it's simply *assumed* that this is the case, by most of the writers.  This background hum of tendentious drivel, playing month in and out over decades in the print organs of the 'high end', *does* manage to seep into the larger public's concept of 'high end audio' (so that eventually the meme that Redbook just isn't good enough gets namechecked in unlikely places), especially when an audio ideologue like Fremer also becomes the go-to guy for reporters and bloggers looking for some audio 'authority' to explain mp3s or digital audio to them.

Feh.  Stereophile and TAS going bye-bye simply would not be a loss to me, and arguably could be a gain to home audio 'high fidelity', as it used to be called.



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-20 09:37:51
Yikes Arnold, it seems you were right about Fremer's volatile personality. He flipped out (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/06/on-being-gizmodoed-b.html#comment-494354) in the comments to his BoingBoing entry, to a very mild post from another person. I now wonder if he's physically violent. If so, might need some help up there in the noggin.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-20 10:02:07
Just like Coca Cola. Personally I'm able to ABX Coke and Pepsi while probably many people are not. Still I would never try to push an agenda that double blind testing would be the only appropriate way to find your favorite cola. I prefer Coca Cola, including their commercials and the white on red label. For some people high end audio is as affordable as Coke is for me. They enjoy reading classy audio magazines and are happy when they can identify their personal taste with an original like Fremer. They try this and that, choose gear with their guts and enjoy browsing through colorful reviews. It's their free time and not a truth tribunal. And they can probably either afford to make "false" buying decisions or their dealer serves in a class with a non questions ask refund policy and even picks  the stuff up at your house.

The thing is that those "audiophiles" are making claims of truth. The difference with Coke & Pepsi is that it's purely about preference. Also, there is no reason to make the claim that they taste the same. If someone said Coke tastes different, I have every reason to believe them. They would not have to invent wild explanations as to why they may taste different. There are no pseudoscientific principles at work there.

It's not like the "audiophiles" are saying, "here, we have these two different systems, and they sound different. Choose what you like better". It's like they were saying "here, if you place your cup on this magnetic cupholder, your Coke will taste MUCH better". It reminds me of something silly some members of my family believe (believed? who knows) in. They thought that placing a spoon hanging in an open bottle of soda [googling... it seems it's some kind of myth for champagne] will prevent de-carbonation. That's a more apt analogy, I think.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 10:17:07
They're NOISE when we need more signal.

Why do we need more signal? If a person genuinely wants to find out about sound, sound perception and how audio equipment works then reliable information exists in all the normal places.

Why do you expect information, for example the content of Stereophile, to be in your interests when you have not paid for it and your interests are not aligned with those that have paid for it?

There;s also an element of personal offense for me, as a scientist, at anti-science and pseudoscience, being fostered in 'my' hobby.

I also felt this strongly in the 1970s when audiophile nonsense first moved into the mainstream to the extent I changed my career path and ignored the area for the next few decades. John Atkinson also had a technical background at this time but made a rather different choice to drop the technical side, make a few compromises and work with the opportunities created by the new path of home audio. Looking back on it now, my decision to quit was not necessarily wrong but the basis on which it was made certainly was.

Like rpp3po, I do not find the current audiophile nonsense offensive because it is too silly to be believed by anyone with a moderate amount of common sense and an interest in what is going on. This does not mean that significant numbers of people do not choose to abandon common sense and believe in magic but that is a personal choice. I have no problem with people making this choice or with people like John Atkinson making a profit from such people. But I would certainly have a problem with a society where the opportunity to buy and sell overly foolish luxury goods was greatly reduced or removed.

That some of its readership has more money than reason, is not much of an excuse; I don't consider that automatically benign, especially since in this country, money too often translates to influence and 'tastemaking'.

It is not a question of benign but a question of where the line should be drawn. Should the taxpayers fund action to oppose the trade in overly silly luxury goods? Does the trade in overly silly luxury goods really do harm? Does it do good in terms of the economy?

Then there's the less economically lofty contingent that reads for information, wanting the best sound for their money, and is taught nonsense like Robert Harley's views on...

So should we stop the publication of nonsense? How can this be achieved without doing far more harm than good?

The audiophile industry brings both benefits and problems. People like John Atkinson, who almost certainly have a good grasp of these, are unable to post a balanced view because of the need to maintain/promote the illusions that are essential for his consumers. HA is perhaps one of the few places a semi-sensible discussion on the topic might take place if some of the regular posters were a bit more tolerant of those illusions and had a bit more confidence in the common sense of those with a genuine interest in what is going on.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-20 11:42:44
Yikes Arnold, it seems you were right about Fremer's volatile personality. He flipped out (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/06/on-being-gizmodoed-b.html#comment-494354) in the comments to his BoingBoing entry, to a very mild post from another person. I now wonder if he's physically violent. If so, might need some help up there in the noggin.
Ooo, thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen him insulting me again - let me quote it here for posterity...

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
Quote from: 2Bdecided link=msg=0 date=

Make no mistake why it is this way: the _real_ problems of audio need real engineering to fix them. You need competence and skill to design speakers properly, or to record and replay a fully immersive sound field - whereas anyone can build snake oil products - especially the advertisers in the magazine that employs Michael.

Cheers,
David.


Most of the products advertised in Stereophile are designed by qualified engineers you dimwit. You are an imbecile.


I wonder why I manage to get him so upset? It happened here on HA too - pages full of people almost swearing at him, and yet it was my straightforward comment about room acoustics that he really took exception to (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245&st=275&p=629455&#entry629455).


(Of course many products in audio magazines are designed by engineers. It's takes more than magic to make a CD player work. However, some well reviewed high-end speakers are a travesty of engineering - audibly so, if you still have hearing above 10kHz! As for magic cables etc...!)

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 11:46:37
Why do we need more signal?

Because there is so much noise.

Quote
If a person genuinely wants to find out about sound, sound perception and how audio equipment works then reliable information exists in all the normal places.


How does a normal person distinguish the signal from the noise?

Quote
Why do you expect information, for example the content of Stereophile, to be in your interests when you have not paid for it and your interests are not aligned with those that have paid for it?


I don't think that it is up to me to pay out of my own pocket for every bit of truth that gets published.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-20 11:51:01
It is not a question of benign but a question of where the line should be drawn. Should the taxpayers fund action to oppose the trade in overly silly luxury goods? Does the trade in overly silly luxury goods really do harm? Does it do good in terms of the economy?
There's no problem trading "overly silly luxury goods" - it's also fine to tell people how pretty they are, how incredibly well designed they are, every details of their engineering.

What it's not OK to do is to claim that they sound better, when there is no such evidence.


There are some ridiculously expensive analogue watches out there. No one claims they are more accurate than they really are. No one claims they'll get you to a meeting more "on time" than a £9.99 digital from Casio.

There's still a market for them, because they're sexy, desirable fashion items.


In many countries, unsubstantiated claims are outlawed in advertising for very good reason. Obviously books and magazines themselves aren't censored, though I wonder if I could sue a hi-fi magazine for claiming an audible improvement, where none existed? Probably not - it would be my own stupid fault for not checking myself.


Quote
The audiophile industry brings both benefits and problems. People like John Atkinson, who almost certainly have a good grasp of these, are unable to post a balanced view because of the need to maintain/promote the illusions that are essential for his consumers.
...and it's instructive to watch his performance in various arenas.

Quote
HA is perhaps one of the few places a semi-sensible discussion on the topic might take place if some of the regular posters were a bit more tolerant of those illusions and had a bit more confidence in the common sense of those with a genuine interest in what is going on.
...the common sense to leave the industry entirely, you mean? <can't find appropriate "wry" smiley>

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 12:06:54
Yikes Arnold, it seems you were right about Fremer's volatile personality. He flipped out (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/06/on-being-gizmodoed-b.html#comment-494354) in the comments to his BoingBoing entry, to a very mild post from another person. I now wonder if he's physically violent. If so, might need some help up there in the noggin.
Ooo, thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen him insulting me again - let me quote it here for posterity...

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
Quote from: 2Bdecided link=msg=0 date=

Make no mistake why it is this way: the _real_ problems of audio need real engineering to fix them. You need competence and skill to design speakers properly, or to record and replay a fully immersive sound field - whereas anyone can build snake oil products - especially the advertisers in the magazine that employs Michael.

Cheers,
David.


Most of the products advertised in Stereophile are designed by qualified engineers you dimwit. You are an imbecile.



This is by the way, a false claim.  Most of the so-called engineers in the freaky segment of high end audio do not have good credentials.

This was observed some years back by a good friend of mine who reviewed equipment for the now-departed Audio magazine. He cited example after example of weird products that were engineered by people with either no credentials, or OK credentials but in a non-audio area.

Riddle me this - what would give Fremer good engineering credentials for judging other people's engineering credentials?  BTW, the source I just cited above is an AES Fellow. I think he *is* qualified to grant the opinon he gave! ;-)

Quote
I wonder why I manage to get him so upset? It happened here on HA too - pages full of people almost swearing at him, and yet it was my straightforward comment about room acoustics that he really took exception to (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71245&st=275&p=629455&#entry629455).


IME Fremer is the classic loose cannon.

I still remember speaking some time back with a psychiatrist who also dabbled in reviewing. He said that he had never seen a segment of society with so many really disturbed people in it as high end audio. I asked him if that was a professional opinon and he affirmed it.

Quote
(Of course many products in audio magazines are designed by engineers. It's takes more than magic to make a CD player work.


Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that many high end  CD and DVD players are either mid-fi players repackaged, or are made up of off-the-shelf subassemblies. People like Phillips are very happy to sell you parts kits that only need a case and some industrial design.

Quote
However, some well reviewed high-end speakers are a travesty of engineering - audibly so, if you still have hearing above 10kHz! As for magic cables etc...!)


I have never been all that impressed with the sound quality of many very expensive high end speakers. When I was at HE2005 some of the worst-sounding speakers at the show were marketed by Bosendorfer, if memory serves. Not cheap!

In other cases  high end speakers have sounded fine, but so do Paradigm and similar brands for a fraction of the price.  So do many speakers made for the audio production market.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 13:05:52
[quote name='Arnold B. Krueger' date='May 20 2009, 12:46' post='635703']
>> Why do we need more signal?
>
> Because there is so much noise.

My 9-5 job involves the technical side of sound and there is no input from the audiophile world. No noise and all signal. (Actually there is plenty of noise but the source is not audiophiles). I had no idea how audiophile beliefs had evolved since the 1970s until I made the effort to enter the isolated audiophile world and find out.

You choose to seek out audiophile information and you choose to impose your view of what is signal and what is noise. Audiophiles who read the same information will classify the signal and noise rather differently and they are the intended audience not you. Why should your values and beliefs be imposed on audiophiles?

>> If a person genuinely wants to find out about sound, sound perception and how
>> audio equipment works then reliable information exists in all the normal places.
>
> How does a normal person distinguish the signal from the noise?

Assuming by normal you mean someone who lacks technical knowledge and cannot use reason directly, then by the usual method of looking for the checks and balances that counter self interest.

>> Why do you expect information, for example the content of Stereophile, to be in
>> your interests when you have not paid for it and your interests are not aligned
>> with those that have paid for it?
>
> I don't think that it is up to me to pay out of my own pocket for every bit of
> truth that gets published.

I am not sure I understand how this is a response to the above.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 13:29:44

>> Why do we need more signal?
>
> Because there is so much noise.

My 9-5 job involves the technical side of sound and there is no input from the audiophile world.



Lucky you. Ethan and I do a lot of live sound and recording work, so we are also familiar with the technical side of sound where there is limted or no input from the audiophile world. Very refreshing. But not totally free of BS, especially recording.

Quote
No noise and all signal. (Actually there is plenty of noise but the source is not audiophiles). I had no idea how audiophile beliefs had evolved since the 1970s until I made the effort to enter the isolated audiophile world and find out.

You choose to seek out audiophile information and you choose to impose your view of what is signal and what is noise. Audiophiles who read the same information will classify the signal and noise rather differently and they are the intended audience not you.

Why should your values and beliefs be imposed on audiophiles?


Because they aren't just my values and beliefs, but are the best available information about how things are. And, there is no imposition, there is competition in the market for ideas and beliefs.

And, you make yourself sound like an audiophile with this "imposing your beliefs" rhetoric.  Seems like there is a closet self for you that secretly hopes that the audiophile weirdness is really true.

Quote
>> If a person genuinely wants to find out about sound, sound perception and how
>> audio equipment works then reliable information exists in all the normal places.
>
> How does a normal person distinguish the signal from the noise?

Assuming by normal you mean someone who lacks technical knowledge and cannot use reason directly, then by the usual method of looking for the checks and balances that counter self interest.


Well then the viewpoint that opposes the floobydust squad over at SP,  TAS, TA, & etc.  are part of those checks and balances.

Quote
>> Why do you expect information, for example the content of Stereophile, to be in
>> your interests when you have not paid for it and your interests are not aligned
>> with those that have paid for it?
>
> I don't think that it is up to me to pay out of my own pocket for every bit of
> truth that gets published.

I am not sure I understand how this is a response to the above.


I think that it is reasonble to expect that a publication that does not clearly label itself as fiction should have a liberal proportion of reliable information.

I think that most people who initially pick up a high end publication are seeking reliable information to guide a purchase decision.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 14:07:17
What it's not OK to do is to claim that they sound better, when there is no such evidence.

Why do you consider the lack of evidence to support claims about the betterness of luxury goods a significant problem? Obviously it matters in more important areas but when considering the selling of expensive audiophile equipment to audiophiles who want to be told stories about the magical properties of audiophile equipment?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 14:19:30
What it's not OK to do is to claim that they sound better, when there is no such evidence.


Why do you consider the lack of evidence to support claims about the betterness of luxury goods a significant problem?


Much of what purports to be high end audio is in fact audio jewelry. It may look great, but in use it has *no* functional advantages. Products like SETs are even strongly dysfunctional.

We are very familiar with  luxury items in other areas of life, one example of which is jewelry. Audio jewlery is odd because unlike regular jewelry, we have these incessant claims for audio jewelry that it "sounds better". 

Let's compare and contrast audio jewelry with just about every other kind of luxury item.

Courtesy of my zip code and financial interests, I receive a lot of ads for luxury items. With very few exceptions, *none* of them purport to have any practical advantages. The watches don't claim to keep better time, the rings don't claim to protect your fingers or even stay on better. The clothing does not puport to wear longer, be more comfortable, or allow you to move more easily. In fact, much of it makes a point of being counter-functional, such as luxury women's shoes. For the most part the canonical ad for a luxury item is composed of some great-looking person using it, in some very impressive-looking luxury context.

Quote
Obviously it matters in more important areas but when considering the selling of expensive audiophile equipment to audiophiles who want to be told stories about the magical properties of audiophile equipment?


I'd like to see the re-write of that sentence. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 14:52:42
Quote

thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen him insulting me again - let me quote it here for posterity...

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
Quote from: 2Bdecided link=msg=0 date=

Make no mistake why it is this way: the _real_ problems of audio need real engineering to fix them. You need competence and skill to design speakers properly, or to record and replay a fully immersive sound field - whereas anyone can build snake oil products - especially the advertisers in the magazine that employs Michael.


Most of the products advertised in Stereophile are designed by qualified engineers you dimwit. You are an imbecile. - Michael Fremer



This is by the way, a false claim.  Most of the so-called engineers in the freaky segment of high end audio do not have good credentials.


More expression of a belief not supported by the evidence, Mr. Krueger. While some designers in high-end audio are not engineers, the majority of them _are_ engineers. I note with interest some HA posters' tendency to construct castles with foundations of sand, vide, the recent agreement that Stereophile's inclusion of measurement data in its equipment reports is window dressing to delude the gullible into trusting the magazine. Yet might it just possibly be that the measurements sidebars that I work so hard to write perform a valuable function: that they allow readers to distinguish between those questionable products that are based on a shaky knowledge of audio engineering? That even if the readers are technically naive, the explanatory text I write about every product's performance allows them the necessary insight?  That the inclusion of measured perfomance data is one of the reasons Stereophile has become dominant in its field by whatever metric you care to name.

Of course, that hypothesis flies in the face of your belief system, Mr. Krueger.

And on your suggestion that one needs to be an audio engineer to judge audio engineering, this was addressed by George Bernard Shaw a century ago: "You don't need to be a carpenter to judge the quality of a table," he wrote. ie, a product should be judged an on well it performs its core function, not on how it is crafted.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 14:56:45
Quote

thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen him insulting me again - let me quote it here for posterity...

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
Quote from: 2Bdecided link=msg=0 date=

Make no mistake why it is this way: the _real_ problems of audio need real engineering to fix them. You need competence and skill to design speakers properly, or to record and replay a fully immersive sound field - whereas anyone can build snake oil products - especially the advertisers in the magazine that employs Michael.


Most of the products advertised in Stereophile are designed by qualified engineers you dimwit. You are an imbecile. - Michael Fremer



This is by the way, a false claim.  Most of the so-called engineers in the freaky segment of high end audio do not have good credentials.


More expression of a belief not supported by the evidence, Mr. Krueger.


Since you stripped off my citation of authority John, I feel that it is only right that I strip off the entirety of your unsupported comments that followed.

Got anything relevant to say?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-20 15:08:07
I note with interest some HA posters' tendency to construct castles with foundations of sand, vide, the recent agreement that Stereophile's inclusion of measurement data in its equipment reports is window dressing to delude the gullible into trusting the magazine.

Presenting information in this manner is a common feature of a lot of post-modernist writing, why would your post-modernist writing be any different?

Someone should really write a poetics of audiophile quackery, most forms of rhetoric get a go it seems, but I wonder what the general rules actually are?
Yet might it just possibly be that the measurements sidebars that I work so hard to write perform a valuable function: that they allow readers to distinguish between those questionable products that are based on a shaky knowledge of audio engineering?

You included lots of charts in your lossy encoder comparison, but all these demonstrated was your complete ignorance of how lossy encoders work. The fact you THOUGHT you were doing something scientific by comparing the charts doesn't MEAN that you were doing a scientific - or as you would say - dispassionate and objective analysis of the performance of the encoders. There are ways of doing that, but they require one to use their ears in controlled testing conditions, a methodology that you completely ignored in favour of adding lots of technical looking charts that didn't actually amount to anything.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 15:16:00
[quote name='Arnold B. Krueger' date='May 20 2009, 14:29' post='635742']
> Because they aren't just my values and beliefs, but are the best available
> information about how things are.

If you listen to audiophiles, you will find that they do not like your beliefs preferring their own and that they are not particularly interested in signing up for the scientific method. This is their choice and so long as their beliefs have negligible input to anything important it is hard to see much of a problem.

> And, there is no imposition, there is competition in the market for ideas and
> beliefs.

So your postings on the Stereophile forum, which is clearly an audiophile forum, is not trying to impose your ideas on an unreceptive audience? I think you will find it looks like this to rather a lot of people.

In order to become an audiophile, a person has to be both lacking in intelligence and a bigot. The former is necessary in order to fail to recognise the silliness in the first place and the latter necessary to discard the stream of contradictory information after picking up the beliefs. Such people do not want their audiophile beliefs challenged, they want them reinforced and input from people like you is generally not welcome.

> I think that it is reasonble to expect that a publication that does not clearly
> label itself as fiction should have a liberal proportion of reliable information.

In this day and age, when someone of reasonable intelligence looks at a glossy publication funded by advertising they have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Audiophile publications may be above average in terms of being misleading but they have little choice given the nature of the industry.

> I think that most people who initially pick up a high end publication are seeking
> reliable information to guide a purchase decision.

But if they have paid nothing or only a nominal sum for that information then it would be a fool that did not recognise that somebody else has paid to put that information in front of them and to treat it accordingly.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: euphonic on 2009-05-20 15:21:08
Quote
Yikes Arnold, it seems you were right about Fremer's volatile personality. He flipped out in the comments to his BoingBoing entry, to a very mild post from another person. I now wonder if he's physically violent. If so, might need some help up there in the noggin.


I thought Fremer gave ample evidence of his instability here long ago, cf.:

1. Saying he couldn't care less what we think in spite of us being so upset, when the reverse is true on both counts

2. Repeatedly saying "this is my last post" before eschewing self-control and posting again anyway

3. Being particularly insulted by 2bdecided's response to the photo of the room -- folks with a little knowledge (in this case, about first-order reflections) emphasise what they do understand to compensate for all that they don't

4. "Buh bye" [sic] twice -- passive-aggression with infantile vocalisation?

5. Confusing gaps in scientific knowledge (concerning audio reproduction) with holes in the scientific method itself, hence the need to elevate personal subjectivity above empirical evidence -- though this one isn't just about Fremer!

It's not nice to go ad hominem like this, but the ancient Greeks say it's a legitimate rhetorical tool... a person's psychological makeup can have huge implications on the basis of his beliefs and actions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 15:21:15
They're NOISE when we need more signal.

Why do we need more signal? If a person genuinely wants to find out about sound, sound perception and how audio equipment works then reliable information exists in all the normal places.


Maybe I'm just showing my age, but for decades, the audio journals *were* the 'normal places'.  It's great when damage is being undone by the new 'normal places' now.  (like HA).

Quote
Why do you expect information, for example the content of Stereophile, to be in your interests when you have not paid for it and your interests are not aligned with those that have paid for it?


Gee, why do I expect things that claim to be true, to be true, if I haven't *paid for them*? 

Quote
I also felt this strongly in the 1970s when audiophile nonsense first moved into the mainstream to the extent I changed my career path and ignored the area for the next few decades. John Atkinson also had a technical background at this time but made a rather different choice to drop the technical side, make a few compromises and work with the opportunities created by the new path of home audio. Looking back on it now, my decision to quit was not necessarily wrong but the basis on which it was made certainly was.


Not clear to me here, does this mean you actually were an audio journalist back then?

Quote
Like rpp3po, I do not find the current audiophile nonsense offensive because it is too silly to be believed by anyone with a moderate amount of common sense and an interest in what is going on.


Ah, then John Atkinson and the writers of SP either lack even a moderate amount of common sense, or lack interest in 'what is going on', or are charlatans.

Quote
This does not mean that significant numbers of people do not choose to abandon common sense and believe in magic but that is a personal choice. I have no problem with people making this choice or with people like John Atkinson making a profit from such people. But I would certainly have a problem with a society where the opportunity to buy and sell overly foolish luxury goods was greatly reduced or removed.


Are you suggesting that if Stereophile were to adhere to HA's standards of proof, that consumers would be deprived of the opportunity to buy and sell 'overly foolish' goods?



Quote
It is not a question of benign but a question of where the line should be drawn. Should the taxpayers fund action to oppose the trade in overly silly luxury goods? Does the trade in overly silly luxury goods really do harm? Does it do good in terms of the economy?



I'm not advocating that the government shut down Stereophile.

(Let me, guess, am I arguing with a *online Libertarian*?)

Quote
So should we stop the publication of nonsense? How can this be achieved without doing far more harm than good?



Calm down sparky. rppo's post to which I replied, was about why oh why is there such dogged critique of Stereophile and the high end.  I say we should not stop that.


Quote
The audiophile industry brings both benefits and problems.


So does the homeopathic medicine industry. Mainly monetary benefits to its sellers, fake benefits or problems to its buyers -- and problems to real medicine.


Quote
People like John Atkinson, who almost certainly have a good grasp of these, are unable to post a balanced view because of the need to maintain/promote the illusions that are essential for his consumers. HA is perhaps one of the few places a semi-sensible discussion on the topic might take place if some of the regular posters were a bit more tolerant of those illusions and had a bit more confidence in the common sense of those with a genuine interest in what is going on.



I think at least some wholly sensible discussion has already taken place, and continues to.  Did you miss it?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 15:32:31
My 9-5 job involves the technical side of sound and there is no input from the audiophile world. No noise and all signal. (Actually there is plenty of noise but the source is not audiophiles). I had no idea how audiophile beliefs had evolved since the 1970s until I made the effort to enter the isolated audiophile world and find out.


With all due respect, then you are not a 'normal guy' with respect to audio    To you there is no need for more signal, less noise (though actually, given the marketing of 196 kHz ADCs to the pro market, I'd say there' still some noise to be canceled) .  I suspect you routinely consult professional sources, not popular publications, for your audio information...

Given your testimony, I would posit that it is your view, not mine, that is skewed with regard to audiophilia.

Quote
You choose to seek out audiophile information and you choose to impose your view of what is signal and what is noise.


Signal in this case is accurate information.  Noise is inaccurate or scientifically dubious assertion. 

If you find this idea exasperating, may I ask what on earth you are doing on HA?

Quote
Audiophiles who read the same information will classify the signal and noise rather differently and they are the intended audience not you. Why should your values and beliefs be imposed on audiophiles?


Why do you claim to speak for all audiophiles? Hwo do you know their values and beliefs globally differ from mine?  Would you call J. Gordon Holt -- founder of Stereophile, and recent advocate of DBTs -- something other than an audiophile?


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 15:36:07
What it's not OK to do is to claim that they sound better, when there is no such evidence.

Why do you consider the lack of evidence to support claims about the betterness of luxury goods a significant problem?



If they're not true, is that not a problem for the proponents and sellers of the 'less good' goods, whose performance is being falsely impugned?  Remember that much of the current outbreak here of anti-Steroephillia was due to JAs' misleading article on mp3s...a technology near and dear to HA's heart.


Quote
Obviously it matters in more important areas but when considering the selling of expensive audiophile equipment to audiophiles who want to be told stories about the magical properties of audiophile equipment?



I might just as well ask, why does it matter to you that it matters to me?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 15:57:08

> Because they aren't just my values and beliefs, but are the best available
> information about how things are.


If you listen to audiophiles,


I guess you don't know who you are talking to. Have I listened to audiophiles? Check out my mid-six-figure posting history to Usenet over a period of more than 13 years.

Quote
you will find that they do not like your beliefs


I lack the chutzpah that it would take to make such a sweeping claim.

I find that many audiophiles really like my beliefs, once they hear of them and particularly after they've had a chance to apply them in practical situations.

Quote
preferring their own


Many audiopiles are actually quite agnostic, especiallly the young ones who have not been brain-washed, yet.

Quote
and that they are not particularly interested in signing up for the scientific method.


AFAIK, most young people leave high school favorably disposed towards the scientific method. IME most college graduates with degrees in tech- or business-related areas, whether the arts or sciences retain their favorable opinion in science. One little problem is that many who find careers in politics and communications get brainwashed with post-modern non-thought.  So, when you read what journalists and wannabe journalists write, you get OD'd with that sort of thing.

Quote
This is their choice and so long as their beliefs have negligible input to anything important it is hard to see much of a problem.


Of course. This business of defending people's "right to choice" is in actuality quite strange. People are going to believe what they want to believe, and make the choices they want to make no matter what I say or type. Your continued harping on this point tells me that you are at best a closet true believer in the weird wing of high end audio. :-(

Quote
Quote

> And, there is no imposition, there is competition in the market for ideas and
> beliefs.

So your postings on the Stereophile forum, which is clearly an audiophile forum, is not trying to impose your ideas on an unreceptive audience?


You've got a funny definition of imposition.  Imposition is forcing people to do something they don't want to do. The members of any forum don't have to read any posts they don't want to read, and they surely don't have to respond to any posts that they don't want to respond to. Furthermore, if they didn't read my posts and didn't flame them as they do, they would obviously be lacking for anything at all to do.

Quote
In order to become an audiophile, a person has to be both lacking in intelligence and a bigot.


A person can be an audiopile and be very smart and open-minded about it.

Quote
The former is necessary in order to fail to recognise the silliness in the first place


There doesn't have to be any silliness in the audiophile hobby.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 16:23:10
[quote name='krabapple' date='May 20 2009, 16:21' post='635771']
> Maybe I'm just showing my age, but for decades, the audio journals *were* the 'normal
> places'.

Not sure what you mean by journal. Academic/technical journals are a reliable source of technical information but consumer audiophile magazines generally are not.

> It's great when damage is being undone by the new 'normal places' now.

Not sure many new places have become well established. Peoples experiences with the many new sources of information on the web is that the presence of disinformation tends to greatly reduce the value of the good information.

>> Why do you expect information, for example the content of Stereophile, to be in your
>> interests when you have not paid for it and your interests are not aligned with those
>> that have paid for it?
>
> Gee, why do I expect things that claim to be true, to be true, if I haven't *paid for
> them*?

Naive I guess. Perhaps your view will change when you get older.

> Not clear to me here, does this mean you actually were an audio journalist back then?

I have never been a journalist (my writing should have made that clear) and have never had the slightest interest in being one. I have a technical background.

> Ah, then John Atkinson and the writers of SP either lack even a moderate amount of
> common sense, or lack interest in 'what is going on', or are charlatans.

One can speculate on the nutter:rogue ratios for proclaimed audiophiles on the supply side but it difficult to be sure without the hard evidence.

> Are you suggesting that if Stereophile were to adhere to HA's standards of proof, that
> consumers would be deprived of the opportunity to buy and sell 'overly foolish' goods?

If Stereophile was to become like HA then they would lose almost all their current audiophile advertisers and readers. A smaller audiophile publication is then likely to benefit from an influx of new advertisers and readers and become the leading audiophile publication.

> So does the homeopathic medicine industry. Mainly monetary benefits to its sellers,
> fake benefits or problems to its buyers -- and problems to real medicine.

The audiophile industry is in the luxury goods business. The homeopathic medicine industry is not. The potential for good and harm is quite different.

> I think at least some wholly sensible discussion has already taken place, and
> continues to. Did you miss it?

It would seem so. I have seen no balanced discussion on the pros and cons of the current audiophile industry on HA or other audio/audiophile sites. The odd post but not a discussion.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-20 16:41:50
People have a right to be lied to?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-20 16:47:40
a product should be judged an on well it performs its core function, not on how it is crafted.
Those two are inseparable in your world, surely? The product's core function is to deliver good sound, while creating the expectation (partly through how it is crafted) that it is something really special, in order to induce the placebo effect, causing the listener to perceive / believe that it sounds exceptionally good.


You're not seriously claiming that part of your life's work is to remove all the data about what the product looks like, how much it costs, how it's built etc, from the equation and concentrate on only the sound? That's the essence of blind testing, and your magazine promotes the antithesis of this.


(to me, "how it is crafted" is quite important - I have various pieces of hi-fi equipment that are multiple decades old - still working well because they were well crafted in the first place. that's a completely different discussion though).

