Negative show report posts... enough is enough.

[steve williams]

That guy lost an opportunity to discover some great music!!

how true especially coming from Keith who always finds new and eclectic music to bring to shows

 

[amirm]

I heard this funny joke years ago:

"One third of Americans suffer from psychiatric illness. So look to your left and to your right. If those people look normal, it is you!"

There is no question that there are critical listeners and non-critical listeners. The problem is that while many of us think we are critical listeners, we have never had that hypothesis checked in an objective way. We may very well be the one who has it, but without some unbiased confirmation, we don't know. Yet we share and treat our opinions of audio equally, industry person or not.

Fortunately this issue has been tested, specifically by Dr. Sean Olive, ex-president of Audio Engineering Society, WBF member, and all around expert in testing acoustic opinions. Two of his studies come to mind:

1. Trained listeners vs not. This is probably the most depressing thing to read for most people here . That is, compared to people who are trained professionals, most of us don't even come close to what they can do in detecting coloration in speakers/rooms. Fortunately there is software that is free and available to become trained just as Harman people have taken: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...e-in-How-to-Critically-Evaluate-Sound-Quality. In there you can see how we all do when we are not trained:

And this:

Too small to see but a group of these listeners were indeed audiophiles. We can see that trained listeners are far, far harsher on ills of bad sound. As a personal example, I can't listen to US DBS Radio (XM and Sirius) yet they have 25 million subscribers. To me the compression artifacts are unbearable even though I love the content and would subscribe otherwise.

I have sat through a large group of dealers at Harman taking the same test. As I have told the story before, with just a bit of training, I went from level 2 to 3 to level 6 or so using the software above. All the dealers failed to tell equalization changes to the music at level 2 and 3. Sean Olive though sailed past me and I believe their trained listeners can reach up to level 12 before they are qualified for the task. Download the software and take the test. It is easy, quick and humbling.

2. What we use to test matters and matters a ton. People are often surprised at the selection of music used at Harman for double blind acoustic testing. James Taylor anyone? That selection just in other fields, comes from huge amount of testing that detects what the most revealing content is, so that even untrained people have a shot at hearing the difference. Here is a great summary of Dr. Olive's AES paper on this: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/03/method-for-training-listeners-and.html

And the most sensitive material for testing whether people could tell a +-3 db EQ at different frequencies:

Pink music followed female *pop* music! Look at the many reference clips we have that rank way, way low. Piano at #10 for example! And Jazz trio at #20???

As a way of reference, human voice is very hard to compress and hence it is considered a "codec killer." As a result one of the test clips is Suzan Vega's solo voice. More revealing than a million classical tracks. Indeed classical music is not even used to test codecs because it is so easy to compress due to harmonic nature of it! Yet what is critical in codec testing, i.e. solo voices, is not in acoustic space with it ranking #15. I bet your first instinct for many of you is to use classical music to rate any system but that is not the most revealing material.

The danger here is that without using proper material and training oneself, the opinion becomes ad-hoc. So let's not put weight on one versus the other.

So whether it is Peter, or many outraged folks in this thread, the odds are against us, way against us, in having a valid/scientific opinion of what is bad sound. We have a preference and thank heavens, listening tests show that when it comes to acoustic domain, is similar to trained listeners. But most of us are not remotely critical listeners.

 

[steve williams]

I heard this funny joke years ago:

"One third of Americans suffer from psychiatric illness. So look to your left and to your right. If those people look normal, it is you!"

There is no question that there are critical listeners and non-critical listeners. The problem is that while many of us think we are critical listeners, we have never had that hypothesis checked in an objective way. We may very well be the one who has it, but without some unbiased confirmation, we don't know. Yet we share and treat our opinions of audio equally, industry person or not.

