Objectivist/Subjectivist Discussion with Jamie Howarth of Plangent Processing

[Ron Resnick]

I think this is an interesting discussion I am having on FaceBook with Jamie Howarth of Plangent Processing.

Jamie began by saying:

[Audiophile] Preferences are irrelevant.

The connection between audio quality and audiophile preference is tendentious at best and better off disregarded.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron to Jamie:

You write: "The connection between audio quality and audiophile preference is tendentious at best and better off disregarded."

This proves way too much, as it puts a bullet in this entire hobby.

Some audio qualities, such as frequency response and wow and flutter and distortion, are measurable and objective. But most sonic aspects of this hobby are subjective.

Your sentence suggests an objective reality to audio quality that does not exist. Audio quality largely is subjective, not objective. High-end audio largely is a subjective hobby.

One listener's resolution, detail and leading edge crispness is another listener's over-etched, clinical and fatiguing sound. Both feel they are judging the sound against their memory of the sound of live acoustic performances.

Generally there is no basis upon which to prove that one sound is more accurate or desirable than another sound. (Yes, the recording engineer who listened to the mic feed of a live acoustic performance certainly will be uniquely positioned to have the most authoritative opinion about the accuracy of the playback of the resulting recording.)

Different audiophiles have different high-end audio objectives. This fact makes this topic even more complicated, but it also provides additional evidence for the proposition that this is a subjective hobby.

Audiophile preference drives almost everything in this hobby -- as it should in a subjective endeavor. Not only is audiophile preference not disregarded (and it should not be disregarded), it literally is the foundation of this hobby: audiophile preference is the very desire which manufacturers seek to satisfy. Different manufacturers seek to satisfy different -- but equally valid -- audiophile preferences.

This discussion likely boils down to the eternal pro audio/objectivist versus audiophile/subjectivist debate.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Jamie to Ron:

No, that's a false argument. There are many more sophisticated measurements employed currently than the Julian Hirsch era few you list.

A few of us (mostly recording guys) have "subjective" hearing way superior and some even can correlate what they hear to much more complex test data, differential phase, resonance detection, decay time/frequency, directional acuity. The knowledge and perceptual discernment is correlated to the data.

It's never subjective.

It's always objective because there's only one object and that's the sound emanating from whatever we're listening to. The word you are looking for is "biased" or "preferred". There have been a few audio files, Pearson being one of them that could so-called subjectively judge, recording quality and fidelity, even though he had very little knowledge or care for the technical aspect that achieved it. If something sounds better without showing up in the measurements you're measuring the wrong thing.

Ron Resnick Preferences are not reliably the key to excellence in audio reproduction. Some people prefer wildly different sound than fidelity to the source being reproduced. That's no help.

Some people can tell when the reproduction of the sound more closely resembles the actual recording. And they might even be able to describe in actual terms the phenomenon at work interfering with an ideal presentation.

I walked into a listening room at Axpona featuring cables that allegedly improved the subjective experience, but right off the bat I heard a more egregious flaw - the phantom center was pulling right in the mid highs. Yeah there was a banner on one side not on the other, and the reflectance was obvious to me, but the owner of the booth didn't hear it until I walked in front of the open side and blocked the bounce like the banner did. I got thanked big time, it sounded way better. That had nothing to do with the cables, it had to do with a critical ear trained to recognize anomalies that stand between the listener and a more ideal presentation.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron to Jamie:

"No, that's a false argument. There are many more sophisticated measurements employed currently than the Julian Hirsch era few you list."

Yes, there are many more measurements than the ones I listed. But that does not make my argument incorrect. Even many objective measurements doesn't change the fact that not everything that can be measured matters sonically, and the fact that not everything that matters sonically can be measured. It remains a largely subjective hobby because the most important sonic attributes that contribute to suspension of disbelief -- such as transparency and presence and resolution and sound-staging -- cannot be measured.

I agree that some people have "hearing way superior and some even can correlate what they hear to much more complex test data, differential phase, resonance detection, decay time/frequency, directional acuity." To at least some extent hearing is a learned skill. I also agree that some people naturally are better at it than others.

