Audio Science: Does it explain everything about how something sounds?

[NorthStar]

Bose ...radio? ...Monster ...cable?

 

[amirm]

And who has more money to spend on marketing than Harman?

A lot of companies I imagine. At last CES for example, Harman was not in the high-end suites while Wilson was in multiple rooms.

But let me make sure you understand the meaning of "marketing" in this context. It doesn't mean just promotion. It means how much input marketing has in design of loudspeakers. This is the best selling high-end loudspeaker brand, the B&W:

This is marketing at its best. Iconic look that captures many buyers. Getting an exclusive on sales of B&W in your region is as good as gold for a dealer. Can you compete with that with this?

Not easily. Fortunately for Harman, they do a few billion dollars in a year in OEM car business. So this technology gets sold and in customer's hands more than every high-end brand you can think of combined. It is that business that fuels the research. So if you are looking for commercial success as proof point, that is there too. But again, not in a way apparent to audiophiles.

 

[PeterA]

Amir,

In response to 358guy you write this in post #726:

That (tonality) is not what you are asked to score. You are asked to score your overall preference for one loudspeaker versus another.

Yet in response to me, you wrote this earlier in post #704:

When you sit there, you are immediately presented with loudspeakers which tonally sound hugely different. It is that difference that you wind up judging.

So, you are asked to score your overall preferences for one loudspeaker versus another by judging their hugely different tonal sound. Yet that (tonality) is not what you are asked to score. I don't quite follow what you are trying to say.

 

[amirm]

Very nice post Amir, I copied it to my wbf best quotes file

I want to add an abbreviated addition I just did to a different thread I started a while back; item number 10, which goes along with this post:

Some folks claim that it takes long term listening to hear the details and nuances that exist between components etc. They usually proclaim that short term listening does not allow you to tune into these nuances.

---However, the question I ask is, so after a week, or a month or whatever of listening, and now they "decide" or "hear" what is really going on, what led them to now believe their ears at that point in time?

---What biological element all the sudden "showed them the light" and why would they believe this as it seems to not occur at any regular time frame, just all the sudden like?

---If it is a gradual thing then what are their ears doing all along this time...are they adapting to the sound, or are they angrily just getting less and less tolerant of it, and how are they doing that?

There you go, more questions, no answers I suspect....

Thanks . The biological factors work against the merits of long term testing. Imagine the incredible amount of data our ears are collecting every moment. There is no way we can store it all in our brain. What happens is that short-term memory captures it all but after a few seconds, huge data reduction happens and just the high-level characteristics of what is heard is committed to long term memory. At that point, it becomes impossible to recall nuances of what we hear. That data is lost far more readily than low rate MP3. This means when we are talking about small differences, you have to rely on short-term memory.

I love to know the physiological theory of why people think our hearing system and perception work differently.

 

[amirm]

In response to 358guy you write this in post #726:

Yet in response to me, you wrote this earlier in post #704:

So, you are asked to score your overall preferences for one loudspeaker versus another by judging their hugely different tonal sound. Yet that (tonality) is not what you are asked to score. I don't quite follow what you are trying to say.

I am stating what the experience is, not the rules of the test. The rules of the tests are exactly as I mentioned: score them loudspeaker preference from 1 to 10. That is it. Now, sit in the chair and listen and the first thing that hits you in the face is how different tonally each loudspeaker is. I am sure everyone agrees that every loudspeaker has a different tone to it. So it is natural to judge that, given how large and obvious the difference is. High correlation to frequency response measurements shows that this is indeed what people naturally do, without being instructed one way or the other.

But again the tests are pure preference with no restrictions.

 

[PeterA]

Very nice post Amir, I copied it to my wbf best quotes file

I want to add an abbreviated addition I just did to a different thread I started a while back; item number 10, which goes along with this post:

Some folks claim that it takes long term listening to hear the details and nuances that exist between components etc. They usually proclaim that short term listening does not allow you to tune into these nuances.

---However, the question I ask is, so after a week, or a month or whatever of listening, and now they "decide" or "hear" what is really going on, what led them to now believe their ears at that point in time?

---What biological element all the sudden "showed them the light" and why would they believe this as it seems to not occur at any regular time frame, just all the sudden like?

---If it is a gradual thing then what are their ears doing all along this time...are they adapting to the sound, or are they angrily just getting less and less tolerant of it, and how are they doing that?

