Negative show report posts... enough is enough.

[DaveC]

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to get into a debate on the value of subjective listening vs objective testing, we've heard it all before anyway. I believe it's not possible to correlate everything we hear to a measurement and our knowledge of the science of sound reproduction is incomplete at this time. However, I do have an engineering degree and the basic design of my cables is based on hard science, then the performance is verified and adjusted if need be by empirical testing. IMO, the best audio equipment is made by designers who understand the science deeply but also aren't so arrogant to think they know all there is to know and leave an open mind, which is reflected in their acceptance of the value of subjective listening to evaluate their designs.

Part of the issue here is amirm is talking about gross phenomenon like 30 dB changes in frequency response while I have been talking about the finer points of how to get a perfect soundstage (which is how this discussion started), while assuming gross aspects of system performance have been 98% dealt with. I mean, who cares about soundstage when you have other gross, unacceptable issues with your system's performance? My point is, once you get your system pretty much dialed in and are seeking that last 2% of performance, at that point everything matters and will make a significant difference. This is why cables don't seem like they make a difference when you're dealing with gross aspects of setup, because they don't. They only make a difference in the context of trying to extract that last bit of performance from a system. For many of us, that last 2% is where the magic really is. Once you hear a system with performing at the level where you have an immersive 3D soundstage where the speakers and room boundaries disappear, when you have a system that resolves the fine micro-detail of acoustic instruments properly, there is no going back.

I'd also point out that many folks go through a never-ending process of component swapping trying to account for deficiencies in the performance of their AC power and cables. These things are the backbone of a system and without neutral cables and good AC power it's impossible to judge the performance of the components in your system. For example, if you have harsh cables you'll buy warm components to compensate than wonder why your system can't resolve fine detail like your buddies system can. Or you buy warm cables and despite buying the most detailed, resolving components you can, you STILL don't get the fine detail your buddies system has. The same goes for dirty AC power, you'll want to purchase components and cables that make the harshness and listening fatigue go away, but in the process you lose all the fine detail. However, if you have neutral cables that are capable of good resolution (this isn't a given just because the cable is expensive) and good AC power then you are in a position to fairly evaluate the components and now you have a chance of putting together a good system. So imo, the process of putting together a system using cheap cables and no AC Power conditioning, then doing these things last, to "tune" the system is bass-ackward. Forget trying to "tune" your system with cables, instead pick the most neutral and resolving cables you can find and get decent power distribution/conditioning from the start.

 

[jap]

This thread has done more wandering than Moses' 40 year jaunt in the desert.

+1

 

[Mike Lavigne]

That 4 inch movement now may also be just as ineffective Mike. Or alternatively, it was effective just as much before as it is now. We simply don't know because your tests were sighted and therefore you mixed physics and your beliefs.

What we know with certainty is that as a subjectivist, you had believed in profound effect speaker positioning made to you. That is why I cited your experience, not that I know it be right or not.


And why I must reject most of what you observe in that regard just the same .


I don't know why we keep bringing up measurements when I have not breathed a word about it. Everything I have shared has been results of listening tests, and trusting what people say they hear at face value.

As to familiarity, it is the thing that corrupts the data Mike. It just does as I showed. Here is another data point:

These are the same highly experienced (not be confused with highly trained) listeners voting for fidelity of these speakers. Notice how in sighted testing, they found speaker G to sound a lot better than S. But in blind testing, the outcome reversed: speaker S did better than speaker G.

Here is the bit about the speakers:

"If we isolate the visual and political factors we have the following
possible scenario. It is easy to believe that loudspeakers "G' and "D" would be
viewed favorably because they were the most expensive, the largest, quite
attractive, and they were products of the company that employed the listeners.

Loudspeaker 'T" was slightly smaller, slightly less expensive, a prestige
product, but made by a competitor. Loudspeaker "S' was absolutely tiny,
relatively inexpensive, and plastic. It was a product of the host company, but
could anything that small and cheap be any good? Many listeners in the
sighted tests admitted afterwards that before the music even started they
believed that loudspeaker "S' would sound inferior, although they admitted its
strong performance surprised them."

We can see the influence of bias here. Speaker S, being a cheap plastic speaker in sighted tests did poorly. But in blind testing, it beat out the fancy high-end speaker.

Intuitively, as much as we dislike this, we need to accept that such influences do create the results that the controlled research shows. We can't continue to cling to the notion that our biases take back seat to system performance. It just isn't so or we would not be human, appreciating other things than what something sounds like.


