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Topic: what we're up against (Read 100488 times) previous topic - next topic
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what we're up against

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Cavaille on
Could that mean that an iPod actually could sound different when it handles different codecs?? Because of power fluctuations?

This is easily testable, though I think there are better explanations for the things that people like Barry Diament say.

This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039

what we're up against

Reply #28 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: krabapple on

And btw they were talking about 'differences' heard when playing lossless compressed (presumably Apple Lossless) vs uncompressed from an iPod.  Graphics card noise?  Bus contention?


Two probable causes.

Or, bad grounding on the system board or PC chassis.

Someone mentioned the possibility of using a digital output, but data loss due to bus contention will show up in the output digital datastream.



My questions were ironic.  AFAICT, he;'s talking about an iPod plugged into a home audio system.


What ''PC chassis' is involved?


what we're up against

Reply #29 –
Quote from: Cavaille on
Quote from: greynol on
This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039
My god, some audio engineers are really strange people. And this man has such impressive credits... really a shame.



Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.

what we're up against

Reply #30 –
All the more reason to criticize him back into reality?

what we're up against

Reply #32 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: greynol on
This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039

Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.

I'm talking about the knowledge as it relates to the curriculum in electrical engineering.  The stuff used in realizing the technology. The stuff that people who only use the technology don't need to know?

Anyway, who said anything about the quality of his work?  If he'd keep to talking about his work and not stray off into the weeds like this, everything would be just fine for him here.

I'm going enjoy another laugh in the mean time.

what we're up against

Reply #33 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.
His work may be vast and impressive but that doesn´t give him the right to make some hilarious comments. For someone to work with audio professionally on a daily basis I just expect him to have the same professionality in vocalizing his beliefs. Yes, his work has real consequence to audiophiles - it is dangerous if he utters it this way.

You know this is what really apalls me about audiophiles. They buy some strange stones or 'chips' or cable because someone said so. Are we sheep? Don´t we have own ears, logic, thoughts and stuff?
marlene-d.blogspot.com

what we're up against

Reply #34 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Cavaille on
Quote from: greynol on
This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039
My god, some audio engineers are really strange people. And this man has such impressive credits... really a shame.



Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.


There's a lesson here for you Scott.  No matter what you may believe, there's a big difference between makeup artists and dermatologists. There is a big difference between the art of recording and the full extent of the science part of audio.  Applying makeup is an art, while dermatology is far more of a science. Just because someone can do the art of theartrical makeup really well has very little bearing on how well they can cure skin diseases.  Recording is much more art than science. Very few recording engeineers have the actual academic credentials of a true engiener. I'm not even sure that training recordists to that degree would make much sense. I know some people who had excellent chops as recording engineers who subsequently obtained decent academic credentials in engineering, They moved on and never really looked back. That didn't mean that they didn't hang with their friends who were still in recording, or looked down on them. There had just been a significant life change for them.

For decades people made really pretty good recordings without knowing much of the science we currently know, which is totally behind what they did.  Granting a makeup artist a MD license based on how he practiced his art in movies or on TV would be really strange, don't you think? There's a reason why the law demands that MDs meet far more critical academic standards than makeup artsts do. It is simply a different thing.  There's a reason why people who are well-trained in science take what even the best recording engineers say about the science part of audio with a grain of salt. They may be far better artsts than scientists. Pure and simple.

Recording engineers are more engineers in the sense of "Stataionary Engineers". BTW, I have some good friends and acquaintances who are Stationary Engineers. I don't operate or fix boilers in big buildings, and they don't tell me how to record or master recordings or build complex audio systems or develop audio products.

what we're up against

Reply #35 –
Quote from: Cavaille on
You know this is what really apalls me about audiophiles. They buy some strange stones or 'chips' or cable because someone said so. Are we sheep? Don´t we have own ears, logic, thoughts and stuff?


Good point. For people who claim to have acute, well-trained ears, as a group they sure don't seem to know the difference between an audible change and no audible change. One of the lessons for me after I invented ABX was that it is "far harder" to reliably hear "no difference" than to hear "a difference". 