Fortunately this issue has been tested, specifically by Dr. Sean Olive, ex-president of Audio Engineering Society, WBF member, and all around expert in testing acoustic opinions. Two of his studies come to mind:

1. Trained listeners vs not. This is probably the most depressing thing to read for most people here . That is, compared to people who are trained professionals, most of us don't even come close to what they can do in detecting coloration in speakers/rooms. Fortunately there is software that is free and available to become trained just as Harman people have taken: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...e-in-How-to-Critically-Evaluate-Sound-Quality. In there you can see how we all do when we are not trained:

And this:

Too small to see but a group of these listeners were indeed audiophiles. We can see that trained listeners are far, far harsher on ills of bad sound. As a personal example, I can't listen to US DBS Radio (XM and Sirius) yet they have 25 million subscribers. To me the compression artifacts are unbearable even though I love the content and would subscribe otherwise.

I have sat through a large group of dealers at Harman taking the same test. As I have told the story before, with just a bit of training, I went from level 2 to 3 to level 6 or so using the software above. All the dealers failed to tell equalization changes to the music at level 2 and 3. Sean Olive though sailed past me and I believe their trained listeners can reach up to level 12 before they are qualified for the task. Download the software and take the test. It is easy, quick and humbling.

2. What we use to test matters and matters a ton. People are often surprised at the selection of music used at Harman for double blind acoustic testing. James Taylor anyone? That selection just in other fields, comes from huge amount of testing that detects what the most revealing content is, so that even untrained people have a shot at hearing the difference. Here is a great summary of Dr. Olive's AES paper on this: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/03/method-for-training-listeners-and.html

And the most sensitive material for testing whether people could tell a +-3 db EQ at different frequencies:

Pink music followed female *pop* music! Look at the many reference clips we have that rank way, way low. Piano at #10 for example!

As a way of reference, human voice is very hard to compress and hence it is considered a "codec killer." As a result one of the test clips is Suzan Vega's solo voice. More revealing than a million classical tracks. Indeed classical music is not even used to test codecs because it is so easy to compress due to harmonic nature of it! Yet what is critical in codec testing, i.e. solo voices, is not in acoustic space with it ranking #15. I bet your first instinct for many of you is to use classical music to rate any system but that is not the most revealing material.

The danger here is that without using proper material and training oneself, the opinion becomes ad-hoc. So let's not put weight on one versus the other.

So whether it is Peter, or many outraged folks in this thread, the odds are against us, way against us, in having a valid/scientific opinion of what is bad sound. We have a preference and thank heavens, listening tests show that when it comes to acoustic domain, is similar to trained listeners. But most of us are not remotely critical listeners.

sobering as it might be but true nonetheless Amir

Good to see that reminder every now and again to see where we might fit

 

[es347]

OMG I can't imagine anything that would take the pure joy out of this hobby than jumping thru those hoops and once achieving the summit, actually being able to experience the true joy that music brings. I'll gladly reside happily in the chaff column thank you..

 

[audioguy]

Also, I am an expert with years of experience with top level audio equipment... I am not a once-in-awhile casual observer.

So somehow that disqualifies those who don't consider themselves "experts"? Seriously??

I am amazed at this thread. Absolutely amazed.

I showed as CES's for about 8 years. And we got lots of comments on both sides - as we would and should expect. And this was prior to most brick and mortar stores going south. I would guess that, now, many manufacturers who have a room at one of the shows is for the sole purpose of getting some kind of industry/public exposure to their products. And if they do so and it sounds like crap, they only have themselves to blame. Knowing how bad that most rooms are should prepare one to, for example, take appropriate passive (or active for that matter) room treatment to deal with some of the major issue. Or use your head, and don't bring four 15 inch drivers into a 1500 cubic foot room and then wonder why you can't control the bass.

My take away conclusion from this would be if I hear a great room (and there are some) I get to comment on it but if I hear a room that isn't great, I have to make excuses as to why it wasn't great (not enough time to set up, poor condition, etc) and not be allowed to comment that it sounds like crap!!!!!

Really???

But then I'm not an "expert with years of experience" so what the heck do I know?????

(And we wonder what's wrong with High End audio)

 

[Joe Whip]

So Amir, I wonder how those out there with that secret knowledge, i.e. the mainstream audio press, have done with the Harmon testing?

 

[audioguy]

So Amir, I wonder how those out there with that secret knowledge, i.e. the mainstream audio press, have done with the Harmon testing?

