Measurements and the Correlation of What We Hear

[amirm]

Do we agree on the following?

1. That there are measurements that tell us extremely well what we *could* hear. Take the frequency response measurements. If it has a dip of 2 db at 5 Khz, surely we all agree that is audible and the thing that told us that was the FR measurement.

2. That measuring is not the same as understanding. If I ran the above measurement point by a random person on the street they would surely not be able to make the determination I just did. So we need to separate knowledge of interpreting data from ability to gather it.

3. We all want single numbers of simple concepts of performance. Take miles per gallon. There are two numbers that were just revised in US because they were too misleading. Even with revised number is likely to be wrong for my commute to work. So we should also accept that in audio, coming up with single numbers or graphs should not be a prerequisite for understanding audio performance.

 

[RogerD]

Roger

Pause a second ... Have you measured a gear before and after recap? I would think that after recap certain parameters would have changed , else.. really, how do you think the sound changed? Something must have changed , else how do you explain the change?
Think about how an utter rejection of science this statement is " If it has any physical impact it is measurable, this is as plainly as I can put and there can be no debate to that unless we get ourselves in thinking that electrical components can have magical properties ... Hardly the province of audio discussions, rather that of metaphysics or Esoterism.
I continue to think that it is important to continue to find ways to correlate measurements to perceptions, I am certain we haven't entirely correlate our measurements to verifiable and repeatable perceptions. It seems however that a good portion of the High End Audiophiles community is not comfortable with the idea. It seems too "mechanical" to reduce the powerful emotions we have toward our gears to a set of numbers.
I think that the response to music is what may prove to be difficult or maybe, just maybe, impossible to measure. Our gears and what they do to the signal OTOH are physical constructs ... measurable constructs.

Frantz,

To be fair my tech measures my gear. I'm the one that selects the components that comprise how the gear measures. All he ever says in a nutshell is that "the sine wave is about as perfect as I have seen",end of story.

I wish there was a way of measuring ambiance level or dynamic level,but I don't think there is. I'll make a radical statement here, I don't think most speaker systems are capable of conveying the full extent of what is the industry norm of measurements related to electronic reproduction

The human ear,along with the mental capacity to recall sound,is the final arbiter.Everyday we hear hundreds of different sounds. The mind automatically makes a decision of the quality of that sound. So we know what is natural and what is a facsimile. Measuring audio equipment and the what we measure has stayed constant for quite a while,not much has changed. That is the problem because,there are many distortions present in all parts of the system chain. I just doubt that what should be measured and given weight is not being quantified to a great degree for lack being able to reproduce it properly.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I'll make a radical statement here, I don't think most speaker systems are capable of conveying the full extent of what is the industry norm of measurements related to electronic reproduction

I'd call that a conservative statement . And an accurate one.

Tim

 

[microstrip]

Do we agree on the following?

1. That there are measurements that tell us extremely well what we *could* hear. Take the frequency response measurements. If it has a dip of 2 db at 5 Khz, surely we all agree that is audible and the thing that told us that was the FR measurement.

2. That measuring is not the same as understanding. If I ran the above measurement point by a random person on the street they would surely not be able to make the determination I just did. So we need to separate knowledge of interpreting data from ability to gather it.

3. We all want single numbers of simple concepts of performance. Take miles per gallon. There are two numbers that were just revised in US because they were too misleading. Even with revised number is likely to be wrong for my commute to work. So we should also accept that in audio, coming up with single numbers or graphs should not be a prerequisite for understanding audio performance.

Amir,

1. For me the difficult question is not what measurements we can hear, but which influence the sound quality most. Any one agrees that equipment should measure well in basic parameters, unless the compromises created to measure well influence aspects not so easy to measure that also significantly affect sound quality.

2. Very true. But usually when we do not understand we just assume that the minimization of errors should work.

3. There are some basic aspects that can never be unified or simplified, as different people have very different views on the fundamental purposes of sound reproduction. The illusion - accuracy debate is just one of them.

 

[microstrip]

I'll make a radical statement here, I don't think most speaker systems are capable of conveying the full extent of what is the industry norm of measurements related to electronic reproduction

As Tim highlighted the sentence, my attentions was focused on it.
Norms for measurements of speaker and electronics should be (and are) quite different, as errors due to them have very different origins and consequences. Although I undertsand the general meaning of the sentence, it is ambiguous and can have many wrong interpretations.

