The Fremer lays an ostrich egg thread

[andromedaaudio]

Jury please rise.
The suspect is a class D amplifier .
The charges are : lean sounding , enough power but no warmth , expensive.
The verdict : ....

Appeal is not possible !!!

 

[Gregadd]

The smart money is on a hung jury

 

[amirm]

Or it could be that he listened to the Levinson and gave his honest and informed opinion.

Oh, I don't doubt that. Question is whether all of that leads to a correct revaluation. I think I am unique in having been in his shoes comparing the ML 53 to both linear and switchmode amps. As I shared earlier, even I, fully aware of the affects of placebo, had a hard time putting aside my bias to fairly evaluate these products. I would often hear what I thought was a flaw. I would immediately say, "ah, that was it. The high frequency had this problem." Then I would remind myself of this bias against switchmode amps. I would then go and listen on the $20,000 linear amp and hear the exact same problem (i.e. it was in the recording or I imagined it being a problem). Or listen to the same note on the same switchmode amp and tryi to put aside my bias and find that this time it would sound fine.

So no, I have no doubt that he thought what he wrote. I just can't put much weight on him being correct when he didn't even do a fraction of what I did in dialing out at least some of the bias and human nature. Heck, I consider my own evaluation potentially faulty, or very faulty.

There is no doubt in my part he will do the same with the Momentum amp.

Yes, he will do the "same" thing. Which is this time think:

1. This is not a switchmode amp so it must not start with issues in the high frequencies.

2. It comes from a designer he knows and I assume likes, so likely he will produce good things than bad (I doubt he knew who designed the ML let alone have the same reputation in his eyes).

3. He will be staring at that meter and look at the machine and be influence just as he was influenced (good or bad) with the ML.

When the man says what he writes is for entertainment value, how can you try to be believe it more than he says Greg?

Others have a financial interest also.

I have not gone there. If there is an issue, we have no data on it. But we have infinite data on how we can be so easily biased. You have to be schooled in a blind test once to know how bad such personal biases can be to never trust your senses as much as we do.

If I say I like the Momentum and I do, how is that wrong or a "disaster." Just because accommodation pricing is available does not mean he will avail himself of the opportunity. Would that enhance your opinion of his review?

Again, I am not going there on the financial bit. I simply think he is biased against anything new, such as digital, switchmode amps, etc. All of that incredibly colors your views and when differences are small, they count for far more than equipment differences.

Here is a test to run. Copy a music file on your computer to another name. Now you have two identical files. Play them in sequence and try to think that they sound different. I assure you that they will! Then assume they don't. And the difference vanishes. It is a simple test. Try running it. Try to think one has more air, more of whatever audiophile goodies there. You will then hear those aspects. I know, I have run this test on purpose and otherwise multiple times.

Now, is it possible that he is right? Sure. You can predict the weather for tomorrow too but sticking your wet thumb in the air. That doesn't mean I am going to change my plans based on that .

 

[amirm]

no; he will only compare it to other amps he has heard in it's price range or amps he has recently listened to which is logical for the review.

Logical relative to his views of audio, not mine . So if you are trying to convince me, that is the wrong argument just as much me trying to convince you are wrong with the results of a blind test . Differences in well designed amps is small. There is no way *I* believe that he can test one amp today and another later and remember such differences. As I noted, in the same issue, another reviewer found differences between two samples of Anthem amps whereas JA found no evidence of a difference in the measurements. I know you don't value that data point. But I do . Per my last post, if he shared that with the reviewer, it is entirely possible the reviewer would have found them to sound the same now. Or maybe not .

Really, these subjective evaluations could be purely random. Without any way of proving them to be right, logic says that should be our starting position. What can lead us to more confidence is to match them up with the measurements. Let's say there is 3 db roll off in bass. Observing that there is less bass then has high confidence of being right. But nebulous observations of liking a sound for the first hour but not the hour after that is the cliche non-sense against digital and such. Again, in my book .

as far as predictions; i think he will prefer the Momentum to other amps in this general price range but it will not be his overall favorite. who knows what specific comments he may make about other amps.

I have heard that amp. It sounded well, like an amp . It did nothing to move me or anything more than another amp. It played music in the hotel room as it should. I don't see how I can make an observation about it any other way. But put MF in the same shoes and there would be a bunch of flowery words about the sound of the amp. What would make you believe his subjective opinion more than mine?

