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

[NorthStar]

When I was @ college in the Philosophy courses...it was good to express your opinion...to speak up.
When in Chemistry courses it was good to dare in exploring.
In Latin courses we learned history and the language.
In mathematics we balanced theory with geometry.
Sculpture courses, ...imagination and hard passionate work.

When I was a student @ school it was good to go ahead and learn and advance. ...We respected everyone in our classes.

The topic is Audio Science and Sounds. ...Their interrelation, connection...as we are discovering it every single day that goes by.

It's not about us and them it's about what we can learn from each other.

Take the time...read the good stuff, and be your own moderator. There is plenty of room for all the scientists and audiophiles to live in harmony everywhere.

Just my opinion for all it's worth.

P.S. In a prior post I gave five links...did anyone here take the time to read a line or two?
Man it's hot today here...38° Celsius! ...I'm frying, like bacon.

P.P.S. You guys are the top cream of the crop in audio...act like it. We're all in it together.

 

[ddk]

I find Amir's frustration pretty understandable. And while that frustration has shown a couple of times, overall, I think he has handled a tirade of substance-free denial and attack pretty well. Above we have a post claiming that the test is flawed because the amp was insufficient to drive some of the speakers, from someone who doesn't even know which amp was used. When challenged to put some substance behind his claim, he insisted that Amir provide the evidence. Frustrating indeed. You'd get booted off the high school debate team for such nonsense.
Tim

You should get your facts right before accusing anyone Tim, like you did with your YouTube comments. A marketing professional who doesn't know about YouTube, what does that say about you? I said many other things besides the amplifier regarding that test too and if you were familiar with Proceed you'd know that there's little difference among their amps of that size, the exact model no. is irrelevant. Where's the scientific evidence against anything I said that you're getting uppety about. I have no problem following you down the "personal" rabbit hole but dispute my comments with real facts of your own.

Amir & I are both big boys and we know how to moderate ourselves.

david

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You'll forgive me if I consider that a pretty biased view of what has gone down here.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Amir & I are both big boys and we know how to moderate ourselves.

david

Are you quite sure of that?

 

[ddk]

You'll forgive me if I consider that a pretty biased view of what has gone down here.

Looking forward to your factual, unbiased version.

 

[ddk]

When I was @ college in the Philosophy courses...it was good to express your opinion...to speak up.
When in Chemistry courses it was good to dare in exploring.
In Latin courses we learned history and the language.
In mathematics we balanced theory with geometry.
Sculpture courses, ...imagination and hard passionate work.

When I was a student @ school it was good to go ahead and learn and advance. ...We respected everyone in our classes.

The topic is Audio Science and Sounds. ...Their interrelation, connection...as we are discovering it every single day that goes by.

It's not about us and them it's about what we can learn from each other.

Take the time...read the good stuff, and be your own moderator. There is plenty of room for all the scientists and audiophiles to live in harmony everywhere.

Just my opinion for all it's worth.

P.S. In a prior post I gave five links...did anyone here take the time to read a line or two?
Man it's hot today here...38° Celsius! ...I'm frying, like bacon.

P.P.S. You guys are the top cream of the crop in audio...act like it. We're all in it together.

Sorry!

david

 

[NorthStar]

No David, I wasn't referring to anyone...it was just a way of speech...universal. :b

 

[ddk]

No David, I wasn't referring to anyone...it was just a way of speech...universal. :b

I know Bob, but I admit that most of the back & forth was an exercise in futility and nothing is resolved.

david

 

[NorthStar]

I hear you.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Looking forward to your factual, unbiased version.

And I'm looking forward to yours. What was the model # of that inadequate amp? What is it's power rating and output impedance? Why, exactly, is it inadequate?

Tim

 

[AJ Soundfield]

And I'm looking forward to yours. What was the model # of that inadequate amp? What is it's power rating and output impedance? Why, exactly, is it inadequate?

Tim

You're wasting your time Tim. He blew his ABX dog whistle and then fabricated the whole amp issue thing attempting to imply it corrupted the results and discredits Tooles solid science. Not a wise thing to do when one demonstrates no understanding of audio science and perceptual testing. "ABX" testing of speakers for heavens sakes. Nor any understanding of the foundations off of which Toole et al operate.
I did start to read the Toole video thread here but it's pretty lengthy! Didn't catch any worthy criticism.

Oh and still have yet to see anything about mysteriously engineered sounds emitted by stereos in the thread, despite the title.

cheers,

AJ

 

[Joe Whip]

I just read a bit of this thread and it has gone about where I would expect it to go. I will say this about the subject. While I am not sure that science can yet explain everything about how something sounds, I do know that is will eventually, probably a lot sooner than some may think. It is only a matter of time!

 

[NorthStar]

I just read a bit of this thread and it has gone about where I would expect it to go. I will say this about the subject. While I am not sure that science can yet explain everything about how something sounds, I do know that it will eventually, probably a lot sooner than some may think. It is only a matter of time!

If up to it, only read the last link (the fifth one): [POST]333274[/POST] ...Won't take long, perhaps in the next century.
...Or two.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Don't matter what it can, or has explained. The argument of the "unknown unknowns" has an infinite lifetime, because there is no answer. The perfect get out of jail free card.

Tim

 

[ddk]

Tim & AJ,

You're conjuring memories of Heckle & Jeckle cartoons, go check out BPA2 & HPA2, knock yourselves out. Don't fall off the branch but once you're done with your cackling put some skin in the posts and take your scientific positions disproving what I said about the speakers and the amp with your technical knowledge.