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 17:05:07
Quote

thanks for posting that - I hadn't seen him insulting me again - let me quote it here for posterity...

Quote from: Fremer link=msg=0 date=
Quote from: 2Bdecided link=msg=0 date=

Make no mistake why it is this way: the _real_ problems of audio need real engineering to fix them. You need competence and skill to design speakers properly, or to record and replay a fully immersive sound field - whereas anyone can build snake oil products - especially the advertisers in the magazine that employs Michael.


Most of the products advertised in Stereophile are designed by qualified engineers you dimwit. You are an imbecile. - Michael Fremer



This is by the way, a false claim.  Most of the so-called engineers in the freaky segment of high end audio do not have good credentials.


More expression of a belief not supported by the evidence, Mr. Krueger.


Since you stripped off my citation of authority John, I feel that it is only right that I strip off the entirety of your unsupported comments that followed.


Huh?

Quote
Got anything relevant to say?


Sure: "While some designers in high-end audio are not engineers, the majority of them _are_ engineers." [This is an observation based on my own experience having been an audio magazine editor for almost 27 years, Mr. Krueger, which I am sure even you would admit is more extensive relevant experience than your own, other you would be doing my job :-).]

"I note with interest some HA posters' tendency to construct castles with foundations of sand, vide, the recent agreement that Stereophile's inclusion of measurement data in its equipment reports is window dressing to delude the gullible into trusting the magazine." [I don't see that this needs to be supported. The relevant message were all posted in this thread in the past 4 days.]

" Yet might it just possibly be that the measurements sidebars that I work so hard to write perform a valuable function: that they allow readers to distinguish between those questionable products that are based on a shaky knowledge of audio engineering? That even if the readers are technically naive, the explanatory text I write about every product's performance allows them the necessary insight? That the inclusion of measured perfomance data is one of the reasons Stereophile has become dominant in its field by whatever metric you care to name." [Again, this is an example of someone like Mr. Krueger ignoring the factual evidence in favor of whatever hare-brained idea sprung into this head. :-) ]

"Of course, that hypothesis flies in the face of your belief system, Mr. Krueger."

So if you feel this hypothesis lacks merit, Mr. Krueger, what is incorrect about it?

"And on your suggestion that one needs to be an audio engineer to judge audio engineering, this was addressed by George Bernard Shaw a century ago:'You don't need to be a carpenter to judge the quality of a table," he wrote. ie, a product should be judged an on well it performs its core function, not on how it is crafted.'"

This directly addresses the criticism you expressed, Mr. Krueger. Why do you feel it not worth responding to, if you raised the subject in the first place? And why, in general, do you so actively avoid answering the questions that are put to you?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 17:13:06
In order to become an audiophile, a person has to be both lacking in intelligence and a bigot.


And you know that, how, "honestguy"?

It is relevant to point out that according the last readership survey, performed by a third party to avoid any suggestion of bias, 95% of Stereophile's readers have a  bachelor's degree or higher. Doesn't that count as "educated"? Why, 4 of my reviewers have PhDs in scientific or related areas. Perhaps they are not "audiophiles," as you would define them :-)

And if you define "bigoted" as someone who ignores factual evidence in favor of their own unsupported beliefs, we have seen a great deal of examples of this in recent postings from HA posters, not the least of whom is one Arnold Krueger. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-20 17:37:18
Mr Atkinson, your quotation of George Bernard Shaw is as pointless and disingenuous as the creationists' use of Einstein's "God" quotations. Surely engineering requires specialized knowledge, and a table doesn't really require too much engineering, don't you think?

And actually, a carpenter might just be able to discern more subtle properties of the table that are real, while some others would be claiming in their tablephile magazines that some particular table makes dinner taste better.

I and some others seem to disagree with most of what honestguv is saying, and I particularly disagree with the sutpid and bigoted part (doesn't mean they're the opposites either). But your mentioning
Quote
It is relevant to point out that according the last readership survey, performed by a third party to avoid any suggestion of bias, 95% of Stereophile's readers have a bachelor's degree or higher. Doesn't that count as "educated"? Why, 4 of my reviewers have PhDs in scientific or related areas.
does, again, smell like the creationists' tactics of all those "scientists" who deny evolution.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 17:42:39

> Maybe I'm just showing my age, but for decades, the audio journals *were* the 'normal
> places'.

Not sure what you mean by journal. Academic/technical journals are a reliable source of technical information but consumer audiophile magazines generally are not.



Back in the day, Stereo Review, Audio, Wireless World, and High Fidelity were reliable sources of information about audio. In the very early days Audio magazine was quasi-functional as the journal (intentional small j) of the AES.


Quote
Quote

> Are you suggesting that if Stereophile were to adhere to HA's standards of proof, that
> consumers would be deprived of the opportunity to buy and sell 'overly foolish' goods?


If Stereophile was to become like HA then they would lose almost all their current audiophile advertisers and readers. A smaller audiophile publication is then likely to benefit from an influx of new advertisers and readers and become the
leading audiophile publication.


It might be interesting to speculate on what would have happened had JGH followed up on his musings in http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/index.html).

It should be noted that there is no evidence that anybody at Stereophile ever actually used the ABX equipment we provided them for its intended purpose. So much for an open-minded investigation of the alternatives.


Quote
Quote

> I think at least some wholly sensible discussion has already taken place, and
> continues to. Did you miss it?



It would seem so. I have seen no balanced discussion on the pros and cons of the current audiophile industry on HA or other audio/audiophile sites. The odd post but not a discussion.


The above puts a very unfair burden on HA to meet undisclosed standards for "balance". My opinon is that the audiophile industry is split into two areas - one pursuing good sound via good science, and the other pretty much totally out of control in their pursuit of the once almighty dollar.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 17:50:13
More expression of a belief not supported by the evidence, Mr. Krueger.



Again John you have repeated your first egregious intellectual deception by stripping out my authority for my statement.

I suggest that you take a quick refresher course in reading, and then reread my post in its entirety.

I'll even give you a hint - scan for the text "AES Fellow".

John, if you can't find the authority that I cited and that you removed so that your post would appear to have any validity at all, I will be forced to humiliate you before the HA community by reposting it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 18:05:43
People have a right to be lied to?


Yup, and JA is doing it to me on HA right now, today. :-(
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 18:29:52
More expression of a belief not supported by the evidence, Mr. Krueger.


Again John you have repeated your first egregious intellectual deception by stripping out my authority for my statement.

I suggest that you take a quick refresher course in reading, and then reread my post in its entirety.


I did. You were saying that an AES Fellow, by whom I assume you mean David Clark, agrees with you concerning the number of non-engineers operating in high-end audio. I noted that fact, observed that it is in conflict with my own experience, which is greater than David Clark's at least in this area, and address your point directly. Why is it  "egregious intellectual deception" for me to do so?

I note, BTW, that you yourself snip sections of others' posts that you do not feel worth addressing, as do many others, including one of the moderators, "greynol." Why do feel it is "egregious intellectual deception" for me to do likewise?

So, to return to the questions of mine that you have been ducking, Mr. Krueger:

"While some designers in high-end audio are not engineers, the majority of them _are_ engineers." [This is an observation based on my own experience having been an audio magazine editor for almost 27 years, Mr. Krueger, which I am sure even you would admit is more extensive relevant experience than your own, other you would be doing my job :-).]

"I note with interest some HA posters' tendency to construct castles with foundations of sand, vide, the recent agreement that Stereophile's inclusion of measurement data in its equipment reports is window dressing to delude the gullible into trusting the magazine." [I don't see that this needs to be supported. The relevant message were all posted in this thread in the past 4 days.]

"Yet might it just possibly be that the measurements sidebars that I work so hard to write perform a valuable function: that they allow readers to distinguish between those questionable products that are based on a shaky knowledge of audio engineering? That even if the readers are technically naive, the explanatory text I write about every product's performance allows them the necessary insight? That the inclusion of measured perfomance data is one of the reasons Stereophile has become dominant in its field by whatever metric you care to name." [Again, this is an example of someone like Mr. Krueger ignoring the factual evidence in favor of whatever hare-brained idea sprung into this head. :-) ]

"Of course, that hypothesis flies in the face of your belief system, Mr. Krueger."

So if you feel this hypothesis lacks merit, Mr. Krueger, what is incorrect about it?

"And on your suggestion that one needs to be an audio engineer to judge audio engineering, this was addressed by George Bernard Shaw a century ago:'You don't need to be a carpenter to judge the quality of a table," he wrote. ie, a product should be judged an on well it performs its core function, not on how it is crafted.'"

This directly addresses the criticism you expressed, Mr. Krueger. Why do you feel it not worth responding to, if you raised the subject in the first place? And why, in general, do you so actively avoid answering the questions that are put to you?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 18:44:07
It might be interesting to speculate on what would have happened had JGH followed up on his musings in http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/index.html).

It should be noted that there is no evidence that anybody at Stereophile ever actually used the ABX equipment we provided them for its intended purpose.


You have lost me, Mr. Krueger. I thought it clear from the article you referenced that J. Gordon Holt did indeed try out the ABX Comparator that he wrote about. The review sample was returned following publication of the report, which is before I took over from Gordon as editor in May 1986.

Quote
So much for an open-minded investigation of the alternatives.


As you know you are aware of, Mr. Krueger, having asked me about these tests on r.a.h-e a few years back, I had used an ABX box owned by Ken Kantor/AR for tests he organized of the audibility of absolute polarity in 1984. After I joined Stereophile in 1986, I asked David Carlstrom and David Clark several times about Stereophile purchasing an ABX Comparator by letter (there was no fax or email back then). I never received any response to my letters and eventually, David Clark, whom I knew through meeting him at AES conventions, advised me that the ABX company was folding and that all he could advise me was tor try to purchase a secondhand sample. Which I never could find.

For the blind amplifier tests I organized in 1989, I used a switching arrangement that I fabricated myself, as you are also well aware, Mr. Krueger, having asked me about it several years ago on Usenet.

This is all ancient history so I am not sure why you are dredging it up, Mr. Krueger, nor do I know why you forget the answers to questions that you have already asked me.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 19:25:08
You were saying that an AES Fellow, by whom I assume you mean ----------, agrees with you concerning the number of non-engineers operating in high-end audio.


No, ----------- raised the issue and illustrated with many examples that he was intimately familiar with.

Quote
I noted that fact,


Eventually.

Quote
observed that it is in conflict with my own experience, which is greater than David Clark's at least in this area, and address your point directly.


John your alleged experience is tainted by the fact that you've got any number of dogs in this fight. Furthermore, your track record for identifying technical expertise is highly suspect given that you hired Harley as your chief technical guy.

Quote
Why is it  "egregious intellectual deception" for me to do so?


Because your first response was completely deceptive, your second wasn't much better and finally we have your third, in which you are deceptively trying to create the impression that you did it right all along.

Quote
"While some designers in high-end audio are not engineers, the majority of them _are_ engineers." [This is an observation based on my own experience having been an audio magazine editor for almost 27 years, Mr. Krueger, which I am sure even you would admit is more extensive relevant experience than your own, other you would be doing my job :-).]


Irrelevant.  I was talking about a defined subset of high end designers, while you are generalizing.

Quote
"I note with interest some HA posters' tendency to construct castles with foundations of sand, vide, the recent agreement that Stereophile's inclusion of measurement data in its equipment reports is window dressing to delude the gullible into trusting the magazine." [I don't see that this needs to be supported. The relevant message were all posted in this thread in the past 4 days.]


You've never effectively rebutted anybody's comments on that topic, JJohn. Simple denial, according to you, doesn't count.

Quote
"And on your suggestion that one needs to be an audio engineer to judge audio engineering, this was addressed by George Bernard Shaw a century ago:'You don't need to be a carpenter to judge the quality of a table," he wrote. ie, a product should be judged an on well it performs its core function, not on how it is crafted.'"


Irrelevant on a number of grounds. First, not all carpenters build tables. In this day and age, almost none of them do. Another is that functionality is not the only grounds for judging fine carpentry. When it comes to fine carpentry, appearance matters a lot. Another is that productivity is an important quality of a professional carpenter, but you can't tell how long it took to make a table by just looking at it. Bottom line, just looking at tables is an incomplete means for judging professional carpenters.

Quote
This directly addresses the criticism you expressed, Mr. Krueger.


LOL!


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 19:35:55
It might be interesting to speculate on what would have happened had JGH followed up on his musings in http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/121/index.html).

It should be noted that there is no evidence that anybody at Stereophile ever actually used the ABX equipment we provided them for its intended purpose.


You have lost me, Mr. Krueger.


Not at all. You seem to have your responses in good order, of a kind.

Quote
I thought it clear from the article you referenced that J. Gordon Holt did indeed try out the ABX Comparator that he wrote about.


You get to be wrong.

Quote
The review sample was returned following publication of the report, which is before I took over from Gordon as editor in May 1986.


So then John you have no direct knowlege of excadtly what JGH did  with the comparator, right?

It turns out that JGH spent considerable time on the phone with an ABX company employee, preparing his review. I even seem to recall that when the equipment was returned, someone who packed it for shipment noted that it appeared that it had never been unpacked.

Quote
So much for an open-minded investigation of the alternatives.


As you know you are aware of, Mr. Krueger, having asked me about these tests on r.a.h-e a few years back, I had used an ABX box owned by Ken Kantor/AR for tests he organized of the audibility of absolute polarity in 1984.

The article we are discussing was published in 1982. Therefore, an alleged ABX box that you may have seen in 1984 would be irrelevant.

Quote
After I joined Stereophile in 1986, I asked David Carlstrom and David Clark several times about Stereophile purchasing an ABX Comparator by letter (there was no fax or email back then). I never received any response to my letters and eventually, David Clark, whom I knew through meeting him at AES conventions, advised me that the ABX company was folding and that all he could advise me was tor try to purchase a secondhand sample. Which I never could find.


That is regrettable. However, that was 1986, which is about 4 years after the article I mentioned. Still irrelevant to the state of things at Stereophile at the time that I commented on.

Quote
For the blind amplifier tests I organized in 1989, I used a switching arrangement that I fabricated myself, as you are also well aware, Mr. Krueger, having asked me about it several years ago on Usenet.


ANow 7 years after 1982 and JGH's article.

I neither advised nor consented to any amplifier tests that you have ever done, John. Your repeated avoidance of orthodox subjective bias-controlled testing techniques is well known.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 20:26:34
[quote name='krabapple' date='May 20 2009, 16:32' post='635773']
> If you find this idea exasperating, may I ask what on earth you are doing on HA?

Exasperating? I am mainly observing the audiophile phenomenon plus a bit of interest in home audio.

> Why do you claim to speak for all audiophiles?

I am unaware of having made the claim.

> Hwo do you know their values and beliefs globally differ from mine?

Because they hold audiophile beliefs and you do not. One gets to choose whether sound, sound perception and the performance of audio equipment is governed by magic or by rational scientific knowledge. Regardless of the label (no audiophile is going to call it magic) you cannot believe in both.

> Would you call J. Gordon Holt -- founder of Stereophile, and recent advocate of DBTs --
> something other than an audiophile?

I would describe him as an audiophile if he signed up for irrational audiophile beliefs and something else if he did not.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 20:33:37
People have a right to be lied to?

Not sure about the right but it is close to the point I have been failing to get across.

If audiophiles want to believe in magic, do not want to believe in science and are happy not to push their beliefs onto others it is hard to see a problem. If people like Arnold B. go off to their forums and repeatedly post stuff about science they do not want to hear then he is out-of-order. Not because what he posts is incorrect but because they do not want to hear it.

I also find it hard to see much wrong with earning a living from supplying nonsense to audiophiles if that is what they want to buy. Most of it looks like acceptable fantasy to me rather than unacceptable lie. This of course rests on where the line is drawn and people's judgment is obviously going to differ. I think the line, as expressed in current laws, is about right.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Nick.C on 2009-05-20 20:47:15
In the UK, if it can be demonstrated that an advertised claim is wrong then the claimant has to change the advertisement. That's why we have the Advertising Standards Authority - to whom anybody in the UK may make complaint as and when necessary.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 20:47:16
[quote name='krabapple' date='May 20 2009, 16:36' post='635774']
>> Why do you consider the lack of evidence to support claims about the betterness of luxury
>> goods a significant problem?
>
> If they're not true, is that not a problem for the proponents and sellers of the 'less good'
> goods, whose performance is being falsely impugned?

I would wholly agree that distinguishing products based on whatever audiophile reviewers use when the products cannot be distinguished based on the sound impinging on their ears is at best a lottery and at worst... But the point I was failing to make was that in the absence of a rational basis claims for "better" do not have much meaning for those that have signed up for a rational view and so are not going to cause significant problems.

>> Obviously it matters in more important areas but when considering the selling of expensive
>> audiophile equipment to audiophiles who want to be told stories about the magical properties
>> of audiophile equipment?
>
> I might just as well ask, why does it matter to you that it matters to me?

Why does what matter? Whatever, the answer is that it does not matter to me beyond satisfying my curiousity. Probably. Depending on the subject.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-05-20 21:05:27
[quote name='Stereoeditor' date='May 20 2009, 18:13' post='635821']
> And you know that, how, "honestguy"?

By observing the audiophile phenomenon and chatting to audiophiles.

> It is relevant to point out that according the last readership survey, performed by a third
> party to avoid any suggestion of bias, 95% of Stereophile's readers have a bachelor's degree
> or higher. Doesn't that count as "educated"?

Probably if any of it stuck but I used the word intelligent. The inability to reason in a rational manner is what enables people to adopt irrational beliefs.

> Why, 4 of my reviewers have PhDs in scientific or related areas. Perhaps they are not
> "audiophiles," as you would define them :-)

On the supply side there is no requirement to sign up for audiophile beliefs. I don't for a moment believe you hold most of the audiophile beliefs associated with your publication but it is nigh on impossible to know who actually believes what from the outside.

Audiophile is not a wholly satisfactory term for those that have signed up for irrational audiophile beliefs but I am unaware of a more precise one. It does have the benefit of being the term audiophiles use to describe themselves and is a term that many that have signed up for a rational view shy away from because of the associations with irrational beliefs.

> And if you define "bigoted" as someone who ignores factual evidence in favor of their own
> unsupported beliefs, we have seen a great deal of examples of this in recent postings from HA
> posters, not the least of whom is one Arnold Krueger. :-)

It isn't quite how I would define bigoted but it was indeed the postings from the HA side that raised my interest sufficiently to post.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 21:36:24
Not sure what you mean by journal. Academic/technical journals are a reliable source of technical information but consumer audiophile magazines generally are not.



I mean the ones you buy at the corner magazine shop or subscribe to at home, not the ones you get at the engineering library. 
For decades, that's where audio consumers got their 'best' information about audio. Nowadays in the US we're basically down to Sound & Vision and the 'high end' rags.


Quote
Not sure many new places have become well established. Peoples experiences with the many new sources of information on the web is that the presence of disinformation tends to greatly reduce the value of the good information.


Exactly the sort of signal/noise problem I allude to.  There have never been 'many' places for the layman to get scientifically-grounded information about audio. 


Quote
> Gee, why do I expect things that claim to be true, to be true, if I haven't *paid for
> them*?

Naive I guess. Perhaps your view will change when you get older.


Gosh. I'm in my late 40s now, grandpa.



Quote
> Are you suggesting that if Stereophile were to adhere to HA's standards of proof, that
> consumers would be deprived of the opportunity to buy and sell 'overly foolish' goods?

If Stereophile was to become like HA then they would lose almost all their current audiophile advertisers and readers. A smaller audiophile publication is then likely to benefit from an influx of new advertisers and readers and become the leading audiophile publication.


Which doesn't quite answer the question I asked.

Quote
> So does the homeopathic medicine industry. Mainly monetary benefits to its sellers,
> fake benefits or problems to its buyers -- and problems to real medicine.

The audiophile industry is in the luxury goods business. The homeopathic medicine industry is not. The potential for good and harm is quite different.


You seem to have made a fetish of the 'luxury goods' category as if it should be fee to operate by journalistic rules of its own.



Quote
> I think at least some wholly sensible discussion has already taken place, and
> continues to. Did you miss it?

It would seem so. I have seen no balanced discussion on the pros and cons of the current audiophile industry on HA or other audio/audiophile sites. The odd post but not a discussion.



Feel free to cite the 'pros'.  I have already noted that Stereophile's measurements are a good thing, but as others have noted, their use in the context of an overall anti-DBT , subjectivism-trumps-all stance smacks of quackery.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 21:39:05
It should be noted that there is no evidence that anybody at Stereophile ever actually used the ABX equipment we provided them for its intended purpose.


You have lost me, Mr. Krueger. I thought it clear from the article you referenced that J. Gordon Holt did indeed try out the ABX Comparator that he wrote about.


You get to be wrong.


Oh dear! That's terrible.

Quote
Quote
The review sample was returned following publication of the report, which is before I took over from Gordon as editor in May 1986.


So then John you have no direct knowlege of excadtly what JGH did  with the comparator, right?


No, as I said I didn't take over from Gordon until 1986. But I did discuss the ABX Comparator, which was a hot topic back in the 1980s, and Stereophile's coverage of it, with Gordon on many occasions.

Quote
It turns out that JGH spent considerable time on the phone with an ABX company employee, preparing his review. I even seem to recall that when the equipment was returned, someone who packed it for shipment noted that it appeared that it had never been unpacked.


With all due respect, Mr. Krueger, you shouldn't resort to fabrication when logical argument fails.

Quote
Quote
As you know you are aware of, Mr. Krueger, having asked me about these tests on r.a.h-e a few years back, I had used an ABX box owned by Ken Kantor/AR for tests he organized of the audibility of absolute polarity in 1984.


The article we are discussing was published in 1982. Therefore, an alleged ABX box that you may have seen in 1984 would be irrelevant.


Why? You said "there is no evidence that anybody at Stereophile ever actually used the ABX equipment we provided them for its intended purpose." While the ABX box I used for its intended purpose in 1984 (not just saw) had not been provided to Stereophile, I did subsequently become strongly associated with Stereophile. Surely _my_ experience of using the ABX box is relevant to your statement, Mr. Krueger. Good grief, I even tried to _buy_ a Comparator once I came to the US. Or are you saying that _only_ experience with the original ABX Comparator sample sent to Holt in 1982 is relevant to a discussion of Stereophile's supposed lack of of exposure to the device?

Quote
Quote
After I joined Stereophile in 1986, I asked David Carlstrom and David Clark several times about Stereophile purchasing an ABX Comparator by letter (there was no fax or email back then). I never received any response to my letters and eventually, David Clark, whom I knew through meeting him at AES conventions, advised me that the ABX company was folding and that all he could advise me was tor try to purchase a secondhand sample. Which I never could find.


That is regrettable.


Isn't it. How might history have changed if Carlstrom and Clark _had_ agreed to sell me a Comparator!

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-20 21:42:47
However, that was 1986, which is about 4 years after the article I mentioned. Still irrelevant to the state of things at Stereophile at the time that I commented on.


Why? Did the design and function of the ABX Comparator change between 1982 and 1986?

Quote
Quote
For the blind amplifier tests I organized in 1989, I used a switching arrangement that I fabricated myself, as you are also well aware, Mr. Krueger, having asked me about it several years ago on Usenet.


Now 7 years after 1982 and JGH's article.


Of course. Not having been able to purchase an ABX Comparator, I developed my own solution for the necessary switching.

Quote
I neither advised nor consented to any amplifier tests that you have ever done, John.


No-one said you were asked to advise or consent to my 1989 blind tests, Mr. Krueger. I am merely pointing out that you are well aware of all the experimental details of these tests because you interrogated me at length on Usenet about them and it is disingenuous for you now to pretend that this is all new to you.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 21:45:19
> Why do you claim to speak for all audiophiles?

I am unaware of having made the claim.


You seem to know what all of them think.

Quote
> How do you know their values and beliefs globally differ from mine?

Because they hold audiophile beliefs and you do not.



Some of them do. Some don't.  You seem to equate audiophile with what I consider audio*phool* (or when I am feeling generous, 'audiophile' in quotes).  One reason I rank on Stereophile is exactly *because* it has helped foster the view you hold.

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One gets to choose whether sound, sound perception and the performance of audio equipment is governed by magic or by rational scientific knowledge. Regardless of the label (no audiophile is going to call it magic) you cannot believe in both.


And one gets to call oneself an audiophile in either case.


Quote
> Would you call J. Gordon Holt -- founder of Stereophile, and recent advocate of DBTs --
> something other than an audiophile?

I would describe him as an audiophile if he signed up for irrational audiophile beliefs and something else if he did not.


Then that's your totalizing definition of audiophile.  That leaves no place for those who 'love' the audio hobby but are also scientifically-minded.

This is a tedious debate as it now comes down to semantics.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-20 21:48:11
People have a right to be lied to?

Not sure about the right but it is close to the point I have been failing to get across.

If audiophiles want to believe in magic, do not want to believe in science and are happy not to push their beliefs onto others it is hard to see a problem. If people like Arnold B. go off to their forums and repeatedly post stuff about science they do not want to hear then he is out-of-order. Not because what he posts is incorrect but because they do not want to hear it.



What about those who want to 'believe in science', and believe they are being given 'science', but aren't?  ONCE AGAIN, let us consider the case of Atkinson's article on mp3s, please.  It's very 'sciency'.

I always wonder what people like you make of consumer watchdog/advocacy groups.  Do you think they should just shut up and wait for the invisible hand of the market to cull out the charlatans?  Yeah, that's always worked well.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 22:46:07
However, that was 1986, which is about 4 years after the article I mentioned. Still irrelevant to the state of things at Stereophile at the time that I commented on.


Why? Did the design and function of the ABX Comparator change between 1982 and 1986?


Precise dating of important milieposts escapes me, but if memory serves, yes.

The major upgrade was the RM-2 relay module. One of the reasons why we designed it was our perception that people were frustrated by what our limited equipment switching faility prior to that. The fact that JGH had never actually used it as intended weighed heavily on our minds.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-20 23:03:44
People have a right to be lied to?

Not sure about the right but it is close to the point I have been failing to get across:

If audiophiles want to believe in magic, do not want to believe in science and are happy not to push their beliefs onto others it is hard to see a problem. If people like Arnold B. go off to their forums and repeatedly post stuff about science they do not want to hear then he is out-of-order. Not because what he posts is incorrect but because they do not want to hear it.


Big "if".

<in the following I'm using the word audiophile as 'honestguv' seems to - to mean the segement of audiophiles that believe in high end floobydust>

My impression from talking to literally thousands of audiophiles over a period of at least 15 years is that they don't want to believe in magic, and do want to push their beliefs on others. 

When then encounter someone who doesn't share their beliefs, they don't try to push magic. They do try to justify their beliefs on the grounds that Science doesn't know enough about human potential to verify or falsify their beliefs. IOW, they don't want to think that what they believe is anti-science but rather they do want to believe that high end audio goes beyond science.

Audiophiles do want to push their beliefs on others because they don't want to believe that they have been sold a bill of goods. They don't want to be the last kid in kindergarten who believes in Santa Claus when Santa Claus is a lie, so they believe that they have special knowlege that Santa Claus is real and everybody who disbelieves in Santa Claus lacks the special knowlege that they have.

Quote
I also find it hard to see much wrong with earning a living from supplying nonsense to audiophiles if that is what they want to buy.


Audiophiles don't want to believe that they are buyng nonsense, which is why they protest so much.

Quote
Most of it looks like acceptable fantasy to me rather than unacceptable lie. This of course rests on where the line is drawn and people's judgment is obviously going to differ. I think the line, as expressed in current laws, is about right.


I see talking about the legal ramifications of the bogus segment of the high end audio market as an unecessary distraction. The problem is one of education. The problem with audiophiles is that they have become improperly educated. I'm a strong believer in effective education, because of its benefical effects on people's lives.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-21 00:42:07

It is relevant to point out that according the last readership survey, performed by a third party to avoid any suggestion of bias, 95% of Stereophile's readers have a bachelor's degree or higher. Doesn't that count as "educated"?


Probably if any of it stuck but I used the word intelligent.


I know. It is not unreasonable to assume that having the ability and work ethic to gain at minimum a bachelor's degree implies intelligence?

Quote
The inability to reason in a rational manner is what enables people to adopt irrational beliefs.


Maybe, maybe not. Religious belief, which is by definition irrational, appears to have a Darwinian explanation, ie, it leads to a greater chance of the genes of the person possessing those beliefs being passed on to the next generation, at least in a tribal society.

Quote
Quote
Why, 4 of my reviewers have PhDs in scientific or related areas. Perhaps they are not "audiophiles," as you would define them :-)


On the supply side there is no requirement to sign up for audiophile beliefs. I don't for a moment believe you hold most of the audiophile beliefs associated with your publication but it is nigh on impossible to know who actually believes what from the outside.


Okay, I believe I see where you are coming from: a combination hubris and logically fallacious reasoning. This what you appear to be declaring:

1) "I, 'honestguv,' am an intelligent, educated person."

2) "I, 'honestguv,' hold certain beliefs about audio."

3) "I, 'honestguv,' believe that those opinions reflect reality, ie are 'true.'"

4) "I, 'honestguv,' note that other people hold different and even opposed opinions to mine."

5) "I, 'honestguv,' note that those people often appear to have as advanced an education as I do, or an even better education, which would appear to suggest that they are not unintelligent."

6) But see "4." The opinions that I, 'honestguv,' have are 'true.'"

7) "Thus those other people are either 1) unintelligent, meaning that their education 'didn't stick,' or 2) they are dishonest."

8) "Because otherwise, their opinions on audio would align with mine. QED."

As I said, there is a fallacy in that logic. I'll leave it to you work out what it is.

And if this argument doesn't represent your view, please explain in what way it differs. Everything I wrote above stems from your own statements.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-21 01:56:30
I note with interest some HA posters' tendency to construct castles with foundations of sand, vide, the recent agreement that Stereophile's inclusion of measurement data in its equipment reports is window dressing to delude the gullible into trusting the magazine. Yet might it just possibly be that the measurements sidebars that I work so hard to write perform a valuable function: that they allow readers to distinguish between those questionable products that are based on a shaky knowledge of audio engineering? That even if the readers are technically naive, the explanatory text I write about every product's performance allows them the necessary insight?


