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Topic: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles (Read 499598 times) previous topic - next topic
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Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #500 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #501 –
Quote from: krabapple on
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.

Quote from: Axon on
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/.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #502 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #503 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: rpp3po on
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?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #504 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
Quote from: Frumious B on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #505 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote
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.

Quote
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. :-(

Quote
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
Thorbjorn

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #506 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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.

Quote
...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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #507 –
Quote from: hybris on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #509 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: hybris on
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.
Thorbjorn

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #510 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
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.

Quote
1. ABX testing, at least in the case of amps (also cables, DACs, ...), that he brought up, is actually pretty easy.


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?

Quote
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.

Quote
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #511 –
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.


False positives sell advertising and magazines. A win-win for the people who favor them and build a personal empire around them.

Quote
YMMV, of course.


I was raised to believe that if you can't do it right, don't do it.

Quote
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #512 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: Axon on
Quote from: analogcorner on
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.
 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #513 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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.

;-)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #514 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
John Atkinson, what about this...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&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

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #515 –
Quote from: Frumious B on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: rpp3po on
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.

Quote
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #516 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #517 –
Quote from: rpp3po on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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, ;-)

Quote
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. ;-)

Quote
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. ;-)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #518 –
Quote from: hybris on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #519 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #520 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
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.

Quote
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #521 –
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #522 –
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #523 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on


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?


Quote
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

Quote
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?

Quote
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?

Quote
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

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #524 –
Quote from: botface on
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.