Yes, that's why I used quotes on "wants" - if the ongoing acoustic information that the brain receives contradicts that internal model then the 'illusion' fails - all the "wanting" in the world won't help, the brain has to now adapt to an alternative viewpoint: that the, say, music event is a 'fake' - we can't relax and enjoy what the intent of the experience was, we now are constantly registering the failings of the reproduction to match up to the "real thing" - we lose interest, become fatigued ... and walk away, mentally at least ...
Why CDs May Actually Sound Better Than Vinyl
- Thread starter Steve williams
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Well it was for a bunch of us. I think it was just a few weeks ago that I was talking to Gary about it and the good work we did to uncover this characteristic of Vinyl. I have linked to the thread a number of times in the past few years and yours is the only negative response I have seen.
Vast majority of teenage girls like Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift
Vast majority of humans like chocolate
Vast majority of people like chicken and beef
So despite all of our varied experiences, we have very common preferences. As you say our audio preferences appear to be very different at times. But here is the thing: if we we only let the ear evaluate sound as opposed to all of our senses, then a ton of these differences vanish. It is a shocking truth but it is what the research and my personal experience says.
Given an AAC file at 320 kbps and the CD, vast majority of people fail that comparison showing that they don't have golden ears, nor have materially different threshold of detection for distortion.
So completing the sequence above,
Vast majority of audiophiles think they are special, but they are not.
Amir the special word is yours... I said unique but also shared. The vast majority of audiophiles are clearly a minority. Thankfully Justin Bieber is not an important pattern in all of our universes but that doesn't mean much in the scheme of things.
The ears don't evaluate, the mind does and it uses whatever sensory data it sees fit and it works on the basis of the sum of it's experiences which may or may not be very special but are in totality certainly individual within the framework of a shared culture. Special is in many ways more like thinking that your own version of the universe is the only one possible.
I have no universe of my own. When large scale studies across many audiences (audiophile or not), many systems and countless speakers, shows very high consistency of what we all think is good sound, combine with participating in the same tests myself with the same outcome, I will be a good horse and drink the water.
I don't know how to not be student of great research with personal relevance. Why are we the same? If I turn up a clock radio to the point of distortion, do you think some of us would like that and others not? I think we both would agree it is bad. When the kid in his small car comes by you with his stereo blasting distorted bass, does our life experience stop us both from disliking it similarly? I don't think so.
By some evolutionary magic, we are wired to have similar preferences to solve an impossible puzzle. Without ever being given the experience of what the talent heard when producing the music, we are able to detect colorations that bother most of us similarly. There is a golden reference in our brain to guide us there. You are right on the role of perception acting here. Just not in it driving uniqueness
.I think this is blessing and something to celebrate. It means equipment can be designed to sound correct and appease many audiophiles and general public just the same.
Yeh, it takes away from us thinking we are some gifted class of population because we spend so much time and energy on the hobby. But so what? If it allows research to be focused more on delivering good sound to us, it is something we need to ultimately want and like.
My two cents anyway
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I have no universe of my own. When large scale studies across many audiences (audiophile or not), many systems and countless speakers, shows very high consistency of what we all think is good sound, combine with participating in the same tests myself with the same outcome, I will be a good horse and drink the water.
Why are we the same? If I turn up a clock radio to the point of distortion, do you think some of us would like that and others not? I think we both would agree it is bad. When the kid in his small car comes by you with his stereo blasting distorted bass, does our life experience stop us both from disliking it similarly? I don't think so.
By some evolutionary magic, we are wired to have similar preferences to solve an impossible puzzle. Without ever being given the experience of what the talent heard when producing the music, we are able to detect colorations that bother most of us similarly. There is a golden reference in our brain to guide us there. You are right on the role of perception acting here. Just not in it driving uniqueness
I think this is blessing and something to celebrate. It means equipment can be designed to sound correct and appease many audiophiles and general public just the same.
Yeh, it takes away from us thinking we are some gifted class of population because we spend so much time and energy on the hobby. But so what? If it allows research to be focused more on delivering good sound to us, it is something we need to ultimately want and like.
