Peter, the best approach would have been to say, "sorry guys, I got a little carried away in my OP. I apologize. This is what I meant." Simple and direct. End of story. As for the comment about cowards, I post my real name, as do you. I am fully ready to back up all of my impressions and opinions. I may not always be correct but I express those opinions honestly and directly. No hiding here. I would tell the manufacturer the same thing in person that I would post here and have done so on many occasions. Politely and with respect, when they ask.
Negative show report posts... enough is enough.
- Thread starter Peter Breuninger
- Start date
Peter, Perhaps you meant something other than what you wrote in your original post. You wrote asking the public not to make negative comments about show experiences on the forums and that doing so makes them some kind of "expert". This is a request for censorship and an attempt to squash one's right to freely express himself.
And does anyone really think that exhibitors "try everything" to get optimal sound?
I just took the 1st NPR' test posted by Gary (Katy Perry's), and picked the correct answer immediately - just focus on the "ping" in her song and the overall naturalness of the sound; the ping is what jumped out first in all three versions; all this on my laptop and its silly speakers. I don't care to take all other tests. Beyond Gary's post, I found little else useful, newsworthy, educational or otherwise in this thread, and certainly starting a thread with inflammatory language diminishes one's credibility. Not calling that out and instead calling out the responses, is, well, a bit over the top.
Poor sound at a show doesn't necessarily equate to poor gear, I think clearly most of us already get that. But surely journalism in context of a show report is about reporting on the show experience with honesty, transparency and the fairness of perspective (that is within the context of the setting up a crap shoot in a mine field that the show conditions provide).
But journalism IS about truth. People want to know honestly and fairly about the show experience.
Filtering for exclusively positive comment is not truth, it is PR.
If you are not representing your work as journalism and these are just fundamentally commercials for the show then that needs to be disclosed and in that way the positive only commentary would be valid. I had always felt that your show video commentaries are clearly more framed as magazine style colour pieces rather than in-depth journalism so there is some latitude for this more as puff pieces rather than critical review but they could do more balancing critique on the quality of the show experience without necessarily becoming adversely derogatory. If a report only give us an inaccurate censored spin version of what has happened they are approaching more advertorial than journalism and to be fair to your viewers who invest their time and energy into watching them it would be good to make that clear which you have now done.
As a mate of mine who has been a journalist for a couple of decades said to me just yesterday, "any man and his dog can call themselves a journo these day". This becomes the challenge for us as readers and viewers in these days of easy self publication.
Telling the non-industry majority they are in no way expert or are little better than chaff was clearly not a good PR move btw. I for one don't look to the opinions of people of think their viewership are worthless. I just watched a Michael Fremer walk thru at Newport and the striking thing was the grace and good humour as well as the genuine sense of camaraderie when he meets up with show goers, dealers and designers alike and how he just tells it as it is without winding up the spin and selling the experience to us. This is proper journalism and no-one got beaten up by it either.
On the separation of wheat and chaff... we are all in truth just expressing our opinions and all our opinions (I humbly submit including yours) are in ways limited. Good luck with having 'the knowledge'.
But journalism IS about truth. People want to know honestly and fairly about the show experience.
Filtering for exclusively positive comment is not truth, it is PR.
If you are not representing your work as journalism and these are just fundamentally commercials for the show then that needs to be disclosed and in that way the positive only commentary would be valid. I had always felt that your show video commentaries are clearly more framed as magazine style colour pieces rather than in-depth journalism so there is some latitude for this more as puff pieces rather than critical review but they could do more balancing critique on the quality of the show experience without necessarily becoming adversely derogatory. If a report only give us an inaccurate censored spin version of what has happened they are approaching more advertorial than journalism and to be fair to your viewers who invest their time and energy into watching them it would be good to make that clear which you have now done.
As a mate of mine who has been a journalist for a couple of decades said to me just yesterday, "any man and his dog can call themselves a journo these day". This becomes the challenge for us as readers and viewers in these days of easy self publication.
Telling the non-industry majority they are in no way expert or are little better than chaff was clearly not a good PR move btw. I for one don't look to the opinions of people of think their viewership are worthless. I just watched a Michael Fremer walk thru at Newport and the striking thing was the grace and good humour as well as the genuine sense of camaraderie when he meets up with show goers, dealers and designers alike and how he just tells it as it is without winding up the spin and selling the experience to us. This is proper journalism and no-one got beaten up by it either.
On the separation of wheat and chaff... we are all in truth just expressing our opinions and all our opinions (I humbly submit including yours) are in ways limited. Good luck with having 'the knowledge'.
