Audio Science: Does it explain everything about how something sounds?
- Thread starter PeterA
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Oh it is not Amir's stuff I have a problem with nor do my points relate to him but to others, but some of you should had realised that
Cheers
Orb
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Well do not get too fed up when certain 'objectivists' ignore your post on electronic warm-up (just one instance of obstinate response from some) and even cold aluminium speakers such as the Magico on how they subtly change to when reach room temp, they have had enough information already to check the electronic warm-up with amps for themselves before writing in response and dismissing some of the posts from the rest of us.
But then I am coming to the conclusion it is a kind of 'objective righteousness' with some of them that ends up being a reiterative cycle until everyone accepts it no matter what is said or provided.
Cheers
Orb
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
How true and this for me is why I find this boring. Has anyone learned anything new in the past 953 posts. This is a hobby, about listening to music, meeting with your buddies and enjoying the bliss that music provides. This for me is tedious as I sit on my armchair eating popcorn as the likes of both sides continue to convince one another. For you objectivists that continue to insult us with the same old argument hoping that someone on the other side "accepts it no matter what is said or provided" but I am certain that ack's post might ruffle some objectivist collars.
Have at guys...it's the start of the weekend. Im listening to music and hosting some friends to listen to music. BTW, my amps will be on well before my guests arrive but will check periodically to see if either side has gained a foothold
Enjoy the weekend and the music guys. This is a hobby. Life is too short for me to worry about the mundane
steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I agree. I will be listening to music. Have at it tomelex but what have you learned other than amplifier warm up is a good thing
Cheers
I'm with Steve! Gimme a holler once we start talking about the passion we share for audio and music. This is not such a discussion...this is silliness. But hey....knock yourself out.
Since the post was mine, I’ll respond to you, Tim.
To the first point: What qualification do you suggest I hold in order to put forth some potentially valid criticisms of a publicly listed corporation involved in research for profit? Would I need to be a peer? Hold a degree in a similar field? Be elected to a position to defend consumer rights? If it’s none of those things, then calling the above an “unfettered… attack” reeks of reactionary emotionalism and defensiveness. No one is above critique, Tim. That’s the ‘Merican way. A constitutionally supported democracy should be involved in encouraging its citizens to freely question the establishment, because if it is not, then it’s not a democracy. Asking questions about how a for-profit company conducts its research is not an “attack”, its called exercising freedom of speech.
“Uniformed?” I read the paper the company’s VP wrote on how they conduct their research (downloaded from here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCoQFjACahUKEwj5xaOOiZrHAhUEuRQKHTWEBuk&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.harman.com%2FEN-US%2FOurCompany%2FInnovation%2FDocuments%2FWhite%2520Papers%2FLoudspeakersandRoomsPt2.pdf&ei=cETGVfnNC4TyUrWImsgO&usg=AFQjCNFsdYMWG0hLEgaj-6qQ7-h2zsafDw&sig2=qX_TNtPNyRaZuVerPR6WFA&bvm=bv.99804247,d.d24) and couldn’t find any statistical certainty measurements apropos any of their findings. What’s more, I’ve sat through slides and “training” from Harman employees when I worked for four years part-time in a high-end retailer during my second university stint. I’ve sold their products. I’ve read the manuals. Anything else you’d like to me have done?
Of course, I don’t claim to have anywhere near the experience of writing technical papers for a corporation that pays me to do so, and allow that there are going to be gaps in my knowledge because of that. That’s why I had some questions, Tim. Can I ask, are you okay with the research methodology?
To the second point: An insult is intended to offend someone personally. An indictment implies accusation. Neither Toole nor Olive were personally accused of anything. I was questioning the robustness of their company’s research controls, having read through the papers and not found any.
To the last point: Like I said, I read the papers, found no information as to how they control for confounding variables or conflict of interest, and responded to a post from a person who we know has a vested interest in defending the research due to their company being in a position to gain financially from its dealer status with the corporation in question. Yes, Amir is one of the founders of the forum, and has declared his dealer status. That still doesn’t make him, Toole or Olive above critique.
And you’re right, I had many questions about how the research was designed and executed, and I still do. But since my line of questioning has only seemed to create defensiveness, I’ll abandon it because I just don’t think it’s worth entering into personally-charged slanging matches over first-world problems.
I will say this though. I believe in the scientific method in as much as conflicts of interest can be eliminated and statistically certainty can be substantiated. And I also believe in the heuristic approach to building a narrative of enquiry where that individual’s experience is owned as their own but shared within a sympathetic community. This hobby is filled with both approaches and I’m glad it is. But I’m glad scientists didn’t dismiss outright the highly unusual and scientifically unsupported anecdotal claims of a woman in 1989 whose experience of her dog taking an specific interest in a skin legion lead to the correct diagnosis of a malignant melanoma. Had they done so, we would not have uncovered a line of potentially life-saving medical research* in which dogs are now being trained to use their oncological senses in the detection of volatile organic compounds related to tumours. Given the standard scientific Prostrate-Specific Antigen test already has a high false positive rate (less than 1 in 4 men who test abnormally have prostrate cancer) leading to unnecessary invasive surgery, further study based on canine prostrate detection in urine seems worth pursuing, as crazy as it may seem to those who hold rigorously to the established norms of PSA.