Until you sit through one, and have your current beliefs validated or disproved, you simply won't know. I am fortunate enough to have gone through that revelation. Few people are in this select group.

Amir,

when I see your posts with graphs and the words Toole or Harman I must confess that my reaction is to abandon the thread as it's going to end up 'anti-listening'......and I move on to another thread.

sort of like your mother telling you it's liver for dinner tonight. I doubt there are many hobbies based on eating liver.

have a nice day.

Mike

 

[CherylJosie]

IMO, the best audio equipment is made by designers who understand the science deeply but also aren't so arrogant to think they know all there is to know and leave an open mind, which is reflected in their acceptance of the value of subjective listening to evaluate their designs.

I would love to meet someone who can reliably identify the 'warm' sound of copper cabling claimed on your web site in blind listening tests. As far as I know, nobody can distinguish 'sound' of the metal in audio cables unless they are incorrectly designed ('they' refers to the cables, not the people).

Amir,

when I see your posts with graphs and the words Toole or Harman I must confess that my reaction is to abandon the thread as it's going to end up 'anti-listening'......and I move on to another thread.

Double-blind ABX listening tests == anti-listening? Go figure.

Regarding this thread, it seems like a total waste of energy. Rep whines about negative comments on the sound of trade show display and threatens to shame any PM replies in public.

That seems like a more compelling reason to move on than Amir's replies.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Double-blind ABX listening tests == anti-listening? Go figure.

my bad for not being more specific, Amir knows what I meant. anti-sighted subjective listening is how i interpret Amir's perspective.....a perspective I have no interest in dwelling on.

there is an objective contingent on WBF, led by Amir, that brings their perspective to many threads. I suppose this is healthy but it typically pushes me away from participating.

Regarding this thread, it seems like a total waste of energy. Rep whines about negative comments on the sound of trade show display and threatens to shame any PM replies in public.

That seems like a more compelling reason to move on than Amir's replies.

I agree this thread has little value. it's more a venting kind of thread where people can talk about what irks them about stuff. I've not really involved myself into those ideas.

see my post here

the OP used unfortunate words in communicating his frustrations. then dug his hole a little deeper. too bad. my only comments were after 470 posts to add perspective to the source of the OP's frustrations for those who could not connect the dots.

I only reacted to Amir's post since he referenced my personal experience yet left out subjective sighted methods I used to attain that experience.

 

[DaveC]

As far as I know...

Exactly.

 

[Tony Lauck]

99% of what Harman uses there, came from when Dr. Toole, Olive, etc. were at Canadian National Research Council. That was a non-profit government funded group, aiming at advancing understanding of loudspeaker performance and acoustics in general. I can't link you to the research papers if you like. So it is not a Harman thing.

Dr. Toole did move to Harman about 20 years ago. But when he arrived, he faced significant resistance to his ideas of blind testing and such. The designers there were convinced they were right in the way they evaluated and designed loudspeakers. So he and Dr. Olive conducted a sequence of tests to convince them they were wrong which actually led to departure of some of these designers from the company.

Today, the motivation to continue that research has nothing to do with "selling speakers." That research is hugely expensive and is being funded by the automotive division of Harman that does a few billion dollars in revenue per year, making OEM audio/infotainment system for many cars. Harman systems are more expensive than what OEMs can buy from other companies so at all times they have to prove, through scientific process, why they do what they do. It is for that reason that they have three anechoic chambers each costing million dollar+.

As I mentioned, the data from their research is used by many loudspeaker designers even if they are not explicit about it. I have sat through their testing, saw my evaluation matching the outcome of their research, and forever changed my views in how I look at loudspeakers, room acoustics and personal preferences when it comes to both.


Good for you but I don't see any of those techniques used at 99% of the rooms at shows.

I called the work you cited "scientific marketing" because it used scientific methods to investigate consumer preferences. It does not show that trained reviewers couldn't learn to focus their attention and ignore other senses, because the listeners were not selected and/or trained for this ability.

 

[amirm]

my bad for not being more specific, Amir knows what I meant. anti-sighted subjective listening is how i interpret Amir's perspective.....a perspective I have no interest in dwelling on.

Mike, ALL listening tests are subjective. The type I speak of attempts to only change one variable at a time, i.e. they are controlled testing. One speaker is swapped for another but the only thing that changes is the sound. A curtain stops you from seeing any other change. The test remains subjective since there is no guarantee we get the same identical answer. Same listener may give a score of 5 once, and 6 another times and people differ to some degree. These are the error bars you see on top of the bar graphs I have been showing. Objective data in audio is exclusively the domain of measurements.