 

[RogerD]

As Tim highlighted the sentence, my attentions was focused on it.
Norms for measurements of speaker and electronics should be (and are) quite different, as errors due to them have very different origins and consequences. Although I undertsand the general meaning of the sentence, it is ambiguous and can have many wrong interpretations.

The statement is very clear,but bias and long held beliefs cloud the issue.

If you need clarity,then let me say,most speaker systems cannot faithfully reproduce detail in the minute degree needed to identify and verify what
is the considered the norm of reproduction analysis. If you are unable to identify at the end user,you cannot make a qualified judgement to what has been measured.

Even in the mastering process it is the same,but that is changing. I would say that is the best hope where true advance in reproduction measurements will be made and hopefully it is past on down the chain.

 

[MylesBAstor]

+12

So there's no threshold of audibility for different types of distortions, etc.? And if it's not measurable, it has no effect on the outcome? This is like saying we've reduced THD to unmeasurable levels yet the equipment sounds awful. But there's no distortion, right, so it must be neutral. Everything else must be colored by comparison. Isn't it just possible that in the attempt to reduce THD, you've now created IM, etc. that you're not measuring and that TIM is actually worse? This is pure reductionism which has been shown time and time again not to work in complex living systems. Or you're not measuring the right thing as there are new study that I just read that showed that receptors in our skin also contribute to our sense of hearing.

That's like saying in statistics that the risk is zero; it's never zero, it's always less than the test number eg if I expose 10^6 cells to a carcinogen, and get no transformations, then the risk is not zero but <10^-6.

 

[microstrip]

The statement is very clear,but bias and long held beliefs cloud the issue.

If you need clarity,then let me say,most speaker systems cannot faithfully reproduce detail in the minute degree needed to identify and verify what is the considered the norm of reproduction analysis. If you are unable to identify at the end user,you cannot make a qualified judgement to what has been measured.
(...)

I am really confused -it would be nice to know what is "the the norm of reproduction analysis". Just distortion and frequency response?

 

[RogerD]

I am really confused -it would be nice to know what is "the the norm of reproduction analysis". Just distortion and frequency response?

Whatever the so-called experts use now.

 

[RogerD]

Let me expand on my original point. There are ques or markers that define all equipment. Clarity,dynamics and the ability to define low level detail(ambient information). Do we have specific measurements to quantify these markers? I don't think so. Until we can measure these specifically I don't think were at where we need to be.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

Again let's take a pause. a deep breath and think. If it exists at all .. It has to be measurable... and frankly for those who are trying to make it a point to show that we can hear something that is immeasurable ... Doesn't it it infirm your position that the perception exist at all. Only in your mind? So let's not take the extremes of strawmen arguments..
The point is we may not measure a pheomenon, we may not even know how to measure a given phenomenon but if its very existence is manifested reliably , we will eventually find a way to measure it.
I admit that there are many problems we audiophile chase things that 99.9999999% of the world population doesn’t care about . In other words the market for our things is minuscule. The problem is compounded by the fact that we, audiophile have shown a very fertile imagination. Some of us have claim with apparent sincerity of hearing that simply is not possible.. like hearing difference if a wire is olarized by a DC field which can’t do A thing to the signal or worse … (Cable elevators anyone?) . I will forever be amazed at the cleverness and learned ways we refuse to accept (some of us at least) that our perceptions are very flawed and very unreliable. That our minds play tricks on us is admitted one second to be rejected the next once we approach the audiophile territory, where it seems the laws of physics have been circumvented.
Our minds do play tricks and that an incontrovertible fact, yet we DO hear certain things reliably that are not yet or not easy to measure. In some cases I truly believe that the current set of measurements is worthless, e.g my earlier post about most certain conditions under which a THD of 50% was not perceived. Or the fact that some amplifers (mainly tubes) despite their relatively high THD display an uncanny ability to represent music , consistently in a most agreeable fashion. That is not to say by the way that there SS cousins fdo not do the same… We need to measure more and better and to me that was the main point of the OP .. How do we devise or help into devising better measurements.. . Not that we don’t need to measure …. unless we want to go back to the medieval times and reject science altogether … I can understand and share that view that that while the measurements from a Krell or a Spectral could be similar, reproductions from these two amps would be very different. It just tells me that our current set of measurements do not tell us enough, not that measurements are impossible. We must devise the right measuring tols and protocols … It is equivalent to wanting to measure the circumference of the moon with a 12 inch ruler in the comfort of your house … It is impossible to do so with such tool… but measuring the circumference of the moon has been done with the appropriate tools .. It is NOT impossible to measure the circumference of the moon with the right tools ….
Same with Audio… A physical endeavor that leads itself to measurements …