Can you provide a link to a review that states in unambiguous terms that the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering?  I'm talking about a clear statement here, not wishy-washy statements along the lines of Salvatore's infamous The (Secret) Rules of Audio Reviewing (http://www.high-endaudio.com/reviewers.html#Rul).

It's difficult to take Stereophile's measurements as anything more than window dressing in light of some past and ongoing events.  It's been repeatedly pointed out to you that Stereophile's measurements of noise vs. frequency of CD players, SACD players and DACs are simply wrong.  They are based on analog bandpass filters that end up doing, in effect, frequency averaging.  This gives wrong data when the noise spectral density varies strongly with frequency, as it does above 20 kHz for noise-shaped DACs which now dominate the market.  It's also been pointed out that FFT-based measurements of this parameter correct this problem.  The justification I've seen for continuing to use this technique despite the known problems is that there's already a database of other players and that the existing method is being used for consistency.  No test engineer worth his salt would ever claim that it's better to be consistently wrong than inconsistent as you have (in effect) claimed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-21 02:15:45
It's been repeatedly pointed out to you that Stereophile's measurements of noise vs. frequency of CD players, SACD players and DACs are simply wrong.  They are based on analog bandpass filters that end up doing, in effect, frequency averaging.  This gives wrong data when the noise spectral density varies strongly with frequency, as it does above 20 kHz for noise-shaped DACs which now dominate the market.


Yes, and I have acknowledged that in the magazine.

Quote
It's also been pointed out that FFT-based measurements of this parameter correct this problem.


Yes, and you should note that I also publish FFT-based measurements.

Quote
The justification I've seen for continuing to use this technique despite the known problems is that there's already a database of other players and that the existing method is being used for consistency.


Yes, I have explained that on many occasions in the magazine.

Quote
No test engineer worth his salt would ever claim that it's better to be consistently wrong than inconsistent as you have (in effect) claimed.


As I have never made that claim or anything like it, your point is moot. What I have written is that when it comes to measurement in practice, the matters of consistency and absolute accuracy are 2 separate problems that can be addressed separately. Repeatability is achievable; absolute accuracy can only be approached asymptotically. Only in the limit do they converge.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-05-21 02:26:36
Repeatable, wrong data are meaningless.  You've continued to repeat wrong data for the sake of consistency.  That's just plain wrong.

I noticed you've carefully avoided answering my first question.  I'll repeat it just in case you missed it.

Can you provide a link to a review that states in unambiguous terms that the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering?  I'm talking about a clear statement here, not wishy-washy statements along the lines of Salvatore's infamous The (Secret) Rules of Audio Reviewing (http://www.high-endaudio.com/reviewers.html#Rul).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-21 13:14:18
Can you provide a link to a review that states in unambiguous terms that the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering?

 
An example was recently posted in this thread, complete with some relevant graphs.

Quote
I'm talking about a clear statement here, not wishy-washy statements along the lines of Salvatore's infamous The (Secret) Rules of Audio Reviewing (http://www.high-endaudio.com/reviewers.html#Rul).


You do yourself no favors by referring to Arthur Salvatore as an authority. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-21 14:28:38
Can you provide a link to a review that states in unambiguous terms that the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering?

 
An example was recently posted in this thread, complete with some relevant graphs.



It's fun watching John zig and zag, no?

I presume that the device in question would be the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects.

Here is what JA had to say about this product after listening to it:

"There was a coherence to the stereo image, a nice three-dimensionality to the sonic objects within the soundstage, and a vivid overall presentation."

Your challenge is to translate that into meaning "the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering".

BTW, I dispute the idea that the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects do in fact represent a shaky knowlege of audio engineering. It appears to me that their performance is in the same range as LP playback, which we already know is holy ground over at Strereophile. Compare their imperfections to the audible thresolds that can be reliably determined by the sort of inherently biased and therefore relatively insensitive listening tests that Stereophile has staked its reputation on, and it is probable that they'd get a pass. 

The Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects demonstrate a good understanding of audio engineering and what sort of numerically poor performance that Stereophile's outdated listening test technology can't detect without their listeners first pre-biasing themselves with the results of equipment-based testing. 

If you read all 10 pages of subjective tests, technical tests, and follow-on informal discussion as posted at http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreview...arm/index1.html (http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreviews/805harm/index1.html), and that's exactly what you see. You see Stereophile's expert listener and frequent damner of the use of test equipment to evaluate equipment performance, changing his story after being made aware of JA's techical tests:

http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreview...arm/index9.html (http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreviews/805harm/index9.html)

"Do I recommend the Cyberlight cables now, having read the measurements? No. But I still find them enjoyable to listen to and I have received many supportive emails from readers who bought them and continue to listen to and enjoy them, despite the measurements. That said, I do not use the Cyberlight cables in my system when I am reviewing. I listen to them just for pleasure. They do "sound" good, however they measure."

"As I've written many times to other readers complaining about this review, if measurements held sway, I'd have chucked my turntable and records a long time ago. CDs "measure" better, but they surely don't transmit the sensation of actual music being made the way LPs do—for whatever reasons...—Michael Fremer, senior contributing editor"

Such Chutzpah! Fremer admits that he'd change his review if he knew about JAs  measurments of the product, but backs that up by denying that the better measurements of CDs are at all relevant to sound quality.

Can we all say "talking out of both sides of his mouth?"

But the writing is soooo beautiful... ;-)



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-21 15:11:32
Michael Fremer: "Do I recommend the Cyberlight cables now, having read the measurements? No. But I still find them enjoyable to listen to and I have received many supportive emails from readers who bought them and continue to listen to and enjoy them, despite the measurements. That said, I do not use the Cyberlight cables in my system when I am reviewing. I listen to them just for pleasure. They do "sound" good, however they measure." [Emphasis Added]

For me comments of this sort that music should be "enjoyable" or "vivid", or "pleasurable" rather than accurate, and HI FIDELITY goes back to J. Gordon Holt's criticism of what his magazine, and the hobby it documented, had become:
Quote
...Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes. [Emphasis Added]

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/ (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/)

This is why I think magazines like Stereophile and its ilk have done an enormous disservice to the hobby, because they have stopped it from progressing, from new developments and discoveries to increase the fidelity of components.  As Holt says in another part of that interview, the major developments have been to make things smaller, cheaper, and easier to use. But perhaps there could've been faster development in these areas if there wasn't a weight of quackery and outright charlatanism weighing things down?

Maybe one problem is that this section of audiophilia simply ASSUMES that "good sound" (you can't really call it hifi) MUST be really, really expensive, so they just refuse to accept that equipment now sounds far better and is far cheaper than before. And if their multi-thousand dollar gizmos actually did work, then sure as hell there would be smart engineers / capitalists working day and night to make the same thing far cheaper anyway, which just proves that the expensive cables, and stupid audiophile clocks (http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina41.htm) must by definition be nonsense.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-21 16:38:12
Can you provide a link to a review that states in unambiguous terms that the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering?

 
An example was recently posted in this thread, complete with some relevant graphs.



I presume that the device in question would be the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects.


You presume correctly, Mr. Krueger. Thank you for helping me make the case the measurements sidebars attached to Stereophile's reviews are not mere "window dressing." Here is the relevant text I wrote summing up the measured performrance: "If this review were of a conventional product, I would dismiss it as being broken. Ultimately, no matter what someone might think of its sound - and Michael Fremer is one the most skilled listeners I know of - I really don't see how the CyberLight P2A and Wave cables can be recommended. I am puzzled that Harmonic Technology, which makes good-sounding, reasonably priced conventional cables, would risk their reputation with something as technically flawed as the CyberLight." (See http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreview...arm/index3.html (http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreviews/805harm/index3.html) .)

Only a simpleton would infer from this text that I was recommending the Cyberlight interconnect.

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I dispute the idea that the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects do in fact represent a shaky knowlege of audio engineering...


You will have your little joke, eh Mr. Krueger. Or perhaps you are demonstrating that you _are_ that simpleton?

Quote
Here is what JA had to say about this product after listening to it:

"There was a coherence to the stereo image, a nice three-dimensionality to the sonic objects within the soundstage, and a vivid overall presentation."

Your challenge is to translate that into meaning "the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering".


Your selective quoting does HA a disservice, Mr. Krueger. Here is the complete quote, available at the URL above: "Even with me knowing how they measured, the cables surprised me with the general acceptability of their sound. There was a coherence to the stereo image, a nice three-dimensionality to the sonic objects within the soundstage, and a vivid overall presentation. Against those, there was a "hummy" quality to the sound of bass guitar, with the tonal emphasis shifted away from the fundamental to the harmonics, and closely miked voices, such as Willie Nelson's on "Stardust," took on a bit of a bark. Dynamics seemed exaggerated, with climaxes sounding louder than I was expecting. In the long term, I found the CyberLight's presentation rather relentless.

"I think that what the listener perceives with this cable is that at low levels, the sound is fattened and made more coherent-sounding by the dominant second-harmonic distortion. In addition, the presence of background noise cannot be dismissed, as there is some evidence that introducing small amounts of random noise results in a sound that is preferred by listeners. At higher signal levels, transients are accompanied by bursts of higher harmonics. However, these subside as quickly as they appeared. The overall effect is to render the system sound as being more vivid, I believe. However, the inevitable intermodulation products that are generated by the cable's bent transfer function leads, I conjecture, to the relentless quality I noted in my own auditioning."

Seems clear enough to me that I was being critical of the product, Mr. Krueger. But then, as you have  said and I have admitted, my intellectual capabilitities are not on the same plane as your own :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-21 19:10:28
Can you provide a link to a review that states in unambiguous terms that the product in question is based on shaky knowledge of audio engineering?

 
An example was recently posted in this thread, complete with some relevant graphs.



I presume that the device in question would be the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects.


You presume correctly, Mr. Krueger. Thank you for helping me make the case the measurements sidebars attached to Stereophile's reviews are not mere "window dressing." Here is the relevant text I wrote summing up the measured performrance: "If this review were of a conventional product, I would dismiss it as being broken. Ultimately, no matter what someone might think of its sound - and Michael Fremer is one the most skilled listeners I know of - I really don't see how the CyberLight P2A and Wave cables can be recommended. I am puzzled that Harmonic Technology, which makes good-sounding, reasonably priced conventional cables, would risk their reputation with something as technically flawed as the CyberLight." (See http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreview...arm/index3.html (http://www.stereophile.com/accessoryreviews/805harm/index3.html) .)

Only a simpleton would infer from this text that I was recommending the Cyberlight interconnect.


Nahh, John I was just having a little fun at your expense. Thanks for dropping your usual pretense of being a gentleman.

I hereby freely admit that I used a little selective quoting, knowing full well that anybody who chased the link I provided would see through my little charade.  Unlike your malevolent butchering of my comments about the engineering expertise found in the weird segment of audio's high end, I'll admit right up front that I did do selective quoting, and you won't have to beat me over the head 3 or 4 times before I come clean. Not only that, I won't follow your lead and try to change the scope of the discussion and address a different situation than the one that I was commenting on.

Of course John you still haven't addressed up the very serious issues that I raised in that post, namely the fact that one of your star reviewers was obviously completely and totally fooled until your measurements were revealed to him.  To this day I don't know if his frantic backpedalling was based on what he heard or your engineering test report.

John, by implication you've indicted vinyl because its performance is in the same general range as the Cyberlights. Actually, the Cyberlights might be a little cleaner than a lot of vinyl playback.  So  can we quote you as saying that  "If I ever reviewed a vinyl playback system, I would dismiss it as being broken."? ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-22 02:33:43
What's so reprehensible about preferring a sound that's distorted in a strictly technical sense?

Even the best speakers still deliver everything else than an exact representation of a live performance. Add room acoustics and it gets even worse. You get a opera house's delay plus your own room's delay plus your speaker's non linearities plus usually a different speaker than microphone placement. It can make sense to mask some of those imperfections with a kind of pleasing noise and harmonic distortion. Such a system does not hide its nature of just playing back recordings and is optimized for other parameters than exact live reproduction - which doesn't work with real world speakers anyway.

You can tune a systems frequency response and SNR up to a point that you just reveal more and more what's still wrong in comparison to a live performance. It can be a distracting experience to expect your brain to merge two soundstages, your 30 qm room's and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées', because your playback chain is so perfect. I'm not a vinyl proponent and I also don't purposely add distortion to my playback chain, but I aks myself on what grounds you base your presumptuous behavior as if all people who prefer other routes must be morons?

When I upgraded my system with very precise Elac speakers and a DAC1 a couple of years ago some records turned out to be pure gold (especially some old Telarc Soundstream recordings) but many others suddenly sounded like shit. They did not sound like shit with my older system that had much worse technical specs. It's not all black and white and people having other concepts of fidelity than you do might have acceptable reasons.

BTW noise isn't all black, anyway. For example, in lossy compression you don't just exploit masking by content that's already in the original signal, but purposely add noise to mask compression artifacts that would else be audible.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-22 04:56:37
Could we not go off on a tangent about vinyl, please?

It's called 'euphonic distortion' for a reason.  That means some people like it.  No need to bring 'fidelity' into it.  Some people like how 78s sound too.  Fine.  So, can we get vinylphiles to shut up about how CD is 'missing' something?

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-05-22 10:11:30
Audiophiles do want to push their beliefs on others because they don't want to believe that they have been sold a bill of goods. They don't want to be the last kid in kindergarten who believes in Santa Claus when Santa Claus is a lie, so they believe that they have special knowlege that Santa Claus is real and everybody who disbelieves in Santa Claus lacks the special knowlege that they have.

I think, if we are being honest, the same is true for "us".

I'm currently 3 years into my PhD research, which involves phychoacoustic models, blind testing, etc. You can imagine that I put a lot of time and effort in that. If a guy like Mr. Atkinson comes by and tells me that blind testing is BS, psychoacoustic models are only there to cripple your audio the way pixelating an image does, and so on, that is quite, well, insulting. My first reaction is to try and convince him that he is terribly wrong (but since this is a 47 page thread already I have the feeling that that is pointless).

Our response to an audiophile who just spend $5000 on an audio cable will trigger the same reaction. And of course that is not really a surprise!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ashley James on 2009-05-22 11:47:23
Audiophiles do want to push their beliefs on others because they don't want to believe that they have been sold a bill of goods. They don't want to be the last kid in kindergarten who believes in Santa Claus when Santa Claus is a lie, so they believe that they have special knowlege that Santa Claus is real and everybody who disbelieves in Santa Claus lacks the special knowlege that they have.

I think, if we are being honest, the same is true for "us".

I'm currently 3 years into my PhD research, which involves phychoacoustic models, blind testing, etc. You can imagine that I put a lot of time and effort in that. If a guy like Mr. Atkinson comes by and tells me that blind testing is BS, psychoacoustic models are only there to cripple your audio the way pixelating an image does, and so on, that is quite, well, insulting. My first reaction is to try and convince him that he is terribly wrong (but since this is a 47 page thread already I have the feeling that that is pointless).

Our response to an audiophile who just spend $5000 on an audio cable will trigger the same reaction. And of course that is not really a surprise!


I've been fascinated by high fidelity audio since I built my first am amplifier in the late fifties and also by deafness, relatives around me were struggling with ancient hearing aids! I believe the two are related.

It is well know that the average male loses about 10dB of hearing sensitivity at 3kHz by the time he is 35 years old. This is a substantial amount and I believe that just as people need spectacles because they've become long sighted so, although they don't realise it, they'd be happier it if there was less background noise, less volume and more clarity. The result of this is that some men (more men than women because they have 6 dB less sensitivity anyway) start to look for better sound. I know from the calls and emails we get, that many of them are appalled by what they hear in shops and wondering what to do next if anything. The problem is that people subconsciously adapt to what they have (hi fi sales staff included) and no longer hear its faults, we call it Readers Wives Syndrome, so may not realise that they could enjoy more for longer if they had a better system. It seems to me that the industry has designed itself around this "flaw" in the human psyche to sell what it has (endless upgrades, ludicrous prices and often unsound engineering practice) and in so doing has forgotten the one major benefit that hi fi might offer people; Better, clearer, more realistic sound reproduction.

Somewhere in this massive and fascinating debate, I believe Gordon Holt was quoted as lamenting the lack of objective comparison or assessment of the current "hi end".

Ash
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 12:03:43
What's so reprehensible about preferring a sound that's distorted in a strictly technical sense?


Two answers:

(1) Nothing rephensible about preferring to listen to great stuff, utter crap or anything in-between. The problem comes when vinyl bigots like Fremer tell innocent newbies crap like good digital recordings can't sound right because of the empty space between the samples, and weirdness like that. Preferences are personal and they are what they are. Technobabble and techno-lies are trash.

(2) Vinyl isn't just distorted in a technical sense. It's distorted in a real world audible sense. Nobody has ever come up with a straight-wire bypass test for vinyl that was hard to do well on. The LP fomat leaves big greasy handprints on everything it touches. And, it is all so unecessary, since we've had better technology in general use for over 25 years. Vinyl is even premium-priced!

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Even the best speakers still deliver everything else than an exact representation of a live performance. Add room acoustics and it gets even worse. You get a opera house's delay plus your own room's delay plus your speaker's non linearities plus usually a different speaker than microphone placement. It can make sense to mask some of those imperfections with a kind of pleasing noise and harmonic distortion. Such a system does not hide its nature of just playing back recordings and is optimized for other parameters than exact live reproduction - which doesn't work with real world speakers anyway.


The difference is that right now we don't know how to do any better than that with speakers and rooms.  Remember, the real-world comparison is between Fremer and his $40,000 turntable, and a $40 Sansa Fuze. the Fuze wins on technical and practical grounds.

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You can tune a systems frequency response and SNR up to a point that you just reveal more and more what's still wrong in comparison to a live performance.


Let's get down to the real facts. You don't need to introduce loudspeakers and room acoustics to the situation to find serious, serious problems. Any hope of accurate liveness is lost when the signal comes out of the microphone. You can make a mic preamp and a headphone amp that will pass a stright-wire bypass test. Headphones can be darn good. What even the best mics to do live sound is not right.

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It can be a distracting experience to expect your brain to merge two soundstages, your 30 qm room's and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées', because your playback chain is so perfect.


I will dipute any claim, if that is what you are making here, that cleaner reproductiion makes good recordings create a poorer soundstage. Throwing 7 veils over a good recording does not improve the illusion of a live performance. Since we have comercial recordings with dynamic range on the order of 80 dB, playing them through a medium that tops out at 70 dB is not the road to audio nirvanna. I want to listen to music, not equipment.

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I'm not a vinyl proponent and I also don't purposely add distortion to my playback chain, but I aks myself on what grounds you base your presumptuous behavior as if all people who prefer other routes must be morons?


I don't call people morons for having different taste than I do, I call people morons for being fooled by and even spreading obvious pseudoscience and posturing, once they have reliable knowlege in their posession. For example, my oldest son's father in-law has a ca. 1957 and a ca. 2003 Corvette. If I ask him which is the better car, he does not give me a song and dance about hand-made replica shock absorbers filled with whale oil distillate. He says the 2003 whomps the 1957's @$$ every which way but loose. But sometimes he (and I)  prefer to take the 1957 out for some motoring fun, because of our sentimental feelings for it, and the fact that it is a different kind of experience. Why can't Fremer man up to that?

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When I upgraded my system with very precise Elac speakers and a DAC1 a couple of years ago some records turned out to be pure gold (especially some old Telarc Soundstream recordings) but many others suddenly sounded like shit.


That is actually something different. I think I know what you are talking about because I experience it very often.  The problem wasn't that the Elac speakers were too accurate but mostly that their spectal balance was different. The problem was almost entirely in the area of spectral response.

It is a simple fact of life that varous recordings are tailored by their producers for target systems with different spectral responses. If you want every recording to sound its best, you have to come up with a spectral adjustment for your system that facilitates that.  No speaker sounds its best with every recording, and no recording sounds its best with every speaker.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-05-22 13:09:35
Arnold when you say all hope of accurate reproduction is lost when using even the best microphones and/or speakers, what exactly do you mean? Don't think you mean frequency, since that can be meddled with. Maybe soundstage? If so, how do binaural recordings fare? Some I've heard are amazingly accurate.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-05-22 14:04:25
He means that neither mics or speakers can accurately replicate live sound without creating audible distortion. Which is entirely true: mechanically transferring physical sound waves to electric impulses and from electric impulses back to physical sound waves is not a process that we have yet mastered (although, we have mastered every step in between those two).

But in a modern world were "live sound" typically means something is being mic'd and sent through a PA system, we might as well not know any different.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 14:40:43
Arnold when you say all hope of accurate reproduction is lost when using even the best microphones and/or speakers, what exactly do you mean?


Because I do so much (Over 1,600 recordings at this point) live recording of band and chorus festivals, much of it in really pretty good rooms (e.g. High School Auditoriums) I know what comes off the mics and how it compares to the live sound I hear in my choice of seats in the house.  My general choice of micing techniques is coincident micing, which is one of the more technically-defensible ways to mic performances like these.

That all said, there are what I find to be mind-blowing differences between what the mics pick up, and what I hear.

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Don't think you mean frequency, since that can be meddled with.


I've taken to *meddling* with frequency response going back some years.  I can do a lot of neat things with a 4-6 band parametric or a 30 band graphic. Close, but no cigar.

At this time there does not seem to be any such thing as an equalizer for spatiality. I can also do a lot of neat things with the multiple channels and channel delays on a digital console (e.g. Yamaha 02R96). Close, but no cigar.

It is easier to add spatiality than to take  some away. Unfortunately we need to be able to do both.

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Maybe soundstage?


For sure soundstage.

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If so, how do binaural recordings fare? Some I've heard are amazingly accurate.


Me too.  Two problems.

(1) You are pretty much restricted to earphone or earphone-like listening
(2) You can recreate the soundstage for just about one pre-selected location in the room with binaural.

What we need is the ability to recreate the soundstage at any reasonable place in the room. We need to provide the ability for the client to make the choice of soundstage as as many different times and ways as he wants, well after the he obtains the recording.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 14:44:37
He means that neither mics or speakers can accurately replicate live sound without creating audible distortion. Which is entirely true: mechanically transferring physical sound waves to electric impulses and from electric impulses back to physical sound waves is not a process that we have yet mastered (although, we have mastered every step in between those two).


Right on!

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But in a modern world were "live sound" typically means something is being mic'd and sent through a PA system, we might as well not know any different.


Now lets be nice about SR - it is near and dear to my heart.

I think of SR as being like recording, just in real time and with the problem of spil from the live sources.

The other difference is that the SR guy takes responsibility for the playback system, and the scale of that playback system is pretty huge.

Been there, done that about 800 times, so far. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-22 15:28:44
Just out of curiosity, could you please describe "coincident micing"?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-05-22 15:51:30
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But in a modern world were "live sound" typically means something is being mic'd and sent through a PA system, we might as well not know any different.


Now lets be nice about SR - it is near and dear to my heart.

I think of SR as being like recording, just in real time and with the problem of spil from the live sources.

The other difference is that the SR guy takes responsibility for the playback system, and the scale of that playback system is pretty huge.

Been there, done that about 800 times, so far. ;-)

Sure, it's just as soon as we involve recording and PAs into an environment we're introducing the limitations of our mics and PAs. You job as a sound reinforcement engineer is to minimize those distortions as much as possible and then shape whatever is left into something as pleasant as possible.

Of course, if we perfected mic and speaker technology to keep their distortions below audible thresholds, you'd be out of a job, the same way digital media and transistors have run most of the audio-quackery out of business.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 16:24:53
Just out of curiosity, could you please describe "coincident micing"?


http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/studi...er2_mics5.shtml (http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/studio/chapter2_mics5.shtml)

"X-Y coincident pair: two cardioids mics aimed across each other at an angle between 90 and 135 degrees and less than 12 inches apart to recreate accurately the way a listener hears with directional cues. (A distance of more than 12 inches apart creates phase cancellation problems). This pattern is very useful for many situations,but it may not provide as wide a stereo image as some other techniques. The image, however, is extremely mono-compatible, and that is why it was very popular in the radio/television broadcast world."

I use cardioid pairs (e.g. Rode NT4) and various hypercardioid pairs composed of individual mics such as the Audix OM-6. My OM-6 pairs have the inner edges of their capsules nearly touching or bonded to each other with resilient material.  I use various included angles from 90 to 120 degrees depending on what sounds *right* to me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 16:29:20
Sure, it's just as soon as we involve recording and PAs into an environment we're introducing the limitations of our mics and PAs. You job as a sound reinforcement engineer is to minimize those distortions as much as possible and then shape whatever is left into something as pleasant as possible.


SR is interesting for me because my work involves a high proportion of acoustic sources. So, I can challenge myself to make the transition from live sound to reinforced sound as gentle and unobtrusive as possible. Then just for fun, we have a few electronic instruments with no acoustic sound of their own.

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Of course, if we perfected mic and speaker technology to keep their distortions below audible thresholds, you'd be out of a job, the same way digital media and transistors have run most of the audio-quackery out of business.


I'm old enough that I'm pretty safe expecting to be retired before technological advancements like that eliminate my job. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-22 16:58:00
I use cardioid pairs (e.g. Rode NT4) and various hypercardioid pairs composed of individual mics such as the Audix OM-6. My OM-6 pairs have the inner edges of their capsules nearly touching or bonded to each other with resilient material.  I use various included angles from 90 to 120 degrees depending on what sounds *right* to me.

Is there as much quackery surrounding vintage microphones as there is with, say, speaker cables?

Like I've read that when digital recording, some studios reverted to using vintage valve microphone amplifiers that they hadn't used since the 1960s. Is there any truth to this? Are 40 year old microphone designs actually that good? Or again, is this just bias built around people that think things with valves and Old ThingsTM in general are an audiophile panacea?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-22 17:57:00
Just out of curiosity, could you please describe "coincident micing"?


"Miking" is the preferred usage, to reflect pronunciation.

http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/studi...er2_mics5.shtml (http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/studio/chapter2_mics5.shtml)

"X-Y coincident pair: two cardioids mics aimed across each other at an angle between 90 and 135 degrees and less than 12 inches apart to recreate accurately the way a listener hears with directional cues. (A distance of more than 12 inches apart creates phase cancellation problems). This pattern is very useful for many situations, but it may not provide as wide a stereo image as some other techniques. The image, however, is extremely mono-compatible, and that is why it was very popular in the radio/television broadcast world."


The spacing adds time-stereo data that reinforces the amplitude-stereo data, which has limited separation between the channels. A cardioid mike has a (1+cosine theta) sensitivity pattern, so for coincident cardioids at 90 degrees, the maximum amplitude ratio is just 6dB. Widening the included angle to 135 degrees gives a 10dB ratio, if I remember correctly. Coincident miking requires figure-8 mikes to correctly capture the direction of sources - Google "Blumlein."

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I use cardioid pairs (e.g. Rode NT4) and various hypercardioid pairs composed of individual mics such as the Audix OM-6. My OM-6 pairs have the inner edges of their capsules nearly touching or bonded to each other with resilient material.  I use various included angles from 90 to 120 degrees depending on what sounds *right* to me.


It would appear your recordings do offer excellent mono-compatibility, Mr. Krueger. :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 18:10:23
Is there as much quackery surrounding vintage microphones as there is with, say, speaker cables?


Good question. There are very expensive vintage microphones and there are very expensive contemporary microphones like say Neumann and Schoeps.  I have zero experience with any of the above, so I'll just keep my mouth shut.

About as close to expensive microphones as I've come are various mics in the $300-500 range. In general they seem to have been worth the extra bucks over competitive mics in the $150-300 range, but not dramatically so. Mics have non-sonic properties such as reliablity and abilty to take use and abuse, so at these price points the big picture is a bit fuzzy.  The most expensive mics I've ever made routine use of were DPA 4007, at about $1200 each. Fact is that if you want a measurement-grade mic that goes to 40+ KHz, that is still about what you pay.

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Like I've read that when digital recording, some studios reverted to using vintage valve microphone amplifiers that they hadn't used since the 1960s.


There are enough studios around that someone someplace has done *anythng* you want to think of including wiring the whole place up with Monster cable. But as a rule, the big news in studios is moving down to using inexpensive mics in the $100-300 range incstead of the classic $1K and up mics that they used to use.  Price performance of mics has improved quite a bit and we now have oddities like the Rode NT1a that is a good sounding mic, and has about the lowest noise on the market, but is in the $250 range.

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Is there any truth to this? Are 40 year old microphone designs actually that good?


AFAIK, most of the expensive mics I've actually seen being used were modern designs.

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Or again, is this just bias built around people that think things with valves and Old ThingsTM in general are an audiophile panacea?


Running a recording studio has come under serious pricing pressure. Many are going to,  or have gone out of business. Most of the big company studios are gone, and have been replaced by a bunch of subcontractors who are hired by independent producers. And they are under the economic gun.  T

The replaceement of analog recorders with digital recorders and particularly PC-based DAWs has changed the economic picture greatly. Expensive equipment that required frequent expensive maintenance whas been replaced by modest opriced stuff that runs for years without adjustment or other technical attention, and sounds better as well.  Inexpensive consoles and in many cases the elimination of consoles with DAWs was another stop in making it possible for more musical people to do their own recording.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 18:36:19
The spacing adds time-stereo data that reinforces the amplitude-stereo data, which has limited separation between the channels. A cardioid mike has a (1+cosine theta) sensitivity pattern, so for coincident cardioids at 90 degrees, the maximum amplitude ratio is just 6dB. Widening the included angle to 135 degrees gives a 10dB ratio, if I remember correctly. Coincident miking requires figure-8 mikes to correctly capture the direction of sources - Google "Blumlein."


In my discussion of coincident micing I mentioned the use of hypercardioid mics, which provide additional separation for a given splay angle.  However, that turns out to be moot, because anybody who listens carefully to large group performnces in large venues knows that while there is a definate perception of space and air, there is almost no perception of a well-defined soundstage. 

The market for the recordings I make is not a bunch of dogmatic audiophiles who rarely if ever actually witness the performances they listen to while they are being recorded. Instead, my clientele is band and choir directors who are both performers at their events and spectators of other very similar events in the same venue and with similar groups of musicans. 

I often pick up my ideas about what my clients are looking for in their recordings by talking to the creme of the music directors - the judges. These people critically listen to 100's and thousands of groups performing in dozens of different venues. Many teach music at the undergraduate and graduate level.