So both your testing and the ones I advocate are subjective. Where they differ is that your type of analysis changes multiple factors but attempts to attribute the change the one thing: the sound. You may very well be right. It is just that research that set out to probe this, found it to not be the case. That knowledge of what you are looking at, even when differences are large and undisputed, corrupt the outcome. As I said, seemingly both audio camps, subjectivists and objectivists, find reasons to disagree and become unhappy. It undermines what we think must be the truth, and not wanting to be shown otherwise.

To be sure, I had my nose rubbed into it just the same . Until I took the tests myself, I did not believe it either. Once there, and seeing the reality of voting twice what sounded good blind the same way, and having it match mass majority of people, then I had to reconsider everything I thought I knew about sound reproduction in rooms. This was about five years ago. Since then, I have read hundreds of research papers, written a number of them myself. No matter how much I read. No matter whose research I read. It all paints a highly consistent story.

I recall you are a GM at a honda dealership. My wife has always had an Acura MDX which is the premium brand of Honda. I remember one time I was looking underneath her car and was shocked to see those fancy, large, stainless steel exhaust pipes, were in reality a 4 inch section of stainless steel tube of much larger dimension simply screwed to the end of an exhaust pipe that was no bigger than what you find in economy cars! The whole thing was a marketing gimmick. Instead of putting larger exhaust pipes from engine to the rear of the car and improve engine breathing, they just put in that last bit there. They took care of what you saw. Not what resulted in better performance.

Some day over a drink you need to explain to me why you think Honda is able to get away with that, but no one selling you audio gear can do that to you....

 

[amirm]

I called the work you cited "scientific marketing" because it used scientific methods to investigate consumer preferences.

The work I am referencing is published in the Journal and Conferences of Audio Engineering Society and Acoustic Society of America. Neither organization would tolerate for a moment someone spinning that kind of literature as scientific marketing any more than medical journals would for what they publish.

There is a filter to make sure that commercial interest of companies is not entered into the substance of the work, even though the funding may very well be.

That aside, we are not measuring what people think of speaker color. We are determining what sound is considered "correct" and true. That is not generic consumer preference.

It does not show that trained reviewers couldn't learn to focus their attention and ignore other senses, because the listeners were not selected and/or trained for this ability.

What ability? Stuff that we can't even define, quantify or even measure? How would we train someone in them? Can you outline a test where I could for example train them on "slam and speed?" How can I under command make them come and go and be sure that they did come and go if I can't measure them?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike, ALL listening tests are subjective. The type I speak of attempts to only change one variable at a time, i.e. they are controlled testing. One speaker is swapped for another but the only thing that changes is the sound. A curtain stops you from seeing any other change. The test remains subjective since there is no guarantee we get the same identical answer. Same listener may give a score of 5 once, and 6 another times and people differ to some degree. These are the error bars you see on top of the bar graphs I have been showing. Objective data in audio is exclusively the domain of measurements.

So both your testing and the ones I advocate are subjective. Where they differ is that your type of analysis changes multiple factors but attempts to attribute the change the one thing: the sound. You may very well be right. It is just that research that set out to probe this, found it to not be the case. That knowledge of what you are looking at, even when differences are large and undisputed, corrupt the outcome. As I said, seemingly both audio camps, subjectivists and objectivists, find reasons to disagree and become unhappy. It undermines what we think must be the truth, and not wanting to be shown otherwise.

To be sure, I had my nose rubbed into it just the same . Until I took the tests myself, I did not believe it either. Once there, and seeing the reality of voting twice what sounded good blind the same way, and having it match mass majority of people, then I had to reconsider everything I thought I knew about sound reproduction in rooms. This was about five years ago. Since then, I have read hundreds of research papers, written a number of them myself. No matter how much I read. No matter whose research I read. It all paints a highly consistent story.

i'll stick with my approach....and love where it's taken me.

I recall you are a GM at a honda dealership. My wife has always had an Acura MDX which is the premium brand of Honda. I remember one time I was looking underneath her car and was shocked to see those fancy, large, stainless steel exhaust pipes, were in reality a 4 inch section of stainless steel tube of much larger dimension simply screwed to the end of an exhaust pipe that was no bigger than what you find in economy cars! The whole thing was a marketing gimmick. Instead of putting larger exhaust pipes from engine to the rear of the car and improve engine breathing, they just put in that last bit there. They took care of what you saw. Not what resulted in better performance.