*The initial study in 2004 had power in excess of 95% to show a statistically significant result (P < 0.05) for a mean success rate of at least 55%, irrespective of the method of analysis used. They assessed power by 1000 stochastic simulations of the experiment with each dog having an expected success rate of between 45% and 60% (mean 55%). The results were analysed by t test and bootstrap techniques, to ensure that the power was adequate under both forms of analysis.
P.S. For anyone interested, I just started a new thread in the Jazz Forum on favourite John Zorn releases.
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One, there is NONE person here offensive...in particular Peter the sailor man and sweet as apple pie OP. :b
Without him we'd (weed
) still be living in the dark ages of audio science. Two, yesterday I bailed out, today I'm catching up in my intellect advancement. :b
Tim, your post above made me reflect on the state of solid state audio (no tubes, no warm up). ...All excellence. ...And much easier to measure accurately.
Now, your post's last sentence; if we suppose that ignorance created arrogance, then ignorance can also blind the one who is reading the writer?
And if so, does that mean that knowledge is a sign of intelligence? ...Then, where is the offense?
:b
Reminds me of the folks who get extremely irate at talk radio. Yet somehow, they are tuned in daily, screaming, unable to change stations or turn off the radio....
cheers,
AJ
Isn't it the truth.
Perhaps that's what compelled Ack to contribute with that excellent "warm-up" post a few posts back?
- We always gain something from any discussion...and that gain is there to open eyes and ears. We're all part of that discussion, we're all part of this beautiful planet, Earth.
And music is everywhere, even in the silence of our quietude.
Some fascinating stuff...truly expands one's mind into the surreal of all audio theories, and beyond. :b
Sharing, learning, discussing...all good for our advancement. ...Without a doubt.
* Later tonight I'm not sure what we're going to do...yesterday we've talked about Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ... but it was loose talk. ...There are many music selections in the air; on our walls and in town, live.
It's funny that you mention "ultra low bass", because @ home we have balanced control over it, but live we don't. ...Best of luck for a pleasant/enjoyable live music evening. :b
...And let us know how that turned out.
Well said Steve. I just returned from a sail with my friend Leland Wallace and his lovely wife, Elsa. He owned the Symdex Systems loudspeaker company during the 90s and 2000s and advised me on my first high end system when I got back into this hobby in 1993. It was a great sail surrounded by a huge number of antique wooden boats having their annual regatta. A few were the kinds of boats that were raced during the America's Cup races in the 1920s and 30s and owned during the Gilded Age.
Leland is a great guy. We sailed and talked about audio and music. Just the sun, ocean, and wind and 6 knots of quiet speed.
As a diversion on a nice Summer day, here are two photos to enjoy.
Anyone remember these Symdex speakers? I think they were called the Sigma Omega model.
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The research originates and dates back to work done at the Canadian National Research Council by Dr. Toole et al. NRC is a government funded, non-profit organization intended to advance/enable establishment of audio related companies in Canada. Companies like Paradigm, PSB, etc. were all helped by this and to this day refer and base their designs (to varying degrees) on NRC research. This is one of many references to their work at NRC which I have posted before:
As I have said, this research is fundamental and is used by many companies. Here is another example: http://www.axiomaudio.com/NRC
"Over the course of more than 20 years, the validity of these measurements has been confirmed by double-blind listening tests conducted in a nearby NRC listening room that approximates the size and furnishings of a typical living room. The program was guided by Dr. Floyd Toole, a Canadian physicist and psycho-acoustician who received his PhD in England in stereo localization, and continued his experiments at the National Research Council beginning in the 1970s. In his search for an accurate speaker with which to conduct his experiments, he discovered wild inconsistencies in speaker design and measurement, and an absence of controlled scientific research. Since he was already an audiophile, Toole invited several young Canadian speaker designers, including Axiom's Ian Colquhoun, to work with him in evolving new speaker measurements and listening tests (part of the NRC’s mandate was to assist Canadian firms in product development).
Toole gathered the results of these tests of frequency-response measurements and controlled listening tests by listeners with normal hearing and wrote scientific papers that were published in Audio Engineering Society (AES) Journals. The papers, "Listening Tests: Turning Opinion into Fact" and "Loudspeaker Measurements and Their Relationship to Listener Preferences," were unprecedented and Toole was later elected President of the Audio Engineering Society worldwide. The results of Toole’s research on speaker measurement and listening tests were startling and got lots of attention. The NRC program also had the willing participation of Canadian hi-fi magazines, editors and reviewers, beginning with AudioScene Canada and later, Sound & Vision Canada. The magazines needed a good facility to do controlled tests of a variety of Canadian, British, and American speakers for the magazine readers, and Toole’s program needed loudspeakers to experiment with. As a reviewer for AudioScene Canada, and later as editor of Sound & Vision (Canada), I was proud to be a member of the NRC listening panel for many years along with Floyd Toole, and Ian G. Masters (former editor of AudioScene Canada).