 

[FrantzM]

Let me expand on my original point. There are ques or markers that define all equipment. Clarity,dynamics and the ability to define low level detail(ambient information). Do we have specific measurements to quantify these markers? I don't think so. Until we can measure these specifically I don't think were at where we need to be.

hadn't read that post yet ... No tthere yet is far from we can't ... You are getting there

 

[RogerD]

hadn't read that post yet ... No tthere yet is far from we can't ... You are getting there

Hi Frantz,

I don't recall saying we can't measure Maybe I have but, I stand that when talking about audio reproduction the considered norm won't get us where we need to be. Somebody needs to narrow the scope of measuring distortion to the degree of clarity,dynamics,and ambient retrieval capability.

There are other markers but when I hear crystalline clarity,scary dynamics,and spooky ambient detail,I wish I could measure the degree of those markers. Of course I have my own measurement scale,it's whether I laugh or not or if I am afraid to end the session,that's a good sign.

 

[mep]

Hi

Again let's take a pause. a deep breath and think. If it exists at all .. It has to be measurable... and frankly for those who are trying to make it a point to show that we can hear something that is immeasurable ... Doesn't it it infirm your position that the perception exist at all. Only in your mind?

Frantz-I'm not saying that all what we hear can't be measured, I'm saying it's not all being measured and that is a huge difference in meaning. People that keep repeating the mantra of "if you can hear it, it can be measured" act like this is fait accompli. It's not. People are confusing the ability to do something vice doing it. And those that glom on to the mantra with +1, or +12, etc. are just jumping on the motherhood and apple pie bandwagon without thinking through what I'm trying to say.

Go back and reread some of things I have stated in this thread and tell me who is providing a comprehensive set of measurements that you can look at and know if the unit under measurement will sound better than what you have. We have canned measurements that tell part of the story, and those measurements aren't coming from the OEMs. We are at the mercy of a few magazines that possess the ability to take measurements and together they are measuring a fraction of the gear that is out there for sale.

If people feel compelled to keep repeating the mantra of "if you can hear it, it can be measured," go right ahead. Just remember what I said. The ability to do something is not the same as doing it. Those measurements don't exist today and if they do, someone is keeping it a real secret.

 

[microstrip]

Hi

Again let's take a pause. a deep breath and think. If it exists at all .. It has to be measurable... and frankly for those who are trying to make it a point to show that we can hear something that is immeasurable ... Doesn't it it infirm your position that the perception exist at all. Only in your mind? So let's not take the extremes of strawmen arguments..
The point is we may not measure a pheomenon, we may not even know how to measure a given phenomenon but if its very existence is manifested reliably , we will eventually find a way to measure it.
I admit that there are many problems we audiophile chase things that 99.9999999% of the world population doesn’t care about . In other words the market for our things is minuscule. The problem is compounded by the fact that we, audiophile have shown a very fertile imagination. Some of us have claim with apparent sincerity of hearing that simply is not possible.. like hearing difference if a wire is olarized by a DC field which can’t do A thing to the signal or worse … (Cable elevators anyone?) . I will forever be amazed at the cleverness and learned ways we refuse to accept (some of us at least) that our perceptions are very flawed and very unreliable. That our minds play tricks on us is admitted one second to be rejected the next once we approach the audiophile territory, where it seems the laws of physics have been circumvented.
Our minds do play tricks and that an incontrovertible fact, yet we DO hear certain things reliably that are not yet or not easy to measure. In some cases I truly believe that the current set of measurements is worthless, e.g my earlier post about most certain conditions under which a THD of 50% was not perceived. Or the fact that some amplifers (mainly tubes) despite their relatively high THD display an uncanny ability to represent music , consistently in a most agreeable fashion. That is not to say by the way that there SS cousins fdo not do the same… We need to measure more and better and to me that was the main point of the OP .. How do we devise or help into devising better measurements.. . Not that we don’t need to measure …. unless we want to go back to the medieval times and reject science altogether … I can understand and share that view that that while the measurements from a Krell or a Spectral could be similar, reproductions from these two amps would be very different. It just tells me that our current set of measurements do not tell us enough, not that measurements are impossible. We must devise the right measuring tols and protocols … It is equivalent to wanting to measure the circumference of the moon with a 12 inch ruler in the comfort of your house … It is impossible to do so with such tool… but measuring the circumference of the moon has been done with the appropriate tools .. It is NOT impossible to measure the circumference of the moon with the right tools ….
Same with Audio… A physical endeavor that leads itself to measurements …

