Blind Test Challenge Offered by Engineer on Audiogon

[Empirical Audio]

He's a "protector of the audio uneducated"; in that sense, his above three points do make sense.

The first and second ones we can certainly argue with...anything above $5,000/pair of loudspeakers.
The third, as long the loudspeakers are good enough...frequency curve off axis and phase.

A study about 8 or 10 years ago showed that most people preferred speakers with good off-axis response. Of all the attributes, this was the most important.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[Empirical Audio]

Digtial proponents have always argued that each incarnation is perfect. That begs the question of; why they work so hard to improve I?.

Even I have fallen into this trap. I never claimed perfect, just that I cannot make it much better. I have discovered over many years that it can always make it better.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[Empirical Audio]

These guys are the real deal.... http://www.aes.org/

I've read some AES jitter studies. They need someone to help them with this that knows something about jitter. They do everything wrong in the studies I looked at, from the equipment to the tracks played to the listeners training. They declare the conclusion to be that no one can hear jitter lower than 1nsec. I recently made changes to my reclocker that reduced the directly measured jitter from 22psec to 7psec. I can easily hear this difference and all of the customers that get this mod give me feedback that they hear a difference. I think this jitter must be in the femtoseconds to final reach the point of inaudibility.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[Ron Resnick]

Not just in audio.

An unnecessary snootysnogg!

(Don’t think we don’t know what you’re talking about, Al!)

 

[microstrip]

A study about 8 or 10 years ago showed that most people preferred speakers with good off-axis response. Of all the attributes, this was the most important.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

If we are addressing the same tests, this preference was valid in the conditions it was tested, we IMHO can not extrapolate for different listening conditions. And most people usually is not we are interested in high-end - we are mostly interested in our type of particular preferences, not on the statistical preference on non believers ...

Surely people wanting to make a successful living on audio should analyze the preference of their target buyers and develop their products accordingly.

 

[RogerD]

I've read some AES jitter studies. They need someone to help them with this that knows something about jitter. They do everything wrong in the studies I looked at, from the equipment to the tracks played to the listeners training. They declare the conclusion to be that no one can hear jitter lower than 1nsec. I recently made changes to my reclocker that reduced the directly measured jitter from 22psec to 7psec. I can easily hear this difference and all of the customers that get this mod give me feedback that they hear a difference. I think this jitter must be in the femtoseconds to final reach the point of inaudibility.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

In my experience jitter is secondary to a very good 75 ohm cable and removing internal current hash in the digital chain. Jitter really doesn't matter.

 

[NorthStar]

If we are addressing the same tests, this preference was valid in the conditions it was tested, we IMHO can not extrapolate for different listening conditions. And most people usually is not we are interested in high-end - we are mostly interested in our type of particular preferences, not on the statistical preference on non believers ...

Surely people wanting to make a successful living on audio should analyze the preference of their target buyers and develop their products accordingly.

Harman International.

 

[Gregadd]

Actually Harmon did claim that could predict how their speaker was going to "respond" in unknown room. That study caused me great consternation. I found that I did not like those speakers standing alone not to mention in competition. As that great Ball Coach, Steve Spurier use to say, "We got some good players. Let's turn the lights on and see what we got." I don't care how a speaker performs in a study. It's the real world that counts.

 

[Folsom]

I wonder if the electrical engineer was a former admin here

That man is not an EE. Not even close.

Steve,

That's my long experience with them as well. They like to fancy themselves as protectors of consumers from charlatans and fools. They are self appointed knights of the realm of orthodoxy, as I like to say. They see themselves as righteous warriors, but they behave more as thugs, attempting to bully every forum they frequent into succumbing to their objectivist viewpoint exclusively. They are closed-minded and typically arrogant, which, I suspect, is why they cannot accuratly see their own state of mind. They are a tiresome lot who like to band together into forum gangs, running to each others defense, and rapidly parachuting into any discussion thread to quickly extinghish any spark of an open-minded explorative discussion.

It's not just that they claim to not hear differences in equipment, they will declare that neither does anyone else hear them. They say subjectivists hear differences they WANT to hear, without realizing that maybe they don't hear differences they DON'T WANT to hear. Since they don't trust their own ears, I always wonder how they select their system components. Logically, they should only select mass-market (read as: cheap) A/V application gear strictly by specification (which are, typically, uniformly beyond reproach), and by price. Otherwise, they are (surprise) hypocrites.

Pretty much. You see a lot, and I mean a LOT of lies in marketing. But almost nothing annoys me more than these "protector" types. Why don't they go to a casino? Hopefully someone will punch their lights out.

Now what's funny is instead of spending time trying to determine wrongness and fakeness, one can spend time finding out why something sounds different. What most don't get is that "better" is subjective and not equal to better measurements necessarily by any stretch of the imagination. People happily appreciate products that make measurements worse, every day, all day - and THAT IS FINE.

Really though I believe we simply don't remember audio in the way we do other things, so we unfairly try to judge things under parameters that won't work for objectionist testing. Therefor I'd stay away from these events unless I come along and try a few things that may dispel it all.

 

[DaveyF]

I second the call for Ron not to do it.

One of the things having a store has taught me is that people will hear what they want to hear.

Alex, psychoacoustics is an old theory. Problem is that it is fairly accurate in most of what it predicts, IME.
Other problem is that it is always a two way street, so therefore people not only hear what they want to hear, but unfortunately they also hear what they are taught to hear. It’s a weird deal...and it’s a fact of this hobby that has been there since the beginning, just saying, and of course, imho.

