No, but the assertion in post 334 was that high end turntable and amp manufacturers are at the forefront of developing new technology. If so, I would love to read about it so I can perhaps use their work for myself. I have access to an electronics parts catalogue, soldering iron, wire cutters, lathe, milling machine so perhaps I could experiment with some of their cutting edge psychoacoustic innovations. It's quite exciting: an even heavier, thicker platter may allow me to hear the hall's ambience coming from right behind me! And a better blend of solder types in my amp may give me a wider sound stage, even with mono recordings. These guys are geniuses I tell you.
Preference vs. audibility - please keep them separate.
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I can imagine two hypotheses:
1. High End audio manufacturers working in analogue know a lot of things that we don't. Even though the Scientific Establishment has long since turned its back on things it can't explain, in the industry, secrets are passed on from generation to generation and at academic conferences (called 'Audio Shows' to misdirect the authorities). No papers are published, because the claims would immediately be rubbished by The Corporations who have an agenda to replace analogue with digital. An interesting fact: the story of Fahrenheit 451 was originally written as an allegory for the High End audio industry of the 1950s.
2. High End audio manufacturers working in analogue don't know any more about psychoacoustics than the rest of us. A universal lack of published papers and claims in their advertising is not evidence that they have cutting edge secrets to hide, but that they have nothing that could withstand scrutiny. What they do have, is the ability to dress up a re-hash of old technology with exotic materials and finishes, and the phenomenon of 'inverse economics'. That is, conventional economics tells us that consumers are rational and that supply of goods adapts to meet demand, with competition driving down prices. Logically, therefore, in the minds of punters, if some product exists and costs $20,000 then it must be there to meet some demand, and it is worth $20,000. Any attempt to publish technical claims about it would immediately vaporise its mystique and it is better to allow wealthy Baby Boomers to fill the vacuum with their own imaginings. The manufacturers are in a tacit conspiracy of silence.
I have no idea how to test these hypotheses, however...
1. High End audio manufacturers working in analogue know a lot of things that we don't. Even though the Scientific Establishment has long since turned its back on things it can't explain, in the industry, secrets are passed on from generation to generation and at academic conferences (called 'Audio Shows' to misdirect the authorities). No papers are published, because the claims would immediately be rubbished by The Corporations who have an agenda to replace analogue with digital. An interesting fact: the story of Fahrenheit 451 was originally written as an allegory for the High End audio industry of the 1950s.
2. High End audio manufacturers working in analogue don't know any more about psychoacoustics than the rest of us. A universal lack of published papers and claims in their advertising is not evidence that they have cutting edge secrets to hide, but that they have nothing that could withstand scrutiny. What they do have, is the ability to dress up a re-hash of old technology with exotic materials and finishes, and the phenomenon of 'inverse economics'. That is, conventional economics tells us that consumers are rational and that supply of goods adapts to meet demand, with competition driving down prices. Logically, therefore, in the minds of punters, if some product exists and costs $20,000 then it must be there to meet some demand, and it is worth $20,000. Any attempt to publish technical claims about it would immediately vaporise its mystique and it is better to allow wealthy Baby Boomers to fill the vacuum with their own imaginings. The manufacturers are in a tacit conspiracy of silence.
I have no idea how to test these hypotheses, however...
Tim,
Please read the interviews of Vladimir Lamm about how he models and designs his amplifiers. Or read the many (I was going to write hundreds, but I remembered that you immediately would ask for proof of this number) of posts of Nelson Pass about how design influence our perception of sound quality.
Groucho,
Yes, no doubt that some of them were very talented people, what we sometimes call geniuses. It is why they are today generally respected by the audiophile community. And I will not comment on your great DIY capabilities - it is too personal.
Aside from collective preference (that is, the "scientific" community socio-subjectively prescribing what methods are or are not "valid" - utterly problematic in itself), this discussion will fail to progress beyond a certain signal-to-noise ratio (356 posts and going strong) unless the area in which both preference and audibility reside is understood to play the most significant role: The human brain.
Beyond prescriptive self-training, DBT's, etc, and of course, marketing masquerading as pseudo-science on behalf of self-interested parties who are selling audio hardware, though the pursuit of high-fidelity may be over a century old, cognitive neuroscience and the study of how and where music is processed in the brain is still in its infancy.
The "science" of DBT's are utterly redundant in shedding light on cerebral blood flow, neuron activation, right/left hemisphere processing and intra-hemispheric coherence, cortical activation, planum temporale development, etc, and why physiological impairment in some areas "releases" the brain to function at a higher level in some instances (blind patients who show superior localization of monoaural sound and raised cerebral blood flow through the visual cortex versus sighted patients, for instance - localization of binaural sound was the same).
As far as I'm aware, no DBT has ever taken into account any of the physiological or neurological variables of the sample population - whether they suffered from tinnitus, tone deafness, auditory agnosia, amygdala damage, cocaine addiction, or quaffed eighteen cups of coffee prior to the test.