What they are looking for is recordings that as closely as possible duplicate the experience of sitting where the judges sit, which is usually centered L-R and about 15-25 rows back, sometimes more. Coincidentally, this is probably the average of the distance that the audience sits at, and is considered by many to be the best seats in most houses.

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I use cardioid pairs (e.g. Rode NT4) and various hypercardioid pairs composed of individual mics such as the Audix OM-6. My OM-6 pairs have the inner edges of their capsules nearly touching or bonded to each other with resilient material.  I use various included angles from 90 to 120 degrees depending on what sounds *right* to me.


It would appear your recordings do offer excellent mono-compatibility, Mr. Krueger. :-)


I don't record audiophile demonstration records. I record working tools.

My goal has always been reality-compatibility.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: opis on 2009-05-22 18:39:53
im actually kinda surprised by the negativism towards this article. i am not in any way ruling out that he can tell the difference between a $2,600 cable and a $4,000 lol

i mean, i have really good hearing in most ways. i can safely tell the difference between tones pitched at ~ 1k hz that differ by 0.2hz, i'd like to think that i am really observant on details in music, and naturally im an audophile. i have no problem believing that this freak really has this good a hearing.

to me 320cbr well ripped with a later Lame codec (or vbr245) is of much lower quality than FLAC. on music that ive heard a few times i can abx a 320cbr rip from a flac rip in 100/100 cases. and im a poor bastard, i listen to most music through a sennheiser PC 161 for about $100 and through an unisolated soundcard from the french revolution.

i personally think that 256kbps cbr played on itunes is of really low quality, and i can clearly imagine someone having twice as good hearing as me, and to them its justified to be this rediculous. i also of course realize that to some it doesnt make enough of a difference, and a quality mp3 rip is well good enough.

i really agree and believe in this part of the article:
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...that going from zero to 85 doesn't take a lot of effort or money, but going from 98.6 to 99.1 by swapping out a $2,600 AC power cable for a $4,000 one becomes a justifiable end


the thing is that i would never tell the difference from 98.6 to 99.1 wich is why i'd never pay $350,000 for a system even if i won $10 mil tomorrow.

but i might be missing something here. what is it about the article that you react so strongly towards? is it the way they try to encourage people to by duckexpensive systems?

peace
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-05-22 18:46:27
@opis, you have made a number of claims that we are going to want backed up by specific examples and ABX logs. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-22 19:27:30
The spacing adds time-stereo data that reinforces the amplitude-stereo data, which has limited separation between the channels. A cardioid mike has a (1+cosine theta) sensitivity pattern, so for coincident cardioids at 90 degrees, the maximum amplitude ratio is just 6dB. Widening the included angle to 135 degrees gives a 10dB ratio, if I remember correctly. Coincident miking requires figure-8 mikes to correctly capture the direction of sources - Google "Blumlein."


In my discussion of coincident micing I mentioned the use of hypercardioid mics, which provide additional separation for a given splay angle.


A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono." You need to introduce a degree of physical separation between the angled capsules, as in the well-known ORTF technique, to give accurate mapping between the original positions of the sound sources and their perceived positions in the reproduced stereo image.

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However, that turns out to be moot, because anybody who listens carefully to large group performnces in large venues knows that while there is a definate perception of space and air, there is almost no perception of a well-defined soundstage.


That may be your preference, Mr. Krueger, but it is not correct. Sit so that the subtended angle of the performing group is 60 degrees, the typical angle between stereo speakers and unless the hall is so reverberant that the critical distance is minimal, you will still perceive a well-defined image.

But this is beside the point: surely as a recordist who has proclaimed your belief in "accuracy,"  you want to record in such a manner that the soundsource directions are accurately preserved? BTW, as Blumlein defined in his 1931 patent, those soundsources _include_ the hall reflections.

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My goal has always been reality-compatibility.


So how many of your recordings have been commercially released and sold on their merits. Mr. Krueger?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-22 20:45:56


The spacing adds time-stereo data that reinforces the amplitude-stereo data, which has limited separation between the channels. A cardioid mike has a (1+cosine theta) sensitivity pattern, so for coincident cardioids at 90 degrees, the maximum amplitude ratio is just 6dB. Widening the included angle to 135 degrees gives a 10dB ratio, if I remember correctly. Coincident miking requires figure-8 mikes to correctly capture the direction of sources - Google "Blumlein."


In my discussion of coincident micing I mentioned the use of hypercardioid mics, which provide additional separation for a given splay angle.


A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono."
You need to introduce a degree of physical separation between the angled capsules, as in the well-known ORTF technique, to give accurate mapping between the original positions of the sound sources and their perceived positions in the reproduced stereo image.


I'm in favor of people having such preferences as they wish.

Including me! ;-)

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However, that turns out to be moot, because anybody who listens carefully to large group performances in large venues knows that while there is a definate perception of space and air, there is almost no perception of a well-defined soundstage.


That may be your preference, Mr. Krueger, but it is not correct.



OK, folks, you heard it here. John Atkinson believes that some preference are correct and others aren't.

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Sit so that the subtended angle of the performing group is 60 degrees, the typical angle between stereo speakers and unless the hall is so reverberant that the critical distance is minimal, you will still perceive a well-defined image.


I thought the goal was to create a listening experience that was true to preferred seats in a concert hall, not how someone thinks that stereo speakers are supposed to b set up.

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But this is beside the point: surely as a recordist who has proclaimed your belief in "accuracy,"  you want to record in such a manner that the soundsource directions are accurately preserved?


Right, and if you ever listened to one of these choirs in the hall in which they performed from the prime seating location, you'd know that the choir does not subtend an angle of 60 degrees.

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BTW, as Blumlein defined in his 1931 patent, those soundsources _include_ the hall reflections.


I've got no problems with that.

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My goal has always been reality-compatibility.


So how many of your recordings have been commercially released and sold on their merits. Mr. Krueger?


Depends what you call commercially. I've been very clear about the commercial context in which I work, which means that for a variety of legal and practical reasons, my work is not available to the general public.

But, here's a big break for you, John.

You can download an excerpt of one of my recordings here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry636388 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71737&st=0&gopid=636388&#entry636388)

BTW, I would say that this recording has a little too much separation to be lifelike, but in an intensity-mode recording, controlling excess separation can easily be done.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-22 21:56:59


The spacing adds time-stereo data that reinforces the amplitude-stereo data, which has limited separation between the channels. A cardioid mike has a (1+cosine theta) sensitivity pattern, so for coincident cardioids at 90 degrees, the maximum amplitude ratio is just 6dB. Widening the included angle to 135 degrees gives a 10dB ratio, if I remember correctly. Coincident miking requires figure-8 mikes to correctly capture the direction of sources - Google "Blumlein."


In my discussion of coincident micing I mentioned the use of hypercardioid mics, which provide additional separation for a given splay angle.


A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono."
You need to introduce a degree of physical separation between the angled capsules, as in the well-known ORTF technique, to give accurate mapping between the original positions of the sound sources and their perceived positions in the reproduced stereo image.


I'm in favor of people having such preferences as they wish.

Including me! ;-)


This is the point that I have trying to get you to comprehend, Mr. Krueger. You (and others) have been strenuously criticizing audiophiles in this thread for expressing a preference for reproduced sound that, in your opinion, is technically inaccurate. If you do so, it is illogical at best and hypocritical at worst for you to try to defend technical inaccuracy in the recordings you make on the ground that it is your preference.

If it is okay for you to prefer technically flawed sound, Mr. Krueger, then it also okay for audiophiles to do likewise. Conversely, if audiophiles are wrong to prefer technically inaccurate sound, then so must you be wrong, Mr. Krueger.

If there is a flaw in that logic, I would, of course, be grateful if someone could identify it.

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However, that turns out to be moot, because anybody who listens carefully to large group performances in large venues knows that while there is a [definite] perception of space and air, there is almost no perception of a well-defined soundstage.


That may be your preference, Mr. Krueger, but it is not correct.


OK, folks, you heard it here. John Atkinson believes that some preference are correct and others aren't.


My apologies for your lack of comprehension, Mr. Krueger. The antecedent for "it" in my earlier message is not your preference but your recording technique of almost-coincident, angled cardioid or hypercardioid mikes.

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You can download an excerpt of one of my recordings here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry636388 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71737&st=0&gopid=636388&#entry636388)


Thank you, Mr. Krueger. I will do so. I hope it is of better quality than the last recording of yours I heard, which even you admitted in an exchange on Usenet with Iain Churches, late of Decca in England, was significantly flawed.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-05-22 23:16:05
Thank you, Mr. Krueger. I will do so. I hope it is of better quality than the last recording of yours I heard, which even you admitted in an exchange on Usenet with Iain Churches, late of Decca in England, was significantly flawed.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Well, John, you have heard one other recording with 5 closely spaced, but non-conincident hypercardoids.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-05-22 23:46:30
<SNIP>
anybody who listens carefully to large group performnces in large venues knows that while there is a definate perception of space and air, there is almost no perception of a well-defined soundstage. 
<SNIP>

That's my experience. Which suggests that the "audio hobby," whether techie, audiophile or audiophool, is getting disconnected from the interests of people who just want to listen to music, as "well" (meaning of "well" subject to some discussion) as possible.

Sean Olive's work demonstrating that, by and large, plain folk like their speakers as linear as possible, clearly relates to musical preferences. But the concern soundstage, maybe not so much?

If there is a disconnect, does it matter?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-22 23:57:48
here's a big break for you, John.

You can download an excerpt of one of my recordings here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry636388 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=71737&st=0&gopid=636388&#entry636388)


I take my hat off to you, Mr. Krueger for posting this link. Me, I would have been a tad more circumspect, given the audibility of the background hiss, the rather scratchy quality in the upper midrange, and the depressed lower frequencies. Here is a link to a spectral analysis of the entire track: http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/sho....php/photo/2020 (http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2020) . The smooth rolloff below 500Hz is peculiar, while the spectral content below 100Hz is all noise.

Quote
BTW, I would say that this recording has a little too much separation to be lifelike...


"Too much separation"? Here is an X-Y 'scope analysis of the finale: http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/sho....php/photo/2021 (http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2021) . As I said, if you made this recording using almost-coincident, crossed cardioids or even hypercardioids, the result is really "fat mono." If you wish, I will apply some LF boost to the difference signal then rematrix to stereo, which, given the shelved-down lower midrange, might restore a more natural tonal balance and add some stereo "bloom."

And before I am criticized for not making my own commercial recordings available for similar analysis, you can download excerpts of some of my choral recordings at http://www.cantusonline.org/Store/mp3.html?category=events (http://www.cantusonline.org/Store/mp3.html?category=events) . (These are 190kbps MP3s - I have no connection with the administration of this site - but they will be good enough for rough and ready analysis.)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-23 00:03:23
Thank you, Mr. Krueger. I will do so. I hope it is of better quality than the last recording of yours I heard, which even you admitted in an exchange on Usenet with Iain Churches, late of Decca in England, was significantly flawed.


Well, John, you have heard one other recording with 5 closely spaced, but non-conincident hypercardoids.


Indeed I did, JJ, and as you know, I thought the results after processing, were very impressive regarding both accuracy and stability of image localization and spatial immersion. But there wasn't just amplitude information to be worked with; the array did space the capsules at a distance similar to that of the human head, which will prove beneficial.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-05-23 01:30:02
Stereo is a serious compromise, and I'm not convinced that one approach to this compromise is "right" or "wrong".

However, I think there is some justification for having recordings that sound a little "larger than life" - I think you need something to make up for the fact that you aren't actually "there", you can't see where the performers are, or see them playing - in fact visual cues are completely lacking.

We know that our subjective perception of any event is multi-sensory. Given that our hi-fi can only talk to one of our senses, maybe it should do ever more so than the real life event would?

Or as David Chesky put it (I may be misquoting!) "people prefer to see even a beautiful actress with a little make up on - that's what we do with audio too - people think they want pure raw recordings, but they like them far better when we put a little rouge on their cheeks".

Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-05-23 02:01:58
Indeed I did, JJ, and as you know, I thought the results after processing, were very impressive regarding both accuracy and stability of image localization and spatial immersion. But there wasn't just amplitude information to be worked with; the array did space the capsules at a distance similar to that of the human head, which will prove beneficial.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


There's a little graph in one of the books on multichannel audio that shows the time/amplitude tradeoff.

The knowlege has been around for some 75 years.

You'd think more people would use it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-23 03:30:50
A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono."

Why does nearly every second post you make feature an argument from authority?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: jlohl on 2009-05-23 08:20:08
Quote
neither mics or speakers can accurately replicate live sound without  creating audible distortion. Which is entirely true: mechanically  transferring physical sound waves to electric impulses and from  electric impulses back to physical sound waves is not a process that we  have yet mastered (although, we have mastered every step in between  those two).

Quote
if we perfected mic and speaker technology to keep their distortions below audible thresholds, you'd be out of a job


the technology is not so far, remember :
An aproche to objective listening tests, KF Russel and PA Fryer,  AES preprint 1495  (1979)
Absolute listening test, PA Fryer and R Lee, AES preprint 1567 (1980)
Listening room influence on loudspeakers, J Salmi and K Weckstrom, AES preprint 1871 (1982), see also the Gradient experiment (http://www.gradient.fi/file_download/15/Basis_of_stereo_Gradient_design.pdf)
It means that for more than 25 years now, a well engineered loudspeaker and a good omni mic can be "perfect" on axis.
We have only to solve microphone spatial capturing, speakers off-axis response and room interaction
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-23 10:20:49
A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono."

Why does nearly every second post you make feature an argument from authority?


Interesting point.

I'm ROTFLMAO at Atkinson's critque of my high school choir recording.

We have this self-proclaimed subjectivist, who bases his entire critique on two plots made by test equipment. Yes, test equipment.

And, this is not a one-time event. We just saw the Stereophile review staff take a 180 degree turn in their review of the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects, once they became aware of John's measurements.

John's entire critique misses what I think is the most important issue of all, which is what did this choir sound like in the space where they performed, from the viewpoint of the most important listeners? 

I know, I was there. Were the voices scratchy? Well, it was during the winter cough and colds season in Michigan. Go figure!

One of John's critical points is absolutely ludicrous - being that the recording has no bass below 100 Hz.

How much bass below 100 Hz does one find in a high school choir singing a capella?  The answer is *none*. Most of the boys in this choir voice's have only started to change. And like most high school choirs, there really weren't a lot of boys.

But yet the recording has is in Atkinson's view a serious fault because it did not magically come up with bass that was not naturally present in the live performance?

LOL!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-05-23 12:00:07
We have this self-proclaimed subjectivist, who bases his entire critique on two plots made by test equipment. Yes, test equipment.

John's entire critique misses what I think is the most important issue of all, which is what did this choir sound like in the space where they performed, from the viewpoint of the most important listeners? 

I know, I was there.


We have this self-proclaimed objectivist, who bases his entire argument on one subjective claim. Yes, one subjective claim.

And, this is not a one-time event. We just saw the Stereophile review staff take a 180 degree turn in their review of the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects, once they became aware of John's measurements.


As I read it you it is not you having snapped and presenting Stereophile with its pants down, but they published it. Stereophile is also not a person. It did not take a 180° turn, but two statements, Fremer's and Atkinson's, were published.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-23 14:47:28
A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono."

Why does nearly every second post you make feature an argument from authority?


Sorry, journalistic force of habit, to attribute out-of-the-ordinary usage. Ignore it if it bothers you.

The point I was making is that Arny Krueger's preferred miking technique is not accurate, in that original soundsource directions are not correctly mapped to the appropriate positions in the recorded stereo image. (For support of my statement, see the 'scope traces I linked to anther message in this thread.) Mr. Krueger has defended that inaccuracy on the grounds of preference, yet he has also strenuously criticized those who similarly express a preference for inaccuracy in reproduction. As I said, this is at best illogical and at worst hypocritical.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-23 14:58:04
Indeed I did, JJ, and as you know, I thought the results after processing, were very impressive regarding both accuracy and stability of image localization and spatial immersion. But there wasn't just amplitude information to be worked with; the array did space the capsules at a distance similar to that of the human head, which will prove beneficial.


There's a little graph in one of the books on multichannel audio that shows the time/amplitude tradeoff.


Blumlein's realization that the ear/brain's use below 1kHz of phase difference to determine source direction could be replaced with amplitude difference was fundamental to stereo reproduction. But is the opposite the case? That the ear/brain's use above 2kHz of amplitude difference to determine source direction can be replaced by time-of-arrival difference? I don't know.

Quote
The knowledge has been around for some 75 years.

You'd think more people would use it.


I suspect that, other than for binaural systems, the use of predominantly time-based stereo data is tricky, with the difference between successful stereo image reproduction and a phasey, unstable mess being all too easy to get wrong :-)

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: bug80 on 2009-05-23 15:02:25
But is the opposite the case? That the ear/brain's use above 2kHz of amplitude difference to determine source direction can be replaced by time-of-arrival difference? I don't know.

No, for frequencies above roughly 1700 Hz the angle of a source can no longer be uniquely determined from the time difference, because there the wave length is smaller than the size of the human head.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-23 15:34:08
We have this self-proclaimed subjectivist, who bases his entire critique on two plots made by test equipment. Yes, test equipment.

John's entire critique misses what I think is the most important issue of all, which is what did this choir sound like in the space where they performed, from the viewpoint of the most important listeners? 

I know, I was there.



We have this self-proclaimed objectivist, who bases his entire argument on one subjective claim. Yes, one subjective claim.

Who might that self-proclaimed objectivist be? It is clearly not me, so your comment seems to be irrelevant.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-23 15:34:14
I'm ROTFLMAO at Atkinson's critque of my high school choir recording.

We have this self-proclaimed subjectivist, who bases his entire critique on two plots made by test equipment. Yes, test equipment.


I don't understand why you are making a big point about my using test equipment, Mr. Krueger. Others might not be aware of this, but you do know, having referred to the fact on many occasions: I perform all the measurements that are included in Stereophile's  component reviews. I have a well-equipped lab and use it.

But I didn't "base [my] entire critique on two plots made by test equipment."  First I described what I heard while listening to your recording: "the audibility of the background hiss, the rather scratchy quality in the upper midrange, and the depressed lower frequencies."

It is clear, I would have thought, that these are descriptions of sound quality. ANd note that I said "lower frequencies," _not_  "low frequencies." _Then_, as this is HA, I proved technical support for those opinions, in the form of a link to spectral analysis of the entire excerpt: "Here is a link to a spectral analysis of the entire track: http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/sho....php/photo/2020 (http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2020) . The smooth rolloff below 500Hz is peculiar, while the spectral content below 100Hz is all noise."

Quote
John's entire critique misses what I think is the most important issue of all, which is what did this choir sound like in the space where they performed, from the viewpoint of the most important listeners? 

I know, I was there. Were the voices scratchy? Well, it was during the winter cough and colds season in Michigan. Go figure!


My use of the word "scratchy" referred to a coarse, rather "intermoddy," "buzzy" nature to the high frequencies, not to the singers themselves. Not having access to your recording chain, I can't investigate or substantiate further. As as this is HA, I don't see that I have to take your unsupported word that the recording accurately captured the choir's tonal balance.

Quote
One of John's critical points is absolutely ludicrous - being that the recording has no bass below 100 Hz.  How much bass below 100 Hz does one find in a high school choir singing a capella?  The answer is *none*. Most of the boys in this choir voice's have only started to change. And like most high school choirs, there really weren't a lot of boys.


You are conflating two statements of mine, Mr. Krueger, to construct a "debating trade" brick without straw. Note that my subjective observation concerned the "lower frequencies," not the "bass below 100Hz." The recording sounds "thin," which I suspect correlates with the lack of energy in the 150-300Hz region as revealed by the spectral analysis. You didn't identify the microphones specifically used on this recording, other than implying they were either cardioids or hypercardioids, but I suspect these mikes were actually intended for close use, where proximity effect would be assumed. When such mikes are used for distant pickup, you will get this rather threadbare tonal quality. It would help, therefore, if you did identify the mikes used.

Quote
But yet the recording has is in Atkinson's view a serious fault because it did not magically come up with bass that was not naturally present in the live performance? LOL!


That's not what I said at all, Mr. Krueger. My reference to the signal present below 100Hz was that it is all noise, in case anyone was fooled into thinking there were valid data present in this region. This noise measures somewhat high in level and is audible.The presence of LF noise is always a problem when distant-miking choirs, due to the lack of masking in this frequency region. In my own choral recordings, to which I gave a link, I actually spend more time tracking down the sources of things like AC noise than I do setting up my mikes :-( 

And you didn't address the major criticism I made of your preferred mike technique, which again was supported by a graph but was snipped in your response..

Quote
Quote
Quote
BTW, I would say that this recording has a little too much separation to
be lifelike...


"Too much separation"? Here is an X-Y 'scope analysis of the finale: http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/sho....php/photo/2021 (http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2021). As I
said, if you made this recording using almost-coincident, crossed cardioids or even hypercardioids, the result is really "fat mono."


[_No comment from Mr. Krueger._]


You defended your choice of a demonstrably inaccurate mike technique on the grounds that your prefer it, Mr. Krueger: "I'm in favor of people having such preferences as they wish...Including me! ;-)"

This is the point that I have trying to get you to comprehend, Mr. Krueger. You (and others) have been strenuously criticizing audiophiles in this thread for expressing a preference for reproduced sound that, in your opinion, is technically inaccurate. If you do so, it is illogical at best and hypocritical at worst for you to try to defend technical inaccuracy in the recordings you make on the ground that it is your preference.

If it is okay for you to prefer technically flawed sound, Mr. Krueger, then it also okay for audiophiles to do likewise. Conversely, if audiophiles are wrong to prefer technically inaccurate sound, then so must you be wrong, Mr. Krueger.

I am still waiting for you to show the illogic in that argument, Mr. Krueger. I suspect that I will be waiting a long time.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-23 15:38:15
The point I was making is that Arny Krueger's preferred miking technique is not accurate, in that original soundsource directions are not correctly mapped to the appropriate positions in the recorded stereo image. (For support of my statement, see the 'scope traces I linked to anther message in this thread.) Mr. Krueger has defended that inaccuracy on the grounds of preference, yet he has also strenuously criticized those who similarly express a preference for inaccuracy in reproduction. As I said, this is at best illogical and at worst hypocritical.


Opinion stated as if it were fact with zero supporting relevant documentation. About as close to supporting documention that we have is Atkinson's claim that the choir subtended 60 degrees, or should have. I laid out the user requirements for this recording, which apparently Atkinson either is intentionally ignoring, or simply unware of.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-23 15:52:13
I'm ROTFLMAO at Atkinson's critque of my high school choir recording.

We have this self-proclaimed subjectivist, who bases his entire critique on two plots made by test equipment. Yes, test equipment.


I don't understand why you are making a big point about my using test equipment, Mr. Krueger.


That would be, abuse of test equipment, John.  Using test equipment only makes sense if you have a relevant reference. For example, a scope trace of a square wave is good if your source is supposed to be a square wvae, and not so good if your source is supposed to be a sine wave.

I've noticed this consistent error in your work Jhan, and that is the absence of the use of reliable references. In the case of your vectorscope analysis of my recording, you show this little squiggle all by itself, and say this proves that there is something wrong with my recording. Compared to what?

In the case of your spectral analysis, you insist that all properly-made choir recordings should have signficiant coherent spectral contents below 100 Hz, which is of course a travesty.  My recording shows that the room it was made in had active HVAC system with modest silencing, which is about what you should expect in a high school auditorium in Michigan in March.

So in your first case John you don't even say what you think a proper vectorscope analysis of a choir recording should show, and in the second case of your spectral analysis, your criteria is so rediculous that it isn't even a bad joke.

I submit that I was asked to produce recordings that represented what the judges heard. Prove that I didn't do a pretty fair job of that.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: ShowsOn on 2009-05-23 15:53:21
A degree of extra separation, yes, but coincident cardioids or hypercardioids still give what one veteran engineer, Tony Faulkner, has called "fat mono."

Why does nearly every second post you make feature an argument from authority?


Sorry, journalistic force of habit, to attribute out-of-the-ordinary usage. Ignore it if it bothers you.

The point I was making is that Arny Krueger's preferred miking technique is not accurate, in that original soundsource directions are not correctly mapped to the appropriate positions in the recorded stereo image. (For support of my statement, see the 'scope traces I linked to anther message in this thread.) Mr. Krueger has defended that inaccuracy on the grounds of preference, yet he has also strenuously criticized those who similarly express a preference for inaccuracy in reproduction. As I said, this is at best illogical and at worst hypocritical.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

None of this answers my question.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-05-23 16:34:50
This thread is about 'why we need audiophiles'.

DO we?

Check out this audiophile's 'educational' youtube videos


a simple tweak to 'tremendously' improve loudspeaker sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylX--ePpb1k (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylX--ePpb1k)

should I mix my cables?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzt7egF9EsM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzt7egF9EsM)


and there's more.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ethan Winer on 2009-05-23 16:46:56
a simple tweak to 'tremedously' improve loudspeaker sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylX--ePpb1k (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylX--ePpb1k)


Well, he does admit he "usually listens very loud." Maybe for too many years though!

--Ethan
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-23 17:15:29
Quote
Quote

Why does nearly every second post you make feature an argument from authority?


Sorry, journalistic force of habit, to attribute out-of-the-ordinary usage. Ignore it if it bothers you...


None of this answers my question.


How does this response of mine not answer your question? (I snipped the rest of my post in case it was confusing you.) The phrase "fat mono" was in quotes, to show that it was not my coinage. As I said, I attributed the usage, as is usual in my profession. And regarding the wider response to your question, putting to one side your hyperbole - "every second post"? - as this is Hydrogen Audio, I assumed that support for statements is generally thought a good thing. My apologies if I have been incorrect in that assumption.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-05-23 17:54:15
How does this response of mine not answer your question? (I snipped the rest of my post in case it was confusing you.) The phrase "fat mono" was in quotes, to show that it was not my coinage. As I said, I attributed the usage, as is usual in my profession. And regarding the wider response to your question, putting to one side your hyperbole - "every second post"? - as this is Hydrogen Audio, I assumed that support for statements is generally thought a good thing. My apologies if I have been incorrect in that assumption.


For the measruement pleasure of your vectorscope John, I submit the "grossly obese mono" version of my choral file at this location:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=636578 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71737&view=findpost&p=636578)

John, given how strongly measurements seem to control what you hear over there at Stereophile, this should greatly improve your listening pleasure. ;-)


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-23 18:26:06
The point I was making is that Arny Krueger's preferred miking technique is not accurate, in that original soundsource directions are not correctly mapped to the appropriate positions in the recorded stereo image. (For support of my statement, see the 'scope traces I linked to [in another] message in this thread.) Mr. Krueger has defended that inaccuracy on the grounds of preference, yet he has also strenuously criticized those who similarly express a preference for inaccuracy in reproduction. As I said, this is at best illogical and at worst hypocritical.


Opinion stated as if it were fact with zero supporting relevant documentation.


Sigh. How much more support for my statements is necessary? My analysis of your recording was supported by the two graphs I made available. Your statements about people being wrong to prefer reproduction that you feel technically inaccurate was made in multiple postings you made to this very thread in the past 3 days. Your defense of your preferred recording technique on the grounds that it is your preference was made in a posting in this thread yesterday.

I don't see that it is unsupported or illogical to point out that you are either attacking or supporting preference for technical inaccuracy depending on what you are arguing, Mr. Krueger.

Quote
About as close to supporting documention that we have is Atkinson's claim that the choir subtended 60 degrees, or should have.


I have not said this. Please do not put words in my mouth, Mr. Krueger. What I wrote was in response to your general statement that there is no "imaging" in live performance compared to domestic playback: "Sit so that the subtended angle of the performing group is 60 degrees, the typical angle between stereo speakers, and unless the hall is so reverberant that the critical distance is minimal, you will still perceive a well-defined image."

Quote
I laid out the user requirements for this recording, which apparently Atkinson either is intentionally ignoring, or simply unware of.


Even if the choir's director requested you to record in mono, Mr. Krueger, and was well-pleased with the result, that does not correlate with your statement that your preferred miking technique gave rise to a recording that has "a little too much separation to be lifelike." As my vectorscope graph demonstrates - see http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/sho....php/photo/2021 (http://forum.stereophile.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2021) - it actually has very little separation, hence minimal image width. Unless the choir had arranged themselves in a human pyramid - and I suspect they hadn't, because of the lack of reverb energy in the difference signal - your use of an inappropriate miking technique distorted the original stage, Mr. Krueger, just as I have been saying all along.

Quote
In the case of your vectorscope analysis of my recording, you show this little squiggle all by itself, and say this proves that there is something wrong with my recording. Compared to what?


Compared to a true stereo recording, Mr. Krueger. Do you really not know how to read a vectorscope graph? The trace in the sum axis has a maximum length of 400 pixels; in the difference direction, it measures 55 pixels. As the number of pixels is proportional to voltage, this shows that the ratio between the sum signal (L+R) and the difference signal (L-R) of your recording is 17dB, rather than, say, the more usual 3dB-6dB, let alone 0dB, which is what you would get with a modern multimike recording that used the entire soundstage for placement of full-level source images. Regardless of what you call the "user requirements" for your recording, Mr. Krueger, the "little squiggle" indicates that your "stereo" recording is to a large extent mono. And it sounds that way also.

Quote
I submit that I was asked to produce recordings that represented what the judges heard. Prove that I didn't do a pretty fair job of that.


As I was not privy to your conversations with the judges, Mr. Krueger. I have no idea. I can only assume they requested you to produce an almost monophonic recording with insufficient energy in the lower midrange, and audible LF noise, hiss, and distortion. In which case yes, you did "a pretty fair job" of giving them what they asked for.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-05-31 23:55:25
For the measruement pleasure of your vectorscope John, I submit the "grossly obese mono" version of my choral file at this location:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=636578 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=71737&view=findpost&p=636578)


Thank you, Mr. Krueger. Sorry for the tardy reply. Sometimes life gets in the way of posting to Internet forums :-)

Quote
John, given how strongly measurements seem to control what you hear over there at Stereophile...


I don't know why you would say that, Mr. Krueger. As you know having asked me about this subject before, Stereophile's reviewers don't see the measurements until after they have submitted their review texts, to avoid the possibility of them hearing what they think they should.

