The Mysterious Case of the Listening Window! By Jeff Day, Positive Feedback

[stehno]

Instead of simply rehashing an old subject, perhaps Mr. Day is simply rediscovering what was once known in the past and going back to a time when we reveled in the enjoyment of music rather than dissecting our hi-fi systems. I see this article as an admission of his rediscovery and change of direction, though I have not read much of his ratings.

Peter, do you think it at all possible that Mr. Day has seen so little progression in his own playback systems' performance over the years that he finds life easier to relish a time when playback performance was much the same to him but without the cost and complexity of today?

Make no mistake, playback equipment performance has improved to some audible degree over the past 50 years as have the opportunities to extract even greater levels of musicality for those who choose to further engage.

If I recall correctly, the handful of those attending Edison's first demo of the phonograph were also elated with the wonderful sound they heard. Perhaps Mr. Day should have had us consider that even more simplified time period when playback music was still obviously enjoyed?

Sorry but based on this one article alone, my hunch is Mr. Day has little to offer in his readers but his fond and faulty memories of days gone by to justify his own lack of progress over the years. If per chance that is true, that also iimplies to me that his listening skills most likley have not improved over the years.

 

[Al M.]

As far as we know...

Sure. As always in science. But the evidence is strong.

 

[PeterA]

Peter; your experience proves exactly what?

all it is is a data point. to be inserted into everyone's views according to the weight they attach to it.

Yes I completely agree Mike. It proves nothing nor did I claim that it ever did. It is only my experience. Are you telling me that I shouldn’t share it? That post was my response to a claim that I was living in a fairytale. Realizing that I made mistakes with expensive gear that was not as good as inexpensive gear was a real ear opener.

Honestly I was humbled by the experience and it was not just in my own system with my own ears but it was in multiple systems with other peoples ears. So from afar you may consider it one data point, and it is surely not much more than that, but from where I said it was a slightly more significant event.

I am claiming nothing more and nothing less just refuting the notion that this is all one giant fairytale. I sold thousands of dollars of transparent audio cables and made a lot of comparisons which we usually celebrate and respect on these forums. Do we have to remind everyone who does a comparative review in these pages that what they are doing is just one data point?

 

[Don C]

I only care about the stereo Lp era from 1957 and more modern digital play back.

Mono and 78 records have been dead to most audiophiles for many decades.

This debate was the basis of Listener Magazine and Art of Stereophile Magazine who has passed.

The "good old days" are now!

 

[PeterA]

Peter, do you think it at all possible that Mr. Day has seen so little progression in his own playback systems' performance over the years that he finds life easier to relish a time when playback performance was much the same to him but without the cost and complexity of today?

Make no mistake, playback equipment performance has improved to some audible degree over the past 50 years as have the opportunities to extract even greater levels of musicality for those who choose to further engage.

If I recall correctly, the handful of those attending Edison's first demo of the phonograph were also elated with the wonderful sound they heard. Perhaps Mr. Day should have had us consider that even more simplified time period when playback music was still obviously enjoyed?

Sorry but based on this one article alone, my hunch is Mr. Day has little to offer in his readers but his fond and faulty memories of days gone by to justify his own lack of progress over the years. If per chance that is true, that also iimplies to me that his listening skills most likley have not improved over the years.

Yes of course the Possibility exists. And I’m not denying the progress being made in Audio. In the last two years I’ve gone through a series of cartridges from the same designer each of which is significantly better than the last one. The designer is in his 80s and he tells me that he is still learning and making progress. I just bought a pre-amplifier which is a huge advance over the early preamplifiers from the same designer. Half of the gear I own today is available new and I’m very happy with it so I’m not in denial of any of these things.

I don’t know enough about Mr. Day to know what he thinks about those issues. and I am certainly not going to speculate about his hearing abilities nor would I about anyone on this forum whom I have not met and listened to music with. That would be incredibly presumptuous.

 

[morricab]

Peter, do you think it at all possible that Mr. Day has seen so little progression in his own playback systems' performance over the years that he finds life easier to relish a time when playback performance was much the same to him but without the cost and complexity of today?

Make no mistake, playback equipment performance has improved to some audible degree over the past 50 years as have the opportunities to extract even greater levels of musicality for those who choose to further engage.

If I recall correctly, the handful of those attending Edison's first demo of the phonograph were also elated with the wonderful sound they heard. Perhaps Mr. Day should have had us consider that even more simplified time period when playback music was still obviously enjoyed?

Sorry but based on this one article alone, my hunch is Mr. Day has little to offer in his readers but his fond and faulty memories of days gone by to justify his own lack of progress over the years. If per chance that is true, that also iimplies to me that his listening skills most likley have not improved over the years.