There you go, more questions, no answers I suspect....

tomelex, here is an example of something I notice over time. I hear systems that initially sound detailed and high in resolution. I have a positive impression of how they sound, but after additional, longer term listening, they prove to be fatiguing. I then think that the sense of detail and resolution is probably distortion which I do not notice initially but it becomes more apparent the more time I spend listening. I have found this with Wilson speakers on occasion. I have often heard them sound pretty good, initially, in dealer showrooms and in friend's systems. But after a bit more time listening, I get tired, lose interest, and want to stop listening.

I do not detect this fatigue in short term listening or during rapid A/B tests. But at some point with longer exposure, my ears tell me enough is enough.

 

[stehno]

tomelex, here is an example of something I notice over time. I hear systems that initially sound detailed and high in resolution. I have a positive impression of how they sound, but after additional, longer term listening, they prove to be fatiguing. I then think that the sense of detail and resolution is probably distortion which I do not notice initially but it becomes more apparent the more time I spend listening. I have found this with Wilson speakers on occasion. I have often heard them sound pretty good, initially, in dealer showrooms and in friend's systems. But after a bit more time listening, I get tired, lose interest, and want to stop listening.

I do not detect this fatigue in short term listening or during rapid A/B tests. But at some point with longer exposure, my ears tell me enough is enough.

Peter, such is the case of those with ears to hear. And the more well-trained one's ears become, the quicker they are to reach that point of enough is enough.

Every once in a blue moon we may run across somebody who has extremely well-trained ears. I know of one such person who a number of years ago was a relatively unknown reviewer. Regrettably, he's perhaps one of the flakier people I know. Nevertheless, when my technology was still in its infancy stages a number of years ago, he came to visit and brought with him his most torturous opera music claiming that exhibitors at audio shows cringe when he pulls out this CD for them to play. I was pretty thrilled when he said this was the first time he's ever heard this piece without any apparent breakup or flattening out and he rather enjoyed his audition time.

Advance about 9 months and I had just inserted a new pair of IC's to audition that were near the full burn-in mark and this gent pays me another visit. He obviously had a memory from his previous visit and starts to listen. Within maybe 30 seconds, he looks at me asks, what did you do to your system? I explained that I upgraded my pre-amp some months back and that it was clearly superior to my prior preamp and that I was auditioning these new IC's. He expressed great displeasure at what he was hearing as we continued listening for about 30 minutes. I then exchanged the new IC's with the old IC's and instantly he said, that's it. In my own defense I'm not going to say whether or not I heard half of what he heard with the new IC's. He was actually a bit angry that I made him suffer so long. But he's probably one in 100,000 who can almost instantaneously distinguish differences in systems he's not that familiar with. I've never encountered anybody with such extremely well-trained ears. A buddy of mine who is very well-seasoned with his own very well-trained ears (much more than mine) even admitted this other gent's hearing is remarkable.

Anyway, the point being that where it may take people like you and me a time to determine something ain't right, there exists an extremist or two out there who can almost instantly tell something's not right and describe in detail why it's not right. Then there's those in between where it may take 5 minutes to 4 hours of continued listening before they realize something's not right and do a fairly reasonable job describing why.

And of course, there are also those who can never under perhaps any circumstance make any distinction whatsoever.

These types with very well-trained ears are the first (and perhaps the last) to admit there stands a huge gulf between the live performance and music reproduced on today's best playback systems. This is a big reason why we need to be so apprehensive about believing what others say about sonic performance (and audio science too). Because from an internet perspective, it's all too easy to assume everybody has the same hearing skills.

 

[jkeny]

I guess you missed my criticism of the Clarke paper (& Nousaine paper on the same topic) in this post (It seems Amir missed it as well, as he failed to answer it)

Very nice post Amir, I copied it to my wbf best quotes file

I want to add an abbreviated addition I just did to a different thread I started a while back; item number 10, which goes along with this post:

Some folks claim that it takes long term listening to hear the details and nuances that exist between components etc. They usually proclaim that short term listening does not allow you to tune into these nuances.

---However, the question I ask is, so after a week, or a month or whatever of listening, and now they "decide" or "hear" what is really going on, what led them to now believe their ears at that point in time?

---What biological element all the sudden "showed them the light" and why would they believe this as it seems to not occur at any regular time frame, just all the sudden like?