"It's always objective because there's only one object and that's the sound emanating from whatever we're listening to."

"Preferences are not reliably the key to excellence in audio reproduction. Some people prefer wildly different sound than fidelity to the source being reproduced. That's no help."

Here is the source of our disconnect. You are assuming that the only objective in high-end audio is "fidelity to the source being reproduced." This is not correct. This objective is merely one of four possible objectives of high-end audio.

"Fidelity to the source being reproduced" is simply your personal objective for the hobby. It might be the only legitimate objective of recording and of mastering. But it is not the only objective of the hobby of high-end audio.

The other three possible objectives are:

recreate the sound of an original musical event,

create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile, and

create a sound that seems live.

Each objective has the same value. There is no objective basis on which to claim that one objective is better or more valuable than another objective. Each objective is equally legitimate and valid.

These objectives are not mutually exclusive. Each of us may have more than one objective.

That you think the only objective is "fidelity to the source being reproduced" is why you see the matter as something objective to be perceived by individuals and to be re-created by stereo systems. I understand that the only question for you is the linear spectrum of how close an individual's hearing and how close an individual's stereo gets to that objective reality.

The problem is that it is not the only objective of high-end audio, and so the objective reality you believe is there is not actually something determinate.

 

[mtemur]

Dear Ron,

In my opinion, there’s little point in trying to convince those headstrong technicians that sound quality exists beyond measurements. They’re so enamored with the capabilities of digital technology that they fail to recognize how these processes can degrade sound quality. If you were to ask him how transparent the Plangent Process is, he would likely claim it’s completely transparent. However, every process—whether analog or digital—leaves an audible footprint and is far from transparent.

How can we expect a technician to understand sound quality beyond measurements when they rely on printer USB cables and patch boards with multiple connections while insisting the audio path is transparent?

The same applies to processes within computers. Bernie Grundman himself pointed out that digital processes harm sound quality in ways that are often worse than analog degradation. These technicians should question their assumptions: if there’s truly no sound quality beyond measurements and today’s measurements far exceed those of 60 years ago, why aren’t we hearing recordings that consistently surpass the old analog masterpieces?

 

[Ron Resnick]

If you were to ask him how transparent the Plangent Process is, he would likely claim it’s completely transparent.

Thank you for your comments on this thread.

I am sure you are correct.

However, every process—whether analog or digital—leaves an audible footprint and is far from transparent.

I believe that Michael Fremer has reported that he does not consider the Plangent process to be completely transparent.

Of course as an analog purist converting an analog recording to digital to clean up wow and flutter is anathema to me.

How can we expect a technician to understand sound quality beyond measurements when they rely on printer USB cables and patch boards with multiple connections while insisting the audio path is transparent?

This doesn't give Jamie enough credit. He is not some mid-level pro-audio guy. Jamie is an experienced recording professional and engineer.

In addition to professional audio Jamie is an accomplished and award-winning film composer and musical director. So he certainly knows a lot about music and audio and sound.

These technicians should question their assumptions: if there’s truly no sound quality beyond measurements and today’s measurements far exceed those of 60 years ago, why aren’t we hearing recordings that consistently surpass the old analog masterpieces?

I think this is a good and powerful question.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Jamie to Ron:

TL:dr
So you guys don't give a shit what it sounds like as long as you like it.
Amateur night.

The goal of high quality audio is fidelity to the source, which invariably sounds better unless the source itself is skewed in objectively detectable ways remediable by further refinements in the recording or mastering process. As for your specious thought model wrt subjective vs objective - it's no accident that both Bob Ludwig and Doug Sax have extremely sophisticated techniques, technical expertise and graduated from Eastman School of Music. These experts did not engage in a didactic exercise compartmentalizing their work skills into subjective or objective. They were one and the same. Maybe that's the difference between pros and hobbyists.

I would caution that you're inadvertently diminishing the cause of audiophiles by making paramount their preferences and cash.