Since it's "blind" there is a good chance they would not have participated.

 

[garylkoh]

Thanks, Amir. That's a good reminder that listeners can be trained.

I would take this step one further - HOW the listener is trained will make the biggest difference to subjective preferences. If the listener is self-trained, then he/she will hear what he will have trained himself to hear. If the listener is trained to a program, he/she will have been trained to hear what the training program designer thinks is important.

That ingrains into the listening experience too - hence we have a huge spectrum of difference to our preferences. Take someone who listens to rock almost exclusively vs someone who listens to classical music exclusively (even live music). Their sonic preferences will be completely different. The rock loving audiophile who doesn't play in a band wouldn't know the sound of an unamplified, undistorted electric guitar even if a Fender Stratocaster was thrown at him. He is hearing a whole chain of electronics - and in a recording, hearing a whole chain of electronics recorded through another whole chain of electronics.

If you have lived with one sound that you have loved for years, you will already be predisposed towards that sound. Cognitive dissonance makes it difficult to switch out of something you are intimately familiar with. Hence, we can only take glowing reports and negative reports for what it is - a personal opinion. Reading too many glowing reports from one reviewer just makes me dismiss that particular reviewer. If a review does not reference back to the reviewer's own system, then I have no reference to his preferences and hence there is no foundation to build a review out of.

The playback equipment and the program material are also critical. This "test" published on NPR yesterday is interesting:

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

I got six out of six WRONG. Listening to my Toshiba Ultrabook "premium sound" speakers I picked out the 320kbps as "best" every time. On my computer, I can turn off the "premium sound" but then it sounds much worse but also much more "accurate" and I can find the WAV file easily. But, I wouldn't enjoy YouTube videos and streaming music as much, and I know that I am leaving a sound processing algorithm on my computer on. Many computer audio drivers are pre-loaded with these sound enhancements, and when I first published my "how to build a music server" white paper, the single biggest problem was audiophiles thinking that they don't have to follow ALL of the instructions and yet get the same results.

I once had a look at the laptop of a young, budding recording engineer who was mixing and recording his band. When he heard his CD on my system, he said that it sounded NOTHING like what he hears on his headphones when he mixes on his laptop. You know why? When I had a look at his set-up, yep, "enhanced stereo" was set on by default.

I think that many of us overly focus on the end result (what we hear at shows and demos) without knowing what the source really sounded like to the recording/mastering engineer or even the artist. Sitting at a piano, the sound is totally different to listening to it in the audience. Ask a violinist to listen to her own recording, and she wouldn't even recognize the sound. Even your own voice sounds different when you listen to a recording of yourself. We hear a 20 second snippet of a track and make a subjective judgement of an unfamiliar room and an unfamiliar system. Even if we bring our "reference cuts" to the show - we can only make a SUBJECTIVE judgement of how different the exhibitor's system sounds when compared to our home system.

At this point, 10 years into my career as a systems designer, I still don't know how to measure everything that I can hear. I KNOW that my reference cuts are only a reference to me, and will only refer to the last system I listened to. All I can do is to design gear and set up my rooms and systems up to as closely as possible reproduce a recording of a music event that I was at or a voice that I have heard live and unamplified. I think that I am supremely fortunate to have had honor of meeting artists like Anne Bisson and Lyn Stanley and having had the opportunity to hear their live, unamplified voices and also have a copy of their superbly recorded and mastered albums. I am lucky to know recording engineers like Jim Merod, and get copies of the recordings of jazz concerts that I was at. And to have been allowed to sit on the floor next to the bassist and stand next to the pianist (I haven't asked to sit on the bench with one yet) during the rehearsals and hear what their instruments sound like without sound enhancements and reinforcement.

At Newport, both Anne and Lyn performed. Did any systems upstairs sound like "live" using their CDs? Well, if any systems sounded "live", then those systems sounded like the cheap mic, the cheap mic cable and mic-amp, the soundboard, and the PA speakers being used to amplify Anne's and Lyn's voices. During Anne's performance, Jacques Riendeau had to tell the sound engineers there to turn the mic off on the piano, because it sounded really horrible.