---If it is a gradual thing then what are their ears doing all along this time...are they adapting to the sound, or are they angrily just getting less and less tolerant of it, and how are they doing that?

There you go, more questions, no answers I suspect....

Your asking these basic questions seems very odd as most people will have had the experience of hearing something wrong (or not quiet delivering) in their system at some point in time - why would you ever change your system otherwise? Have you ever felt that there was something sterile about the system? Yes the note were all being played correctly & in the right places but you had no emotional connection with the illusion being portrayed? Does this happen suddenly - it depends on how attuned you are to this aspect of the playback? It might be a just a feeling over time that something is missing.

As I said in my reply when Amir posted that Clarke paper - "Long-term listening doesn't preclude A/B listening - it can give the listener the perception that two devices sound different without the listener being able to identify what exactly the difference is. Moving to an ABX style test can often confuse matters as we are then put in a position of trying to identify X which is really another level of differentiation. As you know, if all we have is a gut feeling of the difference & can't identify a specific "tell" then ABX testing can often befuddle & confuse."

So, yes, all listening can be flawed but, for many, long-term listening is not as flawed as ABX listening where, in ABX listening, training is required to identify distortions & a certain discipline & focus is also required during the test. At the end of it are we sure that we have not missed some distortions or flaw that we just didn't pick up on?

Long-term listening works on the basis that if after 2-3 weeks (or whatever you consider appropriate) you are consistently hearing the same aspects in the device, then you can be pretty sure that in your normal listening this will continue. You are not relying on a one-shot listening test that is really intended for trained listeners.

Edit: After posting this, I see Peter & stehno have given you two excellent answers along the same lines as mine.

 

[jkeny]

tomelex, here is an example of something I notice over time. I hear systems that initially sound detailed and high in resolution. I have a positive impression of how they sound, but after additional, longer term listening, they prove to be fatiguing. I then think that the sense of detail and resolution is probably distortion which I do not notice initially but it becomes more apparent the more time I spend listening. I have found this with Wilson speakers on occasion. I have often heard them sound pretty good, initially, in dealer showrooms and in friend's systems. But after a bit more time listening, I get tired, lose interest, and want to stop listening.

I do not detect this fatigue in short term listening or during rapid A/B tests. But at some point with longer exposure, my ears tell me enough is enough.

Yes, Peter, agreed & it may even be that we connect emotionally less well with one system than another. I find that the better the realism of the illusion, the better the emotional connection - which I put down to being able to hear (often unconsciously, at first) the nuances of the performers - how they are interacting. We use a lot of these very subtle sonic cues in our daily communications to sense when someone is angry, happy, depressed, etc - why would we drop this acuity when listening to reproduced performances? Of course if it isn't there to be heard then we have less emotional connection with what we are hearing

 

[jkeny]

Peter, such is the case of those with ears to hear. And the more well-trained one's ears become, the quicker they are to reach that point of enough is enough.

Every once in a blue moon we may run across somebody who has extremely well-trained ears. I know of one such person who a number of years ago was a relatively unknown reviewer. Regrettably, he's perhaps one of the flakier people I know. Nevertheless, when my technology was still in its infancy stages a number of years ago, he came to visit and brought with him his most torturous opera music claiming that exhibitors at audio shows cringe when he pulls out this CD for them to play. I was pretty thrilled when he said this was the first time he's ever heard this piece without any apparent breakup or flattening out and he rather enjoyed his audition time.

Advance about 9 months and I had just inserted a new pair of IC's to audition that were near the full burn-in mark and this gent pays me another visit. He obviously had a memory from his previous visit and starts to listen. Within maybe 30 seconds, he looks at me asks, what did you do to your system? I explained that I upgraded my pre-amp some months back and that it was clearly superior to my prior preamp and that I was auditioning these new IC's. He expressed great displeasure at what he was hearing as we continued listening for about 30 minutes. I then exchanged the new IC's with the old IC's and instantly he said, that's it. In my own defense I'm not going to say whether or not I heard half of what he heard with the new IC's. He was actually a bit angry that I made him suffer so long. But he's probably one in 100,000 who can almost instantaneously distinguish differences in systems he's not that familiar with. I've never encountered anybody with such extremely well-trained ears. A buddy of mine who is very well-seasoned with his own very well-trained ears (much more than mine) even admitted this other gent's hearing is remarkable.