Another tip off to how error prone the high end audiopiles tend to be, is the fact that most audiophiles interpret just about any change, whether reliably audible or not, as an improvement. If there were as many improvements as the high end audiopile world thinks, everybody's stereo would sound a whole lot better.

I think it would be funny to give one of these high end expert audiophiles an equalizer, IOW something that actually makes reliably audible changes. What would they do with something that can actually make a reliable audible difference? Would it be like a cat playing with  a mouse?  ;-)

what we're up against

Reply #36 –
Quote from: krabapple on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: krabapple on

And btw they were talking about 'differences' heard when playing lossless compressed (presumably Apple Lossless) vs uncompressed from an iPod.  Graphics card noise?  Bus contention?


Two probable causes.

Or, bad grounding on the system board or PC chassis.

Someone mentioned the possibility of using a digital output, but data loss due to bus contention will show up in the output digital datastream.



What ''PC chassis' is involved?


I'm talking about a desktop computer and its major components - the system board, the power supply, and the drives.  There's a big potential for grounding problems. Back in the day of PC/XTs it was, uncommon to mount system boards with insulating washers. These days we screw everything down tight metal-to-metal. But, the system boards themselves have changed how they handle the metal around the mounting holes. There are large current flows associated with system boards and power supplies, much less with the drives.  It could be a grounding nightmare, and every once in a while someone screws things up and it is. But this is generally very isolated and infrequent.

what we're up against

Reply #37 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Another tip off to how error prone the high end audiopiles tend to be, is the fact that most audiophiles interpret just about any change, whether reliably audible or not, as an improvement. If there were as many improvements as the high end audiopile world thinks, everybody's stereo would sound a whole lot better.

I think it would be funny to give one of these high end expert audiophiles an equalizer, IOW something that actually makes reliably audible changes. What would they do with something that can actually make a reliable audible difference? Would it be like a cat playing with  a mouse?  ;-)
Precisely! I consider myself an audiophile normally... but if I can only be a 'true' audiophile if I buy some hilarious and expensive things then I don´t want to be one. Some companies sell garbage for big money. And no one dares to sue them for being a fraud. There is this company in Germany, named 'Creaktiv'... they sell some granite platter which supposedly 'restructures' or 'informs' some strange fields inside the CD. You put one CD onto this granite, leave it there for a few minutes and then - Abracadabra - it sounds better. This platter costs around 400,- Euros. I could build one myself for 5,- and still had the same effect: nothing. The shocking thing is that they are in business for a few years now. I can´t find words for such nonsense. I won´t give the link here, the site is an insult.

Then there is the case of cables. I vividly remember the company 'Cardas'. They build cables that look beautiful, really beautiful. Some years ago they got good tests because they made the music sound 'warmer'. I always suspected that these cables applied some kind of low-pass-filtering to the signal - and this is something a cable isn´t supposed to do. Plain and simple. I could do the same with an equalizer - but then I won´t spend hundreds of Euros for it and then it must be bad. As a sidemark, equalizers are a wonderful and convenient tool for tweaking the sound to ones liking. I still haven´t figured out why so many audiophiles aren´t using them - to my knowledge they are used every day on most productions anyway. But no, it has to be the cable that colours the sound and makes everything wrong. I´ve heard so many things from the audiophile sector and mostly I´m under the impression that these things simply move the sound in a particular direction - if they have any effects at all. I don´t want that.
marlene-d.blogspot.com

what we're up against

Reply #38 –
Quote from: Cavaille on
As a sidemark, equalizers are a wonderful and convenient tool for tweaking the sound to ones liking. I still haven´t figured out why so many audiophiles aren´t using them - to my knowledge they are used every day on most productions anyway. But no, it has to be the cable that colours the sound and makes everything wrong.


A general theme in the land of "High-End" audio is that money HAS to be spent for improvements.  The more the better.  How much does an EQ cost nowadays?  It's free if you own a computer.

Of course, sonic changes from EQing never sound as good as the sonic changes from an expensive cable.