 

[mtemur]

The problem is the so called pros in recording industry. If we can get rid of them together with their techniques, recordings will sound better. Clear example to this is 50s and 60s recordings. They sound intimate, true to the source, organic and enjoyable. Those recordings have minimal miking, minimal or no compression or limiting, direct to two or three tracks without overdubs or mixing. More importantly no post processing, mastering etc. Please don't confuse today's mastering with cutting/mastering disc. The pros in recording industry is killing the lifelike character of sound by their polishing techniques.

This reminds me of producing genetically modified and hormone-enhanced apples. By all measurable methods, it can be shown to be a beautiful, ripe apple; it even looks like a perfectly matured apple, but it tastes awful. How can you formulate or measure the taste of an apple? How do you describe sound that lacks flavor? More importantly, how do you explain it to someone who isn’t aware of the difference? A refined palate isn’t something everyone has, and they might even love the hormone-laden apple. Explaining everything through measurements and denying what cannot be measured reminds me of the Dark Ages, when some doctors claiming that diseases were caused by microbes were asked to show these microbes, and if they couldn’t be seen, they were declared nonexistent.

 

[J007B]

The problem is the so called pros in recording industry. If we can get rid of them together with their techniques, recordings will sound better. Clear example to this is 50s and 60s recordings. They sound intimate, true to the source, organic and enjoyable. Those recordings have minimal miking, minimal or no compression or limiting, direct to two or three tracks without overdubs or mixing. More importantly no post processing, mastering etc. Please don't confuse today's mastering with cutting/mastering disc. The pros in recording industry is killing the lifelike character of sound by their polishing techniques.

This reminds me of producing genetically modified and hormone-enhanced apples. By all measurable methods, it can be shown to be a beautiful, ripe apple; it even looks like a perfectly matured apple, but it tastes awful. How can you formulate or measure the taste of an apple? How do you describe sound that lacks flavor? More importantly, how do you explain it to someone who isn’t aware of the difference? A refined palate isn’t something everyone has, and they might even love the hormone-laden apple. Explaining everything through measurements and denying what cannot be measured reminds me of the Dark Ages, when some doctors claiming that diseases were caused by microbes were asked to show these microbes, and if they couldn’t be seen, they were declared nonexistent.

It reminds me of the debate in the Photographic Industry, Film vs Digital. Digital will probably never be as good at image capture as film. No matter how many pixels the camera has.

 

[mtemur]

This doesn't give Jamie enough credit. He is not some mid-level pro-audio guy. Jamie is an experienced recording professional and engineer.

In addition to professional audio Jamie is an accomplished and award-winning film composer and musical director. So he certainly knows a lot about music and audio and sound.

My words didn't aim him particularly but generalizing pro audio guys, just like he generalizes audiophiles.

 

[Rt66indierock]

The problem is the so called pros in recording industry. If we can get rid of them together with their techniques, recordings will sound better. Clear example to this is 50s and 60s recordings. They sound intimate, true to the source, organic and enjoyable. Those recordings have minimal miking, minimal or no compression or limiting, direct to two or three tracks without overdubs or mixing. More importantly no post processing, mastering etc. Please don't confuse today's mastering with cutting/mastering disc. The pros in recording industry is killing the lifelike character of sound by their polishing techniques.

This reminds me of producing genetically modified and hormone-enhanced apples. By all measurable methods, it can be shown to be a beautiful, ripe apple; it even looks like a perfectly matured apple, but it tastes awful. How can you formulate or measure the taste of an apple? How do you describe sound that lacks flavor? More importantly, how do you explain it to someone who isn’t aware of the difference? A refined palate isn’t something everyone has, and they might even love the hormone-laden apple. Explaining everything through measurements and denying what cannot be measured reminds me of the Dark Ages, when some doctors claiming that diseases were caused by microbes were asked to show these microbes, and if they couldn’t be seen, they were declared nonexistent.

Somebody wasn’t around 4-H as a kid. How apples taste is one of the basics.