 

[Gregadd]

Yes how different my life would have been if I had pursued the things I should have over he things I liked. But I still would not like them.

 

[amirm]

Yes how different my life would have been if I had pursued the things I should have over he things I liked. But I still would not like them.

If only you would know what you liked, was really something you liked! How do you like that for a weekend thought?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Logical relative to his views of audio, not mine . So if you are trying to convince me, that is the wrong argument just as much me trying to convince you are wrong with the results of a blind test . Differences in well designed amps is small. There is no way *I* believe that he can test one amp today and another later and remember such differences. As I noted, in the same issue, another reviewer found differences between two samples of Anthem amps whereas JA found no evidence of a difference in the measurements. I know you don't value that data point. But I do . Per my last post, if he shared that with the reviewer, it is entirely possible the reviewer would have found them to sound the same now. Or maybe not .

Really, these subjective evaluations could be purely random. Without any way of proving them to be right, logic says that should be our starting position. What can lead us to more confidence is to match them up with the measurements. Let's say there is 3 db roll off in bass. Observing that there is less bass then has high confidence of being right. But nebulous observations of liking a sound for the first hour but not the hour after that is the cliche non-sense against digital and such. Again, in my book .


I have heard that amp. It sounded well, like an amp . It did nothing to move me or anything more than another amp. It played music in the hotel room as it should. I don't see how I can make an observation about it any other way. But put MF in the same shoes and there would be a bunch of flowery words about the sound of the amp. What would make you believe his subjective opinion more than mine?

seriously?

on one level everyone has an opinion. and everyone can listen.

but some of us take listening more seriously than others of us. i've read your posts enough to have an idea of how important listening is to you; and it's simply not that high (relative to some others) on your priorities.

some of us have worked on optimizing analog sources for years. lots of careful listening is involved. for others it's been years since they did or maybe just not important.

system building is something that some put enormous efforts into; lifetime efforts. for others not so much. they can take it or leave it.

if you and i spent lots of time listening together i might have a whole different persective about this. but based on my serious attention to Mr. Fremer's activities for my 20 years as a serious audiophile his listening opinion is higher regarded by me than yours. understand that there are a number of other listeners i value higher than Mr. Fremers simply because i have listened with them many times.

understand that i don't always agree with Mr. Fremer's conclusions about what he hears. but i do understand why he has come to his conclusion since i understand where he is coming from.

so you could say that my opinion on your question is mostly about what information i have and my common approach with Mr. Fremer. not any solid knowledge that you are less capable in any objective sense.

added note; i've heard the No. 53 a few times. while i would not say what Fremer said, i don't disagree with his perspective. so that in itself is an answer to the question.

 

[amirm]

seriously?

Of course.

on one level everyone has an opinion. and everyone can listen.

but some of us take listening more seriously than others of us. i've read your posts enough to have an idea of how important listening is to you; and it's simply not that high (relative to some others) on your priorities.

Well, thanks for the compliment Mike . While listening for flaws is a hobby for you all, it used to be my job. For a decade, I managed the development of audio technologies at Microsoft. I went from not knowing how to listen, to becoming a trained expert listener. We routinely conducted large scale tests at Microsoft, using the resident audiophiles to see what they could hear vs our expertly trained group. In almost no case could audiophiles hold a candle to any of us, myself included. I was no smarter than anyone. I simply had gone through formal training to hear artifacts. Once there, I could hear things that others simply could not -- audiophiles included.

It is a tough pill to swallow but audiophiles as a group, tend to think of their abilities far higher than reality. My own industry data shows that. As does other tests. Here is one done by Harman:

I assume audio reviewers are the pinnacle of where audiophiles think they are. Or we wouldn't be having this discussion. But look at their dismal scores above.

Sean post his "how to listen" software in this forum. Did you run it? I did. It is a simple test of whether you can hear colorations. I did OK. I then sat through two rounds of it in blind testing at Harman. The off-line practice helped me get way ahead of every other dealer in the room. But Sean beat me easily. In the second round, I kept up with him better, up to 70%. But he still beat me. I am confident with practice I could do better. But that is what it takes: methodical practice in controlled settings where we know what observation is right, what is wrong. Randomly listening to music gets us nowhere or else, I would not have needed any training.

Now, over the years, I would run into what rare individual who didn't need practice and was good at hearing artifacts naturally. But there is one person like that for every 1000 audiophiles.

