Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Article: Why We Need Audiophiles (Read 493544 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #475 –
Quote from: analogcorner on
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...

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #476 –
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....

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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #477 –
Quote from: analogcorner on
Quote from: Frumious B on
Quote from: analogcorner on
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 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?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #478 –
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.


That said, IIRC, didn't JA reject Beltism?

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #479 –
Quote from: cpchan on
Your dissection of Gordon Holt's comment is very true (especially the part about "personality cult around product designers") and amusing. 
Quote from: Gag Halfrunt on
Perhaps we can conclude that old reviewers never die, they just turn objective with age.
Agreed.


Counterexample: Clark Johnsen.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #480 –
Quote from: krabapple on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #481 –
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
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!

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #482 –
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #483 –
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:

1. Isn't Stereophile actually giving bad advice, 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. 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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #484 –
Quote from: Canar on
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.

 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #485 –
Quote from: hlloyge on
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! ;-)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #486 –
Quote from: analogcorner on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #487 –
Quote from: analogcorner on
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #488 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #489 –
Quote from: gerwen on
Quote from: analogcorner on
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? ;-)

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #490 –
Quote from: Gag Halfrunt on
"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.
Thorbjorn

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #491 –
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.

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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #492 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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.
Thorbjorn

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #493 –
Quote from: hybris on
Quote from: Gag Halfrunt on
"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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #494 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #495 –
Great job, Arnie! Thanks to your carpet bombing Atkinson could just pick the cherries again.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #496 –
Quote from: Stereoeditor on
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! 

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #497 –
Quote from: hybris on
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.

Article: Why We Need Audiophiles

Reply #499 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
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! ;-)


Quote from: hybris on
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. :-(

Quote
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.


Quote
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).

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
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.

Quote
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.

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.