And you are forgetting or didn’t know why James Russell invented digital audio in the first place in the sixties. The limitations of vinyl playback.

 

[mtemur]

Somebody wasn’t around 4-H as a kid. How apples taste is one of the basics.

Let me explain: if you’ve been eating genetically modified apples your entire life, you wouldn’t know the true taste of a real apple. That's how.

Recorded music is over processed so long by gear and plug-in loving pros that it's hard to come by a natural sounding new recording, just like an organic, real apple. And as we've seen in this example they're defending themselves by measurements. I'm sure a modified apple will measure better than a real apple.

 

[Rt66indierock]

Let me explain: if you’ve been eating genetically modified apples your entire life, you wouldn’t know the true taste of a real apple. That's how.

Recorded music is over processed so long by gear and plug-in loving pros that it's hard to come by a natural sounding new recording, just like an organic, real apple. And as we've seen in this example they're defending themselves by measurements. I'm sure a modified apple will measure better than a real apple.

You don’t get it they teach how apples taste in 4-H to kids. Have for decades after all 4-H was founded in 1902. Maybe visit Hood River Oregon or Washington State and taste some apples yourself.

Even I can make a natural sounding recording and I’m in another profession.

 

[wil]

It reminds me of the debate in the Photographic Industry, Film vs Digital. Digital will probably never be as good at image capture as film. No matter how many pixels the camera has.

This is actually not true, from my long experience.

 

[Rt66indierock]

Ron to Jamie:

"No, that's a false argument. There are many more sophisticated measurements employed currently than the Julian Hirsch era few you list."

Yes, there are many more measurements than the ones I listed. But that does not make my argument incorrect. Even many objective measurements doesn't change the fact that not everything that can be measured matters sonically, and the fact that not everything that matters sonically can be measured. It remains a largely subjective hobby because the most important sonic attributes that contribute to suspension of disbelief -- such as transparency and presence and resolution and sound-staging -- cannot be measured.

I agree that some people have "hearing way superior and some even can correlate what they hear to much more complex test data, differential phase, resonance detection, decay time/frequency, directional acuity." To at least some extent hearing is a learned skill. I also agree that some people naturally are better at it than others.

"It's always objective because there's only one object and that's the sound emanating from whatever we're listening to."

"Preferences are not reliably the key to excellence in audio reproduction. Some people prefer wildly different sound than fidelity to the source being reproduced. That's no help."

Here is the source of our disconnect. You are assuming that the only objective in high-end audio is "fidelity to the source being reproduced." This is not correct. This objective is merely one of four possible objectives of high-end audio.

"Fidelity to the source being reproduced" is simply your personal objective for the hobby. It might be the only legitimate objective of recording and of mastering. But it is not the only objective of the hobby of high-end audio.

The other three possible objectives are:

recreate the sound of an original musical event,

create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile, and

create a sound that seems live.

Each objective has the same value. There is no objective basis on which to claim that one objective is better or more valuable than another objective. Each objective is equally legitimate and valid.

These objectives are not mutually exclusive. Each of us may have more than one objective.

That you think the only objective is "fidelity to the source being reproduced" is why you see the matter as something objective to be perceived by individuals and to be re-created by stereo systems. I understand that the only question for you is the linear spectrum of how close an individual's hearing and how close an individual's stereo gets to that objective reality.

The problem is that it is not the only objective of high-end audio, and so the objective reality you believe is there is not actually something determinate.

Ron, there are only two sides to the issue. Fidelity to the source or hear what you want to hear. Whether they are equal is an interesting philosophical discussion.

 

[Tuckers]

Jamie's statements are very curious to me. A recording engineer records events to their own taste. People hire certain engineers to get a specific subjective sound. What mic they choose, placement, processing - all highly subjective. The albums that I've heard with the Plagent Process are highly editorialized productions. As are the wonderful recordings referenced earlier in this thread from the 50s and 60s, they are not neutral at all, but they are highly musical. How can anyone claim that their reproduction of those albums is objective, vs an audiophile perspective.

 

[J007B]

This is actually not true, from my long experience.