You clearly haven’t heard some of the original Western Electric systems that show up every year in Munich. I have only seen my wife cry in front of a stereo one time and it was in front of a pair of 1933 theater speakers driven by 0.5watt Silbatone amps playing Russian Opera.

Playback equipment got more domestically friendly but better sounding? I question your experience in that arena...

Have you heard an Edison phonograph? I got to hear one in an antique shop in Zurich (wish now that I had purchased it) and the directness of the sound is startling. Sure bandwidth is narrow but “liveness” is in there.

 

[morricab]

Yes I completely agree Mike. It proves nothing nor did I claim that it ever did. It is only my experience. Are you telling me that I shouldn’t share it? That post was my response to a claim that I was living in a fairytale. Realizing that I made mistakes with expensive gear that was not as good as inexpensive gear was a real ear opener.

Honestly I was humbled by the experience and it was not just in my own system with my own ears but it was in multiple systems with other peoples ears. So from afar you may consider it one data point, and it is surely not much more than that, but from where I said it was a slightly more significant event.

I am claiming nothing more and nothing less just refuting the notion that this is all one giant fairytale. I sold thousands of dollars of transparent audio cables and made a lot of comparisons which we usually celebrate and respect on these forums. Do we have to remind everyone who does a comparative review in these pages that what they are doing is just one data point?

I applaud your experimentation and your sharing of the results. Keep it up, Peter.

 

[Don C]

Yes I completely agree Mike. It proves nothing nor did I claim that it ever did. It is only my experience. Are you telling me that I shouldn’t share it? That post was my response to a claim that I was living in a fairytale. Realizing that I made mistakes with expensive gear that was not as good as inexpensive gear was a real ear opener.

Honestly I was humbled by the experience and it was not just in my own system with my own ears but it was in multiple systems with other peoples ears. So from afar you may consider it one data point, and it is surely not much more than that, but from where I said it was a slightly more significant event.

I am claiming nothing more and nothing less just refuting the notion that this is all one giant fairytale. I sold thousands of dollars of transparent audio cables and made a lot of comparisons which we usually celebrate and respect on these forums. Do we have to remind everyone who does a comparative review in these pages that what they are doing is just one data point?

Peter........ Do you feel a little stupid for buying thousands of dollars on BS transparent cables which you praised for years?

The most expensive, top of the line, newest is better approach, leads to wasting money a lot of the time.

It is smarter to listen, and compare many cheaper alternatives, rather than follow the many rich fools on this site.

 

[cjfrbw]

A folded dual purpose horn sub, with high water pressure plumbing for purpose number 2 in the bathroom maybe ?

Flush cooled amplifiers?

 

[the sound of Tao]

I think you detoured when you injected your manifesto here. 3 billion years, eh? I thought the official number was 18 billion years. Oh, well. What's a few billion years amongst a bunch of relativists?

Sorry but relativism only works for the those who don't care, have no purpose, and nothing matters - least of all performance from our playback systems because there are no absolutes. Come to think of it, I suppose I can see a certain percentage of high-end audio enthusiasts embracing your same philosophy.

Relativsim is where everybody's opinion has equal weighting and value to everybody else's opinion. IOW, everybody's opinion is just as right as everybody elses and the relativist is forbidden from telling anybody their opinion is wrong because there is no wrong. Also, a relativist cannot be certain of anything. In fact, the relativist is 100% certain of that.

In contrast, since I live in the world of absolutes where there are absolute rights and wrongs, I can freely demonstrate all the day long how wrong you are in this and perhaps every other matter of significance. You, on the other hand, being a relativist, cannot respond to me in any negative way nor is it within you to tell me I'm wrong. For the simple reason that from your perspective all truth is relative. My truth is not your truth and your truth is not my truth and since according to you, there are no absolutes we're free to make up our own truths and nobody can tell us we're wrong. For example. 2 + 2 = whatever you want it to be. Relativism leads to the most outrageous thinking where nobody can hold anybody accountable for anything.

You want proof? Try your relativistic philosophy on the cop who pulls you over next time you commit a traffic violation and see what that gets ya.

Go ahead. I triple-dog-dare you to tell me I'm wrong.

p.s. This hobby may be 100% subjective but by no means does that imply it's 100% relative.

Hi Stehno,
What official number is 18 billion years?

 

[Lagonda]

You clearly haven’t heard some of the original Western Electric systems that show up every year in Munich. I have only seen my wife cry in front of a stereo one time and it was in front of a pair of 1933 theater speakers driven by 0.5watt Silbatone amps playing Russian Opera.

Playback equipment got more domestically friendly but better sounding? I question your experience in that arena...

Have you heard an Edison phonograph? I got to hear one in an antique shop in Zurich (wish now that I had purchased it) and the directness of the sound is startling. Sure bandwidth is narrow but “liveness” is in there.