My two cents anyway
The scientific model of the physical universe is just the starting building block in our understanding of the human experience of the physical universe that we all then use to build all the varied rich structures of each of our own individual models of that universe... and each personal universe is then linked, shared and possibly validated through our relationships with others. The quality of that relationship then determines the quality of our whole understanding. An objective model of the universe is by its nature singular. A subjective model of the universe is invariably diverse and can be better validated by the massing of all models but even that doesn't invalidate any individual model. We are singularly universal and together we are also a multiverse. That is the nature of all things. Shared and alone in part and in whole, we are the sum of all things and we are also no thing.
Can I humbly go for that's my 8 cents as that is a number that works better for me though I don't think it's in any way more valuable than your 2 cents... just different that's all.
FrantzM, I had a strong interest in learning what measurements you would suggest using to inform us of what "better" sound is. I asked you to define what you meant by "better" sound, to specifically name the types of measurements you would use, and to explain how to interpret the results of those measurements. I wanted to learn something about those measurements. You never responded to my post.
That post is now buried somewhere between page 60 and 90 of this thread, and I can't spend the time to find it. I have a healthy respect for the science part of this hobby and select my gear in part by trying to learn how much science is involved in the designs. That is one reason I like Magico speakers and dCS digital gear so much. I let the designers use science and I tend to use my ears when choosing what I like. I do use lots of measurements when setting up my analog front end and locating my speakers, first reflection panels and listening seat.
I think a "strong anti-science bias" is a gross generalization and overstating your opinion. You can look up the measurements poll I did a while back. The results do not support your opinion. The membership was divided on this, as I recall, just like they are on the CD/LP topic of this thread.
Vast majority of teenage girls like Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift
Vast majority of humans like chocolate
Vast majority of people like chicken and beef
So despite all of our varied experiences, we have very common preferences. As you say our audio preferences appear to be very different at times. But here is the thing: if we we only let the ear evaluate sound as opposed to all of our senses, then a ton of these differences vanish. It is a shocking truth but it is what the research and my personal experience says.
Given an AAC file at 320 kbps and the CD, vast majority of people fail that comparison showing that they don't have golden ears, nor have materially different threshold of detection for distortion.
So completing the sequence above,
Vast majority of audiophiles think they are special, but they are not.
Vast majority of people prefer to listen to their digital music on small portable devices.
Those preferring to listen to their music on vinyl are special (or unique, sound of Tao).
Special: "better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual."
Edit: Unique(sound of Tao): "particularly remarkable, special, or unusual."
I have no universe of my own. When large scale studies across many audiences (audiophile or not), many systems and countless speakers, shows very high consistency of what we all think is good sound, combine with participating in the same tests myself with the same outcome, I will be a good horse and drink the water.
Why are we the same? If I turn up a clock radio to the point of distortion, do you think some of us would like that and others not? I think we both would agree it is bad. When the kid in his small car comes by you with his stereo blasting distorted bass, does our life experience stop us both from disliking it similarly? I don't think so.
By some evolutionary magic, we are wired to have similar preferences to solve an impossible puzzle. Without ever being given the experience of what the talent heard when producing the music, we are able to detect colorations that bother most of us similarly. There is a golden reference in our brain to guide us there. You are right on the role of perception acting here. Just not in it driving uniqueness
I think this is blessing and something to celebrate. It means equipment can be designed to sound correct and appease many audiophiles and general public just the same.
Yeh, it takes away from us thinking we are some gifted class of population because we spend so much time and energy on the hobby. But so what? If it allows research to be focused more on delivering good sound to us, it is something we need to ultimately want and like.
My two cents anyway
Amir, do you really think so? It seems to me that our preferences as audiophiles are not all that similar. Just look at this thread topic. 1/3 prefer vinyl, 1/3 prefer digital, 1/3 have no preference. Some of us are bothered by artifacts on LPs, others are not, and some don't even notice them. Some of us are bothered by digital artifacts, some are not, and some don't even notice them. Somehow your evolution makes you jump up and down in your chair when you hear a pop/click on an LP. My evolution makes me feel fatigued when listening to digital (though that is slowly changing with some recent exposure).