Some day over a drink you need to explain to me why you think Honda is able to get away with that, but no one selling you audio gear can do that to you....

it costs a couple of Billion dollars to do a major model change for Honda/Acura......which typically happens every 4-5 years or so. then a million or more cars are produced to amortize that investment. drive train systems evolve over time in many ways from major model to major model.

there are almost an infinite number of dynamic reasons to specify a particular exhaust design and material selection. Honda makes more internal combustion engines than anyone else in the world. if having a full stainless steel exhaust system resulted in some additional performance/efficiency advantage then that is what would have been used. my educated guess is that the reason you saw that under your car is that the additional weight of the stainless only had an advantage for the cosmetics of the exhaust tips....and exhaust tips are purely for the 'look' and 'sound' with every car out there. for all I know some or part of the exhaust system you were looking at could have been stainless or some other expensive material but made in a way to work better and not have had the apparent look of stainless as we normally think of it.

an exhaust system is, of course, integral in the fuel efficiency as well as the emission system besides power, so it would be hard to assume that bigger is better and somehow improves engine breathing. this is a real world sport utility vehicle which must balance many different priorities. right sizing an exhaust system to balance the back pressure to the air flow is critical. like music an engine needs balance to be in rhythm.

at a dealer meeting in April they presented the new 2016 Honda Pilot (it will be arriving at dealers on June 18th). during the time us dealers were able to get in the new Pilot sitting there the head Pilot model change engineer (he was also in charge of the MDX) was standing there to answer questions. I walked up to him and asked him about how the new Pilot AWD/4WD system compared to the MDX Torque-vectoring system (the worlds best such system). he told me it was now the same mechanically but with a bit different approach to the software controlling it. at our next dealer meeting I will seek him out and pose your question to him to get the straight ahead real answer.

lastly; I have appraised cars almost every day for 40 years I've been in the car business. and we recondition 175 used cars each month (and service 120 Hondas a day). we almost never need to replace/service a Honda exhaust system.....other than an occasional catalytic converter/HO2 sensor. so whatever material they are using it is effective.

 

[NorthStar]

This thread has done more wandering than Moses' 40 year jaunt in the desert.

Lol, I just have to disagree here; this thread has found a solid footing in my estimable opinion. ...A good separation of a big audio sea.

* Happy return, love great humor.

 

[NorthStar]

Amir, your patience is impressive, to say the least.

Tim

Top quality in the year 2015.

 

[bonzo75]

Seems to me the Harman test helps to set up a system, yours or a client's but live concerts are better to judge a a system/component. Hence what Alan says about KEF makes sense too

 

[c1ferrari]

Amir,

I find your posts pertaining to sighted vs. non-sighted listening preferences absorbing.
Salient to subjectivity, I would posit the following:

"...I know it when I see it..." -- United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

 

[esldude]

Mike, ALL listening tests are subjective.

I recall you are a GM at a honda dealership. My wife has always had an Acura MDX which is the premium brand of Honda. I remember one time I was looking underneath her car and was shocked to see those fancy, large, stainless steel exhaust pipes, were in reality a 4 inch section of stainless steel tube of much larger dimension simply screwed to the end of an exhaust pipe that was no bigger than what you find in economy cars! The whole thing was a marketing gimmick. Instead of putting larger exhaust pipes from engine to the rear of the car and improve engine breathing, they just put in that last bit there. They took care of what you saw. Not what resulted in better performance.

Some day over a drink you need to explain to me why you think Honda is able to get away with that, but no one selling you audio gear can do that to you....

You know, it is quite possible the sound of that exhaust with the 4 inch section of larger dimensions sounds different compared to one that maintained the smaller diameter. A difference that would be discernible blind. Of course I know that wasn't really your question.

I take it your real question isn't one for the Honda engineer. It is if Honda can get away with this cosmetic difference to woo customers, why is it that consumers of 'fancy' audio cabling somehow think the fancy cosmetics don't effect their opinion of cabling they buy?

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I'm thinking Moses is still wandering.

 

[blutto]

.... someone spinning that kind of literature as scientific marketing any more than medical journals would for what they publish.....

....about five minutes ago I read the above bit to my wife who has been a medical researcher for over 20 years.....she burst out laughing.....and followed that up with, " he really has no idea "....apparently the standard they used to represent has left the building some time ago.....not to say the standard is still pretty good but it is littered with all manner of scientific marketing ( that over the last few years have led to some real big medical disasters that cost medical/drug companies billions and billions in lawsuits )....

Cheers

 

[Joe Whip]

I'm thinking Moses is still wandering.

Me thinks wandering over the cliff.

