Comparative Listening Tests

[DaveyF]

i really like Amir's ASR site. It is so full of INFORMATION that will take me a long time to digest even a portion.

My problem with hard core objectivists is that they have a few measuring instruments that they think account for everything, and they have a tendency ignore brain processing and brain/perceptual plasticity.

I actually enjoy the hard core subjectivists because they are poetic and look for inspiration, freshness, and new vistas. That doesn't mean I want to go where they go or the fantasies that they indulge, however exotic. Art is important because it is a major feature of music and the hobby, and that will always have an element of the phantasmagoric.

Amir's comment that the brain manufactures differences even when the external data feed remains the same says a lot.

It doesn't matter how good your system is, you ear brain system will eventually acclimate to it and perhaps grow bored. You will hear something that sounds slightly different, your attention will be drawn, you will concentrate and hear something in a different way, and you will believe you have discovered a new audio talisman in the outside world and run naked down the street screaming "Eureka"!

I think a system can benefit from having ways to challenge the brain's plasticity without necessarily endorsing magic. Some guys do it with different cartridges and TTs, some do it by throwing money at components, I do it by changing around tubes and component arrangements mostly.

I "think" I have heard cable differences, too. My own speculation is that if an audiophile were really devoted, they would hard wire their system with solder joints from wall through speakers with no interfaces. Displacing a particular run of wire would then probably be perceptually insignificant. The myriad of interfaces themselves present variability problems.

Also, along the lines of perceptual plasticity, I think cable differences are quickly relegated to insignificance by brain accommodation. With vision, that would be like stepping from a somewhat lighter room into a somewhat darker room. After a few minutes, brain processing would make them more or less equivalent. With cables, the initial thrill of hearing a difference in a cable is probably drowned in the processing milieu after a minute or two, assuming it existed in the first place.

What is music.... is it not a pleasure center for the brain??
Therefore, if one hears a different presentation, because the brain tells us it is different and pleasurable/more correct to our recollection of the real event, is that not good enough??

 

[Steve williams]

Hi Amir,

"Being open minded" and purchasing an object to test while declaring you are confident it will do zero to improve audio performance is not only indicative of selective exposure on your part, but at best, a form of confirmation bias that renders your self-described "open-mindedness" to be completely questionable, and at worst, a flagrant display of experimenter bias suggesting a deficiency of robustness in your ability to design and conduct experiments with any scientific credibility.

Hope you are well.

853guy

Totally agree

 

[cjfrbw]

Amir's reviews crack me up. He can walk into a room of veblens worship with everybody bowing in the same direction to a pile of exotic expense, is unmoved by the opulence of the display, says the sound is unimpressive, and leaves. It's like going into a church and turning over the pews.

I have had similar experiences at shows, without wanting to turn over the pews, but I also know that I don't want the lightening bolts of anger and retaliation by stating it publicly.

I had a display guy get mad at me for calling him a vendor, which I guess he found insulting, so I guess I need new euphemisms for audio political correctness.

 

[Steve williams]

Amir's reviews crack me up. He can walk into a room of veblens worship with everybody bowing in the same direction to a pile of exotic expense, is unmoved by the opulence of the display, says the sound is unimpressive, and leaves. It's like going into a church and turning over the pews.

I have had similar experiences at shows, without wanting to turn over the pews, but I also know that I don't want the lightening bolts of anger and retaliation by stating it publicly.

I had a display guy get mad at me for calling him a vendor, which I guess he found insulting, so I guess I need new euphemisms for audio political correctness.

You should read his review of the VSA room and the Ultra 11. Best in Show by everyone except by the self proclaimed King of Audio who said the speakers were on the wrong wall when in reality the room was 30 x 30. He trashed the placement of the tube traps in the room when in reality the room was designed by Art Noxon.

I know whose ears I trust and I know who to turn a deaf ear to when I read BS reviews about things he knows nothing about.

 

[jkeny]

i really like Amir's ASR site. It is so full of INFORMATION that will take me a long time to digest even a portion.