Frantz,
Great post! But there is one point that seems not to be clear - hearing is the result of processing the physical information with the full power of our brain, not only of the acquisition process . Although we can develop instruments with enormous resolution we can not aim at having the processing capability of the brain in the measuring instrument. This can limit the measurement results.

Also I think the particular point you take for demonstrating audiophile imagination - the DC bias of dielectrics is not the best. Companies I respect, such as JBL, and would not need to use pseudo-effects to sell their products, use this technique in their speakers crossovers. A pity we did not ask Amir about the sound of the great DD66000 with and without batteries.

 

[RogerD]

OK,I remembered reading this review and it stuck with me because I could relate. Please point to me what measurements stand out to produce this level of "clarity", I would like to know.

"The differences against my preamp are stark:
Much more treble energy - the old adage that if a manufacturer can't get the treble right he or she will attenuate it applies up until the Series 2's arrival in my home. They seem to have gotten it right; I can now hear again tape hiss in some recordings (e.g. Sheffield o-Daiko drums - BTW, rendering of this piece is so realistic as to be truly frightening) - and I thought my ears had given out
The dynamic range is much more realistic; I would roughly estimate a 3dB increased headroom
The amount of low-level information retrieval is staggering; I can't believe I am hearing new details for the first time
The 3D positioning and layering within the soundstage is phenomenal
I imagine at the bottom of all this is probably its ability to "perfectly" follow the signal - you just know when something sounds exactly right = truth of timbre and "living presence"
In two words: extreme clarity"

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...Spectral-DMC-30SS-Series-2&highlight=spectral

Well I couldn't find any meaurements on this preamp....but the manufacturer doesn't mention spec at all....good design,quality components,new technology....

Maybe measuring things is old school...eh.

"We are pleased to see more and more music enthusiast are coming to understand that no music system
can be any better than the performance of its preamp.
There is also growing sophistication in regards to
absolute performance and price. At a time when ultra
-high priced preamplifiers are routinely introduced at
serveral times the cost of Spectral, the thoughtful
music enthusiast is left to wonder exactly what benefit
these lofty prices buy? We believe the sophisticated
enthusiast will find the answer in the uncompromising
DMC-30SS Series 2. Few preamplifiers at any price
can boast the designer credentials and unrivaled
component quality of the DMC-30SS. Edge-of-the-art
component technologies and advanced layout strategy
are utilized throughout the DMC-30SS to a degree
rarely seen even in stratospheric components. This is
because Spectral engineers have identified those key
components that most determine instrument stability
and sonic transparency and have invested aggresively.
When careful investment in superior quality signalpath components becomes the design priority over
expensive metalwork sculpture, state-of-the-art signal
resolution can be achieved much more affordably."

 

[mep]

Do we agree on the following?

1. That there are measurements that tell us extremely well what we *could* hear. Take the frequency response measurements. If it has a dip of 2 db at 5 Khz, surely we all agree that is audible and the thing that told us that was the FR measurement.

2. That measuring is not the same as understanding. If I ran the above measurement point by a random person on the street they would surely not be able to make the determination I just did. So we need to separate knowledge of interpreting data from ability to gather it.

3. We all want single numbers of simple concepts of performance. Take miles per gallon. There are two numbers that were just revised in US because they were too misleading. Even with revised number is likely to be wrong for my commute to work. So we should also accept that in audio, coming up with single numbers or graphs should not be a prerequisite for understanding audio performance.