This is all data. You want to run by assumptions not based on one, then go ahead. I don't work that way. As I said, my job and livelihood/career depended on me being right about audio observations. Once you are in that seat, you don't go trusting some reviewer's subjective assessment. Or what post you read from another on a forum.

some of us have worked on optimizing analog sources for years. lots of careful listening is involved. for others it's been years since they did or maybe just not important.

I was an audiophile for 30 years yet I could not hear 10% of the artifacts that expert listeners could prior to training. Fidelity was always important to me and I always tried to listen as much as the next guy. Maybe you are the exception Mike. Maybe you are the 1%. But please don't tell me the 100% is that way. I know first hand from testing such claims that this is not so.

system building is something that some put enormous efforts into; lifetime efforts. for others not so much. they can take it or leave it.

Effort <> results. If one of your sales people put in 16 hour days but sold no cars you would fire him. You would do that because you have a metric of if you are right: sales. You have none in the context we are talking about here. You do an upgrade and you think yous system is better. But the system may be the same or worse. You don't have that data point. There is no frame of reference. You may be right but are not providing data. I provided data on why my hearing is good above.

if you and i spent lots of time listening together i might have a whole different persective about this. but based on my serious attention to Mr. Fremer's activities for my 20 years as a serious audiophile his listening opinion is higher regarded by me than yours. understand that there are a number of other listeners i value higher than Mr. Fremers simply because i have listened with them many times.

Then by all means listen to him. You quote me saying I am wrong about something. Then you turn around and use the rules of your universe to argue with me. That is illogical. If I come to your dealership and say I want a car that is like Ferrari, you can' tell me Honda's are more reliable and I should buy on that basis. It would make no sense. I am not asking you believe me. I am asking you to not tell me what to believe based on folklore. If you have date, put it forward.

understand that i don't always agree with Mr. Fremer's conclusions about what he hears. but i do understand why he has come to his conclusion since i understand where he is coming from.

I fully understand where he comes from too. So now what? You are smarter than me so you should be right? I have data on my side. I know for a fact he could be reporting the wrong thing due to fallacy of human observation. You have what on your side? A bunch of unverifiable subjective reports by him? What makes you right and me wrong? Oh, I remember. I don't know how to listen and you all do .

so you could say that my opinion on your question is mostly about what information i have and my common approach with Mr. Fremer. not any solid knowledge that you are less capable in any objective sense.

If that's the case, then why did you say what you said at the start of this post? You sure painted a picture of me being deaf and stupid. Now you don't know?

 

[Gregadd]

Sorry Mike. I saw that that coming and ducked.

 

[DaveyF]

Amir, there has always been a lot of discussion as to how pro musician's hear things in relation to a'philes. Many people believe that the pro musician, who has trained his ear to hear slight changes in pitch and tone, must have a better ear than anyone who hasn't. Yet, most of these trained musicians ( and I know my fair share) have no interest in high end audio. Why, possibly because they have a VERY LIMITED ability to hear and appreciate all genres of music...and are listening for something that may not correlate to what the typical a'phile is listening for, just IMHO.
OTOH, I suspect that a lot of pro musicians don't really like music that much, ( all types that is),vs. a'philes who generally do; instead they are in the field for the "challenge" or the "glory" or the hoped for money...or you name it. I can't tell you how many of these types I have run into in the field! I actually count myself one of the very few people who have been in the pro audio world and am now in the "high-end" audio world. ( And still love both)..

 

[rbbert]

As we've discussed in so many threads now, it's just so subjective and more to the point not reproducible. At RAMF I had the serendipitous pleasure of spending time in several rooms with a couple of reviewers, Fremer being one (as I've related); our impressions of different systems (please note, not components) were very similar, so I kind of know what he hears and how he describes it. OTOH, I listened in several rooms where the sound was obviously bad to my senses, yet there were other listeners at the same time very pleased with the sound (as were the exhibitors). And just go back and read about the different impressions of the Wilson Alexia demo expressed by different members of this forum.

These subjective disagreements are about entire systems, not just a single component, about which subjective opinions tend to vary even more. So while I understand completely the effort individuals here and elsewhere put into optimizing their systems, translating that into meaningful evaluations of individual components considered outside a total system just doesn't make sense logically or otherwise.