My problem with hard core objectivists is that they have a few measuring instruments that they think account for everything, and they have a tendency ignore brain processing and brain/perceptual plasticity.

Rather they reference brain plasticity as the excuse for everything that they can't explain.

I actually enjoy the hard core subjectivists because they are poetic and look for inspiration, freshness, and new vistas. That doesn't mean I want to go where they go or the fantasies that they indulge, however exotic. Art is important because it is a major feature of music and the hobby, and that will always have an element of the phantasmagoric. There is also the "chasing the dragon" element of wishing to recreate the euphoric recall of peak experiences routinely. Unfortunately, they tend to be random and not so easily summoned, even with great systems.

Amir's comment that the brain manufactures differences even when the external data feed remains the same says a lot.

Attention & focus on different aspects of the same music brings to consciousness elements that may have gone unnoticed before - so playback of the same music one after another can sound different even though the music is exactly the same - this doesn't mean the "brain manufactures differences" - this is a misunderstanding in this example I already stated that the name for this was "inattentional blindness". There seems to be a great confusion about perception, auditory or visual - we don't hear everything in the first playing of music & therefore anything new that we hear in the second playing is a fabrication - perception is an analysis machine & it can only do analysis on a limited amount of data at a time, that aspect that we are focused on. Yes, we can switch instantly (seemingly) & focus on another aspect but we are no longer receptive to the first aspect. We don't notice this aspect as our perceptions seems so seamless - In the field of vision when we switch our eye's focus between one object & another, we are momentarily blind during the time it takes to switch - this is well know & given the name saccades.

It doesn't matter how good your system is, you ear brain system will eventually acclimate to it and perhaps grow bored. You will hear something that sounds slightly different, your attention will be drawn, you will concentrate and hear something in a different way, and you will believe you have discovered a new audio talisman in the outside world and run naked down the street screaming "Eureka"!

This is just wrong - systems which deliver an illusion which our perceptions judge to be perceptually correct do not bore as they present all the aspects of the music which engage us in listening - just as we would be engaged if listening to the same thing live & not in playback.

I think a system can benefit from having ways to challenge the brain's plasticity without necessarily endorsing magic. Some guys do it with different cartridges and TTs, some do it by throwing money at components, I do it by changing around tubes and component arrangements mostly.

I "think" I have heard cable differences, too. My own speculation is that if an audiophile were really devoted, they would hard wire their system with solder joints from wall through speakers with no interfaces. Displacing a particular run of wire would then probably be perceptually insignificant. The myriad of interfaces themselves present variability problems.

You are talking about a different aspect of the hobby - the tinkering side.

Also, along the lines of perceptual plasticity, I think cable differences are quickly relegated to insignificance by brain accommodation. With vision, that would be like stepping from a somewhat lighter room into a somewhat darker room. After a few minutes, brain processing would make them more or less equivalent. With cables, the initial thrill of hearing a difference in a cable is probably drowned in the processing milieu after a minute or two, assuming it existed in the first place.

IMO, this is just plain imagining on your part

 

[ddk]

That assumes pretty low audio IQ on my part if the managed to get me this way.

Not at all what I was implying Amir nor a knock on JBL's products just that the test was flawed and heavily biased to support SO's hypothesis, not to challenge or disprove it.

BTW, you know the low cost Ching Cheng power audio cable brand you were talking about in the other thread? My Mark Levinson monoblock amplifiers came with those cables!!!

So maybe you have more ideas in common with them.

LOL! I've been a JBL fan for decades specially Greg Timbers designs, probably the most experienced if not the best horn designer of our times. They compared one of his best wide dispersion HT horns, the only speaker of such design and the only one that would work in an auditorium setting against half a pair of domestic speakers in an absolutely non-realworld scenario for them, do you really need to even sit through this test to know the outcome? I bet they didn't even use a pure mono source probably an A+B signal to firmly stick that final nail in the other speakers coffins!

david

(Edit) We got side tracked, my point was SO's grading is meaningless and of no value to anyone else!