One has to justify their desire to purchase something...

what we're up against

Reply #39 –
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Cavaille on
Quote from: greynol on
This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039
My god, some audio engineers are really strange people. And this man has such impressive credits... really a shame.



Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.



It's not his 'beliefs',  it's his *claims* -- which are made to 'audiophiles' and may have 'real consequence' to them if it induces them to chase idiotic tweaks with real money.

That some will presume he is a go-to authority on these matters, also has real consequence of adding yet more noise to the already misinformation-ridden public discourse on digital audio.

Do let us know if any of this percolates back to Hoffman's forum, though.

what we're up against

Reply #40 –
I have a suspicion we have some StereoCentral fans amongst us.

The SH.tv forum is useful for info on releases, but some of the snake-oil they spout beggars belief...

what we're up against

Reply #41 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Cavaille on
Quote from: greynol on
This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039
My god, some audio engineers are really strange people. And this man has such impressive credits... really a shame.



Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.


There's a lesson here for you Scott.  No matter what you may believe, there's a big difference between makeup artists and dermatologists. There is a big difference between the art of recording and the full extent of the science part of audio.  Applying makeup is an art, while dermatology is far more of a science. Just because someone can do the art of theartrical makeup really well has very little bearing on how well they can cure skin diseases.  Recording is much more art than science. Very few recording engeineers have the actual academic credentials of a true engiener. I'm not even sure that training recordists to that degree would make much sense. I know some people who had excellent chops as recording engineers who subsequently obtained decent academic credentials in engineering, They moved on and never really looked back. That didn't mean that they didn't hang with their friends who were still in recording, or looked down on them. There had just been a significant life change for them.

For decades people made really pretty good recordings without knowing much of the science we currently know, which is totally behind what they did.  Granting a makeup artist a MD license based on how he practiced his art in movies or on TV would be really strange, don't you think? There's a reason why the law demands that MDs meet far more critical academic standards than makeup artsts do. It is simply a different thing.  There's a reason why people who are well-trained in science take what even the best recording engineers say about the science part of audio with a grain of salt. They may be far better artsts than scientists. Pure and simple.

Recording engineers are more engineers in the sense of "Stataionary Engineers". BTW, I have some good friends and acquaintances who are Stationary Engineers. I don't operate or fix boilers in big buildings, and they don't tell me how to record or master recordings or build complex audio systems or develop audio products.



This isn't a question of differentiating vocations. I know the difference between a dermatologist (an M.D.) and a makeup artist and I also know the difference between a mastering engineer (Barry Diament) and an EE.

It's a question of attacking people for beliefs. For instance Arny, if I remember correctly, you are a Christian. Now even though I am an agnostic atheist and find religion to be irrational I wouldn't attack you for your religious beliefs. Not because I think religion is taboo to debate but because I don't think it would be fair to connect your faith with your credibility or rationality in other areas.

I think in audiophilia there is a tendency to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. Point in case, Ethan Whiner was engaging in many debates over on the Stereophile forums. Got kinda ugly at times. Ethan was being attacked as a person, and as a professional. I pointed out to some of the folks over there that you don't have to agree with everything Ethan says or believes about audio in general to give him his due in the field of room acoustics. Some folks over there vowed to never use any room acoustics of the sort Ethan builds, designs or advocates. Now that's just dumb. audiophiles who could have really used bass traps and absorbtion were cutting there noses off to spite their face  just because their differences with Ethan on *other subjects in audio* had led to bitter fights.

My point being that what any pro in audio says about audio in general is really not that important. What is important is what they do. The folks who attacked Ethan were, in the end, the losers for letting trivial ego driven arguments take their eye off the ball. The ball being better sound.

Attacking people for their beliefs is kinda silly IMO. That is why I say judge Barry by his work. It is his work that makes a difference. I disagree with Ethan on a number of things when it comes to audio but I know he is a top notch guy in room acoustics and would not hesitate to use his designs or buy his products for my next listening room. I am more interested in his work than his beliefs. and while I have no problems discussing or even debating those differences in beliefs with Ethan, I don't attack him over those differences.

what we're up against

Reply #42 –
Quote from: krabapple on
Quote from: analog scott on
Quote from: Cavaille on
Quote from: greynol on
This isn't the first time he's said something to undermine his credibility when it comes to digital audio.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=46039
My god, some audio engineers are really strange people. And this man has such impressive credits... really a shame.