 

[mep]

OTOH, I suspect that a lot of pro musicians don't really like music that much, ( all types that is),vs. a'philes who generally do; instead they are in the field for the "challenge" or the "glory" or the hoped for money...or you name it.

Say what???

 

[rbbert]

Yeah, I don't know what Davey's getting at here either...

 

[A.wayne]

It is a tough pill to swallow but audiophiles as a group, tend to think of their abilities far higher than reality. My own industry data shows that. As does other tests. Here is one done by Harman:

I assume audio reviewers are the pinnacle of where audiophiles think they are. Or we wouldn't be having this discussion. But look at their dismal scores above.

?

Seems spot on to me ............

 

[flez007]

As we've discussed in so many threads now, it's just so subjective and more to the point not reproducible. At RAMF I had the serendipitous pleasure of spending time in several rooms with a couple of reviewers, Fremer being one (as I've related); our impressions of different systems (please note, not components) were very similar, so I kind of know what he hears and how he describes it. OTOH, I listened in several rooms where the sound was obviously bad to my senses, yet there were other listeners at the same time very pleased with the sound (as were the exhibitors). And just go back and read about the different impressions of the Wilson Alexia demo expressed by different members of this forum.

These subjective disagreements are about entire systems, not just a single component, about which subjective opinions tend to vary even more. So while I understand completely the effort individuals here and elsewhere put into optimizing their systems, translating that into meaningful evaluations of individual components considered outside a total system just doesn't make sense logically or otherwise.

You even met Doug as well right? In my case I focused on talking to the designers, but this is of course out-of-topic.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Amir,

you asked me a question. and i answered you. come on over and listen a few times, let's talk about it, and then i can give you a better answer. you wanted to know what i thought so this is about my opinion.

i know; your excuse is you don't have time.......to listen......which is my whole point. i do it 4-6 hours a day; dedicated, focused listening. so do those who's opinions i most value.

does your years of experience listening to digital audio at Microsoft have relevance? i'll avoid getting into that.

and Harman; didn't they design that amp?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

As I noted, in the same issue, another reviewer found differences between two samples of Anthem amps whereas JA found no evidence of a difference in the measurements. I know you don't value that data point. But I do . Per my last post, if he shared that with the reviewer, it is entirely possible the reviewer would have found them to sound the same now. Or maybe not .

Actually, Anthem predicted there would be no differences in the measurements before I listened and I predicted that JA would not find any.

 

[microstrip]

Of course.


Well, thanks for the compliment Mike . While listening for flaws is a hobby for you all, it used to be my job. For a decade, I managed the development of audio technologies at Microsoft. I went from not knowing how to listen, to becoming a trained expert listener. We routinely conducted large scale tests at Microsoft, using the resident audiophiles to see what they could hear vs our expertly trained group. In almost no case could audiophiles hold a candle to any of us, myself included. I was no smarter than anyone. I simply had gone through formal training to hear artifacts. Once there, I could hear things that others simply could not -- audiophiles included.

It is a tough pill to swallow but audiophiles as a group, tend to think of their abilities far higher than reality. My own industry data shows that. As does other tests. Here is one done by Harman:

Amir,

I have no doubt that you can hear thinks that others can not - but IMHO the main question is if these thinks are of primordial importance to evaluate an high-end system, or even if you are not over-valuating them, ignoring or minimizing others that audiophiles usually weight more to establish their preferences.

Harman tests are valuable tools for speaker development and understanding of the interface between rooms and speakers in the sound reproduction. But the conditions in which they were performed are not typical of high-end audiophiles lsitening, as their target was not this type of public - they even make clear in their writings what are their opinions about the high-end subjectivity. No surprise that audiophiles do not rank as well as trained listeners in their own tests, designed to fulfill their targets.

 

[microstrip]

(...) These subjective disagreements are about entire systems, not just a single component, about which subjective opinions tend to vary even more. So while I understand completely the effort individuals here and elsewhere put into optimizing their systems, translating that into meaningful evaluations of individual components considered outside a total system just doesn't make sense logically or otherwise.

+1

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Sorry Mike. I saw that that coming and ducked.

i saw it coming too. he is trying to establish his listening credibility to prove the No.53 is worthy of his view of it. and it's not going to happen unless he tells us about all his extended listening to other amps like that in particular systems over a period of time where he actually develops a bit of a solid reference.

and that is not what he does.

but it is what a few other people do do that have credibility.

i do respect Amir but he has ridden the wrong horse in this race.