It was one out of a sea of rock and pop/rock music. The data is also from an older test. The latest reports are much more devoid of classical. Here are some examples from published AES papers:
The Subjective and Objective Evaluation of Room Correction Products
Sean E. Olive, John Jackson, Allan Devantier, David Hunt, and Sean M. Hess
JW - Jennifer Warnes, “Bird on a Wire”
TC - Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”
JW - James Taylor, “That’s Why I’m Here”
A New Listener Training Software Application
Sean Olive, AES Fellow
Harman International Industries
· Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car", Tracy Chapman
· Jennifer Warnes, "Bird on a Wire", Famous Blue Rain Coat
· James Taylor "That's Why I'm Here", “That’s Why I’m Here”
· Steely Dan “Cousin Dupree”, “ Two Against Nature”
· Paula Cole, “Tiger”,” This Fire”
· “Toy Soldier March”, Reference Recording
· Pink Noise (uncorrelated)
Differences in Performance and Preference of Trained versus Untrained Listeners in Loudspeaker Tests: A Case Study*
Sean E. Olive, AES Fellow
James Taylor, “That’s Why I’m Here” from “That’s Why I’m Here,” Sony Records.
Little Feat, “Hangin’ on to the Good Times” from “Let It Roll,” Warner Brothers.
Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car” from “Tracy Chapman,” Elektra/Asylum Records.
Jennifer Warnes, “Bird on a Wire” from “Famous Blue Rain Coat,” Attic Records.
In the two instances I took the blind tests at Harman, I don't recall classical music being used either although my memory is not 100% perfect. I do remember the James Taylor and Tracey Chapman specifically and found the former to be very revealing of what sounded natural to me in vocals.
A bit about the science, the suitability of track is a matter of statistics. Colorations in speakers are only revealing if there is significant content/energy in that part of hearing spectrum. Rock music tends to have such rich spectrum. Classical music as a general rule does not. Hence the domination of rock/pop music in the top most critical list.
In both this space and audio compression with which I am intimately familiar with, high fidelity of the music recording is not an aid and if anything a distraction. A "pretty" sounding track sounds pretty on many systems because we are drawn to it by its good substance. Critical test clips on the other hand tend to be uninteresting and force you to pay attention to the task which is to analyze equipment with your ear.
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:
Image removed for brevity.
And this:
Image removed for brevity.
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:
Image removed for brevity.
Pink music followed female *pop* music!
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.
Once tried to convince somehow of basically what the first table is showing using Pink noise and well recorded classical music. I sent someone the pink noise and either tiny level changes or EQ changes over a couple octaves. Let them use ABX software to see for themselves how small a difference they could hear. Did the same with a favorite piece of classical music which had to be altered to a much greater degree before they could reliably pick the two as different. Seemed to give them pause for just a bit, but only a bit and right back to the opinion such music was far more revealing a way to detect differences in playback gear. Mea Culpa!
Some have attended the tests and acknowledge them but I have not seen their comments go beyond.
I think for the most part, there needs to be more of a "face the facts" that we all did poorly relative to true tained experts. This should have been a wake up call for people to train themselves more, study more of the research, use critical test tracks known to be revealing and developing their own, etc. These are all the things I did to train myself in hearing compression artifacts. It took 6 months but after that, no one could match my ability in hearing small artifacts in the company. It is like learning any profession. Almost no one is born naturally to be good this way.
I do agree with this, it takes a lot of effort and time to train the ear. And it takes hearing a high end properly setup system to get an idea of what's possible. Many people... even many audio designers... obviously haven't heard what a totl 2-channel system is really capable of. One example is room where one of the designers thought cables will never make a difference with his gear (because his design is so much better), while the unfortunate truth is his gear is full of cheap parts, and the speaker crossovers are also full of cheap parts... parts that color the music so much that cables actually don't make much of a difference anymore. But what is missing is an immersive 3D soundstage and fine detail. It's sort of pleasant sounding but it's really mid-fi...
With show reporting it's important to be able to identify the room effects and separate them from the sound of the system, I live in Denver and have seen thousands of setups at RMAF over the years and with experience it's not hard to discern. When I write a report I am honest about what I hear but am careful not to condemn the system due to poor setup. Systems that have great potential are often shown under marginal conditions, this is the unfortunate truth... sometime talented gear designers can't setup a decent sounding room to save their lives. Things have gotten better over the years and some are simply better at it than others, some rooms are known to have good setups and others...well, not so much.
An example... Focal speakers. I think they are amazing but many people think they make their ears bleed. The issue is Focal speakers are flat and have wide dispersion, they often shown in rooms with inadequate damping. Recently I got to hear them in Boulder Amplifiers' room (at their factory), which is properly setup for the speakers, and it was one of the best systems I have heard. In shows it's obvious to me that reflections are the problem but this is not the case with most listeners, they think it's a characteristic of Focal speakers, which couldn't be further from the truth.