Actually it is, PM me if you care to discuss. I don't want to sidetrack this thread.

 

[geetee1972]

Ron - I feel your pain. Not that I am in the Post Modernist 'everything is a social construct' camp (very far from it), but the engineers in this space who think that the way music should be reproduced is the result of logically deterministic parameters doesn't just baffle me, it triggers me.

There are two arguments you can use to shut someone like this down.

The first is to ask them if they think their measurement strategy can measure the difference in Bach's cello suites played by say Jacqueline D'upree and Janos Starker. Or if it can account for the difference in greatness between Miles Davis and Lee Morgan, or John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.

The measurement may certainly be able to tell you how close to fidelity the sound of a saxophone is reproduced by a system, but can it measure the difference in emotive style between the two people playing it? If the answer is yes, then I may well concede that there is logically deterministic way approach to hifi design that ought to supersede the subjective listening experience. But I don't think there is any measurement system that can do this, and nor do I think there ever will be. I believe (but am happy to be proven wrong), that there is something in the way music is played that transcends logical determinism.

The second argument you can throw in his face is the increasing evidence that human consciousness is itself, not logically deterministic. Most people, including all those vain engineers and bitcoin idiots who believe that AI will approach and surpass human consciousness, still vainly flair in their belief that human consciousness is a logically deterministic construct and that all we have to do is replicate in digital gates the number of synapses there are in the brain (I believe it's 10^15) and we will be there. We're currently at 10^12 so close-ish.

Here's what those people fail to understand; we don't even know what consciousness is, let alone that it is logically deterministic. Why we would assume that is easy to understand (our familiarity with computational devices), but naive. There is increasing evidence that consciousness arises from quantum effects (see the work of Roger Penrose and the recent studies showing that consciousness does indeed seem to be connected to quantum effects: Study Supports Quantum Basis of Consciousness in the Brain)

On that basis, not only does AI have no possible way of emulating human consciousness but our whole experience of the material world is subjective (which is not to say that the material world is also entirely subjective, just our experience of it). This means that you can both be right. It may be possible to be entirely objective about music replay (from a logically deterministic perspective), and for our experience of it to be entirely subjective.

The question then becomes, to what end or purpose are you putting those measurements to work? If your objective approach results in something we subjectively like, where is the problem?

 

[geetee1972]

It reminds me of the debate in the Photographic Industry, Film vs Digital. Digital will probably never be as good at image capture as film. No matter how many pixels the camera has.

Actually digital photography is less 'digital' than film photography. Let me explain what I mean.

Film works with silver halide crystals right? They are either intact or collapsed by the light that hits them. How intense the light is and how large the crystals are, determines this process. So the crystal can only be in one of two states - intact or collapsed. Or to put it another way, a zero or a one!

Digital photography does not work this way. The light sensitive well, the photosite that equates to one pixel, builds charge based on the intensity of the light. The range of values that each light well can hold is finite, but it is not zero or one. It's also been getting much wider over time (increasing dynamic range). So when a digital image is produced, each pixel can have a range of values other than just zero or one.

In terms of fidelity, digital photography is not held back by pixel counts but rather it is this dynamic range. Whilst the photosites have got far broader dynamic range over time, it is the ability of film to reproduce dynamic and tonal range that surpasses digital, though I should also add that this really only applies to image sizes above 6x7 medium format. You do have to go to 4x5 to get that superior range.

Otherwise, the quality that you're also alluding to is something more romantic, something akin to harmonic distortion or impressionist painting. Film's natural inability to reproduce with great fidelity is indeed part of its charm (and why I still use it myself).

 

[wil]

Actually it is, PM me if you care to discuss. I don't want to sidetrack this thread.

No desire to spend my time wading through this. I’ve spent decades making fine art prints. I know how much better, and more true to life, a finely made color digital print is than from the primitive chemical print process. Beyond that, it’s the skill/artistry of the the printmaker that matters. It’s a mistake to be too hung up on the various technologies. Same goes for music reproduction.

Believe whatever you want to believe.