You don't use words. You use measurements. That's what measurements are for. If measurements don't show what you want to describe, then what you want to describe doesn't exist. It's just your imagination.
OTOH, if double-blind listening tests show that you reliably hear it, then measurements will show it. You need to know the correct measurements and how to obtain them, but they will show what you hear
Monkeys have a tail. We are apes.Has anyone thought to ask why we need to "show" what what we "hear" looks on a visual graph? << Hint: We are monkeys. >>
An impudent speaker, with a saucy hint of air, atop a slam bottom.It's that slight light fruit forward sound of the female voices, combined with the typical barnyard earthiness of the underlying bass, clearly identifying the terroir .... an excellent quaffing speaker....
,,. We can't listen to a graph either. …
Those are not bad impressions, but the problem comes when you take the gear home. Real and usual dwells typically force you to play the game of getting good sound with a large amount of handicaps. The key to win most battles is knowing what you´ll be facing, audio is no different.It's enlightening to just listen with no fore knowledge, like at axpona last weekend just walk into a room and hear how the system performs in that enclosure will influence a lot of comments even knowing the setup is what killed the sound, or saved it. We can't listen to a graph either. Most folk on this forum would be surprised to find they're lucky to be getting half of what their systems capable of.
This forum challenges me always. Dear Holm, if I understood what you just said I would attempt an intelligent answer. I have my 2 ears and what survived the 70’s remaining between them. If the midrange sounds believable I’ll probably pay attention oblivious to lab results.
You don't use words. You use measurements.
One of the reasons Toole has been so influential, is that he is both literate and numerate.That's a blinkered, somewhat simplistic view... Too much "Cience"?
From that Toole book:
The slight upward trend in output from about 100 Hz to 3 kHz suggests that the sound may be somewhat
thin,
bright
or
hard
depending on the program. Perceived
“brightness”
is often associated with frequencies much lower than is commonly thought. The depression at higher frequencies deprives the listener of balanced instrumental overtones (see Figure 4.1), possibly leading to a loss of
openness
and
articulation,
and perhaps even a hint of
dullness.
That is a perfect example.Love this thread! Part of the problem is that sometimes subjective things DO become objective when our brain tells us so.
Ever hear your alarm clock going off in the other side of the room, you don't want to get up and "tune it out" so you can get a few more winks? And then when late to work you "swear" your alarm didn't go off?
Hifi story - after a huge power outage (on / off / brownout / off / on) in my area, a few days later I was listening to my local LPFMer classic country. (KZNQ 101.5/stream). I listen off-air FM analog.
But I couldn't listen for more than 10 minutes. On the surface seems ok, but the inexpensive so-called studio cans I was using didn't instantly reveal anything wrong. Just wanted to take the cans off after 10 minutes. Same thing in the car - 10 minutes and I was done. Overall nothing stands out, but my ears were bleeding.
Switched to my Sennheiser 650's. And there it was! The power outage had totally fried the firmware in the audio compander. Deep random sub-bass canon-balls notes!
I knew Tammy Wynette had some nice chops, but she surely couldn't throw out those sub-bass canonballs!
"Sometimes its ... thub thub thub .. hard to be ... thub thub .. a woman .. thub thub"
My less than perfect studio cans couldn't reproduce those low sub-bass notes, so it wasn't immediately obvious, but they were wrecking things everywhere else.
The Sennheisers revealed the problem. In pure fidelity, but there was no way you could listen to it for long with sub-bass canonballs coming out of the fried compander.
Sorry for the long story - helped fix the fried compander problem after a phone call from a nerd listener (me), and what I thought was merely a subjective change in my listening taste actually turned out to be an objective problem at the source.
I have a question about the perception of sound of different dacs.The topic of subjectivity vs objectivity in audio seems to constantly come up in various threads or dedicated threads of the same. So we thought it is best to have one master thread for it so interested people can participate here, and others not seeing it spread everywhere. If you do post about the topic elsewhere, don't be surprised if it either gets moved here or deleted for being out of place.
Note that the use of the term "subjectivism" is as used in audio food fights. It is NOT the proper term in audio research which is controlled listening tests. That topic can be discussed elsewhere.
Happy arguing.
I have a question about the perception of sound of different dacs.
i use an ADI-2 Pro fs with Audeze headphones and noticed that although the ADI-2 sounds much cleaner, the Headphone output of my Macbook sounds more pleasant at the low frequencies, at least to my ears.
Probably it is because of distortion or the DAC filter.
I also tried to switch between different filters on the ADI-2 and found that the filter of the Cirrus Logic chip in my Macbook sounds different and none of the AK4493 Filters can match. I think it is something between the SD Sharp and Low Dispersion Filter.
Does anyone have any idea why my MacBook output sounds more pleasant to me?
Does anyone have any idea why my MacBook output sounds more pleasant to me?