Amir-I agree with what you have stated and your paragraph 1 says basically the same thing I said in my opening paragraph to this thread.

 

[fas42]

And the rest of us are a bit staggered, or perhaps the word is tickled, by the stuff you repeat here on a weekly basis, Frank

And I in my turn would have to say I have been staggered, certainly not tickled, by the sort of sound that a lot of audiophiles put up with in their very expensive setups. They just reek of the type of distortion I've mentioned many times, it obviously can be measured though most people don't have the right gear to do that, I am able to simulate this type of distortion being generated in amplifiers modelled much closer to being realistic than most people seem to do, with great ease. So if I can make normal gear behave badly in a model on a computer, no wonder the real stuff has problems ...

Getting back on topic, again in the modelling it's easy to see why the normal testing never picks up anything: those tests don't stress the circuit in the right manner, so until you do that not one little thing is going to change in terms of getting more information about how a particular component behaves playing music.

Frank

 

[fas42]

Some extra thoughts:

Roger, I disagree about the speakers not being up to the mark in revealing problems, they most certainly are. I have had speakers both cheap and good quality demonstrate this to me over and over again: if the rest of the system is working, or not working correctly the speakers will reveal this with total clarity, leaves the measuring instruments in the dust in that regard. The usual audiophile ritual of claiming problems or virtues because of having metal domes, panels, big enough subwoofers, supertweeters, etc leaves me completely cold: if you stick your ear reasonably close to a speaker it's dead easy to pick all the misbehaviour of the system as a whole.

To the many that claim that subtle variations in a system's configuration can't have an impact: if you don't accept that then you have no hope of achieving a truly high level of performance, unless you're very lucky in your choice of equipment. This is the very area where the real breakthroughs need to be made in understanding, not to work out the n'th variation of doing THD testing.

There is a common theme in many of the responses: the acknowledgement that the ear is extremely sophisticated and capable of assessing very fine variations in performance, along with a blind acceptance that relatively clumsy and simple macro testing by authority figures with deep voices, wearing very smart, white lab coats somehow is going the reveal the connect. Folks, it ain't gonna happen ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Mark has a good point: It doesn't matter if everything can be measured when typically, very little is measured. There are a few folks out there, on the pro side and on the fringes of consumer audio journalism, who do pretty comprehensive measurements, but few of them get much audiophile attention and they don't cover nearly enough stuff to feed audiophile internet discussions. So the claim "if you can hear it you can measure it" has actually been supported relatively little.

The other side of that coin though is anyone can say "I hear this." Can he? Really? How do we know? How does he know? I think most of the people in this thread probably missed this post. It's incredibly insightful and got almost no reaction:

How many experiments by audiophiles could be considered controlled experiments? Let's say, comparing amps. Let's forget about the contentious issue of blind testing and only consider level matching. How many audiophile amp comparisons are level-matched? And of these, how many allow for comparison of the amps within the very short time span of auditory memory?

Thank you, andy.

We can argue for the rest of the year, and probably will, over the differences between tubes and SS, vinyl and digital, ad infinitum, etc. But two things we can't really argue about without slipping deep into denial are the effect that very small differences in volume have on the perception of quality, and the incredible brevity and frailty of human auditory memory. These phenomenon are very well studied and documented, and what they tell us is simple: if you have two audio sources set up to compare, even if you can switch between them very rapidly, if you didn't measure and balance the volume between those sources within .5 db or so, you don't know what you're hearing. Seriously. Unless you're talking about big distortions, completely unsubtle stuff that your grandma could hear, you're in the dark. And if you can measure and balance the volume, but you have to shut off one component, unplug it from your system, hook up the next component, power it up, measure the volume to balance with the first component, then listen and evaluate, you've got nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Mark, you're right. If it hasn't been measured, it doesn't matter if it can be measured. On the other hand, if you haven't carefully controlled the listening to eliminate for volume differences and lapses in auditory memory (and, yes, expectation bias), you haven't heard it either. So your argument is no more valid than saying it can be measured, even if it never has been measured.

So....what do we talk about now? We all may have just bought ourselves a lot of free time.

Tim