I wrote this in another thread. I have highlighted a particular sentence and included its context. Amir commented thus about my phrase "...audio science can not yet explain.": "As to confrontation, unfortunately that is what we have even in your statement when you say "audio science can't yet explain." Audio science very much explains much of what you think it doesn't. You don't like that answer but you have to understand that such comments are inflammatory to the other camp and hugely so. You are telling them that they have to throw out a mountain of research, published and accepted audio science. As I said, on a number of other forums, any of the active threads on our forum would have been considered "anti-science" and riots in streets would follow. confrontational."
Does this highlighted sentence, in my original quote above, seem confrontational, controversial and "(hugely) inflammatory to the other camp"? Are the objectivists, or anyone for that matter, offended by this phrase? I'm curious and want to learn if and why this might be.
Perhaps I should have written, "I do not think measurements can explain everything we hear from an audio system. For instance, I have not seen measurements that will explain how a speaker system will perform in the areas of micro dynamics, resolution, sense of presence, or the listener's level of emotional involvement, in a given system and room." For these areas of performance, I have relied on my ears.
Does audio science really explain everything about how something sounds?
So I have now gone through the entire thread, and though I have ignored some posts for obvious reasons, it is quite clear what most of the worthy posters truly believe. I am posting a response to your original question very late, but it felt like you wanted to hear from your local group of audiophiles.
First, you've asked a couple of times whether people think you made an inflammatory comment above... I feel the original wording was over-affirmative [not inflammatory], as if you (or anyone else, for that matter) have gone through the entire audio research published to date. So not inflammatory the way so many other comments in this thread and others read, and personally, I gloss over such minutiae and truly understand what people really mean; FWIW, your corrected re-phrasing is technically more appropriate. But an "audio researcher", might have taken exception with the original wording; however, at the end of the day, researchers often insult each other, and since we have bigger problems to solve, who cares how you originally phrased things, As an example, a paper I wrote long ago was rejected by one of the two reviewers with rather insulting, direct ("how could this be") sort of language, and the other (real subject-matter) reviewer accepted it as is... go figure, as they say.
More to the main point: can audio science explain everything about how something sounds. Before I elaborate, my opinion is that
I remain utterly unconvinced that it can explain everything, yet. For starters,
science has not even been able to firmly explain why the Stradivarius violins have that distinctive sound yet, thus, no one's been able to accurately reproduce one. But I do think - given time - that everything will be scientifically explained some day (audio is not theology), and
the only meaningful way to advance the art of audio reproduction is through science (which inherently includes experimentation). Therefore, from my perspective, audio science is still thin.
Let me pause and clarify that "audio science", for me, covers more than electrical engineering that's being mostly discussed in this thread, and includes the ear and auditory perception of the brain. The latter two are far from being fully understood (e.g. no cure for any form of tinnitus) yet, and as an example, I posted this research article
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...r-Cells-responding-to-frequencies-up-to-79kHz long ago to show that we still don't fully understand the ear yet (this should really be no news to anyone) and that there is so much more to high frequencies than we think. BTW, this very paper should be relevant to frequency response discussions in this and other threads, and I agree with those that postulate that all electronics need to be wide bandwidth (and why I continue to laugh at Redbook digital).
You may have seen me post many times how I select equipment, and it may be time to elaborate on that:
designer-->design-->sound. Making such a claim can actually appear contrary to what I said earlier: if science cannot explain everything yet, then why not rely on sound first, and why rely on design more than the sound... Bear with me, 'cause it's a little complicated to explain, but consider the following brief statements:
- If science is (to me) the only way to advance the art of audio reproduction, then first selecting the designer(s) who can master it hopefully explains why I value this attribute so much. Audio Engineering science is also extremely complicated, so mastering it is really difficult. Throw in understanding of the ear and auditory perception, and the "designer" attribute becomes extremely critical to me
- Then, selecting certain designers naturally translates to how they actually apply science and knowledge on the printed circuit boards
- How well they succeed is left to the "sound" their products make
But there is more for me to selecting a designer and design: there is the whole integration part in system configuration, and I have never seen solid science or conclusive claims that explain how _exactly_ Component A by Designer X will interact with Component B by Designer Y. In other words, I value a system approach to system design very much; a paramount example of this is how well MIT cables sound with Spectral, unlike any other. This is one of the reasons why I tossed the Harman "research" out the window when lowly Proceed amps were used to drive speakers (and no, power ratings at 8 and 4 ohms mean nothing in this regard - I am referring to how the Proceed issue was defended in other threads), among so many other perceived problems in their approach. Then there is the whole recording part of it, and a designer with experience (and success) in that area is also highly valuable to me. A picture of Keith Johnson was posted in this thread, and then we also saw so many posts from some "Loudspeaker designer" - just contrast the two, and you can probably guess what I think of it.
At this point, I'd like to touch on the following post by Amir: "
We need to erase the notion of "live" from our vocabulary. Everything needs to start at what is already recorded. Not before". I couldn't disagree more; though he attempted to defend it, I can't fathom why we should remove "live" from our vocabulary. Part of the enjoyment we get is in how realistic our systems sound, and "realistic" usually refers to what we hear in our daily lives, and by extension, live music. I personally try to reproduce live music as best as possible, and the recording is part of it.
So finally, now comes the part of how I would like to see audio science evolve, and it builds on top of many things others pointed out: if we could find a way to accurately and scientifically predict and describe how a component renders timbre, soundstage, image height et al, and be able to also do so when Component A is then physically linked to Component B - thus be able to scientifically describe the product of the two - then I _may_ accept that audio science is highly advanced. I say "may" because I think there is the grand-daddy of them all - not discussed as far as I can see - and that is
timing. I would very much love to see scientific claims that Component A gets timing right, or what its timing distortions are - in other words, I have seen no such thing as "timing distortion" measurements, nor timbral quality measurements, nor the others. Furthermore, such measurements would be able to tell me that Component A gets the A440 note correctly but perhaps be off with middle C and by how much and why. And to make it more fun, can science mathematically show me how a cartridge stylus and/or the cantilever affect timbre, timing, image height and soundstage? [and no, I cannot accept that material stiffness explains it all; why? because we cannot even scientifically prove the optimal stylus shape]
Having said all this, audio science and engineering has clearly helped improve the equipment available now, and we have been able to improve on timbre, imaging, soundstaging, etc, even that elusive timing... Personally, only when I ever listen to a system that sounds exactly like live unamplified symphonic music, and be able to couple that with scientific papers on how it was done, will I accept that audio science has been able to explain _everything_. Said otherwise, if science could explain it all today, we would only be limited by materials; and I don't see that... so unless we are able to accurately measure everything relevant to the subject, we can only continue working toward that goal; so far, our measurements appear to still be very limited, though they are improving.
-ack
I've mentioned it in several responses to jkeny, Bud and Peter to name a few. It's not what's acceptable to me. For a test to have scientific validity, one must be aware of and control for variables.