Yes, equipment can be so designed - but at the moment it's usually very expensive, and the methodology to assess its competence is very poorly refined. Hence the so-called "anti-Science bias" here - because, the science as currently implemented is floundering - its ability to predict the the overall, subjective competence of a complete system is quite pathetic, for people who take their music seriously.By some evolutionary magic, we are wired to have similar preferences to solve an impossible puzzle. Without ever being given the experience of what the talent heard when producing the music, we are able to detect colorations that bother most of us similarly. There is a golden reference in our brain to guide us there. You are right on the role of perception acting here. Just not in it driving uniqueness
While this remains, people will continue to delve into the 'dark side', because the desire to achieve satisfying sound far overreaches any need to have some magic, "scientific" numbers come up correctly ...
But listening to Justin Bieber makes me feel singularly unremarkable and almost puts me off drinking as well.
I like to think that we buy music and we buy performances before we buy recordings and buy formats but I've known many happy audio souls who see it quite the other way. Mostly we start this journey in buying music, then we start thinking about performances, eventually worrying about how it was all recorded and ultimately what it was recorded on. All important stuff but useless if the music isn't much chop.
INteresting how strong the reaction have been about my anti-science observation. Perhaps there is something to that
More later; I am listening to music on a digital non-scientific system... The Stax 'phones have been getting a lot of work lately .. Darn! They're good! Better than most (all ?)speakers I've heard
More later; I am listening to music on a digital non-scientific system... The Stax 'phones have been getting a lot of work lately .. Darn! They're good! Better than most (all ?
)speakers I've heardAnd, right on time, some comments by an audio engineer of some well regarded gear, on being open minded ... http://www.audiostream.com/content/...n-reis-listening-measurements-and-uncertainty
As I understand, SONY is converting all their mastertapes to quad DSDs. So only your present Lps will be analog.
Frank, some of your best posts I've read in the last pages of this thread...and that link above...awesome.
IMHO it is a good decision. Most probably the tapes will be loosing quality in the next years - this way they will be preserved with high quality. But we could ask why they are not converting them simultaneously to DXD.
I have read recently that some companies digitized their tapes to 96kHz 24bit, not 192 KHz because at that time they felt it was the best sounding digital format.
Thanks for pointing this very interesting article. These comments are much more than just being open minded. They implicitly criticize the classic methodologies of measuring equipment and suggest a new way of measuring.
It is nice that we see long time experienced designers gathering their large experience with science to develop new methodologies to go on developing the high-end. Perhaps we will see that sometimes being "anti-science" is just a way of pushing new science!
The conclusions of the article:
To summarize the main points:
Set up the system for measurement in the same way you listen to it, with every component connected (even this component is off, ...)
Take more appropriate test signals that better cover the content of the music you listen to, and not just "stupid" sine waves.
Have a "real complex load" to the power amp, even if you only probe measurement on the DAC. This makes a difference.
And finally the most important point: be open minded, and don't forget to live and to enjoy (and not analyze) the music.
Read more at http://www.audiostream.com/content/...surements-and-uncertainty#o6VUR7QeFEYThXLk.99
Interesting read Frank. Of course there will be the one or two here who will continue to say how right they are and regardless of polls or comments from those who always claim to know better and to try to tell us that what we hear is all nonsense and a product of our imaginations. The reality is for me at least is that I buy music in the format that pleases me and my ears. No one is ever going to change anyone else's mind and it ludicrous when I read some of these "ergo" analogies that I just shake my head and move on. Measurements work for all of us and all of us will do what we can to maximize and to optimize the performance of our systems but for most of us we make final changes with our ears. I don't see the poll as telling us anything more than what we already know and recently the thread has become more posturing than anything else as members jockey for position. The reality is however that we all enjoy and love that to which we listen and no one is going to change anyone's mind. Amir doesn't like vinyl.We get it.We aren't going to change his mind nor will he ever change ours. Does it really matter or do we even care. Should any of us who enjoy vinyl really care as they try to make their case He hears artifacts such a pops and clicks that take him out of the zone. As many have pointed out a good set up in a well made turntable using cleaned records and a clean stylus will remove virtually all of those sounds. He doesn't see it that way and continues to tell us that we are all crazy and can't be hearing anything other than things which are pleasing to our ears. This thread as a result has done nothing except to once again get involved in circuitous arguments that we have heard time and again as well as seeing umpteen graphs that we have seen too many times before to count. If everything were as cut and dry and obvious as he sees it IMO the poll would not look the way it does nor would there be such a following for analog. Does anyone have anything new to contribute or has this thread run its course as I see so many directions now that is taking this thread off topic
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