 

[Al M.]

me thinks wandering over the cliff.

lol

 

[CherylJosie]

The work I am referencing is published in the Journal and Conferences of Audio Engineering Society and Acoustic Society of America. Neither organization would tolerate for a moment someone spinning that kind of literature as scientific marketing any more than medical journals would for what they publish.

There is a filter to make sure that commercial interest of companies is not entered into the substance of the work, even though the funding may very well be.

....about five minutes ago I read the above bit to my wife who has been a medical researcher for over 20 years.....she burst out laughing.....and followed that up with, " he really has no idea "....apparently the standard they used to represent has left the building some time ago.....not to say the standard is still pretty good but it is littered with all manner of scientific marketing ( that over the last few years have led to some real big medical disasters that cost medical/drug companies billions and billions in lawsuits )....

Cheers

I am still waiting for a scientist to explain to me how fluoride protects tooth enamel. Replacing a few ions here and there could potentially change solubility (the mechanism a dentist once used to explain it to me) but I have never heard of a kid putting his tooth in a glass of Coke overnight and finding it still there in the morning, nor have I ever seen any solubility data that demonstrates the percentage change that fluoride causes. One would think that reducing fluoride to a single number would have huge marketing appeal but no, it is still shrouded in mystery.

Still we find fluoridation being promoted as the best thing since sliced bread was invented. Meanwhile I find that despite all fluoride I was exposed to as a kid including drinking water, dentistry, and even prescription pills, the health of my teeth seems to have depended much more on what I eat than anything else, hence a mouth full of capped molars and eroded incisors.

True to my skeptical nature, I tend to agree with the John Birch Society explanation (what a gas). I once found a stack of their old literature at a yard sale back in the 1980's and their claim is that fluoride is a waste product of the tin and aluminum industries (stannous flouride, sodium flouride) as well as a Communist plot to destroy the West. Apparently the Birchers spearheaded the early anti-fluoridation movement.

This is a real 'Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you!' kind of moment.

So when I went to the local health food store and bought a few books I discovered that early efforts to dump fluoride waste into soil or air proved too toxic (fluoride is the most reactive negative ion and a hellacious carcinogen/mutagen/toxin). The solution that was devised was to dilute it into the domestic water supply and tell us it was good for us. Some random dentist in an unincorporated municipality who speculated that high levels of natural fluoride protected their teeth (as opposed to the lack of penetration of junk food into a rural community) was trotted out as the spokesperson for the movement.

Toxic waste became the world's first mass-dosed compulsory medication with a 5% increase in the background cancer rate (according to the Birchers anyway). The US RDA of fluoride is still zero, meaning that it has no known role in human nutrition and is still considered a toxin.

Here we are approximately half a century later and the world is still divided on fluoride, with many European countries banning it and many US water systems compulsively medicated with the justification that we are all saving the teeth of the poor who cannot afford to see a dentist (yet I see no evidence that the poor are gaining any benefit if all the Medicare beneficiaries who get no socialized dental insurance and sport mouth full of false teeth is any indicator, and why not just add dental care to Medicare anyway since it would be much more efficient use of resources IMO).

I also heard one explanation for the mechanism of effectiveness being that fluoride is a good disinfectant and kills bacteria. If that were so, we should expect alcoholics to have perfect teeth since they ingest almost nothing but disinfectant.

The question I keep asking myself is, where are the double blind studies? It cannot take that much effort to do a study on rats. Yet despite having looked and looked and looked for them, I find that the available literature keeps referencing the uncontrolled studies of the municipal water supplies that were subject to compulsory medication showing a downward trend in tooth decay that looks very similar to the general downward trend in tooth decay that began around the time that Cuban sugar was banned from the US marketplace and antibiotics came into widespread usage while research into dental health that clearly implicated diet and hygiene as primary variables became the cornerstone of a public education campaign.

Ever wonder why none of the portraits of the founding fathers of the US (or any other portrait from that time) show smiling teethy? Apparently none of them had much in the way of teeth. It seems that somewhere between the Paleo era when teeth almost never rotted and the revolutionary war, human health took a sharp downward turn and the culprit seems to be the way we process food.

Anyway the conflicting evidence left me baffled and doubting so I drink and cook with only bottled water until someone proves it to me one way or the other. Yeah, regarding the honesty of the medical literature one only need watch TV commercials to learn which grand medical innovation has become the latest victim of the ambulance chasers.

Sorry Amir, your faith in science is somewhat misplaced. Anything can be perverted by money.

I suppose it is time for someone to post something randomly and loosely linked to the Kardashians or Duck Dynasty next. Ramble on.

Great lousy thread btw...