I'm absolutely interested in advances in hardware. I continue to collect vinyl and am considering an audition of an R-2R DAC in the near future - heck, I might even purchase a Devialet for the family room. I'd love to better understand why, at this particular point in time, I consider vinyl a superior playback mechanism to digital. But arguments such as these - not to mention DSD vs PCM, tubes vs SS, compression drivers vs planars vs stats vs dynamics, et al, - remain...
I really couldn't have said it better myself.
I don't have time to read hundreds, or even dozens of articles by designers talking about their designs. Do you have anything other than broad generalities? Does Lamm? Does Pass?
Tim
You could add a 3rd that relates to the very good engineers who work in audio and do further work beyond some surmisations in the scientific establishment.
Case in point Dr Earl Geddes and THD/IM/crossover/etc, and their GedLee metric, just as one example who then went on to further study group delay related distortion.
Another quick example Julian Dunn utilising square wave to measure/identify uncorrelated and correlated elements/deterministic or random jitter - some scientists even screwed up their tests on this by focusing on random jitter due to their test environment setup instead of the important correlated elements/deterministic jitter.
That said, I am not defending all that is done in the audio world (not using the word "high end" because it can be abused as there are excellent engineered products but also a fair amount of err weird ones to say the least
).Cheers
Orb
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You could add a 3rd that relates to the very good engineers who work in audio and do further work beyond some surmisations in the scientific establishment....
...That said, I am not defending all that is done in the audio world (not using the word "high end" because it can be abused as there are excellent engineered products but also some err weird ones to say the least
Yes, before I read your last sentence I was going to say that I would just call them "very good" and not insult them with the "High End" association.
Yes.... that's exactly the sort of stuff I'm thinking of. Compare it to Bruno Putzeys' infectious enthusiasm and down-to-earth writings on the subject. I've never heard his speakers and amps but I like his style. Quite how someone so young knows the stuff he knows is a mystery to me. Or anyone of any age, for that matter.
www.grimmaudio.com/whitepapers/speakers.pdf
Yes, but he is pragmatic and doesn't dress his products up with mumbo jumbo, or hint that he knows something but isn't letting on. He doesn't claim/imply that he can solve the multi-dimensional problem of reproducing stereo by some serendipitous tweak of a cable or property of electromechanical devices.
OK, micro, before you come back and shame me, I thought I'd take a look. I found this in the first interview I read, from TAS:
It would appear that, up to this point, Lamm believes we "can only approach the previously accomplished mastery level," though he sees a future in which high-end audio research will take into consideration audio's interaction with the human structure, and that when work in this vein begins, we can expect interesting results.
That's from the May/June 2012 issue. Perhaps he has subsequently begun this r3esearch and talked about it in subsequent interviews? Though he really didn't make it sound like it was research he was planning on doing himself.
Tim
It would appear that, up to this point, Lamm believes we "can only approach the previously accomplished mastery level," though he sees a future in which high-end audio research will take into consideration audio's interaction with the human structure, and that when work in this vein begins, we can expect interesting results.
That's from the May/June 2012 issue. Perhaps he has subsequently begun this r3esearch and talked about it in subsequent interviews? Though he really didn't make it sound like it was research he was planning on doing himself.
Tim
Also note that Putzeys refers to microphones and loudspeakers -- components that interact with sound waves in the air, like the human hearing mechanism does. He does not talk about psychoacoustics and electronics. Not in this quote anyway.
Tim
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You agree with all he says in this article, then?
Including his statement about pre-ringing at 2KHz?
You don't find "dry" & "wetter" descriptions heading towards mumbo-jumbo speak?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising his article but just interested in your analysis of it
Tim he directly & clearly delineates the illusion of stereo playback which heavily relies on psychoacoustics for it's portrayal of this illusion.
What is your point?
Sorry, John it was a bit of a leap. Goes back to my conversation with micro about psychoacoustics and electronics.
Tim
I don't know what part of this statement you are denying him? "Stereo reproduction has no meaning without psychoacoustics."
I really wanted to show the difference between someone who really knows his stuff and is confident in his own abilities, compared to a High End poseur.
"Dry" and "wetter" are not in the slightest bit mumbo jumbo. In the recording industry they're commonly-used, apposite descriptions of e.g. direct vs. reverb'ed sound.
OK, I wasn't aware that they were in a standardised audio lexicon.
No mention of whether you agree with audibility of pre-ringing at 2Khz !
I'm not denying that statement. I'm questioning what high-end electronics has proactively done in the research and development of psychoacoustics/perception. I do have doubts, as it seems to me that the high end has rejected all the processing tools that could impact perception...heck, they've even rejected tone controls...so I'm a bit lost as to what it is they're doing inside their black boxes to leverage my psychoacoustic responses.
Tim
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