Anyway, the point being that where it may take people like you and me a time to determine something ain't right, there exists an extremist or two out there who can almost instantly tell something's not right and describe in detail why it's not right. Then there's those in between where it may take 5 minutes to 4 hours of continued listening before they realize something's not right and do a fairly reasonable job describing why.

And of course, there are also those who can never under perhaps any circumstance make any distinction whatsoever.

These types with very well-trained ears are the first (and perhaps the last) to admit there stands a huge gulf between the live performance and music reproduced on today's best playback systems. This is a big reason why we need to be so apprehensive about believing what others say about sonic performance (and audio science too). Because from an internet perspective, it's all too easy to assume everybody has the same hearing skills.

Stehno, I think Amir is someone who has that facility of hearing these distortions based on his descriptions of the blind testing he has done & his MS training in distortion identification. I think most people with sufficient training & motivation will reach a fairly decent level in this faculty but most aren't really bothered. But there is one great flaw in this training - we only can concentrate on one or two aspects of the sound at any moment in time & in a moving target such as music, it's easy to miss some flaw because were focussed elsewhere.

I posted this link a while ago - it's the audio equivalent of the change blindness video where the gorilla walks across the video shot & a lot of people don't notice him because they are focussed on another visual task.

Here's the link to the explanation of this selective attention issue
Some further reading can be done here "Auditory Attention"
View attachment 20554

 

[Orb]

Thanks . The biological factors work against the merits of long term testing. Imagine the incredible amount of data our ears are collecting every moment. There is no way we can store it all in our brain. What happens is that short-term memory captures it all but after a few seconds, huge data reduction happens and just the high-level characteristics of what is heard is committed to long term memory. At that point, it becomes impossible to recall nuances of what we hear. That data is lost far more readily than low rate MP3. This means when we are talking about small differences, you have to rely on short-term memory.

I love to know the physiological theory of why people think our hearing system and perception work differently.

Although there needs to be more research on 'dissonance' or threshold-tolerance and behaviour difference between short and long term.
This is one reason a product with say a forward treble may seem to be more detailed/accurate initially but over longer period listeners/owners tend to suffer some kind of dissonance/perceptive niggles/listening fatigue that then result in less satisfaction (could say preference as well then) and listening behaviour changes.

Edit:
Ah just read some others have picked up this type of listening behaviour with themselves and such products, which go beyond speakers, and even to modern mastering of records unfortunately (where not done well).
Of course I should mention some kind of anchoring also needs to be considered in what influences our listening behaviour for short and long term, really if anyone is being critical listener they need a separate 'control' system to reset in a way like palate cleansers do for critical tasting and blending (ok not the same but context sort of similar).

Cheers
Orb

 

[jkeny]

Thanks . The biological factors work against the merits of long term testing. Imagine the incredible amount of data our ears are collecting every moment. There is no way we can store it all in our brain. What happens is that short-term memory captures it all but after a few seconds, huge data reduction happens and just the high-level characteristics of what is heard is committed to long term memory. At that point, it becomes impossible to recall nuances of what we hear. That data is lost far more readily than low rate MP3. This means when we are talking about small differences, you have to rely on short-term memory.

I love to know the physiological theory of why people think our hearing system and perception work differently.

Amir, have the above posts not given you your answer?
We have all had the experience of dissatisfaction after long term listening to a device that was initially thought to be "stellar". Why is this so difficult to understand & how does it fit the blind testing meme?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Health, vitamins, cancer and medicine analogies are improper tools to any audio debate. I expected better from you. I am now completely out of this thread.

Perhaps, but they are perfectly legitimate analogies in a debate about science. Perhaps you and Amir are together, in separate conversations?

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I am speaking for myself. I am not asking you to believe what I write. I am asking you to respect that others may not share your vision of audio science and that we have perfectly valid (not illogical) reasons for our opinions, based on our own individual experiences.

Amir is not presenting a "vision," he is presenting data. People in this thread, and throughout the audiophile community, always try to argue against data with anecdotal experience and be taken seriously. It's fine to take positions based on personal taste and continually fail to back this positions up with any more substance than personal experience; it's ridiculous to expect it to be taken seriously by people making data-based arguments against it.

The Harmon tests work on preference and as such this is primarily marketing science, not what I would call audio science. Audio science would involve comparisons to see if differences can be perceived, for example in the case of speakers it would involve referencing live instruments vs. playback of those live instruments. (Hard to do.) This is much easier to do with some electronic comparisons, e.g. line level preamplifiers or ADC - DAC digital loops, software format conversion of recordings of jangling keys, etc...