 

[RogerD]

The only science you need to believe is this: your brain easily, happily and routinely manufactures audible differences.

There is a term for this "Suspension of disbelief ".

 

[microstrip]

(...) Per above, medical science does this. Why is audio an exception? (...)

Easy - audio does not have the resources to carry such tests systematically. But sometimes we see some light, suggesting that audiophiles are not just biased fools. For example, look at Hi-Rez, a current hot subject in high-end. AES has a committee on it, but we are still waiting for the scientific truth on this subject, although a recent AES paper (A Meta-Analysis of High Resolution Audio Perceptual Evaluation http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18296) concludes that

" In summary, these results imply that, though the effect is perhaps small and difficult to detect, the perceived fidelity of an audio recording and playback chain is affected by operating beyond conventional consumer oriented levels."


However, as usual the section entitled "Future Research Directions" starting with : "As previously mentioned, many proposed causes or factors in perception of high resolution audio could not be confirmed nor denied and warrant further investigation " is long ...

Fortunately, pushed by mostly empirical knowledge obtained most of the time in non ideal conditions, we now have excellent HiRez recordings. Should we have waited for the scientists?

 

[jkeny]

And finally when we talk about intellectual dishonesty let us not forget the thread 3 weeks ago when Amir was so sure of himself only to get proved wrong over and over by jkeny and opus112. Rather than saying to them that he understands their point and admits he was wrong, instead he does what he always does when he's wrong and disappears off the site for 2 weeks hoping it would blow over.

DaveyF makes strong points

So let's talk about intellectual dishonesty when the person who preaches it is himself more guilty than the rest of us.

Fully agree, Steve.
The arguments put forward by Amir in that thread was that he was using a term "oversampling" in relation to FFTs that neither Opus nor I were familiar with because we weren't DSP engineers.
Not only did he show a complete lack of understanding of FFTs but tried to suggest that we were at fault.

This type of dishonesty he has demonstrated in the past to cover up his lack of understanding of USB asynchronous communication when he claimed that it re-transmitted packets & claimed John Swenson (ironically, a DSP engineer) had stated this to him.

In both instances, rather than admit to being wrong (there's nothing wrong with being wrong sometimes) he doubles-down & then disappears for the usual two week hiatus as Steve has identified.

Maybe this dishonesty has become acceptable behaviour due to the daily examples we see of it on the news but it treats the listeners/readers as fools who don't know how to evaluate what's being claimed? Indeed, in that recent thread on FFTs I've seen people praise Amir for his information (misinformation)!!

 

[DaveC]

i really like Amir's ASR site. It is so full of INFORMATION that will take me a long time to digest even a portion.

My problem with hard core objectivists is that they have a few measuring instruments that they think account for everything, and they have a tendency ignore brain processing and brain/perceptual plasticity.

I actually enjoy the hard core subjectivists because they are poetic and look for inspiration, freshness, and new vistas. That doesn't mean I want to go where they go or the fantasies that they indulge, however exotic. Art is important because it is a major feature of music and the hobby, and that will always have an element of the phantasmagoric. There is also the "chasing the dragon" element of wishing to recreate the euphoric recall of peak experiences routinely. Unfortunately, they tend to be random and not so easily summoned, even with great systems.

Amir's comment that the brain manufactures differences even when the external data feed remains the same says a lot.

It doesn't matter how good your system is, you ear brain system will eventually acclimate to it and perhaps grow bored. You will hear something that sounds slightly different, your attention will be drawn, you will concentrate and hear something in a different way, and you will believe you have discovered a new audio talisman in the outside world and run naked down the street screaming "Eureka"!

I think a system can benefit from having ways to challenge the brain's plasticity without necessarily endorsing magic. Some guys do it with different cartridges and TTs, some do it by throwing money at components, I do it by changing around tubes and component arrangements mostly.