Quote
this should greatly improve your listening pleasure. ;-)


Sadly, it didn't. It still sounds tonally threadbare, with audible hiss and LF noise, and a scratchy, "intermoddy" quality in the treble. It also sounds quite phasey and checking with the vectorscope indicated that it has considerable out-of-phase information. I don't know what you did to the recording, Mr. Krueger; it doesn't look as if you flipped the polarity of just one channel, but as the spectral content is identical to that of the original close-to-mono recording, all I can conjecture is that you amplified the difference signal in an attempt to try to widen the stage.

Didn't work, I am afraid. I am still puzzled about why you didn't hear the lack of stereo separation on the original recording. It was immediately obvious when I auditioned it, which is why I checked with a vectorscope.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-01 00:48:00
I am still puzzled about why you didn't hear the lack of stereo separation on the original recording. It was immediately obvious when I auditioned it, which is why I checked with a vectorscope.


More to the point John, I'm still puzzled by the fact that you don't hear the lack of stereo separation in orchestral performances when heard from seats  in the middle of the hall.

I also am puzzled that you can't understand it when I tell that the purpose of the recording was to duplicate a certain sonic perspective on a certain kind of performance when listened to from a certain point in a certain hall.

I presume John that were you ever asked to record a performance from a middle-of-the hall perspective, that naturally sounded reedy in a hall with normal levels of acoustic noise for a high school auditorimum, that you would somehow jimmy the recording so that the noise was gone, the stereo perspective was wide, and somehow alter the voices of the singers so that they stopped sounding reedy. This is presumably what you think all choirs naturally sound like, no matter who sings in them or where they sing.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-01 23:40:08
I am still puzzled about why you didn't hear the lack of stereo separation on the original recording. It was immediately obvious when I auditioned it, which is why I checked with a vectorscope.


More to the point John, I'm still puzzled by the fact that you don't hear the lack of stereo separation in orchestral performances when heard from seats  in the middle of the hall.

I also am puzzled that you can't understand it when I tell that the purpose of the recording was to duplicate a certain sonic perspective on a certain kind of performance when listened to from a certain point in a certain hall.

I presume John that were you ever asked to record a performance from a middle-of-the hall perspective, that naturally sounded reedy in a hall with normal levels of acoustic noise for a high school auditorimum, that you would somehow jimmy the recording so that the noise was gone, the stereo perspective was wide, and somehow alter the voices of the singers so that they stopped sounding reedy. This is presumably what you think all choirs naturally sound like, no matter who sings in them or where they sing.


Arnold, I've been following this discussion thread for a while, but I'm saddened that you've chosen not to directly respond to John's counterarguments regarding your recording. This response is more along the lines of a baseless personal attack since all you've discussed herein is 1) feigned puzzlement for sarcasm's sake, 2) more sarcasm based on feigned presumption, and 3) further sarcasm based on feigned presumption again.

Before the revolution of quantum physical measurements and experimentation (e.g., split photon experiments and double slit laser experiments), any scientist worth his or her salt would've called a lot of current post-Einsteinian physics canon BS too. Speaking strictly as a social psychologist, the role of emotion in human perception is just beginning to be understood. There are some very reliable ways in which stimuli can impinge upon our emotional processes, and some robust ways in which emotional processes have been found to impinge upon the rest of our cognitive perceptions, and so I am very curious to learn more about the role of emotion in auditory perception and interpretation of music and I think this discussion has some bearing on that.

You've been a good discussant so far for the most part, as has John. Please don't let the spirit of this debate die in such an onerous way. I think in the spirit of HA as I've briefly come to know it, a response to John's statements regarding his vectorscope measurements of your recording are in order. Empiricism can win the day yet!

-Nathan.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-02 00:35:52
Before the revolution of quantum physical measurements and experimentation (e.g., split photon experiments and double slit laser experiments), any scientist worth his or her salt would've called a lot of current post-Einsteinian physics canon BS too. Speaking strictly as a social psychologist, the role of emotion in human perception is just beginning to be understood. There are some very reliable ways in which stimuli can impinge upon our emotional processes, and some robust ways in which emotional processes have been found to impinge upon the rest of our cognitive perceptions, and so I am very curious to learn more about the role of emotion in auditory perception and interpretation of music and I think this discussion has some bearing on that.


Yes, it's pretty reliable that our emotions will 'impinge upon' our auditory perceptions -- another way to phrase it is that there are conscious and unconscious prejudices that commonly affect (or 'bias') them.  That's why double blind tests and measurements are called for when the audio quality -- and *only* the *audio* quality -- is being rated.  Because without controls in place, it's hard to know if even the most elementary mistake has been avoided -- such as reporting two presentations as 'sounding different' when they are really the SAME.

This view, while commonplace in the sciences and in product testing, is largely at odds with audiophile culture and the practice of audio reviewing generally.  Stereophile, for example goes only to the halfway mark by including extensive measurements (of some kinds of gear), but keeping its reviews 'sighted', resulting in occasional humorous juxtapositions of objective fact with subjective impression. 

Perhaps THAT is why we need audiophiles?


('Interpretation of music' is outside the scope of discussion here, so please don't go there.)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-02 00:44:01
Before the revolution of quantum physical measurements and experimentation (e.g., split photon experiments and double slit laser experiments), any scientist worth his or her salt would've called a lot of current post-Einsteinian physics canon BS too. Speaking strictly as a social psychologist, the role of emotion in human perception is just beginning to be understood. There are some very reliable ways in which stimuli can impinge upon our emotional processes, and some robust ways in which emotional processes have been found to impinge upon the rest of our cognitive perceptions, and so I am very curious to learn more about the role of emotion in auditory perception and interpretation of music and I think this discussion has some bearing on that.


Yes, it's pretty reliable that our emotions will 'impinge upon' our auditory perceptions -- another way to phrase is that there are conscious and unconscious prejudices that commonly affect (or 'bias') them.  That's why double blind tests and measurements are called for when the audio quality -- and *only* the *audio* quality -- is being rated.  Because without controls in place, it's hard to know if even the most elementary mistake has been avoided -- such as reporting two presentations as 'sounding different' when they are really the SAME.

This view, while commonplace in the sciences and in product testing, is largely at odds with audiophile culture and the practice of audio reviewing generally.  Stereophile, for example goes only to the halfway mark by including extensive measurements (of some kinds of gear), but keeping its reviews 'sighted', resulting in occasional humorous juxtapositions of objective fact with subjective impression.


('Interpretation of music' is outside the scope of discussion here, so please don't go there.)


I couldn't agree more, Krabapple. That's why I suggested that Arnold shy away from the sarcastic responses and stick to responding to the empirical evidence of the vectorscope measurements of the audio sample he supplied.

If you'll note in my post, when I discussed the role of emotion (referring back to mainly the original discussion in the early parts of this thread; the *why* of why we "need" audiophiles or audiophools depending on your perspective), I was expressing what interests me largely in this discussion and why I will continue to avidly follow it as long as the level of open debate stays above the level it seemed to be heading toward.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-06-02 05:20:48
Is not the current "debate" thus:

Atkinson: This recording doesn't sound very good, and here are some measurements to show how/why.

Krueger: That is because it is an accurate recording of a not very good performance in a not very good hall.

This is only being protracted because Messrs Atkinson and Krueger have a long and dearly cherished fight which they are now dragging over the forums of HA in the belief that it is as interesting to the rest of the world as it is to themselves.

And I'm only a medievalist, but I have a very high level of trust that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the physics or psychology of perception, but does have something to do with the rhetoric of woo.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-02 08:14:29
And I'm only a medievalist, but I have a very high level of trust that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the physics or psychology of perception, but does have something to do with the rhetoric of woo.


Both the rhetoric of woo and the state of the science as analogy (until measurement was possible, strange and counterintuitive but perfectly measurable and real things have been overlooked as voodoo in even the most fundamental of observation based sciences).

Thanks for the explanation.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-06-02 11:09:18
Hi Nate,

I'll have to disagree here. That something real could have been seen as "fringe" (polite for "nutty") is not an excuse to treat all fringe stuff as equally potentially real.

The example of QM, for instance, is good because QM wasn't imagined by someone as an explanation for phenomena that already had a better, simpler and evidenced explanation for. It sprung from observations that needed explanations (IIRC, one of Einstein's own papers sparked it) and it went "mainstream" not because of just theory, but more importantly, experiments.

So far the type that we consider "woo" that uses QM as an example, is not in the same position nor it had similar beginnings as QM as a scientific theory did. It usually started with un-evidenced assumptions, followed by vague claims, and ignoring already existing simpler, better, evidenced explanations. In fact, QM has become so popular for its supposed esoterism (which really is not THAT hard to "get" its basics) that New Agers like Deepak Chopra use its terms WAY out of context, and completely devoid of actual content, to woo the unsuspecting.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-02 14:31:42
I couldn't agree more, Krabapple. That's why I suggested that Arnold shy away from the sarcastic responses and stick to responding to the empirical evidence of the vectorscope measurements of the audio sample he supplied.


In fact a vector scope portrayal of a recording says nothing all by itself. It has to be referred to something in the real world. I said this early on, but it seems like it flew over more than a few heads. What to do when the key issue is seemingly ignored by one and all?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-02 17:52:28
And I'm only a medievalist, but I have a very high level of trust that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the physics or psychology of perception, but does have something to do with the rhetoric of woo.


Both the rhetoric of woo and the state of the science as analogy (until measurement was possible, strange and counterintuitive but perfectly measurable and real things have been overlooked as voodoo in even the most fundamental of observation based sciences).


Let's examine your examples of 'observed voodoo that turned out to be perfectly measurable and real' on a case-by-case basis, please.

Ready when you are....


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-02 20:54:27
And I'm only a medievalist, but I have a very high level of trust that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the physics or psychology of perception, but does have something to do with the rhetoric of woo.


Both the rhetoric of woo and the state of the science as analogy (until measurement was possible, strange and counterintuitive but perfectly measurable and real things have been overlooked as voodoo in even the most fundamental of observation based sciences).


Let's examine your examples of 'observed voodoo that turned out to be perfectly measurable and real' on a case-by-case basis, please.

Ready when you are....


Krabapple, the effect of and existence of germs for one.

The rotation of the world around the sun for two.

The ability of a photon's two halves when split and maintained a distance apart to respond in complimentary fashoin to measurements made on the other half at faster than the speed light could travel between the two because they still exist as a quantum whole for three.

I can go on if you really need me to, but it was an analogy to suggest that folks not simply dismiss everything out of hand and take even their own VERY SERIOUS positions with a grain of salt, as many people who've had many VERY SERIOUS positions over time have found themselves standing on the wrong side of a paradigm shift in science. Like Newton, Einstein, and others.

------------------------------

Andy, it's great to see you on here. I should've tried to keep my mouth shut longer, but I have a hard time not jumping into discussions I'm reading. Thanks for tipping me off on HA and this thread in particular.

You're absolutely right that people are bastardizing the seemingly perpendicular nature of QM to mainstream science to promote their own BS. I've got a friend from my doctorate program who ran off recently and disheartened us all by becoming a life-coach who herself cites QM as something she "uses" in her coaching.

I meant it not as a carte blanch for any suspect finding, but a suggestion to remain open to at least reviewing well collected evidence of an empirical nature even if it contradicts what you've come to assume to be true. That's the core of good science, but many go just far enough to find what they want to believe within science as it exists and then become as bad a faith-based "truth" monger as a religious zealot, ignoring (and refusing to review or respond to) any contradictory evidence as badly sampled, flawed, or otherwise. Good science doesn't cover its ears and close its eyes.

(I think what MichaelW meant by rhetoric of woo is that in the hands of a less than scrupulous young man, QM can be turned to most romantic purposes in conversation with the fairer sex; photons being in love and whatnot) 

-------------------------------

Arnold, as I understand it, a vectorscope of an audio recording provides information about the relative difference between the left and right channels of signal within a recording. They're deltas basically. There are countless examples within science of using deltas as measurement of relationship (correlation), deviance (standard deviation and variance as a square), change (delta and pre-post designs), and self-relationships (auto-regressive time based models). I've excerpted this from Wikipedia's article on vectorscopes:

"Audio Applications

In audio applications, a vectorscope is used to measure the difference between channels of stereo audio signals. One stereo channel drives the horizontal deflection of the display, and the other drives the vertical deflection. A monoaural signal, consisting of identical left and right signals, results in a straight line with a slope of positive one. Any stereo separation is visible as a deviation from this line, creating a Lissajous figure. If the straight line (or deviation from it) appears with a slope of negative one, this indicates that the left and right channels are 180° out of phase."

So what John has demonstrated with the vectorscope of your recording is that it is in fact a monaural recording with no stereo separation; backing at least that single one of his own claims. What you've then done is come back and tease him kind of meaninglessly about stereo separation and its relation to live listening.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-02 22:14:49
Before the revolution of quantum physical measurements and experimentation (e.g., split photon experiments and double slit laser experiments), any scientist worth his or her salt would've called a lot of current post-Einsteinian physics canon BS too.

Nonsense. The notion that a scientist would call a successful scientific hypothesis BS is absurd. Science does not progress in the manner of an adverserial debate, although it is often portrayed like that by non-scientists, but by cooperatively finding and fitting pieces of evidence together.

Audiophiles are outside the scientific process because they do not follow the scientific method. They produce no alternative scientific hypotheses to predict the observations of interest to them nor are their observations in conflict with established scientific knowledge on sound, sound perception and how audio equipment functions which might attract the attention of a scientist.

I am curious about what you think you are observing when, for example, you follow a discussion between Arnold B. and John Atkinson? I too find the audiophile phenomenon interesting but it is wholly irrelevant to the science of sound, sound perception or audio. It is about people and how they choose to reason.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-02 22:23:16
Before the revolution of quantum physical measurements and experimentation (e.g., split photon experiments and double slit laser experiments), any scientist worth his or her salt would've called a lot of current post-Einsteinian physics canon BS too.

Nonsense. The notion that a scientist would call a successful scientific hypothesis BS is absurd. Science does not progress in the manner of an adverserial debate, although it is often portrayed like that by non-scientists, but by cooperatively finding and fitting pieces of evidence together.

Audiophiles are outside the scientific process because they do not follow the scientific method. They produce no alternative scientific hypotheses to predict the observations of interest to them nor are their observations in conflict with established scientific knowledge on sound, sound perception and how audio equipment functions which might attract the attention of a scientist.

I am curious about what you think you are observing when, for example, you follow a discussion between Arnold B. and John Atkinson? I too find the audiophile phenomenon interesting but it is wholly irrelevant to the science of sound, sound perception or audio. It is about people and how they choose to reason.


While I'm prone to agree with your last two statements, I'm compelled to respond to the first. As an active and participating experimental scientist, I can tell you without qualification that scientific progress and science itself is often adversarial debate. You might be surprised how many different "camps" there are in nearly all scientific fields when you get up to the level of reading academic and scientific journals rather than the summaries of them in magazines or textbooks wherein one individual usually gets to coalesce the current findings and state of theory under their particular flag. Even particle physics has its camps, and that says something.

As to what I think I observe within this thread as a whole, and not just limiting to John and Arnold's discussion, is some potential indication of what that as yet unidentified or measured element of the human perception of audio may be. That thing that allows music to connect in a way with a listener that isn't captured by any other sorts of tones or sounds in series. It's certainly an unscientific pursuit unto itself, but that doesn't mean we simply have to wage a war of opinion. We can look at what little empirical evidence we have and postulate falsifiable hypotheses from there the way that all science begins.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-06-02 23:26:04
As to what I think I observe within this thread as a whole, and not just limiting to John and Arnold's discussion, is some potential indication of what that as yet unidentified or measured element of the human perception of audio may be. That thing that allows music to connect in a way with a listener that isn't captured by any other sorts of tones or sounds in series. It's certainly an unscientific pursuit unto itself, but that doesn't mean we simply have to wage a war of opinion. We can look at what little empirical evidence we have and postulate falsifiable hypotheses from there the way that all science begins.


The guts of the issue is whether or not there is any "potential indication" of an "as yet unidentified or measured element of the human perception of audio."

You will find on HA somewhat tolerant discussions of the possibility of higher frequencies or greater bit-depths than CD being relevant. But it is not at all clear that the supposed phenomena reported in audiophile magazines are real data, because there is a resistance to subjecting such claims to the most basic kinds of verification, like double-blind testing. Since there are other explanations for the claims, in terms of psychology, economics, and willy-waving, Occam's razor suggests they be ignored. Occam's razor is a methodological guide, not a law of nature, but there is nothing in audio as big and uncontested as the black body radiation anomaly to suggest that any kind of new paradigm is needed.

Alas, far too often the discussion is carried on, on both sides, in a manner calculated to "win" a debate, not to advance truth, but the fringers question the whole set of scientific methods of investigation of perception, which would seem to kipper the possibility of rational inquiry right from the start.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-02 23:36:17
The guts of the issue is whether or not there is any "potential indication" of an "as yet unidentified or measured element of the human perception of audio."

You will find on HA somewhat tolerant discussions of the possibility of higher frequencies or greater bit-depths than CD being relevant. But it is not at all clear that the supposed phenomena reported in audiophile magazines are real data, because there is a resistance to subjecting such claims to the most basic kinds of verification, like double-blind testing. Since there are other explanations for the claims, in terms of psychology, economics, and willy-waving, Occam's razor suggests they be ignored. Occam's razor is a methodological guide, not a law of nature, but there is nothing in audio as big and uncontested as the black body radiation anomaly to suggest that any kind of new paradigm is needed.

Alas, far too often the discussion is carried on, on both sides, in a manner calculated to "win" a debate, not to advance truth, but the fringers question the whole set of scientific methods of investigation of perception, which would seem to kipper the possibility of rational inquiry right from the start.


Well said, Michael.

I do wonder if we do any good to the audiophile magazine's "resistance to subjecting such claims" by bullying one of their editors when he actually starts discussing matters in a testable way (and even comes over to the counterpoint's camp to share in that discussion).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-03 00:03:35
As an active and participating experimental scientist, I can tell you without qualification that scientific progress and science itself is often adversarial debate.

In which case you should be able to put forward some examples. But I am going to add a qualification and that is not examples from the "soft sciences" but examples from the real sciences that are based on scientific laws/hypotheses. The qualification is important because it is basing reasoning on a pyramid of established, self-supporting and agreed "facts" that makes adversarial debate meaningless. In order to disagree one side has got to believe one thing while the other believes something else but if both sides have signed up for the scientific method then this is not an option.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 00:07:41
Krabapple, the effect of and existence of germs for one.

The rotation of the world around the sun for two.

The ability of a photon's two halves when split and maintained a distance apart to respond in complimentary fashoin to measurements made on the other half at faster than the speed light could travel between the two because they still exist as a quantum whole for three.


None of these represent 'overlooked as voodoo' phenomena (and the quantum relatedness example hardly qualifies as something the layman would have ever noticed or claimed to be happening in the first place, much less be called 'voodoo' for it).  And really, if you are going to go back the Middle Ages, you are simply acknowledging that we knew less in the past than we know now (where often it wasn't mainly scientists who believed in the 'voodoo', it was the scientists who *exposed them* as voodoo), and that scientific findings can be controversial until the evidence for them mounts -- in otherwords, recognizing the way science works.

You also need to consider how many idea that were dubbed as 'voodoo', turn out to be voodoo, before you wag your finger. 


Quote
I can go on if you really need me to, but it was an analogy to suggest that folks not simply dismiss everything out of hand and take even their own VERY SERIOUS positions with a grain of salt, as many people who've had many VERY SERIOUS positions over time have found themselves standing on the wrong side of a paradigm shift in science. Like Newton, Einstein, and others.


What looks to you like 'dismissing out of hand' may well be dismissal based on WHAT IS KNOWN.  When there is a preponderance of evidence on one side, it's up to the 'other side' to provide the reason why we should reinterpret that evidence.  That's how science works.  The door remains open, but not wide open.  "I heard it" isn't good enough evidence.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 00:10:47
As an active and participating experimental scientist, I can tell you without qualification that scientific progress and science itself is often adversarial debate.

In which case you should be able to put forward some examples. But I am going to add a qualification and that is not examples from the "soft sciences" but examples from the real sciences that are based on scientific laws/hypotheses. The qualification is important because it is basing reasoning on a pyramid of established, self-supporting and agreed "facts" that makes adversarial debate meaningless. In order to disagree one side has got to believe one thing while the other believes something else but if both sides have signed up for the scientific method then this is not an option.


Well, for one example from the "hard" science of physics: http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html (http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html)

The debate over Hawking's Information Loss Paradox.

Do I really need to provide you some more or is this satisfactorily far enough away from those bad old "soft" sciences I'm part of?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 00:12:00
As to what I think I observe within this thread as a whole, and not just limiting to John and Arnold's discussion, is some potential indication . That thing that allows music to connect in a way with a listener that isn't captured by any other sorts of tones or sounds in series. It's certainly an unscientific pursuit unto itself, but that doesn't mean we simply have to wage a war of opinion. We can look at what little empirical evidence we have and postulate falsifiable hypotheses from there the way that all science begins.



Where do you see these 'potential indications of what that as yet unidentified or measured element of the human perception of audio may be', and why do you presume that 'element' exists in the first place?


Btw, from my personal experience of science and scientists, I totally agree with you that adversarial contest -- some of them even heated and personal -- have played a role in advancing science.    Scientists are human too and competition for priority (and grant money) can be a great stimulus!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-03 00:13:24
I do wonder if we do any good to the audiophile magazine's "resistance to subjecting such claims" by bullying one of their editors when he actually starts discussing matters in a testable way (and even comes over to the counterpoint's camp to share in that discussion).

What do you think John Atkinson is trying to achieve by braving the bullying and posting here?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 00:15:16
Krabapple, the effect of and existence of germs for one.
None of these represent 'overlooked as voodoo' phenomena (and the quantum relatedness example hardly qualifies as something the layman would have ever noticed or claimed to be happening in the first place, much less be called 'voodoo' for it).


The germ theory was certainly considered too far fetched by the folks, scientific and lay alike, that rejected it until measurement (microscopic observation) was possible. I can't stop you from dismissing my examples, but at the end of the day, I'm satisfied I've made my point. My intention is certainly not to "finger wave" but rather to advocate for open discussion.

----------------------------

Honestguv, open discussion from all perspectives?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 00:21:14
Krabapple, the effect of and existence of germs for one.
None of these represent 'overlooked as voodoo' phenomena (and the quantum relatedness example hardly qualifies as something the layman would have ever noticed or claimed to be happening in the first place, much less be called 'voodoo' for it).


The germ theory was certainly considered too far fetched by the folks, scientific and lay alike, that rejected it until measurement (microscopic observation) was possible. I can't stop you from dismissing my examples, but at the end of the day, I'm satisfied I've made my point. My intention is certainly not to "finger wave" but rather to advocate for open discussion.



But except for the quantum experiment, so far you're pulling examples from fields in their infancy, or when science as we know it barely existed. And you're not engaging the point that in audio, we are not operating in a knoweldge vaccuum , and keeping an open mind does not mean abandoning skepticism.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 00:29:20
Krabapple, the effect of and existence of germs for one.
None of these represent 'overlooked as voodoo' phenomena (and the quantum relatedness example hardly qualifies as something the layman would have ever noticed or claimed to be happening in the first place, much less be called 'voodoo' for it).


The germ theory was certainly considered too far fetched by the folks, scientific and lay alike, that rejected it until measurement (microscopic observation) was possible. I can't stop you from dismissing my examples, but at the end of the day, I'm satisfied I've made my point. My intention is certainly not to "finger wave" but rather to advocate for open discussion.



But except for the quantum experiment, so far you're pulling examples from fields in their infancy, or when science as we know it barely existed.  And you're not engaging the point that in audio, we are not operating in a knoweldge vaccuum , and keeping an open mind does not mean abandoning skepticism.


Now I get your point. You're right that we're certainly not as far into the infancy as those fields were in my examples (although with the case of heliocentrism,  astrophysics had been around a few hundred years as observational science before Galileo, Kepler, or Copernicus were running around doing their things). We are, however, kind of in the infancy of psychoacoustics as a field (less than 100 years does not a science make), and the study of emotion in psychology is certainly in its infancy. If there's a contribution to be made to our understanding of psychoacoustics by our understanding of emotion, it's yet to be made, so I suppose that's why I'm vehement about open debate on this end of that timeline.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 00:38:14
Now I get your point. You're right that we're certainly not as far into the infancy as those fields were in my examples (although with the case of heliocentrism,  astrophysics had been around a few hundred years as observational science before Galileo, Kepler, or Copernicus were running around doing their things).


'Observational science' ..you mean astrology?

Quote
We are, however, kind of in the infancy of psychoacoustics as a field (less than 100 years does not a science make), and the study of emotion in psychology is certainly in its infancy. If there's a contribution to be made to our understanding of psychoacoustics by our understanding of emotion, it's yet to be made, so I suppose that's why I'm vehement about open debate on this end of that timeline.


Leaving aside the question of how old science itself is ('scientist' being a 19th C coinage, and the scientific method formally going back perhaps to Bacon and Descarte in the 1600s), and given the accelerating rates of scientific and technological advance in the last century or so, neither psychoacoustics NOR experimental methodology NOR audio technology are in their infancy  (and audio woo claims and arguments typically hinge on all three of these), so skepticism of certain ideas may be entirely appropriate.  Any good scientist acknowledges that 'facts' are provisional, but they also acknowledge that it requires evidence and logic, not speculation, to revise the current models.  So where's the evidence and logic, beyond "I hear it!" or "I feel better listening to this CD player than that one!" from audiophiles?  That only becomes 'good evidence' for objective audible difference when certain methods of subjective comparison are used , yet Mr. Atkinson's magazine propagandizes AGAINST such methods, and meanwhile is willing to promote *irrelevant* objective measures to support claims of audible difference, as in his recent article on mp3.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-06-03 00:55:07
Most theories of today's mainstream science started off as fringe ideas until enough evidence accumulated to convince everybody. Moreover, in many cases, the theories really were fringe ideas, in some sense - their adherents in many cases really did not have good evidence for a while. I'm thinking specifically of plate tectonics, atomic theories of matter, etc. Or even general relativity for that matter (it was first a very "beautiful" theory with no real supporting evidence to speak of).

What is considered controversial in the audio world today revolves, almost exclusively, around listener perceptions which cannot be validated with blind testing. It is true that the "mainstream scientific thought" on the matter (if there is one in the first place) does not make particularly detailed explanations of these perceptions/beliefs. A lot of it boils down to "it's placebo" which frankly, isn't particularly persuasive. Unfortunately the competing theories offered are even less persuasive. IMHO.

Some audiophiles are really quick to assert the incompleteness of human knowledge of audio, particularly Beltists - nlsteele, I suppose you wouldn't have an alter ego with a last name "Frog"?  - but I think if such a gap in knowledge exists, it rests exclusively in the psychological realm, not the psychoacoustic. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! If music companies had a better understanding of how people derive enjoyment from music, they certainly wouldn't be in as dire straits as they are in now. And I can certainly see how a choice of format - particularly vinyl with its larger artwork and "tactile" interface requirements - could correlate with such enjoyment. And audiophiles, ostensibly representing a group of people who derive much pleasure from music and have much knowledge of how to configure environments to maximize such enjoyment, could still be respected in a world that went completely skeptical and pro-DBT.

But such justifications do not really rely on objective or intrinsic qualities, such as the nature of the format itself. It really would be all in your head. And I think some people are frankly just not secure enough to state a preference that requires no justification, and instead use really poor or false ones. It is somewhat refreshing to hear some vinyl n00bs derive satisfaction not from any intrinsic sound quality, but from the artwork! Or even the ticks and pops themselves! It's superficial, but at the same time, it's uncommonly honest.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-03 01:02:07
I do wonder if we do any good to the audiophile magazine's "resistance to subjecting such claims" by bullying one of their editors when he actually starts discussing matters in a testable way (and even comes over to the counterpoint's camp to share in that discussion).

What do you think John Atkinson is trying to achieve by braving the bullying and posting here?


Seems like John was up to quite a bit of bullying of his own.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 01:09:03
Audiophile arguments often resemble 'god in the gaps' arguments.  "Because you buzzkillers don't know EVERYTHING, MY belief is still likely to be true."  That's a fail. And "it's placebo" (or "it's in your head') is unpersuasive NOT because it isn't often true, but  because most people are innumerate about probability, or illiterate as to just how common 'placebo' responses are.  People tend to greatly underestimate how fallible they are.

But I do think the record company morons missed an opportunity by not offering CDs in LP-sized packages and artwork, as an option.  Yes , I KNOW record retailers would have balked, but look at where retailers have ended up in their 'wisdom'.
Certainly so called 'high rez' or 'audiophile' releases should have been given old-school extravagant packaging, to make them more of an 'event'.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-06-03 01:50:08
And "it's placebo" (or "it's in your head') is unpersuasive NOT because it isn't often true, but  because most people are innumerate about probability, or illiterate as to just how common 'placebo' responses are.


What I've seen in this debate is that people will implicitly or explicitly claim their results should be taken at face value (even though their experiment was uncontrolled) because the results were not what they expected or wanted.  See for example here (http://www.stereophile.com/features/409recommended_components/index.html).  You'll see the quote "I'm sorry to report that demagnetizing LPs works-consistently and decidedly," he said.

People tend to greatly underestimate how fallible they are.


Ain't that the truth!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 02:25:17
Most theories of today's mainstream science started off as fringe ideas until enough evidence accumulated to convince everybody. Moreover, in many cases, the theories really were fringe ideas, in some sense - their adherents in many cases really did not have good evidence for a while. I'm thinking specifically of plate tectonics, atomic theories of matter, etc. Or even general relativity for that matter (it was first a very "beautiful" theory with no real supporting evidence to speak of).

What is considered controversial in the audio world today revolves, almost exclusively, around listener perceptions which cannot be validated with blind testing. It is true that the "mainstream scientific thought" on the matter (if there is one in the first place) does not make particularly detailed explanations of these perceptions/beliefs. A lot of it boils down to "it's placebo" which frankly, isn't particularly persuasive. Unfortunately the competing theories offered are even less persuasive. IMHO.