We have to appreciate the hard work exhibitors have put in to lug all the gear to the shows, set-up to the best of their ability, and then pander to the audience. I think that if they had an open mind, they would also appreciate our comments - what we liked and what we did not like about the presentation. But we must also comment with an open mind that we are not the "expert" that we all think that we are.

My father told me that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. If we kept our minds open and enjoyed the music for what it is - music - and make less definitive judgemental statements, we would all have a lot more fun.

*rant off*

 

[steve williams]

Right on the mark Gary. Kudos

 

[microstrip]

Thanks, Amir. That's a good reminder that listeners can be trained.

I would take this step one further - HOW the listener is trained will make the biggest difference to subjective preferences. If the listener is self-trained, then he/she will hear what he will have trained himself to hear. If the listener is trained to a program, he/she will have been trained to hear what the training program designer thinks is important.

That ingrains into the listening experience too - hence we have a huge spectrum of difference to our preferences. Take someone who listens to rock almost exclusively vs someone who listens to classical music exclusively (even live music). Their sonic preferences will be completely different. The rock loving audiophile who doesn't play in a band wouldn't know the sound of an unamplified, undistorted electric guitar even if a Fender Stratocaster was thrown at him. He is hearing a whole chain of electronics - and in a recording, hearing a whole chain of electronics recorded through another whole chain of electronics.

If you have lived with one sound that you have loved for years, you will already be predisposed towards that sound. Cognitive dissonance makes it difficult to switch out of something you are intimately familiar with. Hence, we can only take glowing reports and negative reports for what it is - a personal opinion. Reading too many glowing reports from one reviewer just makes me dismiss that particular reviewer. If a review does not reference back to the reviewer's own system, then I have no reference to his preferences and hence there is no foundation to build a review out of.

The playback equipment and the program material are also critical. This "test" published on NPR yesterday is interesting:

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

I got six out of six WRONG. Listening to my Toshiba Ultrabook "premium sound" speakers I picked out the 320kbps as "best" every time. On my computer, I can turn off the "premium sound" but then it sounds much worse but also much more "accurate" and I can find the WAV file easily. But, I wouldn't enjoy YouTube videos and streaming music as much, and I know that I am leaving a sound processing algorithm on my computer on. Many computer audio drivers are pre-loaded with these sound enhancements, and when I first published my "how to build a music server" white paper, the single biggest problem was audiophiles thinking that they don't have to follow ALL of the instructions and yet get the same results.

I once had a look at the laptop of a young, budding recording engineer who was mixing and recording his band. When he heard his CD on my system, he said that it sounded NOTHING like what he hears on his headphones when he mixes on his laptop. You know why? When I had a look at his set-up, yep, "enhanced stereo" was set on by default.

I think that many of us overly focus on the end result (what we hear at shows and demos) without knowing what the source really sounded like to the recording/mastering engineer or even the artist. Sitting at a piano, the sound is totally different to listening to it in the audience. Ask a violinist to listen to her own recording, and she wouldn't even recognize the sound. Even your own voice sounds different when you listen to a recording of yourself. We hear a 20 second snippet of a track and make a subjective judgement of an unfamiliar room and an unfamiliar system. Even if we bring our "reference cuts" to the show - we can only make a SUBJECTIVE judgement of how different the exhibitor's system sounds when compared to our home system.

At this point, 10 years into my career as a systems designer, I still don't know how to measure everything that I can hear. I KNOW that my reference cuts are only a reference to me, and will only refer to the last system I listened to. All I can do is to design gear and set up my rooms and systems up to as closely as possible reproduce a recording of a music event that I was at or a voice that I have heard live and unamplified. I think that I am supremely fortunate to have had honor of meeting artists like Anne Bisson and Lyn Stanley and having had the opportunity to hear their live, unamplified voices and also have a copy of their superbly recorded and mastered albums. I am lucky to know recording engineers like Jim Merod, and get copies of the recordings of jazz concerts that I was at. And to have been allowed to sit on the floor next to the bassist and stand next to the pianist (I haven't asked to sit on the bench with one yet) during the rehearsals and hear what their instruments sound like without sound enhancements and reinforcement.