I "think" I have heard cable differences, too. My own speculation is that if an audiophile were really devoted, they would hard wire their system with solder joints from wall through speakers with no interfaces. Displacing a particular run of wire would then probably be perceptually insignificant. The myriad of interfaces themselves present variability problems.

Also, along the lines of perceptual plasticity, I think cable differences are quickly relegated to insignificance by brain accommodation. With vision, that would be like stepping from a somewhat lighter room into a somewhat darker room. After a few minutes, brain processing would make them more or less equivalent. With cables, the initial thrill of hearing a difference in a cable is probably drowned in the processing milieu after a minute or two, assuming it existed in the first place.

I think most posting here are beyond the stage that we marvel at differences that are not improvements. Most of us listen for very specific things, I mean read Al M's review of my cables... he was very obviously looking to improve some specific aspects of his system he wasn't happy with. I and others have also stated the very specific things we look for when evaluating a system, not just "wow, that sound different!".

Hard wiring a system does make sense but not from a convenience perspective! I think most, including myself, want to be able to quickly and easily change things out, hence connectors. They are a somewhat necessary evil, and they can be improved to the point they interfere very little but this is not inexpensive... Good quality connectors do cost a lot. I think connector jacks are often ignored, most components do not come with the best possible RCA/XLR jacks, binding posts and internal wire, improving this makes about the same difference as good cables.

Any change you make to a system will be acclimated for by the brain, that's why inexperienced audiophiles with questionable systems often prefer their own systems to anything else they hear at an audio show. And it is true sometimes the change may be a slight improvement but you can take a whole bunch of slight improvements and it adds up to a night and day improvement. I've experienced this installing my SurgeX and cables in systems that had marginal power and cable components and the system's owners were incredulous at the huge improvements made. Each cable added made a nice improvement but nothing earth shattering, but the before/after differences of an entire cabling system + good AC power conditioning and delivery totally transformed his system from flat and boring, yet not objectionable, to a system with a 3-D soundstage that had far better resolution and the result was a much more engaging and fun to listen to system. IMO, cables and power are critical components when you get to a certain level of performance for this reason. Also, this is how you get a system that has that euphoric magic every single time you turn it on, not just when you're psychologically ready to hear some music.

 

[DaveC]

Sitting here I have next to me a $300 AC outlet that I am confident will do zero to improve audio performance. Yet, I still bought the thing to test. Who here has done such things in reverse? Jkenny? Stehno? Anyone else? How come you all are not open minded that your audio beliefs and methods of evaluation may be horrifically wrong? I don't even know if anyone has run my simple exercise that takes a few seconds and costs nothing. So why am I being asked to be open minded?

Wow... Just wow.

I've already commented on your test being too difficult and my thoughts that only folks with exceptional auditory memory would have a chance. But on other things, most here are certainly able and willing to try out new things without the incredible bias you are showing here. You have no clue what that receptacle will do, and if you install it how I recommended, in the wall feeding a power distributor, it's going to make a difference any old Joe would have no problem discerning. Except maybe people with ludicrous psychological bias, jeesh, why even bother if you're so certain?

 

[jkeny]

Sitting here I have next to me a $300 AC outlet that I am confident will do zero to improve audio performance. Yet, I still bought the thing to test. Who here has done such things in reverse? Jkenny? Stehno? Anyone else? How come you all are not open minded that your audio beliefs and methods of evaluation may be horrifically wrong? I don't even know if anyone has run my simple exercise that takes a few seconds and costs nothing. So why am I being asked to be open minded?

Let me rephrase that for you, Amir - "Sitting here I have next to me a $300 AC outlet that I am confident will do zero to improve audio performance. Yet, I still bought the thing to show it has no effect."

This accurately describes your approach - your experimenter's bias is rampant & evident in the "tests" you perform.

Your lack of understanding of the effects of leakage currents in measurements & how to use the Audio Precision analyser, (you continually tell us you own), would be embarrass a neophyte technician.