Barry is a very good mastering engineer IMO. I would say judge him by his work not his beliefs. His work has real consequence to audiophiles.



It's not his 'beliefs',  it's his *claims* -- which are made to 'audiophiles' and may have 'real consequence' to them if it induces them to chase idiotic tweaks with real money.

That some will presume he is a go-to authority on these matters, also has real consequence of adding yet more noise to the already misinformation-ridden public discourse on digital audio.

Do let us know if any of this percolates back to Hoffman's forum, though.


"Real consequence?" seriously? Who really gets hurt by idiotic tweaks anyway? It seems the folks who buy them enjoy them and the folks who think they are snake oil scream out in pain.
This may come as a surprise to you but I do think there are plenty of tweaks that obviously make no audible differences. For some reason it just does not bother me that other people enjoy them.
also I see no problems with discussing and debating claims of cause and effect. But quite frankly the personal attacks are pretty childish.

what we're up against

Reply #43 –
Analog Scott, once again turning the argument into something it never was and then labels it as childish.

As Krab said, "It's not his 'beliefs', it's his *claims*".

As for a real consequence, how about going into debt and losing your home?

Meanwhile, who here said they'd never buy a title mastered by Barry Diament?  May I see a show of hands, please?

what we're up against

Reply #44 –
Has Arnold ever justified (and tried to push) his Christian beliefs on the grounds that he's a good engineer? I'm also what religious people (not I) would call an "atheist", but frankly I think the claims of relativists, postmodernists, Chopra-ists and New Age types pass largely uncriticized by the people who criticize religion.

what we're up against

Reply #45 –
I have no argument with equating Barry Diament's beliefs about lossless compressed vs uncompressed playback with *religious belief*.  I think that's what it is.

The thing is, would mastering engineer Barry Diament, advising audiophiles who consider him an authority on matters technical, agree up front that his belief is essentially religious?


(btw, andy o, public atheists like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers have been as scathing on Deepak Chopra and New Age woo as they have been on more conventional religion.  You must not be reading the right critics.)






what we're up against

Reply #46 –
You can't argue with people like that. I just tell them "well, then, if lossless compression sounds worse, your hardware is broken", which, of course, it would have to be.

IF it sounded different.

(insert sound of birds chirping)
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

what we're up against

Reply #47 –
Quote from: analog scott link=msg=0 date=
Real consequence?" seriously? Who really gets hurt by idiotic tweaks anyway? It seems the folks who buy them enjoy them and the folks who think they are snake oil scream out in pain. This may come as a surprise to you but I do think there are plenty of tweaks that obviously make no audible differences. For some reason it just does not bother me that other people enjoy them.

I wouldn't underestimate the degree of "screaming out in pain" on the part of purchasers of snake oil. In fact they have more reason than the sceptics to do so, because (1) they spend their hard-earned money on the stuff; (2) it's natural to justify one's personal expenditure -- who wants to be seen giving money to a con artist? (3) whereas the sceptics are arguing on the grounds of logic and reason, believers in golden cables take their cue from faith, along with a profound mistrust of the empirical approach to knowledge-gathering, thus the more natural recourse is to scream instead of reason.

To think that the elementary laws of supply and demand don't apply to audio equipment, and that what many people think and do has no effect on others, is to be extraordinarily naive. Also, there is genuine, verifiable progress yet to be made that is being stalled by the demand for things that don't matter or are counterproductive.

Quote from: analog scott link=msg=0 date=
But quite frankly the personal attacks are pretty childish.

Aren't you doing likewise?

Quote from: analog scott link=msg=0 date=
It's a question of attacking people for beliefs. For instance Arny, if I remember correctly, you are a Christian. Now even though I am an agnostic atheist and find religion to be irrational I wouldn't attack you for your religious beliefs. Not because I think religion is taboo to debate but because I don't think it would be fair to connect your faith with your credibility or rationality in other areas.