Some audiophiles are really quick to assert the incompleteness of human knowledge of audio, particularly Beltists - nlsteele, I suppose you wouldn't have an alter ego with a last name "Frog"?  - but I think if such a gap in knowledge exists, it rests exclusively in the psychological realm, not the psychoacoustic. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! If music companies had a better understanding of how people derive enjoyment from music, they certainly wouldn't be in as dire straits as they are in now. And I can certainly see how a choice of format - particularly vinyl with its larger artwork and "tactile" interface requirements - could correlate with such enjoyment. And audiophiles, ostensibly representing a group of people who derive much pleasure from music and have much knowledge of how to configure environments to maximize such enjoyment, could still be respected in a world that went completely skeptical and pro-DBT.

But such justifications do not really rely on objective or intrinsic qualities, such as the nature of the format itself. It really would be all in your head. And I think some people are frankly just not secure enough to state a preference that requires no justification, and instead use really poor or false ones. It is somewhat refreshing to hear some vinyl n00bs derive satisfaction not from any intrinsic sound quality, but from the artwork! Or even the ticks and pops themselves! It's superficial, but at the same time, it's uncommonly honest.


Axon, I've appreciated your contributions since the start of this thread, and this one is no exception. I'm very happy to see the discussion seems to be refreshed, but you've piqued my curiosity on another topic. I'm not familiar with these "Beltists," and can't seem to find a good definition online for them. Sorry to report that Frog isn't amongst my monikers (of which there are only really three), but I'd like to hear more about what you're talking about. If it's OT, just PM me, as this feels like a sidebar conversation anyway. FWIW, Andy O can vouch that I'm relatively new to this whole audio thing, and I can furnish credentials to the opposite for my indoctrination in science. This is far more fun to discuss than my own job, though.

Thanks to all for being so tolerant of my jumping into the midst of this conversation.

---------------------------

Krabapple, I out of habit lump even some "pre-science science" in with the usual suspects because when psychologists go through the history of the pursuit it usually includes a healthy dose of why mind-body arguments are bumpkis relegated to philosophy and that references a good deal of ancient Greeks on up (e.g., Heraclitus) as the philosophy became a natural philosophy became a science.

I actually loosely meant navigational astronomy which has been around since the Phoenicians, though it certainly wouldn't have been thought to be capital-S Science at that point, it was still reliant on observation.

Your patience with my own descriptive quirk and your point is duly noted.

----------------------------

Everyone, or particularly Krabapple, is there some sort of doctrine on this "audio woo" you guys are talking about? I was assuming Michael was talking about something else when said the rhetoric of woo, but I was apparently mistaken? I'm guessing this is a terminology common to HA regulars for some facet of audiophile circles.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: m0rbidini on 2009-06-03 02:36:46
Even if general relativity was untestable due to technical limitations when it was first presented by Einstein, it was falsifiable using standard scientific reasoning and thought experiments which were later acomplished.

The problem with "audiophools" (sorry, can't think of a less biased word at the moment) is not the scientific theories or hypotheses presented. The problem lies in the denial of scientific methods and in the claims of opinions as facts.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-03 02:55:12
What is considered controversial in the audio world today revolves, almost exclusively, around listener perceptions which cannot be validated with blind testing.


Understatement of the facts.

Most if not all of the controversies revolve around listener perceptions that:

(1) Perceive large differences where no relevant differences exist.
(2) Perceive large differences where the relevant differences that do exist are orders of magnitude below well-known human thresholds of hearing, based on blind testing.
(3) Perceive large differences that are smaller than those that are found to be reliably discernable, even when using recognized listening tests methods that aren't exactly blind.
(4) Perceive large differences where the relevant differences that do exist that are orders of magnitude below well-known human thresholds of hearing, based on our understandings of human physiology.

Quote
It is true that the "mainstream scientific thought" on the matter (if there is one in the first place) does not make particularly detailed explanations of these perceptions/beliefs.


?????????????

Quote
A lot of it boils down to "it's placebo" which frankly, isn't particularly persuasive. Unfortunately the competing theories offered are even less persuasive. IMHO.


The better explanation is that the perceptions are due to audible illusions. 

In fact the human brain is the most powerful organ in the body and it can supercede the sensations of most if not all other parts of the body.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 04:25:20
Some audiophiles are really quick to assert the incompleteness of human knowledge of audio, particularly Beltists - nlsteele, I suppose you wouldn't have an alter ego with a last name "Frog"?  - but I think if such a gap in knowledge exists, it rests exclusively in the psychological realm, not the psychoacoustic. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! If music companies had a better understanding of how people derive enjoyment from music, they certainly wouldn't be in as dire straits as they are in now. And I can certainly see how a choice of format - particularly vinyl with its larger artwork and "tactile" interface requirements - could correlate with such enjoyment. And audiophiles, ostensibly representing a group of people who derive much pleasure from music and have much knowledge of how to configure environments to maximize such enjoyment, could still be respected in a world that went completely skeptical and pro-DBT.

Everyone, or particularly Krabapple, is there some sort of doctrine on this "audio woo" you guys are talking about? I was assuming Michael was talking about something else when said the rhetoric of woo, but I was apparently mistaken? I'm guessing this is a terminology common to HA regulars for some facet of audiophile circles.


heh. Are you sure you want to know?

well, for starters there's cable craziness; used to be just speaker cable and old fashioned RCA interconnects, but now we even have USB CABLE WOO:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/...mber-USB-Review (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Kimber-Kable-Kimber-USB-Review)

for tweaks, the perhaps classic example is the 'green marker' tweak from the early 90s
http://www.snopes2.com/music/media/marker.htm (http://www.snopes2.com/music/media/marker.htm)

and there's the ever-popular Shakti bamboozelry
http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm (http://www.shakti-innovations.com/hallograph.htm)

But it just doesn't get more woo than than Machina Dynamica...and no surprise, it even cites quantum mechanics as the mechanism! I present to you:
Brilliant Pebbles (http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm)
Teleportation Tweak (http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina60.htm)
Audiophile-Grade Outlet COVERS (http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina44.htm)

and as for the audio craziness of the Belts (Peter and May), here is an example, tunnel down into the website for more:
http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/product/odl/One_Drop_Liquid.html (http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/product/odl/One_Drop_Liquid.html)

of note here on HA has been the recent dustups over LP demagnetization (there is also a CD demag tweak)
http://www.musicdirect.com/product/73520 (http://www.musicdirect.com/product/73520)

(the musicdirect catalog  is, itself , a swirling sucking vortex of audio woo)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: greynol on 2009-06-03 04:51:14
well, for starters there's cable craziness; used to be just speaker cable and old fashioned RCA interconnects, but now we even have USB CABLE WOO:

Don't forget the $500 Denon ethernet cable.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ed Seedhouse on 2009-06-03 06:10:44
The rotation of the world around the sun for two.


Our world doesn't "rotate" around the Sun at all.  It rotates around it's own internal axis of rotation, in about 24 hours.

It revolves around said Sun, more or less, which I suppose is what you meant, but your apparent confusion about the terminology is a bit concerning.

Actually, to be more precise, both the Earth and the Sun revolve about a common center of gravity, which happens to be located within the body of the Sun, but not at it's center.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-06-03 06:40:05
'Observational science' ..you mean astrology?


Would Kepler count as a scientist, in some loose sense of the word? At one time he had a day job as official astrologer for a German city, and I think Braehe was a court astrologer.

The point is that, at certain stages, science can be mixed up with woo; there was a time when it was intellectually respectable to be interested in ESP.

Scientists get taught a particularly 19th century rationalist version of intellectual history, which includes a travesty of the Middle Ages, a deliberate ignoring of the fact that the Renaissance was the golden age of woo, and a conflation of the ideas of the Renaissance with those of the Enlightenment. This does matter, because it leads to an oversimplified view of how we might advance the cause of reason without narrow dogmatism--even in such a peripheral endeavour as audio.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 08:06:19
The rotation of the world around the sun for two.


Our world doesn't "rotate" around the Sun at all.  It rotates around it's own internal axis of rotation, in about 24 hours.

It revolves around said Sun, more or less, which I suppose is what you meant, but your apparent confusion about the terminology is a bit concerning.

Actually, to be more precise, both the Earth and the Sun revolve about a common center of gravity, which happens to be located within the body of the Sun, but not at it's center.


Aren't you the clever boy.

---------------------------

Greynol, that's my favorite set of amazon reviews ever (and tags). Restored my basic faith in humanity.

---------------------------

Krabapple, is Machina Dynamica real or just a spoof site? Those pebbles were the deal breaker for me. I can't believe anyone would really tape pebbles to their interconnects. That's pet rock bad. Thanks for providing all the links (though I feel my faith in humanity dwindling again).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 08:17:49
and as for the audio craziness of the Belts (Peter and May), here is an example, tunnel down into the website for more:
http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/product/odl/One_Drop_Liquid.html (http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/product/odl/One_Drop_Liquid.html)


You know, it's sad because there's some really cool stuff coming out of more scientific pipelines that's WAY more interesting and that this will likely steal some credibility from because of the way it's purporting the same kind of thing, the influence of the observer. I give you the global consciousness project (I didn't buy it when I first saw it either, read a while on it): http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ (http://noosphere.princeton.edu/)

The really stupid thing is Belt's postulate is testable by having blindfolded listeners sit at a listening position right beside a sighted-audiophile/sighted-normal based on random assignment. They'd be able to tell you if the quantum influence of the observation of the sighted audiophile was able to change the SQ at the listening point.

Krabapple, again, thanks for clearing this up for me. I'm glad to know who the "Beltists" are and to count myself not amongst them (though I now get the joke, Axon , nice one).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: sxr71 on 2009-06-03 08:25:27
I would have thought that the number of synesthetes within the audiophile community to be in proportion to the number of synesthetes in the wider population. If anything, I'd even make a wild guess that the number of those with sound->colour synesthesia that own audio equipment would be slightly lower than the wider population, because if I had an in-head visualizer permanently switched on, I'd be more editorial in my listening.

That audiophiles can hear a three-dimensional 'soundstage' would suggest one of three things:

1. They are making stuff up
2. They all have OCD when it comes to setting up their systems, and this is the pay-off
3. They are making stuff up again

I know #1 and #3 are similar, but it's such an important point, it's worth repeating.

I suspect this 3D stuff is smoke and mirrors, especially as whenever I attend an unamplified classical concert, I struggle to identify the point in space where the second violinist sits if I close my eyes. But perhaps what they are describing is their brain over-compensating because supposed distance cues are being artificially rebuilt from something a fraction of that distance away in reality. The fact that the instrument may have been less than a foot from the microphone and the only mechanism for stereo positioning at the engineer's desk is a pan-pot is irrelevant - if you have an instrument that you anticipate being 20 feet away, your brain will attempt to locate it 20 feet away. If the loudspeakers are giving precise HRTF cues to the distance of that instrument, but that places the instrument six feet away instead of 20, your brain might conceivably struggle with the dichotomy and over-compensate by making you think stereo is more three-dimensional. This over-compensation could potentially be more noticeable if the loudspeakers are in very precise placement relative to the listener and the loudspeaker-room interaction was particularly favourable. And if there's one thing most audiophiles have in common, it's precise placement of loudspeakers and listener.

That's a whole lot of 'ifs' and 'maybes', though. Trouble is, we'll never know for sure, 'ifs' and 'maybes' seem to be all part of the audiophile magical mystery tour. If you ask 'why', chances are you'll get a Yoda-like response: Disturbance there is in the dark side of the cables. Phase is what you seek, yesssss.


All of a sudden a person who cares about speaker placement has OCD. I don't comment on your lack of care of speaker placement and diagnose you with a mental illness thereof.

The stereo "effect" requires careful speaker placement and succeeds to vary degrees based on the room. Certain speakers due to to their dispersal patterns succeed more than others in a given room.

With that out of the way, I can always hear left to right instrument placement. However I cannot say that it is clear whether one instrument is in front of or behind another. I think at that point one must begin to imagine the positions of instruments behind and in front of others. They then must use the information coming from the speakers to support their view of some sound being in front of or behind another sound.

I have listened to a recording made in a church of a person with loud shoes walking in a straight line towards a stereo mic setup. I listened on a system that cost in the range of $15,000. I have to admit that if I wasn't exactly told what was going on in the recording it would have been difficult to really tell what was being recorded apart from the fact that the sound does get louder as he walks towards the mic(s) (which I think is a moot point in the case of a live performance where performers are mere feet away from each other) and that as he gets closer the "image"shifts from center to both speakers independently. I suppose that happens when he walks between the mics and past them.

So I think basically people need to imagine this "depth" aspect to some extent and what they hear in terms of depth is based on what they imagine.

Listening to a large orchestra on the other hand gives you the distances that enable you to hear a particular instrument from behind others. However if you've never been to the orchestra you would just know from the acoustic cues that the position of the harp is different from the violins but you wouldn't really be able to state that one is behind the other. Only if you know the harp is behind the violins can you then interpret the different acoustic cues of the harp and say it is behind the violins.

All in all I wouldn't go so far as to say they are making it up but rather that they exaggerate the capability of stereo to provide a real feeling of depth and they fail to either understand or properly express the role of prior knowledge in this perception of "depth".
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: sxr71 on 2009-06-03 09:04:22
well, for starters there's cable craziness; used to be just speaker cable and old fashioned RCA interconnects, but now we even have USB CABLE WOO:

Don't forget the $500 Denon ethernet cable.


Well, yes I wouldn't have expected a company like Denon to pull this kind of stunt but I guess everyone has mouths to feed.


This same sort of thing happens with "gamers" in computing. These are the guys who claim to need 180 frames per second and buy $200 ethernet cards that do exactly the same thing as the one built into the motherboard of all modern computers for about a $1 in cost at most.

I can cite other examples like the Totem beak for one, but the drop of water thing takes the cake.

As for MP3 at 128KBPS vs. CD I believe personally that I have heard a difference. It happens once in a rare while but it happens when I am listening to a song and I wonder why it doesn't sound like I remember (or frankly why I don't feel as I usually do when listening to that song) and then I discover I'm accidentally playing the MP3 and not the FLAC. I suppose when being tested the human mind wants to "pick up" on something and is tuned to a different analytical set of faculties that ironically are the wrong set to pick out the difference between these two audio formats. When one sits down to listen and enjoy music I believe a different set of faculties comes into play and I personally believe based on my experience that you can sometimes be caught playing the wrong file. The realization tends to come a few songs into a well listened to album. It's actually happened to me once when I found I was playing the CD layer instead of the SACD layer of a particular album. That has only happened to me once in my recollection and in fact surprises me also.

That needed to happen to me 3 times before I decided on FLAC at home and 256kbps on the iPod and ideally ALAC on the iPod when we see them equipped with 1TB Flash memory on day about 5 years from now. But in general, where in my youth I was attracted by the audiophile marketing machine, I now find myself repelled by it. I think my first pro-audio purchase set me straight very quickly.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: sxr71 on 2009-06-03 09:18:45
The rotation of the world around the sun for two.


Our world doesn't "rotate" around the Sun at all.  It rotates around it's own internal axis of rotation, in about 24 hours.

It revolves around said Sun, more or less, which I suppose is what you meant, but your apparent confusion about the terminology is a bit concerning.

Actually, to be more precise, both the Earth and the Sun revolve about a common center of gravity, which happens to be located within the body of the Sun, but not at it's center.


Aren't you the clever boy.

---------------------------

Greynol, that's my favorite set of amazon reviews ever (and tags). Restored my basic faith in humanity.

---------------------------

Krabapple, is Machina Dynamica real or just a spoof site? Those pebbles were the deal breaker for me. I can't believe anyone would really tape pebbles to their interconnects. That's pet rock bad. Thanks for providing all the links (though I feel my faith in humanity dwindling again).


You won't believe some of the stuff they have out there. They have these special wooden blocks that life the cable a certain distance from the ground and are made of a certain material and create or rather mitigate a certain negative physical effect caused by the cable lying on a floor or carpet and then it is followed usually by what exactly the difference in sound will be etc. etc. So basically they manufacture a effect with some vague explanation that is killing your sound and then they offer you a fix for lots of $$$. Then they tell you exactly what to expect so that you basically believe it when you listen.

The thing that gets me is that these are things that invented. It indicates malicious intent on the part of the purveyor. What observed problem exactly were they attempting to solve? So they basically create one to make extra money.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-03 12:40:43
I do wonder if we do any good to the audiophile magazine's "resistance to subjecting such claims" by bullying one of their editors when he actually starts discussing matters in a testable way (and even comes over to the counterpoint's camp to share in that discussion).

What do you think John Atkinson is trying to achieve by braving the bullying and posting here?


Assuming this question is not rhetorical, I do enjoy a good discussion. But, at least in the latter part of this thread, I have been demonstrating the irony that underlies the discussion of Arny Krueger's recording example: that it is the so-called "subjectivist," who has been offering observations supported by subsequent measurement and backed up by theory, and that it is the self-declared believer in Scientific Method who has bee arguing from an unsupported position of faith, expectation bias, self interest, and the active dismissal of scientific theory.

The larger point, of course, that is illustrated by the exchanges with Mr. Krueger, is that the denizens of this forum, despite the adherence to Science that they share with Mr. Krueger, are also human and thus equally likely to be led by their beliefs as those they criticize. I am in Mr. Krueger's debt for offering me the opportunity to illustrate what would otherwise be unsupported opinion with an actual example.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-06-03 13:30:17
The rotation of the world around the sun for two.


Our world doesn't "rotate" around the Sun at all.  It rotates around it's own internal axis of rotation, in about 24 hours.

It revolves around said Sun, more or less, which I suppose is what you meant, but your apparent confusion about the terminology is a bit concerning.

Actually, to be more precise, both the Earth and the Sun revolve about a common center of gravity, which happens to be located within the body of the Sun, but not at it's center.


Actually the earth still is the center of the universe. A couple of hundred years ago god just changed the pattern the universe is circulating around us. The catholic church had more and more become a perversion of his original Christian message, got swellheaded and power hungry. Much of his most talented breed had been killed in their dungeons. So he changed the sun's rotation around the earth into a complex circular pattern that lets it look like the earth is rotating around the sun. This bolstered some really bright heads afterwards and generally made it look like we are just some minor periphery in much larger entity. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good and mankind took off like it never had before.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-03 13:53:59
The larger point, of course, that is illustrated by the exchanges with Mr. Krueger, is that the denizens of this forum, despite the adherence to Science that they share with Mr. Krueger, are also human and thus equally likely to be led by their beliefs as those they criticize. I am in Mr. Krueger's debt for offering me the opportunity to illustrate what would otherwise be unsupported opinion with an actual example.


Just another example of John's misunderstanding of science and belief.

The idea that people who try to follow the lead of scientific findings are necessarily otherwise any different from anybody else is a myth. Basically, most people just wake up in the morning, and  get on with their lives.  When presented with a new question, most of us rely on what we have learned and experienced up to that point to guide us. On occasion, some of us will do a little research or ask a better informed person about things we have recently experienced that we have not yet reached many conclusions about. One of the places where people differ is what they already know and have experienced and how they perceived those things. The other is how they resolve questions about things they are as yet unfamiliar with - how they research those questions and what references they use.

On HA, there seems to be a high proportion of people who have varying but generally above-average amounts of being well-informed about the findings of science and how they apply to audio. But they are not exactly alike in terms of belief or practice.  If for example you go onto the Stereophile forum, you find a completely different kind of person - people who are largely ignorant of the findings of science and how they apply to audio and seemingly pretty proud of it. While there is an obvious attitude of respect and interest in science on HA, over at SP the findings of science are routinely belittled, and in general the posters could be less interested in science, but only if they tried really hard.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-03 16:11:13
As an active and participating experimental scientist, I can tell you without qualification that scientific progress and science itself is often adversarial debate.

In which case you should be able to put forward some examples. But I am going to add a qualification and that is not examples from the "soft sciences" but examples from the real sciences that are based on scientific laws/hypotheses. The qualification is important because it is basing reasoning on a pyramid of established, self-supporting and agreed "facts" that makes adversarial debate meaningless. In order to disagree one side has got to believe one thing while the other believes something else but if both sides have signed up for the scientific method then this is not an option.


Well, for one example from the "hard" science of physics: http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html (http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html)

The debate over Hawking's Information Loss Paradox.


Thanks very much for the link.

Quote
Do I really need to provide you some more or is this satisfactorily far enough away from those bad old "soft" sciences I'm part of?


There is also the fact that the rotation of spiral galaxies does not conform to their calculated masses, requiring either the existence of a mysterious dark matter or an adjustment to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, neither of which sit comfortably with established viewpoints.

And someone mentioned the Placebo Effect. In that connection, I have been reading about Valium, which is a very successful drug. However, it appears that in blind clinical trials, if the patient does not know he is being given Valium, it shows no improvement over the placebo. But if the patient _does_ know he is being given Valium, it has a _greater_ effect than the placebo. These two results strike me as being paradoxical in the extreme.

I admit that this is getting distant from audio issues, however.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-06-03 16:20:33
Thing is, 10 placebo pills won't kill you. But, no matter what you think you are getting, 10 valium will first relax your mind, then your lungs... 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 16:23:49
Quote
Krabapple, is Machina Dynamica real or just a spoof site? Those pebbles were the deal breaker for me. I can't believe anyone would really tape pebbles to their interconnects. That's pet rock bad. Thanks for providing all the links (though I feel my faith in humanity dwindling again).


I've wondered for years if Machina Dynamica's a work of performance art.  But there are audiophiles that certainly do buy into it -- visit a place called AudioAsylum.com and see.

Geoff Kait (apparently the person behind MA) also posts to Stereophile's forum, and seems to believe his own nonsense.

Stereophile itself takes an editorially 'agnostic' approach to Belt and MA...which I find equally amusing.  (Are they merely 'agnostic' about unicorns too?)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 16:33:41
And someone mentioned the Placebo Effect. In that connection, I have been reading about Valium, which is a very successful drug. However, it appears that in blind clinical trials, if the patient does not know he is being given Valium, it shows no improvement over the placebo. But if the patient _does_ know he is being given Valium, it has a _greater_ effect than the placebo. These two results strike me as being paradoxical in the extreme.


Pubmed link?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-03 16:36:35
Thing is, 10 placebo pills won't kill you. But, no matter what you think you are getting, 10 valium will first relax your mind, then your lungs... 


Not only that, but as usual Atkinson did not tell the whole truth about his anecdote if it is referrring to this study:

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/conten...tract/121/8/809 (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/121/8/809)

The study related only to the use of Vallium for treating people with neurotic disorders (e.g. anxiety). However, Vallium is also used to treat many situations including:
agitation, shakiness, and hallucinations during alcohol withdrawal and to relieve certain types of muscle pain. The study does not seem to relate to them at all.

So Atkinson's summary was (no surprise!) overly-broad to the point of being misleading.  The study's results probably relate as much if not more to general issues involved with the treatment of anxiety, as to any situation related to the use of placebos.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-06-03 17:03:21
Stereophile itself takes an editorially 'agnostic' approach to Belt and MA...which I find equally amusing.  (Are they merely 'agnostic' about unicorns too?)


Mostly agnostic, but not entirely.  They did publish the 'Chips for Chumps' (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/505awsi/index.html) article.  This brought out a lot of very angry responses from, among others, industry insiders engaged in nominally legitimate pursuits.  Yet for some of these insiders, challenging the "suspension of disbelief" concept of high-end audio was getting just a bit too close to home I guess.  For examples of these responses, see here (http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?searchtext=chips+chumps&b=AND&topic=&topics_only=N&author=&date1=&date2=&slowmessage=&sort=score&sortOrder=DESC&forum=critics).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-03 17:39:33
Quote
And someone mentioned the Placebo Effect. In that connection, I have been reading about Valium, which is a very successful drug. However, it appears that in blind clinical trials, if the patient does not know he is being given Valium, it shows no improvement over the placebo. But if the patient _does_ know he is being given Valium, it has a _greater_ effect than the placebo. These two results strike me as being paradoxical in the extreme.


Thing is, 10 placebo pills won't kill you.


Of course, no-one is denying that Valium affects the body's chemistry.

Quote
But, no matter what you think you are getting, 10 valium will first relax your mind, then your lungs... 


But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.
 
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ed Seedhouse on 2009-06-03 18:00:21
Actually the earth still is the center of the universe.


As a matter of fact I have read that there is a way to consistently map the observed universe onto a model that does indeed have the Earth at it's center. But though it works perfectly well and explains all our observations, it is little believed because it involves things that go counter to our common sense views of reality.  If I recall right it involves, for instance, believing that objects actually do get smaller as they recede from the observer.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-03 18:34:31
And someone mentioned the Placebo Effect. In that connection, I have been reading about Valium, which is a very successful drug. However, it appears that in blind clinical trials, if the patient does not know he is being given Valium, it shows no improvement over the placebo. But if the patient _does_ know he is being given Valium, it has a _greater_ effect than the placebo. These two results strike me as being paradoxical in the extreme.


Pubmed link?


The link to the original paper was provided by Arny Krueger. The results, of course concerned treatment for anxiety, which is the primary purpose of the drug.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ethan Winer on 2009-06-03 19:14:04
The better explanation is that the perceptions are due to audible illusions.


And of course Comb filtering (http://www.ethanwiner.com/believe.html).

Sorry, I couldn't resist!

--Ethan
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 19:29:53
Thing is, 10 placebo pills won't kill you. But, no matter what you think you are getting, 10 valium will first relax your mind, then your lungs... 


Not only that, but as usual Atkinson did not tell the whole truth about his anecdote if it is referrring to this study:

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/conten...tract/121/8/809 (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/121/8/809)


Sorry, I'm missing something.  The 1965 study in that link concluded that there was no statistically significant difference between the three treatments (two drugs and one placebo).

What paper (or papers, since JA refers to "blind clinical trials", plural) is JA referring to?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-03 19:38:46
But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.


Given the state of denial of the connection between mind and body that you believe in John, I can understand how you are mystified.

Here is what I see.

Anxiety is a state of mind. Train some people to believe that Valium changes their state of mind by reducing their anxiety. Then give them what they think is Valium. Their pre-existing state of mind which is to believe that Valium reduces anxiety  reinforces the actual receipt of Valium. Their state of mind changes, and they are now less anxious.

Valium is a very old drug (> 40 years) , and AFAIK there is no reliable science about how it directly works on the chemistry of the brain in ways that are uniquely and specifically related to anxiety. I'm not saying that we don't know what Valium does to brain chemistry, rather I'm saying that Valium's effects are very generalized and non-specific. 

This is different from many newer drugs whose direct chemical effects on various aspects of the operation of the brain were predicted from their chemistry, and specific chemical events in the brain related to the malady that they seem to address.

I'm kinda hip to this because I have two kids with PhDs that are directly related to biochemistry.

This applies to Audio Golden Earism quite directly. The essence of Audio Golden Earism is that very generalized changes to audio gear are said by many to make changes in people's brains that seem to be very non-specific.  "Vastly Improved Soundstaging" seems to me to be about as non-specific as "reduced anxiety".  We've already found that in a similar way that this study finds Valium being indistinguishable from a placebo in blind tests, many of these non-specific changes to audio gear turn out to be indistinguishable from a placebo in blind tests.

One of the strong indicators that Golden Earism involves psychological, not technical effects is the fact that everything seems to make things "sound better". This is contrary to my experience with recording where some things make things sound better, some make things sound worse, and some things have no effect.

The art of recording informs many people about placebo effects because it is fairly easy to catch yourself adjusting a knob that seemingly makes a difference, and then finding out that the function that the knob adjust is bypassed.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 20:00:19
Stereophile itself takes an editorially 'agnostic' approach to Belt and MA...which I find equally amusing.  (Are they merely 'agnostic' about unicorns too?)


Mostly agnostic, but not entirely.  They did publish the 'Chips for Chumps' (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/505awsi/index.html) article.  This brought out a lot of very angry responses from, among others, industry insiders engaged in nominally legitimate pursuits.  Yet for some of these insiders, challenging the "suspension of disbelief" concept of high-end audio was getting just a bit too close to home I guess.  For examples of these responses, see here (http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?searchtext=chips+chumps&b=AND&topic=&topics_only=N&author=&date1=&date2=&slowmessage=&sort=score&sortOrder=DESC&forum=critics).


This is a fantastic read in a magazine that most folks would presuppose to be *the* purveyor of snake oil itself rather than an occasional critic of such. Thanks for sharing it, Andy C.

John, is there any chance of getting Jim Austin onto HA? A PhD in Physics would probably contribute positively to our discussions of gravity and QM.

Although I suppose we might want to shoot for getting one of Arnold's kids on here since we seem to be pushing over into a discussion of Valium. Zzzzzzz........

Not to bring up an awkward topic, but at the end of the day, Stereophile is a magazine and they have ad copy to sell. I'd guess they'll sell more ad copy by maintaining some loyalty to all the entrenched camps that read it as well as by raking up some controversy amongst the other ones. That may be a little cynical, but most business models seem to be a little cynical at their core in the guise of pragmatism. If they were a technical journal, I could see differently, but this is along the lines in my mind of arguing over why USA Today is such a banal paper; it's banal because it sells as such.

-------------------------------

Krabapple, after reading through more of your links today, I'm really on the fence about Machina Dynamica. The thing that keeps me thinking it a spoof are the posters on each page. I'm hopeful, though, because I love things like the Museum of Jurassic Technology: http://www.mjt.org/ (http://www.mjt.org/) (entirely spoof/art, but they commit so much it makes you wonder sometimes)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-03 20:55:54
This is a fantastic read in a magazine that most folks would presuppose to be *the* purveyor of snake oil itself rather than an occasional critic of such. Thanks for sharing it, Andy C.



I was referring to what the editor in chief has written in his 'As We See It" take on this topic:

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/787/index.html (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/787/index.html)

Peter Belt's arrant nonsense is dismissed on the grounds that not only is it scientifically nonsense -- which should be sufficient -- but it's *too expensive*.  (This is kinda like 'the food was terrible and the portions were too small')

But see in particular the report about the Tice clock that ends the essay.

The ability to dismiss the claims on excellent scientific and logical grounds, and then suggest in effect 'but try it, if you can afford it -- you might like it', and also report a difference from sighted evaluation as if it had any force, is classic Stereophile wriggle.


Quote
John, is there any chance of getting Jim Austin onto HA? A PhD in Physics would probably contribute positively to our discussions of gravity and QM.