Of course, sonic benefits accrued not just to Axiom’s speakers but to other prominent Canadian speaker builders as well. The findings of Toole’s program were in one sense startling and at the same time remarkably useful: When the brand name, size, type and price of speakers were concealed from listeners, persons with normal hearing agreed on which speakers sounded pleasing and accurate --"musical" if you will-- and which ones were inaccurate and downright unpleasant. In the course of these tests, the notion of "golden-eared" listeners was largely dismissed. As long as listeners had a few hours of training on what to listen for ("fat" emphasized bass, strident harsh treble, muffled midrange, narrow "boxy" colorations and the like), they ranked good speakers and bad speakers the same way. And what was even more intriguing: If a speaker’s on-axis (in front) and off-axis frequency-response measurements could be kept as similar as possible, especially within a 15-degree "listening window" and especially over the midrange, the speaker would score highly in blind listening tests. While this is an oversimplification of decades of research at the NRC and by individual designers at Axiom and at other firms, it has proven to be extraordinarily predictive. Although no two speakers designed according to the NRC mantra ever sound exactly alike, there is nevertheless a remarkable congruence in what might be called "the Canadian sound," and that is one of openness, transparency, "linearity" (smoothness), and fidelity."
Even in the case of research conducted under Harman, it is a *gift* to all of us that the company chooses to share all of its research with us and rest of the industry. It is disappointing to continue to see these non-technical remarks that are results of lack of spending time to read and understand the work.
One should not overlook the reason a lot of audio equipment - like my XP-25 and Alpha DAC - just don't have an Of/Off switch at all. Beyond that, not much else to say. Regarding the Magicos, the local dealer alerted me that they need warm-up long, long ago (I was inquiring about the Q7s' character changing ever so slightly). At the end of the day, voice coils and crossover parts also have an optimal operating range, like any other electrical component, and for example, like transistors' needing heatsinks, one may notice that some speaker drivers include holes in the back to help dissipate heat, not unlike ferrofluid's raison d'etre in some tweeters. There is nothing new here, just pointing out what's really common practice and based on solid science.
It's great to see this definition of the term "MUSICAL" = PLEASING AND ACCURATE. Along with "natural", "musical" is the highest compliment to describe a system, IMO.
That is not their "research." It is a Powerpoint presentation meant to educate people so it has the high level message. The research are the ASA and AES Journal papers.
Dealer training of that sort doesn't teach you anything. Now if you went to Harman recently and sat through their 2-day presentation, then you would have had an informed opinion because you would actually then sit through the blind listening tests. But even that would not get you educated enough to know this very complex field. It took me years to read hundreds of papers, spend days with the researchers to learn this topic. It is not remotely something you pick up as a part-time person in a Hifi shop.
All of this analysis has been done and extensively so in every *paper*. Here is one of countless examples where the statistical analysis goes on for pages: "Differences in Performance and Preference of Trained versus Untrained Listeners In Loudspeaker Tests: A Case Study"
"In both tests, there was a highly significant
difference in preference between the different
loudspeakers; F (3, 180) = 175.5, p < .0001 for the 4-
way test, and F (2, 224) = 91.441, p < .0001 for the
3-way test. A Scheffe post hoc test performed at a
significance level of .05 showed significant
difference in the means between all pairs of
loudspeakers in both tests.
Other main effects that were statistically
significant in both tests were listening group; F (10,
60) = 8.844, p < .0001 for the 4-way test and F
(13,112) = 5.459, p < .0001 in the 3-way test.
In the 3-way test, program was statistically
significant, F (3,336) = 6.302, p < .0004. Since the
effect size was very small it is not discussed any
further. The other main effects are discussed in more
detail in the following sections. "
Again the analysis goes on and on. Please, please assume some competence on the part of our industry research communities to demand such rigor and for presenters to include them in all of their work.
The more "great" part was what proceeded that part of the sentence: "The findings of Toole’s program were in one sense startling and at the same time remarkably useful: When the brand name, size, type and price of speakers were concealed from listeners, persons with normal hearing agreed on which speakers sounded pleasing and accurate..."
Hi Peter,
it is great you had such a nice time sailing. I really enjoyed the last time sailing with you too; feeling in touch with the water on your sailboat is an exquisite experience -- it's like a low-lying sportscar on the road.
I found those Symdex speakers really impressive at your place, outstanding performance for the price.
For my part, I had a great musical afternoon enjoying the genius in Mozart's symphonies # 36 and # 39. Thank you again for once more awakening my interest in this incredible composer with your LP of his string quintets. These symphonies were followed by Stockhausen's Balance, a trio for bass clarinet, English horn and flute. It is one of the most remarkable compositions I know when it comes to originality. Finally, I heard the 2nd string quartet by the great Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, just gripping music.
Now I will enjoy the nice summer weather on a walk with my dogs. For the evening I have planned to listen to the avantgarde jazz of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, live in 1972. I look forward to that thrilling experience.
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