And, while I'm at it can we not use "Hi-Fi" to describe something that sounds bright? I have been guilty of this in the past but it's really annoying and a disservice to out hobby, which is... ok, should be... about high fidelity audio reproduction.
Wow. Just when I thought he site was slowing down, Peter's commentary obviously hit a nerve. A few questions if I may:
1) I'm not sure I understand the nature of Peter B's objection when a consumer listens at a show and declares a room poor sounding. How is that different than when a pro such as Jon Valin does it (which he does with regularity)? Does that make it OK? Is he a "better listener" and does that gives him the right to express his opinion? Is a professional's reviewer more valid than that of a hobbyist? Please don't misunderstand my point here. I like Valin but certainly disagree with him historically about the sound of several products he has reviewed (i.e. Soluution, Magico). My point is, everyone's opinion has the right to be heard on a forum such as this, even Valin! Let the reader shake his head in consent, or vomit in disgust at the comments rendered. It's just one person's opinion, ether way.
2) If the manufacturers who have a poor sounding room and are so knowledgeable about room acoustics (it is their business after all), why don't they do something about it? They don't even have to use DSP! A good parametric EQ is cheap and easy to use and certainly under show conditions, can fix many sonic anomalies and cover a myriad of sins. Or is it possible that the use of such as device is beneath the manufacturer? To be honest, its inexcusable that such an easy fix is there for them to use, but is often shunned because its not a "purist" approach. To me, that just makes the manufacturer look foolish. Someone should show those folks a picture of Dan D'Agostino's pre-amp which has...are you ready...tone controls!
1) I'm not sure I understand the nature of Peter B's objection when a consumer listens at a show and declares a room poor sounding. How is that different than when a pro such as Jon Valin does it (which he does with regularity)? Does that make it OK? Is he a "better listener" and does that gives him the right to express his opinion? Is a professional's reviewer more valid than that of a hobbyist? Please don't misunderstand my point here. I like Valin but certainly disagree with him historically about the sound of several products he has reviewed (i.e. Soluution, Magico). My point is, everyone's opinion has the right to be heard on a forum such as this, even Valin! Let the reader shake his head in consent, or vomit in disgust at the comments rendered. It's just one person's opinion, ether way.
2) If the manufacturers who have a poor sounding room and are so knowledgeable about room acoustics (it is their business after all), why don't they do something about it? They don't even have to use DSP! A good parametric EQ is cheap and easy to use and certainly under show conditions, can fix many sonic anomalies and cover a myriad of sins. Or is it possible that the use of such as device is beneath the manufacturer? To be honest, its inexcusable that such an easy fix is there for them to use, but is often shunned because its not a "purist" approach. To me, that just makes the manufacturer look foolish. Someone should show those folks a picture of Dan D'Agostino's pre-amp which has...are you ready...tone controls!
I really appreciate your detailed answer. Very, very helpful and educational. Your posts on this topic have taught me a lot. At the very least, I need to go back and re-evaluate the material I'm using to evaluate equipment. Thank you!
Here's my take as someone who's worn all the hats.
As a show participant I try to make the system sound as good as possible......to me. If I can satisfy my own standards great, if I can't I just have to live with it. I will not be able to please everybody. That is a given. I have no choice but to provide my own compass. Some guy will come in one days and see solid state and might say yuck and see tubes the next year and say hooray. Yes biases can and often do run deep. Fortunately my tastes seem to be in line with a big slice of the population and for that I suppose I'm lucky. If you like what you hear a pat on the back is appreciated, if you don't let me know why. That's appreciated too. If you really love it, the stuff is all for sale man, service included.
As a show goer, I carry that same perspective. What I do try to do is talk to the exhibitors to get an idea of what they may have been shooting for. In other words if there are any aspects that they were trying to show off in particular. This is important to me because I know from experience that a prospective owner can greatly alter the characteristics of a system via set up alone. If I came into a room and the setup was for example tilted up, I know that I could fundamentally change that balance. Of course this does not take into account aberrations intrinsic to the specific units in use.
In short, I try not to pass judgment on any single piece of gear so quickly. Besides anybody who walks into a room, sees a piece for the first time and judges it based on that, to me is unhinged from reality. Now if the person goes in and judges the presentation at that room, the totality of it all, be it anywhere from orgiastic to excruciating then I would respect that. Just don't tell me A,B or C sucks because I heard it once. Very different from A,B,C sucked when I heard it last.
I think that is a difference that we should all be able to appreciate.
