The good sound or bad sound is a different debate, I understand why you are sensitive about the Lamm topic, but yes that marketing thing makes sense if it is marketing, but otherwise I would consider it negative for a reasonably discerning consumer
The American Sound Turntable- Beyond's Minimalist!
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The good sound or bad sound is a different debate, I understand why you are sensitive about the Lamm topic, but yes that marketing thing makes sense if it is marketing, but otherwise I would consider it negative for a reasonably discerning consumer
Lots of assumptions in your argument, Bonzo. We don’t know if it is marketing or not marketing. We don’t know the nature of the testing nor do we know much about the test themselves or the subjects. We don’t know if they were listening to real music, reproduced music, or just sounds. We know very little, but we have the products and we can listen and make up our own minds as to their value.
As far as we can know nobody knows or imagines what are the Vladimir Lamm models - the only thing we get is an ambiguous comment on "differential equations", how can we feel or guess anything on the subject?
Not much, but more than most people know.
I managed to find one interesting link I had saved some years ago in my Lamm folders
https://www.lammindustries.com/revi...rin-for-the-croatian-hi-fi-magazine-issue-41/
IMO the interview must be read and understood as an whole.
The scientist perspective of Vladimir Lamm (also known as Vladimir Shushurin - if you want to research his works, also use this name) shows clearly in the last question: (quote from the supplied link)
Do you believe in blind listening tests?
Only in blind listening tests, especially double blind listening tests. It’s not a matter of belief. In the industry we use blind listening tests exclusively for professional testing of components, and not with just one tester. In reality, we use several groups of testers. That’s the only right way.
Not much, but more than most people know.
I managed to find one interesting link I had saved some years ago in my Lamm folders
https://www.lammindustries.com/revi...rin-for-the-croatian-hi-fi-magazine-issue-41/
IMO the interview must be read and understood as an whole.
The scientist perspective of Vladimir Lamm (also known as Vladimir Shushurin - if you want to research his works, also use this name) shows clearly in the last question: (quote from the supplied link)
Do you believe in blind listening tests?
Only in blind listening tests, especially double blind listening tests. It’s not a matter of belief. In the industry we use blind listening tests exclusively for professional testing of components, and not with just one tester. In reality, we use several groups of testers. That’s the only right way.
I have nothing against blind tests per se; I have successfully passed some myself, including when it came to cable differences.
However, they are problematic, and claiming they are "scientific" is problematic as well.
The reliance on aural memory introduces a psychological factor that is poorly understood. This psychological factor, unavoidable in the aural realm, is not present when making side-by-side comparisons in the *visual* realm where memory plays no role. Furthermore, blind tests introduce a stress factor that can suppress the perception of small but meaningful differences.
Therefore, being a scientist myself I strongly reject the idea that blind tests are performed from a "scientific" perspective.
Blind listening tests treat humans as robots, not as the psychologically complex beings that they are. This is the opposite of a proper scientific perspective that strives to take things into account the way they are, not the way we want them to be, or feverishly imagine them to be.
Contrast that to proper testing of medical drugs with a placebo group. The placebo effect is properly neutralized in such tests, *taking into account* human psychology and psychosomatic effects. On the other hand, blind listening tests improperly *ignore* human psychology.
The claim that blind tests are "science" is nothing but feel-good pseudoscience.
Blind tests *can* work -- as I said, I have passed some myself -- but don't call them science. They are not.
Here is my understanding: Lamm's listening experiments were done in Russia when he was in the military. He did psycho-acoustic oriented audio research and high-definition television research in the military. that was in the 1970s. After military service he continued his audio research at the Lvov plant.
When he became the head designer for Lvov -- this was the Soviet system with lots of people and equipment -- he had access to anything he wanted including high quality speakers, tape machines and tables (Klipschorn, Tannoy, Quad, JBL 4343 and 4345, Teac, Tandberg, Revox and the EM 930 and 927 turntables, etc.) Lamm had 400 people under him, people from a variety of backgrounds, including other engineers, scientists, designers, workers and musicians. I don't know the make-up of listening panels when he was in the military.
The Lvov company made mostly consumer audio products as a commercial enterprise. There were efforts to copy what was available outside the Soviet world. But Lamm also continued his research on the human hearing mechanism in 'private' -- on the side as it were -- his large listening panels and his engineers were not fully aware of what was going on. This private research was not done to evaluate equipment -- not requiring skilled or above average listeners -- it was done to understand how people reacted to different sounds and music. Blind and double blind listening, live music and some recorded.