AJ, where are your merited arguments that you boasted about, put something up yourself before demanding things from others.

And I'm looking forward to yours. What was the model # of that inadequate amp? What is it's power rating and output impedance? Why, exactly, is it inadequate?

Tim

You're wasting your time Tim. He blew his ABX dog whistle and then fabricated the whole amp issue thing attempting to imply it corrupted the results and discredits Tooles solid science. Not a wise thing to do when one demonstrates no understanding of audio science and perceptual testing. "ABX" testing of speakers for heavens sakes. Nor any understanding of the foundations off of which Toole et al operate.
I did start to read the Toole video thread here but it's pretty lengthy! Didn't catch any worthy criticism.

Oh and still have yet to see anything about mysteriously engineered sounds emitted by stereos in the thread, despite the title.

cheers,

AJ

david

 

[853guy]

Don't matter what it can, or has explained. The argument of the "unknown unknowns" has an infinite lifetime, because there is no answer. The perfect get out of jail free card.

Tim

"Unknown unknowns" isn't a hip buzz-word I pulled out of the air. Rumsfeld may have (mis)popularised it, but it's a crucial part of understanding uncertainty in complex systems related to risk and contingency management that's wide-spread amongst industries not limited to finance, insurance, health care, engineering, oil and gas, and space exploration (see below):

"(This graph) shows a tradespace for an orbital transfer vehicle, with cost on the vertical axis and utility (mostly determined by the ability to impart delta-V on other vehicles) on the horizontal.22 Each point is an evaluated architecture. At a glance, one can see that architectures in group A are probably robust and have potential for further value creation. If, for example, the user’s requirements change unexpectedly, there are “nearby” architectures of similar cost that can accommodate the user. A system using the architectures at B, on the other hand, would get in severe cost trouble if the user’s demands increased; the only advantage to these architectures is the potential for savings if the users needs decreased."



If you don't think taking components measured with steady-state signals only, putting them together and playing the always changing signals of music through them is not a complex system - let alone introducing a speaker to an amplifier - introducing variables that cause changes to the latter signal which we only have limited scope of currently measuring (taking the waveform of a digitally-encoded music signal and comparing it to the same musical signal played back though a system and measured at the speaker/room interface tells us...?), then I hope you'll allow those of us who have listened and owned a wide range of gear to continue to explore the significance of those changes in our own systems without derision, as much as you think said derision may be warranted relative to your own experience with yours.

P.S. If you need more graphs from the ongoing research being done on unknown unknowns in any of the related fields above I'll be more than happy to post them.

 

[Groucho]

I still see no attempt to define what the perfect audio system ought to do - which we would need in order to design a system to do it.

Instead, people are taking what already exists (designed by other people who have never been told what a perfect audio system ought to do) and observing it as though observing a natural system. Burdened with psychological biases they're finding it mysterious and unpredictable. Even without the psychological aspects, the objectivists are trying to unravel the multi-dimensional contents of a black box by observing its inputs and outputs. But with no definition of what it is supposed to be doing they cannot say whether it works or not.

Audiophiles are obsessed with minutiae (e.g. the difference between cables) without ever establishing what the basic system is supposed to do. I strongly suspect (my "hypothesis") that the perfect audio system should simply be 'linear' i.e. flat frequency response, perfect time domain behaviour, no noise, no distortion, and that the final speaker/room interface is where it gets interesting - but not necessarily mysterious.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Tim & AJ,

You're conjuring memories of Heckle & Jeckle cartoons, go check out BPA2 & HPA2, knock yourselves out. Don't fall off the branch but once you're done with your cackling put some skin in the posts and take your scientific positions disproving what I said about the speakers and the amp with your technical knowledge.

AJ, where are your merited arguments that you boasted about, put something up yourself before demanding things from others.

What amp?

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I still see no attempt to define what the perfect audio system ought to do - which we would need in order to design a system to do it.

Instead, people are taking what already exists (designed by other people who have never been told what a perfect audio system ought to do) and observing it as though observing a natural system. Burdened with psychological biases they're finding it mysterious and unpredictable. Even without the psychological aspects, the objectivists are trying to unravel the multi-dimensional contents of a black box by observing its inputs and outputs. But with no definition of what it is supposed to be doing they cannot say whether it works or not.

Audiophiles are obsessed with minutiae (e.g. the difference between cables) without ever establishing what the basic system is supposed to do. I strongly suspect (my "hypothesis") that the perfect audio system should simply be 'linear' i.e. flat frequency response, perfect time domain behaviour, no noise, no distortion, and that the final speaker/room interface is where it gets interesting - but not necessarily mysterious.

100% agreement.

Tim

 

[jkeny]

The ideal system would be linear , what goes in is what comes out ,an accurate as possible reproduction of the signal.
In relatively small domestic listening rooms ,is indeed where most of the problems lie, it is extremely difficult to create a flat response with good and even reverberation time across the entire frequency spectrum.
If we could create the 'perfect' room ,with an extremely linear system that would come as close as possible to reproducing the original file.
Of course there is nothing wrong in preferring added distortion, just don't refer to it as High Fidelity.
Keith.

Of course you realise that this ideal is not achievable? The playback electronics are not linear & the very design of devices like S-D DACs precludes linearity.
It then becomes a matter of deciding how much non-linearity is acceptable & we are back to the debate between those that claim they know what is inaudible & those that claim they hear such elements.