 

[Al M.]

An unnecessary snootysnogg!

(Don’t think we don’t know what you’re talking about, Al!)

Of course, Ron, you do. That's the point.

 

[Al M.]

But it is also a more general thing. That people only hear what they want to hear also holds for the deeper philosophical, existential world views. There are few that have rigorously probed alternative world views before they became certain about their own. That holds for people on all sides of the fundamental issues.

 

[Robh3606]

And most people usually is not we are interested in high-end - we are mostly interested in our type of particular preferences, not on the statistical preference on non believers ...

So damn the science full speed ahead and only use what fits you own paradigm forget the rest??

Rob

 

[Empirical Audio]

In my experience jitter is secondary to a very good 75 ohm cable and removing internal current hash in the digital chain. Jitter really doesn't matter.

If you have so much ground-loop noise that you have hash on the signal, you have bigger problems. Solve those first and then minimize jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[microstrip]

So damn the science full speed ahead and only use what fits you own paradigm forget the rest??

Rob

Sorry, I fail to see the connection between your comment and my comment on Steve N. post ...
Anyway, audio design is not a black and white matter, it has many kinds of gray ...

 

[Empirical Audio]

That man is not an EE. Not even close.



Pretty much. You see a lot, and I mean a LOT of lies in marketing. But almost nothing annoys me more than these "protector" types. Why don't they go to a casino? Hopefully someone will punch their lights out.

Now what's funny is instead of spending time trying to determine wrongness and fakeness, one can spend time finding out why something sounds different. What most don't get is that "better" is subjective and not equal to better measurements necessarily by any stretch of the imagination. People happily appreciate products that make measurements worse, every day, all day - and THAT IS FINE.

Really though I believe we simply don't remember audio in the way we do other things, so we unfairly try to judge things under parameters that won't work for objectionist testing. Therefor I'd stay away from these events unless I come along and try a few things that may dispel it all.

The problem is not that things that measure worse actually sound better than other things that measure better. The problem is that the measurements are insufficient to properly characterize the gear. It's time that the typical measurements are improved. Lord knows, I have tried with JA. No response....

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[RogerD]

If you have so much ground-loop noise that you have hash on the signal, you have bigger problems. Solve those first and then minimize jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

You don’t understand.....I don’t have any,nada,none,no compression,no congestion,just a perfect clean digital signal. I use a Sony Dvp 55n transport and a Monarchy NM24 DAC w/Mundorf supreme coupling caps. About a 1200.00 digital rig and I’ ll put it up against any rig in the world. Removing the internal current leakage inside the component produces a unadulterated signal. Yet the vast majority of people can’t fathom, that some concept can make such a profound difference in the audio signal and the electronics. Except for speakers,it makes me think that the High End is a farce, but unintended, just people are in their box... the box being that they must spend large amounts of money...which is not true if you understand what really effects the audio signal.
BTW I did not say anything about ground loop noise...does not exist in my system.

 

[Hi-FiGuy]

I once was at a local audio club meeting and the store had their repair technician giving a speech. He basically said we all actually like distortion and gave some compelling cases of it. He also said that he can teach us to hear a particular form of distortion but warned us once heard you can never unhear it regardless of the level of system. Never in my life have I seen or heard 40 to 50 people give a unanimous in perfect rhythm no! Priceless it was!

 

[Empirical Audio]

You don’t understand.....I don’t have any,nada,none,no compression,no congestion,just a perfect clean digital signal. I use a Sony Dvp 55n transport and a Monarchy NM24 DAC w/Mundorf supreme coupling caps. About a 1200.00 digital rig and I’ ll put it up against any rig in the world. Removing the internal current leakage inside the component produces a unadulterated signal. Yet the vast majority of people can’t fathom, that some concept can make such a profound difference in the audio signal and the electronics. Except for speakers,it makes me think that the High End is a farce, but unintended, just people are in their box... the box being that they must spend large amounts of money...which is not true if you understand what really effects the audio signal.
BTW I did not say anything about ground loop noise...does not exist in my system.

I do understand. I have been at the stage you are at many times over my career in audio. I've heard all of this before, many times. You have achieved a level that you believe is the top or close to it. Every system is at different level of perfection. If there is one thing I have learned over 22 years of having my own audio design company, it's that things can ALWAYS get better.

If you are happy with your system, fine, but don't try to convince us that our systems are not significantly better, because I know they are, based on what you have there. I've modded other manufacturers gear for more than 10 years (including many Sony Transports) and designed my own gear for almost 20 years. You will not be taken seriously making these kinds of claims here.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[DaveyF]

The problem is not that things that measure worse actually sound better than other things that measure better. The problem is that the measurements are insufficient to properly characterize the gear. It's time that the typical measurements are improved. Lord knows, I have tried with JA. No response....

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

+1

Remember that measurements are supposed to measure what one hears...but the question becomes...what does one hear??
If you cannot hear a particular tone or have experience understanding the variations of that tone, then how is one supposed to quantify a measurement that can correlate to that tone. Inquiring minds and all that!

Now, OTOH, I do happen to think that measurements can be highly instructive....because IF you have a really poor unit with gross distortion...which some people will actually not hear, then a measurement that can point out the faulty design of the piece in question, is IMO a valuable tool. BUT, as you pointed out, measurements are insufficient to properly characterize the gear...and the question then becomes...how could that be changed?? A very complex problem, that I suspect would have no practical answer. Which is probably why you have NOT heard back from JA.....he has no answer either.