Dear mods: Can we please ask people in these threads not to use people of religious faith as (invariably negative) examples of whatever point they are trying to make?
Okay, to the topic.
When people perceive something, there are several necessary questions. We are used to the first one: is the perception reliable in the absence of prior knowledge about the devices under test?
But there are other biases. If a group of people have experience listening to big bands, and in a recording of same note that the trumpets seem elevated, it could be an artifact of their shared experience. In most big bands, the trumpet players stand behind the seated trombone and saxophone players and so we remember them being higher. Or, an orchestral patron looking down on a orchestra from the mezzanine will see the back row “above” the front row when projected onto two dimensions, and trumpets are usually on the back row. These shared memories don’t have to have much influence to bias perceptions. I don’t recall that those sorts of biases were explored by Harman—as I recall they looked at age, sex, experience and role within the audio biz.
The tweeter being higher than the mids and woofers seems obvious, but nobody ever talks about it—it must be too obvious.
One reviewer described his first experience with the height effect on listening to a recording of a rocket launch. He was amazed to note the impression of rising sound. Amazed? Where else would a rocket go? Can that expectation be so easily ignored?
There are all sorts of subtle cues we hear to create spatial awareness, and to my thinking the better the system puts those subtleties into my ears, the more I’m going to perceive. Those subtleties are all covered in timbre and reverberation effects, it seems to me, and are imminently measurable. Recordings that add reverb electronically and separately for each track will not contain all those recording-space acoustic interactions, it seems to me. Effort put into microphone placement is not wasted.
This does not challenge measurements. My current system, playing the Chesky demo CD, does everything the announcer tells me I should hear, and that’s true no matter what CD player or DAC I’m using. I suspect that the speakers, room, EQ, and recorded content account for about 99.9% of that, at least the part that isn’t simply biased by the power of suggestion.
My listening position is slightly off-center. I use my EQ to delay the closer speaker by a fraction of a millisecond to account for the 8” shorter path. That moved the phantom image back to the middle and away from the closer speaker. A level change wasn’t required. I do not perceive sound coming from the speakers at all. This is not magic, though magic is just technology we don’t understand.
Now, to the topic of subjectivist’s objectives. Story time: I own a lovely Ebel Sport Classic Chronograph wristwatch just like the one Frank Dernie received as a gift from “one of his drivers”. That watch company has been a special research project of mine, and that watch was the must-have watch of the 80’s. It was cooler (and pricier) than the Rolex Daytona, and fit perfectly the product placement advertising that Ebel bought when they put the same watch on Sonny Crockett’s wrist in
Miami Vice.
Needless to say, I do not resemble Don Johnson in any dimension and have nothing like the incredible experiences and back story for my watch that Frank has for his. But when I wear it, I can, for a fleeting moment,
live the fantasy.
That’s what Fremer is pitching—fantasy. He may even believe it himself (and I have no reason to think he doesn’t). The Placebo Effect is still an effect, even if its cause is misattributed.
Rick “fantasies are fine, but not necessarily transportable” Denney