Brad, she was crying because she realized she was not getting a new car in a foreseeable future, as you where going to spend the money on vintage high-fi

 

[cjfrbw]

Peter........ Do you feel a little stupid for buying thousands of dollars on BS transparent cables which you praised for years?

I am perfectly happy with well terminated, shielded wires of almost any description. However, it's hard to make perfect economic efficiency an absolute goal of the quest. One has to accept that a certain amount of 'waste' is a pinch of salt thrown over the shoulder in the pursuit. Some have more salt than others.

 

[bonzo75]

Western electric 16a but not with WE drivers, with Neumann vintage and Gauss 15 inch woofers playing a mono recording.

 

[stehno]

Hi Stehno,
What official number is 18 billion years?

Doesn't the number fluctuate with current generation science-minded types disproving prior generations of science-minded types?

But for sake of argument, I will choose to stick with 18 billion years. That's my truth. All I need is for you to tell me I'm wrong.

BTW, my point was relativism.

 

[cjfrbw]

Western electric 16a but not with WE drivers, with Neumann vintage and Gauss 15 inch woofers playing a mono recording.

Cool, and YouTube sounds good, too. Ked, what are the details of the signal chain, pre, amp etc.?

 

[ack]

Peter........ Do you feel a little stupid for buying thousands of dollars on BS transparent cables which you praised for years?

LOL

 

[the sound of Tao]

Before you complain about relativism and do some grandstanding, you should better inform yourself. Graham is right, it took 3 billion years for single cell life to develop into multicellular life. And what's up with 18 billion years? The universe is 13.7 billion years old.

I just noticed this Al, yes, I was wondering also

We have different opinions. IMHO the important aspects are not the nice semantics, but the concepts and what is behind them. A confusing and ambiguous non standard nomenclature only means we will spend our time in posts trying to clarify the meaning of obscure terms and never debate the interesting why's and how's.

The word windows in sound reproduction has subjectively been associated with transmission and transparency. Only objectively it has been associated with boundaries, such as listening areas or levels, such as a window comparator.

You consider that there has been some clarification - yes, you are correct IMHO no one has presented a valid argument defending the "listening window" term, except Jeff Day's freedom of speech.

BTW, your words on language evolution are nice and I agree with most them. I recently used similar ones when addressing the issue if we should accept some new words concerning the new information techniques that come from english words universally used, just slightly modified to adapt to our language. They now seem to sound horrible, but in a few years they will be standard language.

I do feel there is simply also the context to support understanding for his idea in the article. The way that the words were used as a concept and his general position on these things didn’t seem to me too confusing and for me there was enough validity in using the term. While I certainly don’t claim to have read all I genuinely can’t recall seeing the term used much at all and not that it would then be considered as broadly understood as a convention in general terms in audio let alone a standard.

But all that aside micro I really was just saying that we regularly deal with developing thoughts and using abstracts to communicate so latitude in both concepts and language and some free play is needed and perhaps even desirable. Our pursuit isn’t fully understood nor is it static and that is from my perspective a good thing.

Understanding is alive and the journey isn’t over. The writer gave sufficient context for his thoughts to be essentially understood by many... a valid idea if not a perfect explanation but certainly a sufficient one for many. These weren’t underpinning audio commandments being set in stone, it was commentary and ephemeral in nature, reading it resonated for the reader or it didn’t. You didn’t care for his usage and I was fine with it. No big disagreement really, and the important part of it for me wasn’t in the specific example but simply more about how language evolves and can’t be fixed absolutely and on that we are in agreement.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Doesn't the number fluctuate with current generation science-minded types disproving prior generations of science-minded types?

But for sake of argument, I will choose to stick with 18 billion years. That's my truth. All I need is for you to tell me I'm wrong.

BTW, my point was relativism.

Oh ok

 

[the sound of Tao]

A folded dual purpose horn sub, with high water pressure plumbing for purpose number 2 in the bathroom maybe ?

Milan from experience I’d suggest the bathroom is too dangerous a place to be playing with subs. Too much shaking on the bottom end is obviously a recipe for disaster at our age. It’s probably not even a good place if your woofer is a big one. Small woofers are OK in the bathroom but then who wants to admit to having a small woofer anyway

 

[Lagonda]

Milan from experience I’d suggest the bathroom is too dangerous a place to be playing with subs. Too much shaking on the bottom end is obviously a recipe for disaster at our age. It’s probably not even a good place if your woofer is a big one. Small woofers are OK in the bathroom but then who wants to admit to having a small woofer anyway

I keep telling myself small woofers are just as good as larger ones, and they are faster ! Wait is that a good thing ?