As a show participant I try to make the system sound as good as possible......to me. If I can satisfy my own standards great, if I can't I just have to live with it. I will not be able to please everybody. That is a given. I have no choice but to provide my own compass. Some guy will come in one days and see solid state and might say yuck and see tubes the next year and say hooray. Yes biases can and often do run deep. Fortunately my tastes seem to be in line with a big slice of the population and for that I suppose I'm lucky. If you like what you hear a pat on the back is appreciated, if you don't let me know why. That's appreciated too. If you really love it, the stuff is all for sale man, service included.
As a show goer, I carry that same perspective. What I do try to do is talk to the exhibitors to get an idea of what they may have been shooting for. In other words if there are any aspects that they were trying to show off in particular. This is important to me because I know from experience that a prospective owner can greatly alter the characteristics of a system via set up alone. If I came into a room and the setup was for example tilted up, I know that I could fundamentally change that balance. Of course this does not take into account aberrations intrinsic to the specific units in use.
In short, I try not to pass judgment on any single piece of gear so quickly. Besides anybody who walks into a room, sees a piece for the first time and judges it based on that, to me is unhinged from reality. Now if the person goes in and judges the presentation at that room, the totality of it all, be it anywhere from orgiastic to excruciating then I would respect that. Just don't tell me A,B or C sucks because I heard it once. Very different from A,B,C sucked when I heard it last.
I think that is a difference that we should all be able to appreciate.
Hi Peter,
I would respectfully suggest that you should turn the other cheek when it comes to these criticisms. Part of this wonderful hobby is evaluating gear and opining whether we like it or dislike it. We miss you over on Audio Shark and keep up the great work with AVShowrooms.
Best,
Ken
Many, many years ago at CES, Jeff Rowland was showing with a number of other manufacturers and used a room correction device (SigTech) in his room and won Best Sound at the show. (Without it, he may have won Worst sound at the show). The following year, he wanted to use it again (he owned the SigTech) but the speaker company he was partnering (different from the previous year) with (name withheld as they may still be around), blew us off (we were doing the install) telling us that his speakers did NOT NEED room correction and that he would not allow such a device to sully his system. His room sounded like crap. Not much has changed in the ensuing 17 years.
It is NOT difficult at a show to address major room issues if one is open minded. Basic EQ, parametric EQ or DRC can all be used (along with passive treatment) to massively improve the equipment/room interaction. But as Marty suggested, the "purist mentality", or in many cases, complete lack of understanding of room acoustics makes their demo spaces sound far worse than necessary. That should not happen.
I do understand the basis of Peter B's objection. There is a lot of negativity online. But a lot of that negativity comes in the form of low-value posts that most people ignore. For example, the stereotypical "I put my head in the door and was driven out by the sound" is so cliche at this point that I doubt anybody reads it. I saw a post after one show that said something to the lines of, "the tweeter was too metallic and shrill. I don't like any speakers with aluminum tweeters." Guess what? That post gets ignored because the bias is obvious.
High-value negative posts, however, are valid opinions, regardless of who they come from. And the people who are willing to make high-value posts are generally people who understand show-related issues. They are also the people most likely to tell you what their preferences are as a comparison.
Now, if the OP had railed against low-value negative posts, I would absolutely side with him. The OP as written, however, is utterly and totally offensive. It reeks of classism and a desire of an industry insider to retain his position as an information broker and gatekeeper. The idea that the press should strive to protect the sales and revenue streams of the manufacturers is laughable.
The OP insulted me. The "wheat and chaff" followup comment was enough for me to remove AVShowrooms from my internet bookmarks.
The problem with using EQ/DSP/etc is that people going to the shows consider them a sin, much more so than the manufacturer. We just discussed this at length: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?17673-April-2015-Toole-video-on-sound-reproduction
People think such devices are antithesis of good sound and as long as that is the case, active speakers, room correction, DSP, EQ, are all mostly out of the question. Instead, all kinds of nonsense random acoustic panels are thrown around in the room or even worse.
I would amplify
this distinction. I'd rather hear music through the home rig as if I am in the audience -- it could be an intimate audience or an imposing audience, but an audience-perspective, nevertheless.Some recordings, heard through the home rig, sound as if I'm in the body of the instrument.
That's a very good post.
My thread is about "low-value negative posts." Knee Jerk posts. Period. I think you are reading too much into this, you seem very knowledgeable. Classism? I call this reverse classism. It's the negative, know-it-all posts. That's it. The sales of an industry? Perhaps you smoke on the pipe.
Have patience here and keep that knee in check. I mean this in a humorous way. I represent only my beliefs. And as such, for "show" reports I stick to my guns. One casual man's knee-jerk opinion vs. an expert's opinion?
I challenge all of you (and myself): You have $20,000 to spend on a loudspeaker and have only one source of recommendation/review/post.
John Atkinson's or XYZ knee-jerker.
I choose the expert. And it's John.
Who do you choose?
Sincerely,
Peter B.
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