What exactly are you claiming I don't do in reverse? I develop digital audio products that address certain weaknesses I have identified as important & the end user feedback & magazine reviews show that I'm doing it right.

I sent one of my early USB DACs on a tour around WBF members some years ago, 2012 - Bruce Brown had this to say about it here

The hardest part of a DAC is to recreate the soft parts. I can sense the size of the venue and reverb tails go out all the way without falling off into the black.
The bass is nice and tight. Imaging on upright basses are spot on. They have good definition and body. Nothing bloated or unnatural. Snare hits are fast. I can hear the body of the snare for 1-2sec. It doesn't fall off like other converters. Piano is strong throughout the whole range. Voices are very natural and brass doesn't make my ears bleed.. especially muted trumpet. The only thing I found lacking are tiny cymbal hits..............All in all.. I'd say it's the best inexpensive converter I've heard yet. I'd put it up against anything under $5k. We'll be getting the Mytek 192/DSD DAC in here again and would love to directly compare the 2 head to head. From what I remember, the Mytek has its work cut out for it! Great job John!!

The design & refinement have moved on substantially since then. I offered it to you to hear & test but you weren't interested.

Tell me, exactly what audio devices have you designed & had reviewed?

 

[stehno]

My #1 belief basis is on controlled listening tests where we use our ears. Failing that, I resort to engineering, measurement and science. Since none of the audio tweaks come with controlled listening tests where only the ear was used, I am forced to interpret the efficacy of their product using other methods.

Seriously? How do you derive at these conclusions? This is a straw man argument used to convince others and perhaps yourself why you must “interpret the efficacy of their product using other methods”. Which IMO when translated implies, Amir is unable to interpret what he hears.

By the way, I had my hearing checked by an audiologist last year. He ran large number of tests (much more than the first time I had it done 20-30 years ago). All the tests were single blind. You think I would get as accurate of a result if I were looking at his monitor while he was presenting the tests?

IMO, this seems to be yet another indicator that you don’t know the first thing about understanding, comprehending, or interpreting what you hear i.e. a lack of trained hearing. Yes, we’re all too well aware of how you supposedly pass every hearing test with flying colors as you seem to boast about it too many times. But what you don’t understand is every time you boast about your wonderful hearing scores seems to be yet another indicator that you lack understanding of what is really entailed with trained/developed hearing.

You even posted a thread boasting, “Conclusive proof that higher resolution audio sounds different” and like a badge of honor you pinned it for all to see what fabulously trained ears you have. Which I wish they’d unpin. Yet another testament of your supposed superior hearing skills, but to me and perhaps to others, it’s just another of many bits of evidence that you don’t exhibit any traits of knowing the first thing about possessing a set of trained/developed ears. Perhaps like the blind man trying to convince everybody he can see. A monkey, a child, a dog, and even most women have better hearing that you. But out of that group you and perhaps Ethan are the only ones calling yourselves audio experts. I just don’t understand that.

The only science you need to believe is this: your brain easily, happily and routinely manufactures audible differences.

Amir, again, this is not science but common sense. Mature / savvy people have understood this for a very long time. Case-in-point. You ever watch a movie 10 times and each time you pick up something new? Maybe even completely different perspectives of the plot? It’s common sense and the mature / savvy types do not marvel at this as each sense has this potential. Should the astute type be aware of this potential? Of course, but only if it's necessary like if my ability to interpret what I hear was greatly lacking. It's common sense that no two events are identical. But under most circumstances, I need not concern myself with such elementary thoughts.

Again, I presented a test earlier where you listen to the same song over and over again and hear differences. There are countless proofs like this. If you don't believe in this, let's discuss it more. If you do believe in it, then you need to conduct tests that take this into account. Per above, medical science does this. Why is audio an exception?

See previous note.

As to your comment, no machine is telling you anything. We are simply observing that when a human is used as an audio measurement system, it comes with good and bad characteristics. We need to take advantage of good without the bad.