At Newport, both Anne and Lyn performed. Did any systems upstairs sound like "live" using their CDs? Well, if any systems sounded "live", then those systems sounded like the cheap mic, the cheap mic cable and mic-amp, the soundboard, and the PA speakers being used to amplify Anne's and Lyn's voices. During Anne's performance, Jacques Riendeau had to tell the sound engineers there to turn the mic off on the piano, because it sounded really horrible.

We have to appreciate the hard work exhibitors have put in to lug all the gear to the shows, set-up to the best of their ability, and then pander to the audience. I think that if they had an open mind, they would also appreciate our comments - what we liked and what we did not like about the presentation. But we must also comment with an open mind that we are not the "expert" that we all think that we are.

My father told me that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. If we kept our minds open and enjoyed the music for what it is - music - and make less definitive judgemental statements, we would all have a lot more fun.

*rant off*

Great post, Gary. Thanks for your time!

 

[Atmasphere]

This year Munich was really challenging- mostly because during the whole week, I only got about 7 hours of sleep Wah!

But we had really good sound. In fact, the best we have ever had at any show and the best I have ever heard at a show, period. But then I went online and saw all those negative comments people were making, although none of them included our room.... I really felt like they had not seen the whole show, and based on hearing some outstanding rooms at Munich, I began to wonder if they were even at the same show.

We had Lyn Stanley in our room, singing twice a day. When she was doing her gig, the room was so packed I could not even get inside. However it was that way a lot even when she was not around. We got a lot of really nice comments from people too. Some lingered for hours. So I can't help but feel that some of the negative comments I saw when I got back were people that had an even worse time with the travel than myself and so were just in a bad mood- attitude can make a difference. But Munich is utterly huge, and its hard to imagine seeing everything in only four days.

 

[KeithR]

how true especially coming from Keith who always finds new and eclectic music to bring to shows

thanks Doc- i aim to bring new stuff every year.

this year's version was Blake Mills "Heigh Ho" - just fantastic indie singer/songwriter music. recorded at Oceanway and the production work was quite special

 

[steve williams]

thanks Doc- i aim to bring new stuff every year.

this year's version was Blake Mills "Heigh Ho" - just fantastic indie singer/songwriter music. recorded at Oceanway and the production work was quite special

Keith

you have become urban legend when you brought Duende

 

[Al M.]

This year Munich was really challenging- mostly because during the whole week, I only got about 7 hours of sleep Wah!

But we had really good sound. In fact, the best we have ever had at any show and the best I have ever heard at a show, period. But then I went online and saw all those negative comments people were making, although none of them included our room.... I really felt like they had not seen the whole show, and based on hearing some outstanding rooms at Munich, I began to wonder if they were even at the same show.

We had Lyn Stanley in our room, singing twice a day. When she was doing her gig, the room was so packed I could not even get inside. However it was that way a lot even when she was not around. We got a lot of really nice comments from people too. Some lingered for hours. So I can't help but feel that some of the negative comments I saw when I got back were people that had an even worse time with the travel than myself and so were just in a bad mood- attitude can make a difference. But Munich is utterly huge, and its hard to imagine seeing everything in only four days.

Great for you that you had such a good sounding room.

But that's precisely the point: when people like you can produce good sound at such a show (kudos!), then there is even less excuse for those who don't, and they deserve to be, and need to be, criticized.

I have heard, for example, that the BorderPatrol room (Gary Dews) consistently produces good sound, show after show (he wasn't in Munich though, I think). So if Gary can do it, why can't others?

 

[PeterA]

PS: I will also add to this thread, if you PM me regarding my OP, I will make it public. One coward has already done this and since I did not state this in advance, the cowardly PM will remain private. All future PMs will be made public.