But, by its scientific nature, this whole subject shouldn't be faith-based in nature! I thought it was about trying to use a reasoned approach to achieve better sound reproduction (of course, not overlooking the limits posed by the present state of scientific knowledge). If you want to liken this debate to a religious/faith-based one, then by all means criticise Galileo et al for not having more comprehensive proof that the earth revolves around the sun.

Quote from: analog scott link=msg=0 date=
Attacking people for their beliefs is kinda silly IMO.

Only the truly hardcore and out of touch with reality would elevate the field of audio reproduction to the level of belief in Godhood, or even belief in political dogma. Are mastering engineers really like saints?

what we're up against

Reply #48 –
Quote from: krabapple on
I have no argument with equating Barry Diament's beliefs about lossless compressed vs uncompressed playback with *religious belief*.  I think that's what it is.

The thing is, would mastering engineer Barry Diament, advising audiophiles who consider him an authority on matters technical, agree up front that his belief is essentially religious?


(btw, andy o, public atheists like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers have been as scathing on Deepak Chopra and New Age woo as they have been on more conventional religion.  You must not be reading the right critics.)

I meant more "mainstream" critics. I'd point to scienceblogger Orac for better anti-Chopra rants, but I actually meant mainstream media and whatever the "left" is, who love to criticize the conservative religious (Huffington Post, for instance). Didn't wanna get too into it cause it's OT, it was just a passing comment.

what we're up against

Reply #49 –
I've enjoyed reading this discussion, and since a lot of points on pg 2 have revolved around belief etc., and history and perception of religion, I'd like to add a few clarification points. In my "real life" I'm a sociologist who studies how governments regulate religion, and have taught classes on sociology of religion, and the relationship between science and religion.

For the record, I completely agree with euphonic that discussion of audio quality shouldn't be faith-based in nature. It's all about evidence.

And the clarifications I'm making here are similarly not faith-based; I'm just reporting what academic scholars of religion think about a couple of things. I understand if this is getting into "religion and politics" territory, but I'm not intending to make any normative argument.
Plus, I don't think I'm actually disagreeing with anything that people have said in this thread. But I'm totally fine branching off of this thread if people want to discuss this stuff.

1. Galileo didn't have conclusive evidence about heliocentrism. That's *part* of the reason it was such a big issue as a debate. Galileo's self-supposed best argument for heliocentrism was his argument from the tides - which turns out to have to do with the moon's gravitational field, not with the relative motion and size of earth vs. sun. Most historians of science agree that during the Galileo controversy, the evidence for geocentrism vs. heliocentrism was not conclusive.
This DOESN'T absolve the Catholic church from declaring geocentrism "a matter of faith and morals" which now appears absolutely ludicrous. This probably wouldn't have happened except that Galileo wrote an open letter on scriptural interpretation (which he rightly understood as one of the major reasons for his opposition). I of course think that Galileo should have been able to discuss scriptural interpretation with Catholic hierarchy, even if he was kind of a prick. But the Galileo story isn't a clean-cut narrative about open-minded science being squelched by religion. It's only halfway that

2. Like andy o, I too have thought it curious that many educated people who are critical of religion and religious belief(s) give a free pass to to various "cute" and new-age systems of thought. Probably it's because these things given a free pass aren't highly-institutionalized, and part of the frustration or critique these people have is with institutional religion. As krabapple points out, Dawkins and various other "public atheists" (a.k.a. "new atheists" or "angry atheists") call this out as unfounded belief, along similar lines to how they perceive institutional religions.

But it's worth noting that the perspectives of Dawkins et al, both about philosophy and sociology of religion (their books are usually 2-part: why belief in religion is stupid, and how religion has bad effects on the world), are rarely taken seriously by people who professionally study these issues. There are some good arguments made by the "public atheist" crowd, but many of their arguments are crap and are an embarassment to the many atheists who actually study religion. I think this is more true of their sociological arguments (about how religion affects society), but maybe that's just b/c I'm a sociologist and know my field better than I know philosophy of religion.
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320