As I understand it, thanks to Reagan, Lamm, the refusenik, arrived in the US -- after an 10 year wait for a visa -- with his audio designs largely intact. He said much of that was completed when he was in the military and during his visa wait period he built prototypes. US companies already had designers and wanted technicians. In 1990 he started working as a designer for a US audio company named Madison Fielding. He displayed his first amplifiers (pre-production) at 1993 Summer CES in Chicago but Madison Fielding, who was not a high-end company, would not put them into production despite being named Best of Show. In 1994 he first attended CES in Vegas under the name Lamm Audio.
Feel free to correct this account.
Basic empiricism. The listening data was input to the model. I don't believe there is an 'ideal listener'. In audio world it is axiomatic that there will always be someone who 'prefers something else.'
I think we need a independant here , " Optimus "
In the mean time while he is there he will do speaker positioning / cartridge alignment.
Surely when I (and many audio scholars) am addressing "blind tests" we are referring to properly carried and validated blind tests, using the correct methodologies and analysing tools, not the more usual anecdotal audiophile listening tests.
If there is interest we can debate about the proper methods that consider the factors you are referring, including the need to validate them with positive tests. Floyd Toole carefully explained when audio blind tests become science.
But probably it is not the proper thread and may-be forum to discuss it - surely the high-end non-predictability can't be supported by science!
I had once been to a small restaurant that called itself One in Top ten. Nice bracket to be in. It was good.
You are entirely missing my point.
If Floyd Toole thought that audio blind tests could become science he was wrong, no matter how "carefully" he may have explained it.
Yes, this is what we can summarize from the interviews and articles existing in the old Lamm site. But this biographic narrative does not add anything of relevant to the main subject - how Lamm products were really designed and the science behind them. What is the connection between the many blind listening tests and the referred mathematical model of human hearing? How was this "model" used to design electronics?
Well, I can say the same about your answer.
Have you read the book? BTW, as any one having read reading it knows, the book includes hundreds of references from known audio scholars - it is not internet audiophile based. And as the author says, people are free to disagree with it and debate it - he is an open minded scientist.
You should cross check Floyd with Romy, my understanding from the forum these days is one of them has to be right
Not really. It seems you don't understand my argument. Just to illustrate my point about the inherent flaws of audio blind tests, here is a "scientific" example from the Swedish National Radio Company where they got it all wrong:
The Blind, the Double Blind, and the Not-So Blind
I was once in a sushi bar in Osaka; sitting next to me was a live abalone, stoically awaiting its fate. It stuck its siphon out of its shell, the waiter tapped the tip with a spoon, the siphon withdrew. Again the siphon appeared, again the waiter tapped it with a spoon, again it withdrew. I was...
www.stereophile.com
Well, scholars can be wrong. Nothing changes that. When it comes to audio, nothing, no matter how often you cite your hero Floyd Toole who seems to appear in every fifth or tenth post of yours.
For different reasons, I also don't consider string theory and the multiverse "science".
String theory, after 50 years of mathematical models, has no observational evidence to back it up -- that is a fundamental problem, since the interplay of observations and hypotheses is the backbone of science. It has irreversibly split the physics scientific community in half, without anything to show for it. Entire careers have been built on mathematical fluff.
The multiverse is *in principle* unobservable (as opposed to not yet being observed) since no particles (e.g., photons) carrying information about it can reach us. We cannot even *in principle* observe the "outer edges" of our own universe. The multiverse is not science, it is a mathematical philosophical model masquerading as science.
No matter what scholars (or "scholars") say.
AL we know nothing , so why cant the multiverse be true in which exists the mass we currently cannot observe
.the stuff we can see/ " touch is only 5 %
Not really. It seems you don't understand my argument. Just to illustrate my point about the inherent flaws of audio blind tests, here is a "scientific" example from the Swedish National Radio Company where they got it all wrong:
The Blind, the Double Blind, and the Not-So Blind
I was once in a sushi bar in Osaka; sitting next to me was a live abalone, stoically awaiting its fate. It stuck its siphon out of its shell, the waiter tapped the tip with a spoon, the siphon withdrew. Again the siphon appeared, again the waiter tapped it with a spoon, again it withdrew. I was...
As expected, you are addressing internet knowledge - a particular case of of a poor interpretation of null tests carried without proper methodology. The referred problem has been addressed many times. Stereophile is an entertaining and very informative audio magazine, not AES ...
Well, I see that some scientists are not even able to carry basic calculus in their statistics ... But I would love to know who is is your reference in stereo audio science. Alan Blumlein?
Well, you found a nice escape - I am not interested at all in debating such matter in WBF. Sorry.
...is that what Jimi meant when he said: 'scuse me while I touch the sky? I Love the multiverse...where all my dreams come true.
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