Who says, you? Another "audio expert" who cannot hear? It just occurred to me. Your “science” skills just may have a place in high-end audio. That’s for you to conduct listening tests with other like-minded pseudo science buddies (like Ethan) who also cannot hear and perhaps many without a “science” background in high-end audio who also lack the ability to interpret what they hear. I’m being serious. But for those with the ability to hear and interpret what they hear, I’ve always had great difficulty finding any value somebody like yourself may bring.

I asked my friend about it and he said it made a positive difference. Wanting to remain friends, I did not challenge him on that and instead, enjoyed tape after tape. There certainly was no harm introduced there so no reason to jump up and down about it.

Now what I described is the conclusion in my friend's mind based on faulty audio evaluation. I am confident that based on proper evaluation the effect of this device on audible soundwaves that we perceive is zero. And no, this is not being closed minded. If I told my doctor that someone online says taking massive amount of vitamins cured his cancer, should he be open minded and go and chase that? Or should he say that such stories do not follow accepted protocols and hence there is no reason to chase them?

Oh, that’s right. Per your earlier post, applied science told you the Shakti’s acts as diffuser of sorts its small stature dictates minute even infinitesimal changes. At CES 2007 one room had this new gismo that was a steel ball of sorts smaller than a playing marble and rested in a special tiny wood cup. The room was on the main / basement floor of the Venetian hotel and as I recall was maybe 20 ft by 25 – 30ft. We were there to hear some pretty phenomenal speakers and knew nothing about the tiny ball. We were there for perhaps 90 minutes that first day. But the first 10 – 15 minutes one of the vendors demonstrated for us the impact of the music presentation based on the placement location of this one tiny ball. It was rather phenomenal the impact this tiny ball had. It became quite the buzz for a few years but then seemed to drop off. I thought I saw it advertised a few years ago in a MusicDirect mag. This single tiny ball is maybe 1/500th’s the size of the Shakti’s. Yet, its impact was fairly incredible.

I would never underestimate the impact of vibrations / acoustic alterations. Tesla said if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think up vibrations which was reportedly his greatest passion. In fact, in Tesla’s lab on the 7th floor of a Manhattan bldg. Tesla had created a very small box that could fit in his coat pocket with an oscillator contained within. He attached it to a load-bearing wall with a steel girder behind it and within minutes people across the street were running out of their building screaming earthquake. He tried it once more on a skyscraper being constructed with just the steel girder frames constructed and attached the little box to one of the vertical beams. Within minutes construction workers higher up on the structure were screaming earthquake and Tesla grabbed the little box and walked off.

These few examples lead me to believe that your eye + brain interference is perhaps more severe than your ear + brain interference. And nowhere do I see a hint of real science from you in this regard. But I would not discount perhaps much naïveté.

Personally I am open minded even to a fault. To wit, I am happy to participate at my expense to evaluate this and any other tweak using our ears and only our ears to see if they are effective. Are you game? Are you open minded to experiments that do this and would potentially show zero value?

Sitting here I have next to me a $300 AC outlet that I am confident will do zero to improve audio performance. Yet, I still bought the thing to test. Who here has done such things in reverse? Jkenny? Stehno? Anyone else? How come you all are not open minded that your audio beliefs and methods of evaluation may be horrifically wrong? I don't even know if anyone has run my simple exercise that takes a few seconds and costs nothing. So why am I being asked to be open minded?

I could be wrong but I’m guessing you’re being asked to be open-minded because you’re extremely closed-minded? Back in 2002, after hearing about cryo-treating electrical parts and cables, I purchased a Jena Labs cryo-treated 20-amp Hubbell IEC connector to replace the standard Hubbell 20-amp IEC connector at the line conditioner dedicated for my 20-amp amplifier. I believed in cryo-treating so much that the IEC connector sat in my toolbox for 2 years and when I stumbled across it in 2004 I installed it. And several days later (after burn-in) I was rather impressed with the little but still quite distinct improvements I heard. By 2005, I was having all my cables and electrical parts cryo-treated.