Yes, that's what HA needs more of: discussion of the roles of gravity and quantum mechanics in audio. And let's not forget string theory.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-03 21:57:11
But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.


Given the state of denial of the connection between mind and body that you believe in John, I can understand how you are mystified.


Your comments might be taken more seriously, Mr. Krueger, if you refrained from putting words in others' mouths or restrained your attempts at reading minds. I have not said anything that pertains to the connection or lack of connection between mind and body, whether on this forum or anywhere else.

Quote
One of the strong indicators that Golden Earism involves psychological, not technical effects is the fact that everything seems to make things "sound better".


Not in Stereophile, Mr. Krueger. We have found that some things have no effect, and that others sometimes make the sound worse, as you would know if you actually read the magazine you routinely criticize.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-03 21:59:20
John, is there any chance of getting Jim Austin onto HA? A PhD in Physics would probably contribute positively to our discussions of gravity and QM.


Jim posts regularly to Audio Asylum. I'll suggest he lurk on HA for a while.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy_c on 2009-06-03 22:23:16
This is a fantastic read in a magazine that most folks would presuppose to be *the* purveyor of snake oil itself rather than an occasional critic of such. Thanks for sharing it, Andy C.

Well, this kind of article is not something they do very often.  And since it violated Salvatore's Rule #1 (http://www.high-endaudio.com/reviewers.html#Rul), I don't see them repeating an article like this anytime soon .

Even though I am a pretty harsh critic of Stereophile, I don't consider them to be a "purveyor of snake oil" per se.  I consider them overall to be skilled obfuscators whose main purpose is to support and justify what the industry is doing, while falsely claiming to be all about the readers.  There are exceptions with individual writers though.  I'd consider John Marks, Kal Rubinson and Jim Austin to not fit this pattern.  I'm referring to the overall editorial tone and direction the mag has taken.

Quote
John, is there any chance of getting Jim Austin onto HA? A PhD in Physics would probably contribute positively to our discussions of gravity and QM.

Since neither gravity nor QM have much of anything to do with audio, I assume you're joking?  Jim is a good guy though.

Quote
Krabapple, after reading through more of your links today, I'm really on the fence about Machina Dynamica. The thing that keeps me thinking it a spoof are the posters on each page.

I'm not Krabapple, but I assure you it's quite serious.  If you're interested in a spoof of audio tweaks, look here (http://www.nathanmarciniak.com/elemental/).  In a similar vein, one guy tried "scamming the scammer" with the Machina Dynamica "Teleportation Tweak".  That experience was described here (http://www.audioannex.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=5&Number=84695&page=&view=&sb=&o=), and got the user booted from Audio Asylum.  (Warning!  That site has no rules and is not for the faint of heart!)  Also, Machina Dynamica discontinued the money back guarantee for that "product" after the incident.  Note that links to audioasylum.com from audioannex.com don't work.  To follow the links, you need to copy the link, then paste it into your browser.  This is because the audioasylum.com code looks at the referrer and redirects to Taco Bell if the referrer is audioannex.com.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-03 22:34:48
Well, for one example from the "hard" science of physics: http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html (http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html)

The debate over Hawking's Information Loss Paradox.

Do I really need to provide you some more or is this satisfactorily far enough away from those bad old "soft" sciences I'm part of?

Let us consider your example. Recalling the scientific method from your school days, how much of that process is involved in what is presented on the page? And the adversarial debate, if one may stretch to calling it that, determines precisely what in terms of the eventual output from the scientific method?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-03 22:51:09
>> What do you think John Atkinson is trying to achieve by braving the bullying and posting here?
> Honestguv, open discussion from all perspectives?

It would be a more informative answer without the question mark. No, I would judge that he is quite strongly constrained by his job as to what he can or wants to be open about.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-03 23:14:41
The larger point, of course, that is illustrated by the exchanges with Mr. Krueger, is that the denizens of this forum, despite the adherence to Science that they share with Mr. Krueger, are also human and thus equally likely to be led by their beliefs as those they criticize.

I would disagree with the equally and it is obviously going to vary between individuals but otherwise I think it is a fair point.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-03 23:26:10
Just another example of John's misunderstanding of science and belief.

Obviously he gets some things wrong, we all do, but is it mainly misunderstanding or understanding and misdirection? I have tended to pick up more of the latter although this is based on a relatively small number of postings and articles.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-03 23:35:14
Well, for one example from the "hard" science of physics: http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html (http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html)

The debate over Hawking's Information Loss Paradox.

Do I really need to provide you some more or is this satisfactorily far enough away from those bad old "soft" sciences I'm part of?

Let us consider your example. Recalling the scientific method from your school days, how much of that process is involved in what is presented on the page? And the adversarial debate, if one may stretch to calling it that, determines precisely what in terms of the eventual output from the scientific method?


Honestguv, not to get too far OT (and yes, I was joking about Jim Austin contributing to physics discussion, Andy C; though I think he could contribute on many levels) I think you're oversimplifying science as a human pursuit if you limit it to only those particular instances in which someone forms a falsifiable hypothesis based on empirical observation and goes about attempting to falsify it and then provides enough information to allow others to replicate it (i.e., only those situations in which the scientific method is directly applied and ignoring all discussion around the findings made via this method, as you seem to propose).

There's this whole thing often referred to as a scientific community, since as human beings we are limited in the spans of our lives, we often have to rely on others to complete the work we begin in ours. This makes science an inherently social process (this is even ignoring arguments like Reid would make regarding the "common sense" and how it defines science; I would also point out that James Burke has made similar arguments recently). Any social process is prone to the same kinds of dynamics that your basic relationships are: fighting, politicking, argument, biases, etc.. I'm not saying that all science is produced by this process, but what an individual chooses to pursue in their research, what conferences it gets presented at, what outlets it gets published in, who you work with, and who you study under are all defined by these kinds of relationships. I've seen Watson arguing with other researchers over the nature and interpretation of genomic findings, I've seen more physicists arguing amongst themselves over string theory, m theory, QM, than I can shake a stick at, and over in the nasty soft sciences, I've been first hand witness to some of the most venemous interactions over scientifically testable postulates I've ever heard of. There are scientists that refuse to talk to one another for entire lifetimes.

They're people at the end of the day, and to paraphrase Hume, it's fine to be a philosopher when you're in your study, but when you put your slippers on and get ready for bed, you still have to live as a man.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-04 12:13:11
The larger point, of course, that is illustrated by the exchanges with Mr. Krueger, is that the denizens of this forum, despite the adherence to Science that they share with Mr. Krueger, are also human and thus equally likely to be led by their beliefs as those they criticize.

I would disagree with the equally and it is obviously going to vary between individuals but otherwise I think it is a fair point.


I actually agree with John - we are also human and thus equally likely to be led by our beliefs as those we criticize. Even though the GE regulars on the SP forum behave in childish and occasionaly subhuman ways, we're all taking about things that we believe.  The difference is mostly in the beliefs themselves, and to a lesser degree how we are led by out beliefs.

To a large degree, our beliefs are based on formal learning (e.g. books and classes) and informal learning (e.g. life's experiences).

My point is that most people with formal training in science and technology find Stereophile to be a  mixture of reasonably well-informed truth and poorly-informed speculation presented to the readers in such a way as to lead them to believe that it is all fact.

Behind the scenes Stereophile's management at least occasionally tell advertisers etc, that it is "opinon".  If anyone were to prove that Stereophile has made a false claim and sue them, Stereopile would no doubt claim protection under the First Amendment as protected speech - opinon.

One other difference is that a person who is well-informed about science knows that all findings of science are provisional until better knowlege is obtained. IME Stereophile true believers believe that the fantasy-science they have learned from reading Stereophile is immutable truth. After all, so many of them have invested so much money in that pseudo science.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-04 12:21:56
Just another example of John's misunderstanding of science and belief.

Obviously he gets some things wrong, we all do,


True, but few of us have based a magazine empire on so much fantasy published as if it were fact.

Quote
but is it mainly misunderstanding or understanding and misdirection? I have tended to pick up more of the latter although this is based on a relatively small number of postings and articles.


Well, that's the $64,000 question. You know this ABX thing has been going on for 30 years. In the beginning, the ignorance defense obviously had a lot going for it.

At this point I read John as being completely lost in his own posturing.  I think he does not think that he is wrong, even though a reasonable insightful person in his situation would at least suspect something about himself and what he is doing.

IME, a few million dollars can sway most people, particularly when the sway is in the direction of believing that they are right.  I see this in a lot of my peers - they've made a lot of money so the 60 foot yacht and megabuck home says that they did it right and are doing it right.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-04 12:25:45
But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.


Given the state of denial of the connection between mind and body that you believe in John, I can understand how you are mystified.


Your comments might be taken more seriously, Mr. Krueger, if you refrained from putting words in others' mouths or restrained your attempts at reading minds. I have not said anything that pertains to the connection or lack of connection between mind and body, whether on this forum or anywhere else.



Readers, please note that the "words I put in (Atkinson's) mouth" were direct quotes of articles that appeared in his magazine under his name that he provided the links to. 

I think we've just seen John's ongoing dissembling taking a very weird turn. :-(
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-04 20:08:40
Just another example of John's misunderstanding of science and belief.

Obviously he gets some things wrong, we all do, but is it mainly misunderstanding or understanding and misdirection? I have tended to pick up more of the latter although this is based on a relatively small number of postings and articles.



Your impression is spot on.    There is just enough lip service to science* and 'objectivism' in Stereophile so that one can pull out examples to make it seem 'fair and balanced'.  But it's not  Which is not all that surprising; it is a consumer magazine that caters to an audience that wants its subjective impression -- that high-end, high-priced gear really does sound better (and analog sounds better than digital) -- reinforced, and advertisers who would be aghast to be held to DBT standards.




(*Stereophile is particularly diligent in arguing for scientific excellence and rigor when a paper or experimental result debunking an audiophile tenet is on offer.)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Stereoeditor on 2009-06-05 13:57:04
But according to the article, if you take _one_ Valium pill of the appropriate dosage, despite the change in the body chemistry, there is no effect on the patient's state of mind - the desired outcome, which is the reduction in anxiety to which Arny Krueger has referred - that can be distinguished statistically from placebo. It is only when knowledge of the treatment is combined with the chemical change that the effect of the drug becomes statistically different from that of the placebo alone. I find that _very_ strange.


Given the state of denial of the connection between mind and body that you believe in John, I can understand how you are mystified.


Your comments might be taken more seriously, Mr. Krueger, if you refrained from putting words in others' mouths or restrained your attempts at reading minds. I have not said anything that pertains to the connection or lack of connection between mind and body, whether on this forum or anywhere else.


Readers, please note that the "words I put in [Atkinson's] mouth" were direct quotes of articles that appeared in his magazine under his name that he provided the links to.


You have lost me, Mr. Krueger. Yes, you posted a fairly long quote from a published essay of mine that included observations about sound quality you claimed violated HA's ToS#8. However, there was no violation because a) things that occur outside of HA are not obliged to conform to its Terms of Service, and b) I wasn't the one who posted these subjective observations to HA.

More importantly, your statement that I am in a "state of denial of the connection between mind and body" is not supported by the text of my essay, which is why I said you were putting words in my mouth. I was discussing Peter Craven's hypothesis, reflecting the thoughts of Barry Blesser on the perception of sound (published in the October 1988 JAES), was that with the greater information density of the sound that reaches the ears offered by higher sample rates and greater bit depths, the brain has to do less work constructing auditory objects. The basis for this hypothesis, that the ears and brain don't behave as simple microphones and that a large amount of processing is required to derive, for example, the perception of something as fundamental as a "stereo image," is hardly controversial - I refer you to any textbook on audio perception or even my own thoughts at http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/57 (http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/57).

Quote
I think we've just seen John's ongoing dissembling taking a very weird turn. :-(


"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Krueger? And a "weird turn"? All I was doing in my essay was offering anecdotal support for Peter's hypothesis, based on my own experience as a recording engineer. While you are welcome to reject those observations, of course, it is merely a dishonest tactic of what you have termed the "debating trade" to infer from them any statement of my beliefs concerning an unrelated subject. As with your observation that your technically close-to-mono recording has exaggerated stereo separation, you are letting your own beliefs and biases obscure your perception of reality. And you accuse _me_ of dissembling!

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-05 14:07:18
"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Krueger?Editor, Stereophile


No John. You butchered my post quite creatively and extensively, apparently in order to produce a fantasy that I shall not waste further time on except to deny that your post represents anything that could be considered to be intellectual honesty.

I don't know what you've been prescribed John, but you need to discuss its side effects with whoever prescribed it! :-(
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: sld on 2009-06-05 16:20:45
"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket, Mr. Krueger?

I don't know what you've been prescribed John, but you need to discuss its side effects with whoever prescribed it! :-(

When people start ad hominem, regardless of whoever is speaking on the side of truth, I think it is time to retire the thread.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2tec on 2009-06-05 17:13:23
When people start ad hominem, regardless of whoever is speaking on the side of truth, I think it is time to retire the thread.

It seems to me that people have been disparaging others throughout this thread, why should this particular instance be any different? Personally, I'm against any form of censorship and I'd like to hope that free and open discussion on this topic will continue. Indeed, if the discussion isn't either personally interesting or relevant, no one is forcing anyone else to follow it.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-06 06:14:19
They're people at the end of the day, and to paraphrase Hume, it's fine to be a philosopher when you're in your study, but when you put your slippers on and get ready for bed, you still have to live as a man.


I picked up a fascinating book today called 'Charlatan' by Pope Brock, which recounts the career of one 'Dr.' John R. Brinkley, a shameless fraud who in first half of the 1900's made piles of money transplanting goat testicles into gullible patients hoping to have their 'vitality' (read: erections) restored.

As part of setting the context, Burke describes how Brinkley operated in the 'golden age of quacks' *. Science and technology actually helped make this golden age possible because their real *successes* made people more credulous in the face of anything *claiming to be* science. THis is why half-science and pseudoscience is so sneaky, whether it's in medicine or audio, even today. 

Back in the days when electromagnetism was the 'new thing', arcane to the layman but having a valid scientific pedigree, quack treatments often claimed to involve electricity or magnetism.  Nowadays it's quantum mechanics.

Brock also makes the interesting argument that when respected scientists go badly off track -- and it's always curious when long, illustrious careers end in embrace of a dubious idea (e.g., Pauling's championship of vitamin C) -- these 'great blunderers' unwittingly perform a valuable service too -- by 'pointing the way for others to be right'.  I take this to mean that by raising the bad idea's professional profile, it leads to other scientists towards finding the 'right' answer, through trying (and failing) to prove it right, or by trying to prove it wrong.


(*and he floored me with the information that one hundred years earlier, with Jacksonian democracy all the rage, most states *removed* medical licensing requirements from their law books so that even the 'common man' could practice medicine.  The AMA was formed in direct response to that threat to professional medicine as well as public health; medical licensing soon became law again)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-06 07:58:48
Back in the days when electromagnetism was the 'new thing', arcane to the layman but having a valid scientific pedigree, quack treatments often claimed to involve electricity or magnetism.  Nowadays it's quantum mechanics.


You're forgetting that even today you can buy magnetic bracelets on infomercials that will supposedly do crap like "freshen" your blood by "aligning" your iron molecules, and we even have electrical quack treatments too. Hell, you can get laser acupuncture (?!). I wish we were as far along as a species as I usually catch myself thinking we are.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-06-06 17:54:14
well, for starters there's cable craziness; used to be just speaker cable and old fashioned RCA interconnects, but now we even have USB CABLE WOO:

Don't forget the $500 Denon ethernet cable.

Isn't there a commandment somewhere in the bible that says "thou shalt link Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1) whenever mentioning that Denon cable"?

Heathen!

That product, BTW came out just about when I was looking for an AVR, I hope someone bought one cable, cause they certainly lost the $500 I was considering spending on a Denon AVR.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: knucklehead on 2009-06-06 18:31:01
Isn't there a commandment somewhere in the bible that says "thou shalt link Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1) whenever mentioning that Denon cable"?


That has to be one of the best links ever 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-06-06 18:45:35
Regarding this side-discussion of "fringe" science, well, let's consider today's fringe stuff that's already been mentioned. Dark energy/matter, string theory, etc. Well, those things actually explain unexplained phenomena, as did General Relativity. There is a need for those explanations. And those theories aren't just pulled out of someone's ears. They predict things and are falsifiable. (Critics of string theory might disagree, but its predictions AFAIK are technologically challenged, not fundamentally impossible.) That's the common thread that links all scientific discoveries, that they explain previously unexplained stuff.

Do all these audiophile hypotheses really explain anything, let alone anything unexplained? Are they more likely than the existing scientific explanations? It seems to me that they play exactly the same game as Intelligent Design creationists, New Agers and homeopaths. "Science doesn't know everything." Yes, but it does know a LOT, and keeps discovering new things. Knowledge is progressive and cumulative. What we DO know via scientific inquiry, contradicts what these groups of people believe. If they wanna overturn science as we know it, go ahead, but they better have damn astoundingly good evidence.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-06-06 18:53:42
But such justifications do not really rely on objective or intrinsic qualities, such as the nature of the format itself. It really would be all in your head. And I think some people are frankly just not secure enough to state a preference that requires no justification, and instead use really poor or false ones. It is somewhat refreshing to hear some vinyl n00bs derive satisfaction not from any intrinsic sound quality, but from the artwork! Or even the ticks and pops themselves! It's superficial, but at the same time, it's uncommonly honest.

That's what I think too. If fans of vinyl, tube amps and such just claimed a romantic or nostalgic attachment, it would be perfectly fine with me, and I would even sympathize. If the prices matched the technology, I might even get into those things.

There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though. Or maybe some people have a romantic attachment to cables? I guess to each their own 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-06-06 19:51:47
Do all these audiophile hypotheses really explain anything, let alone anything unexplained?


Most if not all audiophile hypothesis such as those found by the bundle in various high end ragazines and web sites, serve to explain the results of sighted evaluations.

Quote
Are they more likely than the existing scientific explanations?


Depends whose talking.

Quote
It seems to me that they play exactly the same game as Intelligent Design creationists, New Agers and homeopaths. "Science doesn't know everything."


Lately, over the Stereophile forum we've been encountering a different approach - "You guys don't know science".  That's the latest approach taken by the high end, debunking the kind of *phoney science* that one finds in the JAES and IEEE.

They've got a number of papers written by what appears to be a genuine PhD who believes that 44 KHz sampling can't reproduce samples that vary by less than the sampling interval which is about 22 uSec. Therefore, higher sampling rates are required for high fidelity.

Quote
Yes, but it does know a LOT, and keeps discovering new things. Knowledge is progressive and cumulative. What we DO know via scientific inquiry, contradicts what these groups of people believe.


Well, that's because we are believers in ummm, Scientism and various false scientists.

Quote
If they wanna overturn science as we know it, go ahead, but they better have damn astoundingly good evidence.


Eve  hear of  a person named May Belt?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-06-06 20:22:18
There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though.

Why not? The pleasure audiophiles derive from possessing uber-expensive cables would seem to be exactly the same as possessing other uber-expensive audiophile components like amplifiers, CD players, and the like which usually have the same audibly neutral performance as cheap products.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-06-06 21:30:23
There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though.

Why not? The pleasure audiophiles derive from possessing uber-expensive cables would seem to be exactly the same as possessing other uber-expensive audiophile components like amplifiers, CD players, and the like which usually have the same audibly neutral performance as cheap products.

Nah, I was just saying that it's easier for me to relate with a romantic, perhaps nostalgic attachment to vinyl and tube amps, but with cables that romanticism is harder to swallow. Aren't most audiophile cables being marketed as bleeding edge anyway? Not much nostalgia over futuristic stuff.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-06 21:33:26
Brock also makes the interesting argument that when respected scientists go badly off track -- and it's always curious when long, illustrious careers end in embrace of a dubious idea (e.g., Pauling's championship of vitamin C) -- these 'great blunderers' unwittingly perform a valuable service too -- by 'pointing the way for others to be right'.  I take this to mean that by raising the bad idea's professional profile, it leads to other scientists towards finding the 'right' answer, through trying (and failing) to prove it right, or by trying to prove it wrong.


One other aside (while we're still OT), this is the optimistic case. What's unfortunate about science as it's primarily done these days is that only the "successful" experiments and research get published typically. That means that when you've got the quack who through some bad technique is able to find a result that others can't replicate, they can't publish those non-replications, and so everyone in the field can run around failing over and over to replicate a standing result in ignorance of all the others doing the same, but it does nothing to remove the result from the literature until there's either a preponderance of contradictory evidence or someone presents a theory/result that can replace the aberrant one. It can get ugly that way.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: nlsteele on 2009-06-06 21:39:37
Nah, I was just saying that it's easier for me to relate with a romantic, perhaps nostalgic attachment to vinyl and tube amps, but with cables that romanticism is harder to swallow. Aren't most audiophile cables being marketed as bleeding edge anyway? Not much nostalgia over futuristic stuff.


You're forgetting that the wealthy often run around basically miming whatever the poor have had to do at extraordinary prices and considering it high-fashion. Think of French Provencal cooking, dude ranch vacations, solo treks into the wild. It all seems based on the principal of choosing to do something making it a better act, and therefore of value equivalent to its price. Cables that cost $30K would be no different in this regard, sort of a look-how-much-I'm-willing-to-pay even though they might not even make a difference model of pleasure and self-satisfaction.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-06-06 21:46:07
Yeah, but I cannot relate to THAT!

I wish I could, though...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gnypp45 on 2009-06-06 22:17:13
There is no excuse for uber-expensive cables though.

Dare ye question thy holy writ of Transparent?  You sir, are truly "lost" as your screen name suggests!  I will now pray for you, lest your ears catch fire. Here take my hand, let us pray:

"Oh Lord of Cable Marketing, please hear our prayer and heal the wounded conscience of our dear brother andy o and his descent into madness and folly.  Strike fear into his heart with your mighty sword of advertising.  Comfort his family who no doubt spends many restlessness nights distraught over their loved one's doubt and skepticism and inevitable combustion within the pits of 99.9% Great Performance Hell.  Cast away all intelligence and reason from his mind so that he may become a pure vessel, a conduit between the ATM Machine and You.  Hear our prayer O Lord and blesseth andy o.  Amen."

Sorry, but I couldn't resist citing this funny post (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=14093.msg121521#msg121521) by 'nathamn' in another forum.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-06-07 19:13:41
One other aside (while we're still OT), this is the optimistic case. What's unfortunate about science as it's primarily done these days is that only the "successful" experiments and research get published typically. That means that when you've got the quack who through some bad technique is able to find a result that others can't replicate, they can't publish those non-replications, and so everyone in the field can run around failing over and over to replicate a standing result in ignorance of all the others doing the same,



Hence the occasional calls for a 'journal of negative results', which could prevent lots of redundant fails

But even so: in a field I'm familiar with, in the early part of the 20th C, a famous scientist promoted a wrong model that kept everyone else searching for proof for thirty years, until it was finally overthrown.  But it wasn't a total waste, some interesting biology was learned in that otherwise 'fruitless' search.

Quote
but it does nothing to remove the result from the literature until there's either a preponderance of contradictory evidence or someone presents a theory/result that can replace the aberrant one. It can get ugly that way.



However, something's that's really earthshattering, and reported by seemingly reputable labs usually gets taken apart pretty vigorously and rapidly.  Example: cold fusion.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: wave on 2009-06-23 20:03:57
Why not? The pleasure audiophiles derive from possessing uber-expensive cables would seem to be exactly the same as possessing other uber-expensive audiophile components like amplifiers, CD players, and the like which usually have the same audibly neutral performance as cheap products.



There is no sense in purchasing some expensive components, the reason for the insufficient spatial accuracy caused by the procedure itself.
The spatial distribution of the sound sources and its early reflections in the recording room mainly determine our spatial perception of a sound event. All conventional loudspeaker reproduction procedures cannot reproduce this complex spatial and temporal structures, the reduction onto a few transmission channels inevitably cause a significant loss of spatial information.

The only way out would be the holophony approach, as would be possible by the wave field synthesis principle. ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis) )

So long would be too expensive components a pure waste of money.


H.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: smok3 on 2009-07-16 20:22:51
about stereogay and ha

a. the 1st problem is, that this people write about things they don't know, so basically they are selling some fictional images/stories. There is of course nothing wrong with fiction, until you don't call that rokumentary (or worse: documentary)

b. the 2nd problem is that this kind of stuff is even debated on HA (i really would never guess that something so low-fi can happen to this nice board)

c. ok, so if whales are that smart, why can't they build an oil rig? (instead of just swimming around in those jittery waters)

d. and if somebody mentions a personal attack i did on his persona, i'am just gonna cry, for real.... (even if it's just a whale)

uhm i'am smart, look at all this analogies

edit: i need to add a shiny picture of some random equipment now, i forgot that
(http://blogs.menupages.com/sanfrancisco/brick.jpg)
this player is great (you just have to love this eq free, retro design), only jitter is still a problem (and h.264 still looks better on vinil of course).
p.s. lamps are missing on this picture, you have to purchase those separately (500eur per piece, the more, the warmer the sound is)

edit2: hmm, maybe i could write for stereogay in the future, not that hard at all, 1 minute per article is a good bet.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: PoisonDan on 2009-07-17 07:10:00
e. the third problem is that a moderator resurrects a dead thread while apparently being drunk or stoned. 
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: smok3 on 2009-07-17 10:12:26
taking the liberty to post when i find some time (and no, i'am way to busy for drug experiments...)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: instaud on 2009-07-17 13:26:47
Audiophiles have the same motivation like wine "connoisseurs" who pay 300$ for a bottle of wine, or art collectors who buy a 100,000$ painting: they explain their spending with taste and knowledge about the issue, but in reality pursue the warm, fuzzy and exciting feeling of exclusivity.

If audiophiles were truly only interested in the pure quality of sound, they would stop using reproductions which are necessarily flawed and altered during the whole chain of the recording process, from the moment the sound hits the mike's membrane. Instead, they would seek live presentation of music exclusively, because what they hear when they play a recording is just the result of many people's influences on the sound, engineered to appeal to the biggest market share. A Roxy Music LP on a 300k system (in the article) is like eating a hamburger on 1000 year old chinese porcelain - it's the hamburger which will satisfy.

You don't agree? Live concerts, or playing music yourself (the ultimate music experience!) is not what this is about, but the perfect reproduction of whatever there is on the medium? Then one has to ask why profane ABX testing is so unheard of (pun intended) in audiophile circles...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-07-17 14:55:38
Nietzsche was right. There is nothing but the eternal recurrence of the same.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-07-17 15:06:02
taking the liberty to post when i find some time (and no, i'am way to busy for drug experiments...)



OK,  but I'm still wondering how the whales fit in to all of this.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-07-17 23:18:51
Audiophiles have the same motivation like wine "connoisseurs" who pay 300$ for a bottle of wine


Actually, no. Blind tasting is an integral part of wine connoisseurship, and there is something you might call wine-sport, in which people attempt to identify unlabelled wines. Of course, there is wine snobbery, but there's also genuine interest carried well into what most people would find to be the land of diminishing returns. Also, some wine connoisseurs will happily recommend value-for-money wines.

If audiophiles were to start having fun events in which they tried to identify which brand of interconnects were being used, or even if the top-end magazines were to regularly run articles on, say, the best speakers under $500 (maybe only as something to buy for your tween kid), they would have a lot more cred.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: tfarney on 2009-07-23 20:51:48
So right. I recently got into an exchange on an audiophile forum in which wild claims were being made and and no data was being offered to support them. They had, of course, all kinds of reasons why blind testing was problematic, all based on personal speculation all including conditions of the testing that need not exist...strawman arguments. But when I asked, simply, all other things being equal what is the advantage of SEEING during listening? How coud NOT SEEING diminish an otherwise identical listening session; how, in fact could it not be more objective, there was no answer. It got very quiet.

The answer, of course, is they don't want their fantasies to be disproven.

Tim
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: smok3 on 2009-07-24 00:59:46
OK,  but I'm still wondering how the whales fit in to all of this.

how about lions? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJwgP44Ap9E...feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJwgP44Ap9E&feature=related)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: tiptoe on 2009-08-07 15:31:44
So right. I recently got into an exchange on an audiophile forum in which wild claims were being made and and no data was being offered to support them. They had, of course, all kinds of reasons why blind testing was problematic, all based on personal speculation all including conditions of the testing that need not exist...strawman arguments. But when I asked, simply, all other things being equal what is the advantage of SEEING during listening? How coud NOT SEEING diminish an otherwise identical listening session; how, in fact could it not be more objective, there was no answer. It got very quiet.

The answer, of course, is they don't want their fantasies to be disproven.

Tim


Ultimately, it is an argument that is not winnable. The audiophile will simply start repeating "What matters is personal preference." They have too much invested in their worldview, and too many people telling them they're right and the scientists are wrong.

There is an entire ecosystem of false information, over-priced products, magazines that pontificate on said information and products, and then tons of forums where the audiophiles all sit around and agree with each other. Once you buy into it, you get constant reinforcement. The more strongly you believe, the more of it you will take in and believe.

You wind up with people that will start shrieking at you the moment you mention that you require proof. This happens if you question someone's religion too. They start piling the tinder around the stakes and patting their pockets to see who has matches.




Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Axon on 2009-08-07 15:56:46
A note on science. Very few people actually believe "science is wrong". (No, that's not what you said, but it deserves clarification). Most righteous people (and I'm not limiting this statement to audiophiles here) believe that science, like reality, is on their side.  When a discrepancy occurs, of course, it's about all those people who claim to be scientists but actually don't know what they are talking about. Hence, the belief that the AES has done nothing productive for the advancement of audio quality since the 1960s, that it is populated by shills and corporate interests, etc.

Given such an observation, I tend to agree that it's more or less unproductive to start flaming audiophiles on the basis of pseudoscience. Like I've said before, I think there's a paradigmatic component to all of this and so you've got to think outside the box to communicate meaningfully. tfarney actually does a really good job of this here. The question he asked can be explained away in the audiophile worldview, but doing so may introduce a lot of cognitive dissonance. ("If blind testing introduces so much stress, how come I'm not stressed when I'm not exactly aware of somebody else's rig?" "Am I really that agitated of a person to be stressed in such an environment?" "Shouldn't a professional listener be able to calmly perform such tests without stress?") People instinctively tend to resolve such dissonances by refusing to think about them, which may not do much to convince them, but to an outsider, it's tremendously persuasive.

