Stereophile | January 2017 Issue

[amirm]

Both points easily addressed.

Bias

1. To ignore my biases, you should know what the biases are. What if my bias was A, and experience changed the preference to B? Do you know my bias was A, or do you consider my conclusion B as the bias?
2. Did you know that Martin Logan was my favorite speaker, and then I changed my preference to Analysis Audio (modded), then to many horns, and for two years, I did not like Apogees, and told Justin (User 211) they were shite? So can you identify the bias? Not to mention I still hear Apogees I don't like, hear some that I do, and also now heard something that has again put a horn back on the list? Ok, so you might say I am biased against cones, but then why add YG and Stenheim above cones (though still prefer Aps and horns to them).
3. I haven't checked, but I am willing to bet a few people here that I text with like Audiophile Bill, Ron, etc expected to hear back when I visited Mike that "what a waste of money, another expensive cone system, blah blah blah". That was the bias, definitely. I was certain I would come back with a polite write-up that between the lines read waste of money, but Apogees are much better. They would have been surprised to have instead received the texts they did.
4. If you read Marty's system review, and what I have written in About Me (yet to publish), my travels started because I was biased against DRC - I traveled to Marty's to see how could DRC possibly be good. And the travel taught me that heck, just get your ass off the plane and eliminate/confirm the bias.
5. I soon learned that biases were being explained away as experience, where in reality most people were not even actually listening to the components in question. In fact, if you go around and listen to some alternatives, you will change your bias too - I don't think many here will be stubborn in changing if they listen to something, before they vest their emotional and financial interests in it. Just check how many who have challenged me on restored Apogees have actually heard one - they have heard Maggies, Apogees 20 years ago, "because planars cannot do bass Apogees cannot too", etc. My travels expose me to drastically different schools of thought - helps nip biases in the bud before they are developed and passed away as experience.
6. We again come to the same point on bias as with the word opinions - are biases being formed with or without auditions. My contention is that most people on this forum are deciding, and purchasing, without proper compares. It might appear that the two of us have different tastes, but in reality, one might have actually the heard the various components in question and one might not have. In which case, preference of the guy who has heard cannot be dismissed as bias relative to guy who hasn't done the compares yet defends a preference.
7. In the vintage vs modern hifi section, many are choosing modern without having heard the vintage in question - despite reading that Steve, Marty, and I preferred alternatives to Techdas, and Steve actually owns one, and he, DDk, and I, actually like Techdas. Yet people who haven't done those compares, do not understand how a 100k modern TT cannot be the best and continue to be so biased.
8. You will be surprised how much in sync Gian60, his friend and I were in Italy. Very different gear, very different backgrounds and music tastes. It is just a question of going through the same experiences rather than writing on a forum because I own A, and have never heard B, A still has to be the best because it is modern/costlier/of XYZ design/measures better, and I heard a product similar to B 20 years ago in a hifi show so it cannot contend.
9. Don't forget I was anti-SS and pro tubes only, so please explain the bias. Ron actually accused me (in good humor) of not sticking to a philosophy
10. I was of the school of thought that analog and digital don't make a difference, so please explain the bias. Am I now biased to analog, or was digital my bias? I was also vested emotionally and financially in the Lampi so to stay with that bias would have been a good thing.

The notion of anti-bias is often mentioned as supporting the conclusions of listening tests. Alas, it doesn't work that way. You can very well be against one of the choices, pick that as the better one, and still be completely wrong!

Take this simple example of a single system. I play it twice with no change whatsoever in between. But I tell you that the second run has something changed. You will invariably pick these two instances as sounding different even though nothing is changed at all.

Why? Because when you try to experiment, you pay attention differently to what is played. In the above comparison you would pay more attention to what is there in the music. All of a sudden you hear details you had not paid attention to in the other run. YOu would hear more "air." You would hear more detail. All of that was in the music in both instances but you were not paying attention equally.

For this reason we need to have controls and one is what I just mentioned: you play the same sound twice and see if the listener reliably picks them as the same or thinks they are different.

And ultimately we need to keep the identity of what is being played to have any chance of arriving at reliable conclusion. Anything else I am afraid is full of error and cannot generate results that are translatable to equipment differences or what others may hear.

And oh, knowledge of this will not help you at all to get you past it. I have lost track of how many times I thought I was hearing a difference as a result of a change only to find out that the change had not occurred and I was really hearing the same thing twice in a row.

Believe otherwise if you like but don't insist on it being true.

 

[bonzo75]

Not sure if you are addressing my points, as what you say is tough to relate to. You assume we changed once, looked for a difference, and that is it. You do know people go back and forth, listen to the same thing in different systems, and what is played second might be played first, right? I am also not looking for minor differences. If differences between two amps are minor you might as well go for the best deal.

 

[microstrip]

(...)
But if you ignore the biases of the writer - not too difficult - Zero distortion supplies great information and good read.