After thinking about this thread some more this morning, I reread the OP. I find the implication and tone of this post script to be quite troubling. I alluded to the overt call for censorship before, but to then follow that up with this attempt to either stifle or expose private communications between forum members and the OP seems at odds with one of the fundamental features of this site, namely the public AND private exchange of ideas.

And to also call anyone attempting to contact the OP a "coward" is, in the least, extremely provocative and rude, but it perhaps also violates the user agreement regarding name calling.

 

[cjfrbw]

Wow, this has been a hard thread to slog through.

I understand Peter's OP post, and in many ways I agree with it. I think that it is best when commenting to try to stick to positive impressions of gear. One of my reasons for doing so (and I am more than guilty of the occasional snarky and snide comment) is that many of these manufacturers have their artisan hearts, souls as well as pocket books in these products, and it is not up to me to determine that they don't fit into some audiophiles' schemes of sound presentation and appearance. Some of these guys have more artistry, dedication and vision in their pinkies than I will ever have in my whole body, and for me to waltz in and tear them apart on a whim is just mean and unnecessary. I even acknowledge the validity of edifice systems, that are designed for visual magnificence as much as music, because I personally love seeing them and hearing them.

The shows are full of strange snobs, dedicated artists, devoted antiquarians, visionaries, deluded obsessives, snake oil salesmen, and sometimes just clueless sales guys standing around a bunch of stuff they don't quite know how to flog.

Once in a while a "pile" is noteworthy for being expensive and unusually mediocre. I remember the Lansche/Ypsilon multi hundreds of thousands pile at RMAF as being one of them. I don't know any of the group I knew even wanting to spend more than a minute or two listening to that one. However, it might be a magnificent system in the right room.

I do think that noteworthy lacklusters, especially at the upper Richter scales of expense and pretense, should be punctured if they don't deliver. I also enjoy the kudos for the wonderful, off the beaten path stuff that is seldom acknowledged.

 

[kevinkwann]

As a way of reference, human voice is very hard to compress and hence it is considered a "codec killer." As a result one of the test clips is Suzan Vega's solo voice. More revealing than a million classical tracks. Indeed classical music is not even used to test codecs because it is so easy to compress due to harmonic nature of it! Yet what is critical in codec testing, i.e. solo voices, is not in acoustic space with it ranking #15. I bet your first instinct for many of you is to use classical music to rate any system but that is not the most revealing material.

I have no argument with this assertion and in fact agree with it. However the chart you posted shows that symphonic music, which of course is classical, is the third most accurate/useful with regards to evaluation. Can you explain?

 

[Al M.]

Great post, Gary. Thanks for your time!

Yes, thanks, Gary!

 

[Al M.]

This year in Munich, I attended at Hifi Deluxe the FM Acoustics demo. The double FM system delivered incredibly poor results beyond all expectations. Of course, there were bad circumstances but these bad conditions normally could have been addressed. I have hesitated before writing some words about this disappointing performance as we all know this equipment is able to sound very well. But I decided to express my thoughts and not to act as if this under-performance never existed...

Good for you. Could you please provided a link? Thanks.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

PeterA, you are a thoughtful poster and deserve a reply.

I have made full disclosure to be compliant. What I am trying to do is to get public discussion vs. private attacks. I'm am sorry if that is upsetting, but I want this to be out in the open. Love it or hate it, my OP is about, 1) knee jerking negatives to assert a level of superiority, and 2) how hard it is to get good sound at a show and the lack of understanding of this with the negative posters.

Like... the XYZ room sucked and I hate XYZs. I leaned my head in the room for 10 seconds and it tore my ears off. The Internet's personal barrier has reduced proper discourse. It has made us cowards to hide behind an artificial wall.

If one would say, the XYZ room had a bass anomaly I perceived between 80 and 120 Hz that seemed to affect several recordings. I mentioned this to the room operator who agreed that a sweep of the room proved this with a peak at 90 and 150 Hz and that they tried every available component and correction device on hand to address this.

The exhibitors know when they are not getting optimal sound. They try everything.

These are people making a living to bring us pleasure.

BTW, the tone of the post matches the tone of the knee-jerkers. Doesn't feel so good, does it?

People who live in glass houses...