The reliance on personal preference is more of an apology for audiophilia than a front-line argument, and I don't think it's that common. I'm not even sure people actually believe that when they say it. That is, the righteousness to which audiophiles ascribe their beliefs reflects their belief that what they are experiencing stems from an objective reality. Thus, you have people like Robert Harley dismissing Meyer/Moran out of hand (or even engineers like Massenberg) simply because it contradicts personal, subjective, sighted experience. If it really boiled down to personal preference, audio would be a 100% relativist and they likely wouldn't be engaging in such arguments in the first place.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: tiptoe on 2009-08-07 16:57:51
The reliance on personal preference is more of an apology for audiophilia than a front-line argument, and I don't think it's that common. I'm not even sure people actually believe that when they say it.


I agree with you that it's more of an apology than an argument. However, I've run across it quite a bit. If you question it, you get something like, "Who are you to tell me what I should like?," or "What's it to you that I like _____?" I normally take it as meaning that the person can't answer my questions, but they want to "win" the argument. It's the equivalent of people who dismiss you with "Whatever."

They very likely do not really believe it, but it gives them an "out."


Quote
That is, the righteousness to which audiophiles ascribe their beliefs reflects their belief that what they are experiencing stems from an objective reality. Thus, you have people like Robert Harley dismissing Meyer/Moran out of hand (or even engineers like Massenberg) simply because it contradicts personal, subjective, sighted experience. If it really boiled down to personal preference, audio would be a 100% relativist and they likely wouldn't be engaging in such arguments in the first place.


That makes sense.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-08-07 18:34:23
You wind up with people that will start shrieking at you the moment you mention that you require proof. This happens if you question someone's religion too. They start piling the tinder around the stakes and patting their pockets to see who has matches.

Although I broadly agree with you I am going to take issue on this point. Audiophiles believe things about the physical world that are both measurable and contradict established scientific knowledge. Traditional religions generally ask for belief in matters that are not measurable and have no conflict with established scientific knowledge. I have had several stimulating conversation with holders of traditional religous beliefs with easy agreement on where we disagree broadly based on probabilities versus faith. Of course this does not hold for many wacky modern religions but even when they involve alien beings I am not sure they are quite as nonsensical as audiophile beliefs.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-08-07 19:10:37
There's nothing wrong with "personal preference" until somebody tries to generalize it.

Then we have a problem, Houston.

If you're going to generalize it, now you need to analyze it, test it, and verify it.

Which isn't necessarily impossible, I've done it, and do have others. What's MUSHRA all about, anyhow?

But the real problem is deeper, I think, there's a whole industry that does nothing but either placebo or nocebo, and they, themselves, for the most part, do not believe that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-07 19:21:20
A note on science. Very few people actually believe "science is wrong". (No, that's not what you said, but it deserves clarification). Most righteous people (and I'm not limiting this statement to audiophiles here) believe that science, like reality, is on their side.  When a discrepancy occurs, of course, it's about all those people who claim to be scientists but actually don't know what they are talking about. Hence, the belief that the AES has done nothing productive for the advancement of audio quality since the 1960s, that it is populated by shills and corporate interests, etc.


Your point is of course general but the example given applies to the Stereophile forum particularly -- and that is a *moderated* audio forum, like this one.  Such wild claims by 'all those people' typically go unchallenged by *the moderators, writers and editors who either should or do know better*.  That appears deeply cynical to me.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-08 00:24:13
You wind up with people that will start shrieking at you the moment you mention that you require proof. This happens if you question someone's religion too. They start piling the tinder around the stakes and patting their pockets to see who has matches.

Although I broadly agree with you I am going to take issue on this point. Audiophiles believe things about the physical world that are both measurable and contradict established scientific knowledge. Traditional religions generally ask for belief in matters that are not measurable and have no conflict with established scientific knowledge.

I can agree with that for fuzzy, New Agey religions, but I don't see how resurrection and male human parthenogenesis don't contradict fully science. Then you have something really out of left field like transubstantiation... shall I go on?
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-08-08 06:41:48
I can agree with that for fuzzy, New Agey religions, but I don't see how resurrection and male human parthenogenesis don't contradict fully science. Then you have something really out of left field like transubstantiation... shall I go on?

As this seems to be my day for being Mr Grumpy, those Christians who do believe in resurrection, virgin birth and transubstantiation don't necessarily question science, since all these events are classed as miracles, that is, events outside the natural order which is described by science. That, of course, is a position that can be questioned, too: and I think it possible that half the bishops in the Church of England don't believe in the Virgin Birth, Protestants in general don't believe in transubstantiation, and the literal truth of the resurrection of Jesus has been subject to question in advanced circles (people who would still claim to be Christian) since at least the 1930s.

The point of all which is that to compare the counter-rational beliefs of audiophilia with religion may be gratifying to the Dawkins fan-club, but doesn't actually say anything about sound reproduction (or grown-up religious belief). There ought to be some kind of TOS #8 about assertions of what is and is not religious belief. Me, I'm enjoying reading about Schopenhauer, especially a book by my former colleague Julian Young, who also wrote a good book called _The Death of God and the Meaning of Life_. Schopenhauer is not quite OT here, since his theory of music was influential on a number of good composers.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-08 15:06:35
Hmm I'm not even gonna get into what's "true" or "grown-up" religion and not, only on claims that contradict reality. I also wasn't talking about what people think is science. I was also gonna mention miracles as a general thing, BTW. Those do contradict science, and science may not strictly disprove an omnipotent and benevolent god (you can always ascribe some Mysterious Grand Purpose Your Little Mind Can't Understand), but it does give us plenty of information that doesn't jibe with that assumption at all.

Anyway the point honestguv was stating is that religious claims are fuzzy and don't contradict what we know objectively, as opposed to audiophile claims. I just said that most traditional religious beleifs are not really that fuzzy. The UK bishops and such you mention do have that sort of fuzzy theology, but that's also because they know better to contradict such stuff as evolution and physics.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: sld on 2009-08-08 18:19:55
I was also gonna mention miracles as a general thing, BTW. Those do contradict science, and science may not strictly disprove an omnipotent and benevolent god (you can always ascribe some Mysterious Grand Purpose Your Little Mind Can't Understand), but it does give us plenty of information that doesn't jibe with that assumption at all.

I dunno why we aren't discussing audio any more, but if science deals with the physical (whatever that can be experienced with the 5 senses) and not the metaphysical, then how exactly does science have the power to prove or disprove God? It is possible to provide plenty of apparently scientific data and conclusions, half of which allegedly prove God, leaving the other half to do the disproving, and thus we're back to treating science within proper limits: it can neither directly nor indirectly account for the metaphysical, because then we're entering the realm of philosophy (or revelational theology, if you like).
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-08 19:59:13
I wasn't talking about "God". Why do people assume there's only one? I was talking about real-world claims of most religions. If they wanna have the fuzzy god that doesn't make tangible claims, well good with me. Do you think resurrection and virgin birth of a male human is not disprovable by science? And it's not like you can just say "miracle" and expect everyone to respect that, come on.

Most educated religious people choose to have that fuzzy god, OK. They even call that "real" religion and shun more orthodox or conservative ones, fine. But don't say that that's the same "God" that makes all those other real world silly things.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: honestguv on 2009-08-08 20:46:00
Do you think resurrection and virgin birth of a male human is not disprovable by science?

Try disproving it using the scientific method.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ed Seedhouse on 2009-08-08 22:38:52
Do you think resurrection and virgin birth of a male human is not disprovable by science?

Try disproving it using the scientific method.


Well, science of course doesn't pretend to absolutely "prove" or "disprove" anything about the physical world.  The laws of thermodynamics are, however, very well established and most unlikely to ever be disproved, given what we know now.  And if the laws of thermodynamics are correct then resurrection is in any natural way is quite simply ruled out.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-08 23:28:29
Well science isn't about proving or disproving single past events, but it does tell us how the universe works, and whether those events are reproducible or even possible. And for all we know (and it's quite a bit) the universe doesn't allow for those two things.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-08-09 00:17:12
Do you think resurrection and virgin birth of a male human is not disprovable by science?

Science almost exclusively deals with the reproducible.
Events that claim to be exclusive to one occurrence are incredibly difficult for science to quantify in any meaningful sense.


The important point to note for this thread is that any qualifications we can come up with do not in any sense apply to audio.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: MichaelW on 2009-08-09 06:42:26
My real gripe is that people use the word "religion" fantastically imprecisely. When they say "religion" they normally mean American, biblical-literalist, Protestant Christianity. Try thinking about Hinduism or Buddhism for a change. Or maybe Heidegger or even Schopenhauer, who are kind of crypto-religious. Or, better yet, leave religion out of it. And maybe there is only a limited value in bashing audiophools. OMG, teh n00bs!!11!one. Yeah, all right, point made.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: CoyoteSmith on 2009-08-09 07:14:10
its impossible to completely disprove something that doesnt exist, you can come up with facts which point to something being likely untrue. that is why science takes the opposite approach, if you have an idea you call it a hypothesis, you then proceed to test your notions surrounding the hypothesis to form a series of facts which allow you to form a theory. if others are able to reproduce the same results then you can begin to verify something as fact.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-09 07:33:55
My real gripe is that people use the word "religion" fantastically imprecisely. When they say "religion" they normally mean American, biblical-literalist, Protestant Christianity.

If you're referring to me, I never said that, although I think they're also religions, only different ones, wouldn't you agree? My argument at least on this thread is against tangible, real-world claims of many religions. There are others that don't make such claims, of course I agree.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: JustListen on 2009-08-09 16:00:55
"Audiophiles" are not evil, rather they are harmless. They are harmless because they are ignorant.
The problem is that when ignorance has enough money, it creates an industry that is apathetic to progressing, because that industry can get rich by simply exploiting ignorance.


Very true. I bet all of these products

http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html (http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html)

are in his cube.


It is even worse; the first product is :

quote "

AUDIOPRISM CD STOP LIGHT PEN
The most requested tweak of them all. A certain Jesse Morris emailed me with the name of the thing, so I no longer have an excuse for not putting it in.
This is the legendary 'CD Pen' - you're supposed to colour in the edges of your CDs with it.
That's what you're supposed to do.
I have this mental image of middle-aged men, with beards and tank-tops, really carefully colouring in the sides of all their CDs. One after another. For hours on end. Then I imagine the hollow feeling they must get when they listen to their carefully prepared disks, only to find they sound exactly the same as they did before.
And now their hands are covered in ink.
And they're $20 poorer.

"end quote

The thing is they WILL hear the difference and the difference will be as clear as night and day and it will ALLWAYS be an improvement; the instruments suddenly jump from the speakers and the soundstage has become 10 times the width of the room etc. Just wait till they have changed all the fuses in their equipment with "audiograde" ones. The music out of their system has become better than it ever has been. Of course it never is enough; there is allways something else that can be done to make it even better (has anyone thought of replacing all the (copper?) tracks on the printed circuit board(s) with golden ones? I bet that that will improve the sound no end    ).

All kidding aside; it is rather amusing to read supposedly serious reviewers writing about these things. I have not yet read any review in an Audiophile magazine that states that by adding thingy X to the system (be it a goldplated fuse or a magical power cord or whatever) that it actually made the system sound worse. Of course my experience with Audiophiles magazine is limited, I just read them for fun and I don't  read very many. There must be some in this world which do take their craft seriously and try to give usefull advice. I just haven't come across one yet.

I am convinced that I won't ever hear any difference between (for example) a standard fuse and a gold plated one but a real audiophile always will. Their ears are, of course, much better than mine (I feel sad).


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: tfarney on 2009-08-12 13:21:01
Back on topic, the most interesting thing about audiophiles is the levels to which they can be, at once, self-righteous and stunningly wrong. It makes them impossible to argue with, yet I can't seem to resist.

Tim
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Moog on 2009-08-12 14:43:09
Do you think resurrection and virgin birth of a male human is not disprovable by science?

Try disproving it using the scientific method.


Simple:

Try repeating the experiment, and see if you get the same outcome!
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rick.hughes on 2009-08-12 15:35:34
Do you think resurrection and virgin birth of a male human is not disprovable by science?

Try disproving it using the scientific method.


Simple:

Try repeating the experiment, and see if you get the same outcome!


A strict requirement of replication invalidates most historical sciences (archeology, evolution, etc.). All that is really required is that the evidence can be examined by independent observers and conclusions can be agreed upon.

Also, "proof" and "disproof" in the strict philosophical sense can only be applied to logical arguments. Science can only provide us with the most likely explanation of the evidence.

In the particular case above (resurrection and virgin birth), given all that we know about the natural world, the most likely explanation for the accounts is the unreliability of human testimony.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-12 16:29:45
If evolution is a "historical science" then so is biology and for that matter, astrophysics and cosmology.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: pdq on 2009-08-12 17:07:29
An important aspect of the scientific method is that a theory be used to predict things that have yet to be observed, and that testing then confirm those predictions.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: rick.hughes on 2009-08-12 18:12:54
If evolution is a "historical science" then so is biology and for that matter, astrophysics and cosmology.

Perhaps "historical science" is not the best term though I have seen it used elsewhere when making this point. My point is that we don't have to have an experiment in order to have science, unless by experiments we simply mean observations. New fossil finds, genetic analysis, etc. confirm evolution without requiring an experiment that causes something to evolve. Likewise, we don't have to create a new universe to confirm cosmological models.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-12 22:28:16
Well since this thread has gone to the crapper long ago, we might as well discuss this. Evolution does predict, that's my point. It has predicted for instance that a certain type of organism should have existed during certain period, and then sometimes fossils are found. It uses available findings to build a theory which predicts. New evidence supports the theory. One that I can remember is the chromosome 2 fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_%28human%29) in humans, AFAIK it was predicted before the evidence was found. "Prediction" doesn't always mean some specific event that will happen in the future like an asteroid collision, but also you can predict that something will be found, based on previous evidence or theory. I don't know much about anthropology, but I presume it works the same.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-08-14 15:27:40
In the particular case above (resurrection and virgin birth), given all that we know about the natural world, the most likely explanation for the accounts is the unreliability of human testimony.
I don't think the logic holds there. It might be a reasonable possibility given what we know about human testimony, but "all that we know about the natural world" seems to have little bearing on it.

Surely the claim is that at that time, in that place, what we know about the "natural world" did not apply because something specific, non repeatable, and unnatural happened.

To argue "something unnatural can't have happened, because unnatural things can't happen" is heading towards a circular argument.


I wonder if the "human testimony" argument is much use either - if you decide that such things cannot happen, then you can stand there and watch them yourself and yet decide that what you are seeing is a trick, rather than what it purports to be.

Indeed, that's partly why the scientific method requires that other people can repeat an experiment and corroborate the observation - on the one hand because people are easily fooled, but on the other because when something genuine but new is discovered it will initially look like "magic".


Not sure what this posts adds to our commutative understanding of why we need audiophiles


Cheers,
David.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-08-14 22:22:14
Back to something resembling the OP, 'sasaudio' is off again about professional qualifications, how I was a janitory at Bell Labs, etc.

Worth a gander over at stereopile just for the laughs, I think.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-08-15 16:15:22
Back to something resembling the OP, 'sasaudio' is off again about professional qualifications, how I was a janitory at Bell Labs, etc.

Worth a gander over at stereopile just for the laughs, I think.


I read, I cried a tear for logic and reason.

I count something like 55 pubs, and watched two idiots who can't even properly write their own names dismiss it all.

Just another demonstration of how being an idiot makes you a natural part of Stereopile's market. ;-)
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: extrabigmehdi on 2009-08-16 04:33:44
I'd just like to say that I respect Fresmer for saying that we lost something from going to vinyl to CD.
I agree with the "3d special feeling", I just can't find it when listening to CD.
And I'm saying this "from memory", I  remind how vinyl were great.
But there are other aspect that are great on digital, so I  don't have too much regrets.
Overall, it's like from going to coca cola, to pepsi. Not exactly the same taste,
but you can get used to it.

But in an other hand, I think spending $350,000 on a stereo system is stupid .
Unless you have an insane amount of money to spend. And even it's the case ,
there might be wiser ways to spend such amount of money.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ed Seedhouse on 2009-08-16 06:04:45
I'd just like to say that I respect Fresmer for saying that we lost something from going to vinyl to CD.


Yeah, well we lost a lot of noise, bad pitch control, distortion, and uneven frequency response, that's true.  I for one don't miss them.  Every time I've compared a vinal record to it's CD verstion the vinyl has, by comparison, sucked, and sucked obviously.


Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: carpman on 2009-08-16 06:44:22
I'd just like to say that I respect Fresmer for saying that we lost something from going to vinyl to CD.
I agree with the "3d special feeling", I just can't find it when listening to CD.
And I'm saying this "from memory", I  remind how vinyl were great.

And many old people think the past was great (even if there was a bloody massacre going on at the time) - it's called nostalgia and it's an illusion. Ed Seedhouse has just described the reality.

C.

EDIT: chopped waffle.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Ed Seedhouse on 2009-08-16 07:02:04
And many old people think the past was great (even if there was a bloody massacre going on at the time) - it's called nostalgia and it's an illusion. Ed Seedhouse has just described the reality.


At 65 i am old enough to remember reading articles in the 1960's about how much better the good old 78's played with thorn needles were than them danged new-fangled LPs.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Woodinville on 2009-08-16 07:05:04
And many old people think the past was great (even if there was a bloody massacre going on at the time) - it's called nostalgia and it's an illusion. Ed Seedhouse has just described the reality.


At 65 i am old enough to remember reading articles in the 1960's about how much better the good old 78's played with thorn needles were than them danged new-fangled LPs.


I might be 9 years behind you but I remember some of the same nonsense, and the bit about how stereo "ruined the music", just about like how "multichannel isn't musical" nowdays.

It's a religion for those guys. If you contradict their dogma, they have no choice but to go on jihad.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: extrabigmehdi on 2009-08-16 08:40:43
Well, I  remind of listening the bad album from Michael Jackson,
It was just ten time better in term of "excitement" of what I  hear now on cd.
When I listen to the "bad" track on cd, it just seems "flat".
While with the vinyl, I got the feeling that sound was "moving" in the room.

Maybe the digital remastering crap, I don't know.
But I never got the spatial sensation I got  before, with any cd.

I bought recently a xonar stx,  high end  sennheiser headphone, some great altec lansing speakers
(I mostly listen to music in front of my computer  these times).
Nope, not the great excitement I got before.
Maybe my ears were damaged, or call it nostalgia...
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: carpman on 2009-08-16 09:08:02
Maybe the digital remastering crap, I don't know.

Very likely. There have been plenty of CDs (not just post 1995) that were mastered very poorly. Many times I've felt that sound engineers got carried away with the potential stereo seperation on CDs (when old pre-CD material was being remastered for CD) and over-did it (just because you can split the content 100% Left 100% Right, doesn't mean it's aesthetically a good move). On top of that you've also got all these loudness atrocities, but none of this says anything about the CD medium itself.

I guarantee I could transfer your Michael Jackson vinyl to CD and nothing audible would be lost, and a) I could make it sound identical, and b) I could very likely make it sound "better" (i.e. less clicks and pops and noise etc .. obviously if you like clicks and pops it wouldn't sound better, but hey). Yet, as is often pointed out, you cannot do the reverse: if you take a CD release and from it create a vinyl pressing, the vinyl medium adds its own "characteristic sound" to the mix and thus vinly simply cannot replicate CD.

C.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-08-16 10:37:01
I'd just like to say that I respect Fresmer for saying that we lost something from going to vinyl to CD.


Sicenc says that what we lost is a ton of noise and distortion.

Quote
I agree with the "3d special feeling", I just can't find it when listening to CD.


Science has an explanation for that. No matter what we hear, we remember it, and it takes the same sound to engage those old memories. If you remember music with noise and distoriton, it will take similar noise and distortion to give you "That same old feeling".

Quote
And I'm saying this "from memory", I  remind how vinyl were great.


I lived through the entire life of vinyl as a mainstream medium which was from the early 50s to the mid-80s. Yes, vinyl was a big sonic improvement over 78s, especially 78s as they were commonly played - with acoustic phonographs.

Quote
But there are other aspect that are great on digital, so I  don't have too much regrets.


The history of mainstream media shows that for most people, progress is about sound quality and convenience. The general acceptance of MP3 is a kind of proof that the CD was sonically ideal, even so ideal that a few small steps back in terms of sound quality are an acceptable trade-off to obtain more convenience.

Quote
Overall, it's like from going to coca cola, to pepsi. Not exactly the same taste,
but you can get used to it.


Since I had a long history of listening to live music several times a week to prepare me for the CD, I was used to the CD  before I heard it for the first time.

Quote
But in an other hand, I think spending $350,000 on a stereo system is stupid .


If I had $350,000 to do with as I wished, I'd have to work hard to overcome my desire to do something for the real world that I live in - the happiness and comfort of my neighborhood, the city.

Quote
Unless you have an insane amount of money to spend. And even it's the case ,
there might be wiser ways to spend such amount of money.


Agreed. Audio  and music are important to me, but not mroe important than the whole world.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: extrabigmehdi on 2009-08-16 14:52:52
@carpman
Quote
Many times I've felt that sound engineers got carried away with the potential stereo seperation on CDs [...] and over-did it (just because you can split the content 100% Left 100% Right, doesn't mean it's aesthetically a good move).

That's an interesting remark. I've re-listened to the "bad" track, and perhaps my critic would be that the left and right, are somehow "not related".
It's as if I'm not able to recreate a "stereoscopic" image, and  instead hearing two different thing simultaneously.
I  could say that my ears are "squinting", although, that's a bit exaggerated if I  would compare with true eyes problems.
Maybe I  should just enable the option "dolby headphone" of my sound card, the problem seems less obvious.


@Arnold B. Krueger
Quote
Sicenc says that what we lost is a ton of noise and distortion.

Well, it's more about a "physical" sensation, than something you hear I  believe. The sound might be more faithful with cd , but somehow the "emotion" is lost. And playing with equalizer and introducing artificial distortions won't help.

edit:
By the way I  tried the izotope vinyl plugin , and I  thought: "what an ugly thing". It restore all vinyl defaults, but none of it's advantages. The only thing maybe interesting, is the low pass filter, so it's a bit "easier" to listen.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: andy o on 2009-08-17 07:57:44
I'd just like to say that I respect Fresmer for saying that we lost something from going to vinyl to CD.


Yeah, well we lost a lot of noise, bad pitch control, distortion, and uneven frequency response, that's true.  I for one don't miss them.  Every time I've compared a vinal record to it's CD verstion the vinyl has, by comparison, sucked, and sucked obviously.

I would say we lost a few kg of equipment too. I don't even miss CD players. The iPod is probably the best that has happened in music equipment in the last decade for me. I remember the clunky 12-disc CD changer in the old car. Nowadays you just connect one cable to a thing the size of a lighter and you'll get many times more music. I like progress.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: Arnold B. Krueger on 2009-08-17 09:03:51
@Arnold B. Krueger
Quote
Science says that what we lost is a ton of noise and distortion.


Well, it's more about a "physical" sensation, than something you hear I  believe.


The physical sensation is endomorphins being released into your brain when your pleasure center is being activated by a familiar sound.

The sense of familiarity is based on your memories, which are obvious dominated by the experience of listening to vinyl.

My sense of famliarity is based on my memories, which are far more dominated by the experience of listening to live music.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-17 19:23:21
Back to something resembling the OP, 'sasaudio' is off again about professional qualifications, how I was a janitory at Bell Labs, etc.

Worth a gander over at stereopile just for the laughs, I think.



Not gonna do  it...reading his craptacular posts makes me be feel all 'HULK SMASH' and it's too early in the week for that.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-17 19:30:23
If evolution is a "historical science" then so is biology and for that matter, astrophysics and cosmology.

Perhaps "historical science" is not the best term though I have seen it used elsewhere when making this point. My point is that we don't have to have an experiment in order to have science, unless by experiments we simply mean observations. New fossil finds, genetic analysis, etc. confirm evolution without requiring an experiment that causes something to evolve. Likewise, we don't have to create a new universe to confirm cosmological models.



Note in support: Evolution, including speciation, has been observed (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html).  Ignorant people who rant about there being 'no evidence for macroevolution' don't accept the evidence for observed speciation because they seem to think speciation will mean a jump from, say, tigers to housecats in one generation (or even more ignorantly, genus or phylum-level jumps). 



Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-17 19:33:41
I'd just like to say that I respect Fresmer for saying that we lost something from going to vinyl to CD.
I agree with the "3d special feeling", I just can't find it when listening to CD.
And I'm saying this "from memory", I  remind how vinyl were great.
But there are other aspect that are great on digital, so I  don't have too much regrets.
Overall, it's like from going to coca cola, to pepsi. Not exactly the same taste,
but you can get used to it.

But in an other hand, I think spending $350,000 on a stereo system is stupid .
Unless you have an insane amount of money to spend. And even it's the case ,
there might be wiser ways to spend such amount of money.


I'm in my late 40's, so I grew up with LPs (and eventually sprang ~$600, early 80's bucks, for an 'entry level' audiophile TT/cart).

I miss the lovely and sometimes elaborate packaging.

Other than that I don't miss anything about them.

And I don't respect Michael Fremer a lot.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-17 19:37:02
And many old people think the past was great (even if there was a bloody massacre going on at the time) - it's called nostalgia and it's an illusion. Ed Seedhouse has just described the reality.


At 65 i am old enough to remember reading articles in the 1960's about how much better the good old 78's played with thorn needles were than them danged new-fangled LPs.



For a real eye-opener, read 'Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music' (http://www.amazon.com/Perfecting-Sound-Forever-History-Recorded/dp/0571211658) , which shows how these format debates have been with us since Edison's day.

Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-17 19:42:38
Well, I  remind of listening the bad album from Michael Jackson,
It was just ten time better in term of "excitement" of what I  hear now on cd.
When I listen to the "bad" track on cd, it just seems "flat".
While with the vinyl, I got the feeling that sound was "moving" in the room.

I bought recently a xonar stx,  high end  sennheiser headphone, some great altec lansing speakers
(I mostly listen to music in front of my computer  these times).
Nope, not the great excitement I got before.
Maybe my ears were damaged, or call it nostalgia...




Very likely your ears are different (they almost certainly have worse frequency response),
and with age your expectations of sound are different. So,  yes , nostalgia an physiology.

That's in addition to the mastering differences.  And the possibility of euphonic
distortion in the form of phase- and crosstalk-related effects that offer an illusion of
'more ambience'.

For that I prefer Dolby Pro Logic II and 5 speakers ;>
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: krabapple on 2009-08-17 19:48:52
@carpman
Quote
Many times I've felt that sound engineers got carried away with the potential stereo seperation on CDs [...] and over-did it (just because you can split the content 100% Left 100% Right, doesn't mean it's aesthetically a good move).

That's an interesting remark. I've re-listened to the "bad" track, and perhaps my critic would be that the left and right, are somehow "not related".
It's as if I'm not able to recreate a "stereoscopic" image, and  instead hearing two different thing simultaneously.
I  could say that my ears are "squinting", although, that's a bit exaggerated if I  would compare with true eyes problems.
Maybe I  should just enable the option "dolby headphone" of my sound card, the problem seems less obvious.



A mastering engineer typically isn't going to control the degree of 'stereo' separation -- that's usually a mixing-stage job via (though it can be done in mastering -- witness Rudy Van Gelder's bizarre remasters, where he folded down much of the soundstage of his old recordings).  If the LP version of the same mix sounds less 'separated' than the CD, it's probably distortion -- there is more interchannel crosstalk in LP playback than CD. IOf course you may prefer it, because  that's what you get to do.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: zielwolf on 2009-09-06 08:53:56
Quote
I've come to a very definitive conclusion regarding my ears' abilities to resolve sonic information: there's a finite limit. Investing $350,000 in an ultra-high-end stereo isn't going to suddenly grant my ears the ability to hear atoms bonding or to be able to resolve the sound of a mosquito sucking blood from an elephant in Zimbabwe. To me, it's more about trying damn hard to be realistic about the capabilities of my physical (and mental) self and trying damn hard not to get caught up in a tailspin of perceptions I can't attribute to a known reality.

I have a strict policy of listening to whatever format contains music I enjoy. If that means 128kbps CBR FhG MP3s circa 2001, if that's all I have, then great! If that happens to be 24/96 FLAC, that's better because I know it's better, but it's still just as great as listening to the admittedly less-than-stellar MP3s. To me, there's no major difference in terms of my being able to enjoy listening to music -- even when there are obvious artifacts or other problems that can be attributed to lossy compression. I just do my best to enjoy what I have available.


A bit late to the discussion, but, I totally agree. I have a couple of tracks in my library whose song names and performers I have never managed to find out and probably never will. I originally recorded them off FM radio onto cassette back in 1996 before MP3 existed in any useful sense, and because when they had become useful, I didn't know any better at the time and was just a poor student with a couple of blank CD-Rs to burn in an age when a couple of blank CD-Rs cost 20% of my fortnightly government student stipend, I burnt them as 128 kbps MP3s, and even worse, forgot to turn the X-BASS setting off on the cassette player when I did it.

These are now the only copies I have, and maybe they are about as far from audiophile league as North Korea is from the US ideologically speaking, but they are all I have and I still love those songs and enjoy listening to them immensely because they are really excellent tracks in my opinion and I could listen to them on my tinny mobile phone speaker and still really enjoy them. So what if (referring to the Gizmodo article) Bowie's Heroes sounds like whatever the antonym of musically "flat" (musically "shapeful"? "dimensional"??) is on a 350K sound system compared to an iPod. I'm sure Heroes has been played on much worse systems (such as AM radio receivers the world over) many thousands of times before and it's still a great song. Not because of a sound system though.

I am of the suspicion that people like Fremer need friends, not more fancy $4000 power leads.
Title: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles
Post by: gerwen on 2009-09-10 17:46:43
A bit late to the discussion, but, I totally agree. I have a couple of tracks in my library whose song names and performers I have never managed to find out and probably never will. I originally recorded them off FM radio onto cassette back in 1996 before MP3 existed in any useful sense

Have you tried Shazam (http://www.shazam.com/music/web/home.html)?

Find someone with an iPhone, they'll likely have it installed, or can easily install it in a few minutes.  It might id these songs for you, so you can get a decent copy if you want.