Perhaps I should have been more clear - please read:

But if you subtract the bias introduced by the preferences of the writer - not too difficult - Zero distortion supplies great information and good read.

I was not addressing listening bias. We know about it, and know that it makes our choices more difficult, but also know about the destructive power of the more often referred techniques to overcome it.

 

[amirm]

Not sure if you are addressing my points, as what you say is tough to relate to. You assume we changed once, looked for a difference, and that is it. You do know people go back and forth, listen to the same thing in different systems, and what is played second might be played first, right?

You can do all of that and can still be hugely wrong in your conclusions. All of this is lay opinion of what makes tests right. They make intuitive sense but they are nowhere close to guarding against what we are as humans.

I am also not looking for minor differences. If differences between two amps are minor you might as well go for the best deal.

The perceived differences can be huge/night-and-day yet the equipment can be producing identical sound.

Have a loved one make the changes to your system that you think generates such large differences. But not tell you if they have or have not made a change. You will be amazed at how big of a difference you "heard" in cases where no changes were made!

We don't go through formal protocols to eliminate such factors because they are fun or cheap. They are not. It is expensive and pain in the neck to remove human influences because there is no other alternative to arriving at reliable conclusions.

Without testing the hypothesis that your conclusions are reliable in an objective way, you simply do not know how good your assessments are.

 

[bonzo75]

You can do all of that and can still be hugely wrong in your conclusions. All of this is lay opinion of what makes tests right. They make intuitive sense but they are nowhere close to guarding against what we are as humans.


The perceived differences can be huge/night-and-day yet the equipment can be producing identical sound.

Have a loved one make the changes to your system that you think generates such large differences. But not tell you if they have or have not made a change. You will be amazed at how big of a difference you "heard" in cases where no changes were made!

We don't go through formal protocols to eliminate such factors because they are fun or cheap. They are not. It is expensive and pain in the neck to remove human influences because there is no other alternative to arriving at reliable conclusions.

Without testing the hypothesis that your conclusions are reliable in an objective way, you simply do not know how good your assessments are.

Thanks Amir. None of us have blind tested before or have thought of these possibilities

 

[amirm]

Thanks Amir. None of us have blind tested before or have thought of these possibilities

Ah that British sarcasm.

For some reason your response reminds of me of this commercial:

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Ah that British sarcasm.

really Amir, what sort of response did you expect? you had to know before you hit 'send' on your blind testing suggestion post that a brief sarcastic brushoff was the best you might get.

you hit 'send' anyway.

maybe you were hoping for a 20 post back and forth?

 

[amirm]

really Amir, what sort of response did you expect? you had to know before you hit 'send' on your blind testing suggestion post that a brief sarcastic brushoff was the best you might get.

you hit 'send' anyway.

I did not mind his response at all. I used to have an R&D group in Reading England so pretty common answer from him which I ran with and returned the favor .

 

[NorthStar]

Know more than you say; say less than you know

I just stumbled upon this; I like it.

Are professional audio reviewers abiding by this golden wisdom rule?

 

[microstrip]

(...) Without testing the hypothesis that your conclusions are reliable in an objective way, you simply do not know how good your assessments are.

Fortunately we have witnessed the experience of people that without testing the hypothesis develop great equipment and assemble great stereo systems, managing to fine tune it even in knowledge conditions. These people meet the preferences of many of us.

Unfortunately for the science cause in sound reproduction, even people who use equipment designed according to the rules you love sometimes fail in the dark side in their systems - I love when I read about their "exceptions" in this forum.

 

[NorthStar]

 

[Big Dog RJ]

Shawn the sheep- best program ever! Anytime, anywhere, it stills makes me laugh.
Infact, family and all went to see the movie few years ago, what a laugh! Really talented people who make this movie, and character interaction, plus motion using various techs, simply superb! Wonder what else they've produced...

Last night's session was fantastic, listened till 4am. Round About midnight from Miles and Ray Brown's Something for Lester on LP was superb. This is not Lester Young, rather Lester Koenig, who was one of Ray's producers at the time. Passed away and Ray dedicated this album to Lester. Superb bass articulation! I have another version of this on Ray Brown but not as detailed. Also noticed the pitch and timing to be slightly different, these minor variances were not so apparent on the Quads but on the Martin Logan's they're quite obvious.
Just goes to show that every detail of the recording is well captured, this is exactly what I'm after and you really don't need 100's of watts to reproduce it.

I am quite certain that the new Ren15A from ML will be quite superb, with its active bass and DSP on board, plus new "Blade" tech used in their panels, making then lighter, more rigid, resulting in further transparency. Matching it with the right amp would obviously be the key. Chappy who has ordered this currently uses CJ's Premier 350. He feels that this much power is obviously not required, although was required for the MG20.7. I believe he's planning on a different power amp, would be an interesting match up when ready.