Like I said. I always try to avoid your many posts primarily because they are little to no value to those with at least minimal listening skills but with 15,000 posts it can be like walking thru a mine field. When you were site administrator I avoided you like the plague and for good reason. But now that I've read a few of your posts more in-depth, I can see now why you would reference "The Audio Expert" from time to time.

Amir, your marketing skills must be incredible.

 

[BruceD]

Well I see this thread is slowly racing to the Bottom--of what I don't know--anyway --for an observer the raising of voices is entertaining

If i may throw in a question-- I notice the VSA room was --gasp! Square?--surely a no no for optimum placement

so for it to get Best in Class/etc-- the devil was tamed?

Go the Tube traps ( I presume)!

BruceD

 

[DaveyF]

Wow... Just wow.

I've already commented on your test being too difficult and my thoughts that only folks with exceptional auditory memory would have a chance. But on other things, most here are certainly able and willing to try out new things without the incredible bias you are showing here. You have no clue what that receptacle will do, and if you install it how I recommended, in the wall feeding a power distributor, it's going to make a difference any old Joe would have no problem discerning. Except maybe people with ludicrous psychological bias, jeesh, why even bother if you're so certain?

Dave, the thing is that Amir is so certain that the receptacle cannot work, that I believe he has turned off his mind to the possibility that it can! Same thing can be said for the many posters on his forum who post about the Shakti's. They are so certain that they cannot work, that there really is no need to even consider listening to them. Closed minded and blinkered individuals are apparently rampant on his forum. Yet, here's the thing, I believe that they all in good faith believe exactly what they state...it is impossible in their minds to contemplate that this large wooden stick could possibly do what its makers claim.
One of my good a'phile buddies suggested to me today that it is very possible that these same guys just don't have the ability to determine differences in musical sounds,....plus they certainly do not have the kind of gear that most of us on this forum enjoy. As such, a certain amount of jealousy sets in....
Whether this is true or not, I don't really know, but it certainly gives one something to ponder??

 

[Steve williams]

Well I see this thread is slowly racing to the Bottom--of what I don't know--anyway --for an observer the raising of voices is entertaining

If i may throw in a question-- I notice the VSA room was --gasp! Square?--surely a no no for optimum placement

so for it to get Best in Class/etc-- the devil was tamed?

Go the Tube traps ( I presume)!

BruceD

+!

Precisely my point. Damon and Leif get a "square" room which yes is a "no-no" but based on Art Noxon's design they tamed the room only to have the King Of Audio state that the speakers were placed on the wrong wall as well as the tube traps were also placed incorrectly.

 

[Steve williams]

One of my good a'phile buddies suggested to me today that it is very possible that these same guys just don't have the ability to determine differences in musical sounds,....plus they certainly do not have the kind of gear that most of us on this forum enjoy. As such, a certain amount of jealousy sets in....
Whether this is true or not, I don't really know, but it certainly gives one something to ponder??

The "King"by his own admission only hears sounds. He does not hear music

 

[PeterA]

This started out as a pretty interesting thread discussion. We are now discussing people's ability to hear, the importance of testing, science, and whether or not we are open minded. I am reminded of what one of my Boston audio buddies recently wrote me: "I don't pay much attention to the opinions of audiophiles who don't listen to live music."

 

[Steve williams]

This started out as a pretty interesting thread discussion. We are now discussing people's ability to hear, the importance of testing, science, and whether or not we are open minded. I am reminded of what one of my Boston audio buddies recently wrote me: "I don't pay much attention to the opinions of audiophiles who don't listen to live music."

The best post of the day Peter. I totally agree

 

[Joe Whip]

This started out as a pretty interesting thread discussion. We are now discussing people's ability to hear, the importance of testing, science, and whether or not we are open minded. I am reminded of what one of my Boston audio buddies recently wrote me: "I don't pay much attention to the opinions of audiophiles who don't listen to live music."

I feel the same way.