The objective does not define whether or not it is science, the methodology does. And this argument is inaccurate anyway. Harman does these tests to inform product development, not advertising.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Dude, you're retired now. You should get out more.

P.S. OK, just 'cause I feel sorry for you: http://www.stereophile.com/content/fine-art-mercury-living-presence-recordings#RDciiILLL8EzUWJZ.97

I'm not a classical fan. I listen to and play music daily, but not that genre.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Very nice post Amir, I copied it to my wbf best quotes file

I want to add an abbreviated addition I just did to a different thread I started a while back; item number 10, which goes along with this post:

Some folks claim that it takes long term listening to hear the details and nuances that exist between components etc. They usually proclaim that short term listening does not allow you to tune into these nuances.

---However, the question I ask is, so after a week, or a month or whatever of listening, and now they "decide" or "hear" what is really going on, what led them to now believe their ears at that point in time?

---What biological element all the sudden "showed them the light" and why would they believe this as it seems to not occur at any regular time frame, just all the sudden like?

---If it is a gradual thing then what are their ears doing all along this time...are they adapting to the sound, or are they angrily just getting less and less tolerant of it, and how are they doing that?

There you go, more questions, no answers I suspect....

Typically, there is no specific point in the listening continuum where these subtleties are revealed. It starts before listening begins, as an argument to dismiss the results of blind listening tests that go against what they think they hear with all their non-auditory biases fully engaged.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I'm not making an argument for live listening but I think you'd love Chris Whitley's Dirt Floor. Recorded by Craig Street with one Speiden ribbon stereo mic in his dad's workshop. Still my favourite album of his.

Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions, but that used the Calrec Ambisonic Microphone, which is technically four capsules in one mic, and Margot Timmins actually sang into an SM58 through a PA to better compete with the rest of the band, but hey, who's counting?

All the Naim early releases were done by Ken Christianson through two AKG 414 EBs, though I no longer have any of those recordings.

Early BIS were all two mics into a Studer.

All of Tim Berne's Bloodcount recordings were two mics hung from the ceiling.

Water Lily Acoustics' Kavi Alexander used Pearl ELM-8 and C mics almost exclusively in Blumlein. If you've not heard A Meeting by the River by Ry Cooder & Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, I highly recommend you track it down.

Don't get me wrong; I love simple recordings. But Dirt Floor was recoded at reasonably close range. It's not the kind of "stereo pair in an audience seat" recording we're talking about that would pick up the ambience of a venue. You can tell that just by listening to it. And The Trinity sessions was recorded in a very reverberant environment, with no audience in place to soak up the sound. It was done that way for effect, and the effect is nothing like what you'd hear from 10th row center (or whatever) in a hall full of patrons. These are very good records which use very good mic-ing techniques to great effect. They do not support the live as reference argument anymore than the great 50s and 60s jazz recordings, captured "live in studio" (no overdubs, lots of mic bleed) do. I'm not familiar with the other tiitles you've listed.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I wonder, if they advertised in all the audiophile mags, and sold equally expensive stuff as their competitors, over time, would their stuff then be the "best". I suspect it would be.

Put a $500 pair of Infinity floor standers in a 200 lb cabinet with an automotive paint finish, a $30k price tag and a new brand. Advertise them in all the right mags, on all the right sites, recommending that they be coupled only with expensive high-end sources and amplification, and loan them out to all the right reviewers with the appropriate high-end hyperbole, and i'd bet they'd become respectably audiophile in short order.

Tim

 

[jkeny]

Typically, there is no specific point in the listening continuum where these subtleties are revealed. It starts before listening begins, as an argument to dismiss the results of blind listening tests that go against what they think they hear with all their non-auditory biases fully engaged.

Tim

Yes, Tim, as is your want, proceed to ignore the excellent posts made in reply to Tomolex & continue to polarise the discussion with innuendo & barbs

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Yes, Tim, as is your want, proceed to ignore the excellent posts made in reply to Tomolex & continue to polarise the discussion with innuendo & barbs

Are you saying that the long-term listening argument is not used in the community to dismiss the results of blind listening tests? Even in this very thread? Are you saying that there is a specific point in long-term listening where these things begin to be revealed? Are you able to confirm these things revealed in long-term listening with anything other than personal opinion?

Tim