Until then, enjoy the music and those you haven't seen Shawn the Sheep, must! It will make you laugh and relax and enjoy life's finer things.
Good one Northstar! Cheers, RJ

 

[caesar]

I do not know where that definition comes from but it is inherently conflicting as it covers with three different parameters: frequency, time and space. That does not mean that those are entirely independent physical parameters but they affect our perceptions differently. Also, I don't care for the term "smooth" since it doesn't say anything about uniformity itself but, rather, that any variation is not jagged or abrupt.

1. Frequency: Is the frequency response uniform and continuous? There is subjective variation in the in-room FR of the Beolab. I had been aware of this when I heard the prototypes in Struer. At that time, Geoff Martin and I fiddled with the FR using variations on the order of a dB here and there and we had minor disagreements about preference. He tells me that some of my preferences were incorporated into the current target curve but, it is clear to me, that when the facility for the user to tweak this, it can be fixed.
2. Time: Does all the sound appear to arrive at the listener's ear simultaneously? This is a tough nut because the sound of music is constantly changing and evanescent. Some sound are meant to arrive sooner/later, so the test is whether everything arrives when it should. One can test this, trivially, with mono pink noise or mono voice but, although the B&O's pass this test, it is clear from the measured transient response that the drivers do not all respond exactly at the same time. But is this significant? I think not because................
3. Space: Is the soundstage stable and gapless and are the individual voices/instruments localizable? Here I think the B&O is a champ. Using conventional recordings, the B&O's soundstage is as stable and convincing as I have heard and, using various test recordings with individual voices/instruments at varying positions, it is also convincing. Since each of these voices/instruments encompasses many frequencies distributed to both speakers, this says that timing between the speakers and across the FR is sufficiently uniform that they can interact without corrupting the phase-dependent interaction. It also suggests that that the radiation control of the B&O keeps room interaction from being a significant issue.

So, that's a (fixable) No, a Maybe and a Yes and why I think that "seamless" has many meanings. Also, my experience with good, discrete multichannel reproduction makes me particularly persnickety with reference to 3. Space.

Kal, thank you for explaining that so clearly. Not being an "audiophile", I never knew what any of that meant before you chimed in.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Will be interesting to compare Dag with Dart, then with valves

Best musical Experience I had in London was listening to the organ in St pauls cathedral what a beautifull Hall and acoustics you have there bonzo

 

[bonzo75]

Best musical Experience I had in London was listening to the organ in St pauls cathedral what beautifull Hall and acous tics you have there bonzo

I have heard the organ there, what did you listen to?

 

[andromedaaudio]

IT wasnt really a demonstration. The cathedral was open for tourists he played some background music

 

[Diapason]

Controversial perhaps, but as much as I love the sound of the organ in St Paul's, I find the acoustic can actually be a bit too much and sometimes the musical line becomes unintelligible. It's more suited to some repertoire than others of course, but in general it's a challenging acoustic. That said, when I lived in London I never missed the Sunday afternoon recital there because the space is so magical. And I *adore* the sound of the choir in the stalls during evensong, it's so distant and ethereal it's almost other-worldly.

Talking about organs, the concepts of "seamless" being discussed above apply equally well to organ-building. One of the great challenges to an organ builder is to ensure a seamless transition in sound as you move from the lowest notes to the highest notes in each stop and, separately, as you add stops to build the crescendo. Most organ builders can put together something that sounds ok, but not all of them can build something that sounds seamless. As with speakers, it's the mix of engineering, craftsmanship and art that brings the magic.

Incidentally, when you mention the word seamless to an organ builder, they know what it means!

 

[andromedaaudio]

I can imagine a choir would sound lovely there with the reverberation in that enourmous cathedral/space

In Westminster Abbey there are choires as well , not so big as St Paul s but what a gorgious historical place that is

 

[NorthStar]

Ces 2017

The concept of the BeoLab 90 (reviewed by Kal in the Stereophile January 2017 Issue) is spreading...

• Revolutionary Lexicon SL-1 Speakers Shown at CES 2017 |
by Mark Henninger on January 4, 2017
_____

Lexicon SL-1 ? “SoundSteer Technology utilizes DSP array processing to control the directivity via beam forming. This advanced algorithm adjusts the location and size of the “sweet spot” in real time so the user can optimize the listening experience to suit their individual needs. High-resolution audio is delivered through 32 speakers (12 tweeters, 16 midrange, 4 woofers) over 22 channels of amplification delivering 1250W of power. All of this is controlled by the user through an app on any mobile device.”
_____

Lexicon is a co-division of B&O? ...Or of HK International?
Is the future in hi-end speakers moving towards DSP, and much more drivers? The more simple the less complicated...

 

[thedudeabides]

Interesting Bob. Makes my MBL 116's look pretty simple in execution.