Stereophile's snide editorial on ASR and Amir

[egellings]

Spray-back from whizzing a post.

 

[pablolie]

Why does a male dog wash its genitals?

Your dog is very sophisticated and well trained to use a shower or bidet. The dogs I know just lick them. Then try to lick your face. :-D

 

[Doodski]

Your dog is very sophisticated and well trained to use a shower or bidet. The dogs I know just lick them. Then try to lick your face. :-D

 

[pablolie]

View attachment 238344

I'd have to look forever for an emoji that summarizes my response, but I just laughed and sprayed iced tea all over. I was able to avoid the computer and it's unsweetened, luckily.

 

[John Atkinson]

Walker was an audio genius..

Yes indeed. I offer some personal reminiscences in this obituary: https://www.stereophile.com/news/121503walker/index.html

Money quote: "Whatever the subject, [Peter Walker] had the uncanny ability to reduce it to its essence, to examine its implications from first principles."

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[thegeton]

Your dog is very sophisticated and well trained to use a shower or bidet. The dogs I know just lick them. Then try to lick your face. :-D

Ha! I was attempting to show a little decorum. That said, my dog licks his enthusiastically.

 

[egellings]

Dogs like to roll in rotten stuff like dead fish, too. With noses that sensitive, how can they tolerate that? You'd think that the little biological preamp that that nose connects to would be driven into clipping, or worse yet, just railed out.

 

[rwortman]

I think we just go for the lowest noise that a particular technology can offer. With tubes, 0.1% might have been about the best attainable, so we were (had to be) satisfied with that. Modern day technology allows for much better performance, and we won't be happy with anything less even though noise has been imperceptibly low for some time now. People like all those zeroes after the dismal[sic] point for some reason.

So the basic difference between and objectivist and a subjectivist audiophile is that one claims he can hear inaudible things and the other compares spec sheets for inaudible things. Maybe audiophilia belongs in the DSM.

 

[Inner Space]

So the basic difference between and objectivist and a subjectivist audiophile is that one claims he can hear inaudible things and the other compares spec sheets for inaudible things.

It's an endless loop, though - the inaudible things that the objectivist sees in spec sheets have been declared inaudible by purely subjective methods. Researchers don't hook up brain scans - they merely ask, "Can you hear it now?"

 

[Sal1950]

That said, my dog licks his enthusiastically.

As would you, if you could. LOL

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Dogs like to roll in rotten stuff like dead fish, too. With noses that sensitive, how can they tolerate that?

The same way that some people claim to have ears so sensitive that they can hear things measurements can't even show, yet tolerate single-ended triode amps with 10% distortion. Jim

 

[MarkS]

Hmm. If .1% is low enough, why are we obsessing about whether a DAC or amp has .01 or .00001?

I sure don't. But doing so is encouraged here at ASR, where the .01 device will get rated much higher than the .00001 device.

 

[DMill]

My dog can hear me coming home from an upstairs bedroom to the driveway and lick his own balls at the same time. Unless I’ve missed something maybe we in audio can have both too.

 

[Galliardist]

So the basic difference between and objectivist and a subjectivist audiophile is that one claims he can hear inaudible things and the other compares spec sheets for inaudible things. Maybe audiophilia belongs in the DSM.

They are both methods of dealing with the problem of inaudibility. At least some subjectivists steer towards items that sound different, just because the brain will be much happier with differences that do exist. And objectivists can at least see the difference in a spec sheet or a graph. Seeing is perceiving.

The subjectivist does hear "inaudible things", that is, we hear a difference when the change in the soundwaves should not be audible. There is no "claim" about it.

Maybe we should worry about what we are really "hearing". Though I suspect that will be as humbling an experience for us as failing a DBT on a sighted comparison "obvious difference" is.

Note I say "we". This can strike at any time, even in the most hardcore objectivist, since actual listening to music on our systems is a subjective experience.

 

[SIY]

As would you, if you could. LOL

I think the dog would bite him if he tried.

 

[TimF]

And I thought that now and then I post odd things on ASR.

 

[pablolie]

summing it up... our joint ASR rebuttal to that is about dogs licking themselves?

I am a cat person but it's not like they don't tongue-shower their private areas..

 

[Sal1950]

I think the dog would bite him if he tried.

LMAO

 

[Newman]

The subjectivist does hear "inaudible things", that is, we hear a difference when the change in the soundwaves should not be audible. There is no "claim" about it.

Hang on, you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. You are claiming that you are not imagining hearing inaudible things. Show me one properly conducted and controlled listening test, where subjects cannot respond to anything but changes in the sound waves, that shows a high statistical confidence that these infinitesimal changes in the sound waves, that should not be audible without superhuman hearing, are indeed audible.

Your big mistake is to think that your sloppy casual sighted home A/B 'listening' 'tests' are telling you about what is audible in the sound waves. They DO NOT. Your test method is a perfect setup for audio illusions, just as perfect as a David Copperfield 'magic' trick is a visual/cognitive illusion, and your response to your audio 'test' is the equivalent of insisting that Copperfield is actually possessed of supernatural magic powers, that he actually sawed his assistant in half and put her together again, etc.

cheers

 

[Holmz]

Hang on, you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. You are claiming that you are not imagining hearing inaudible things. Show me one properly conducted and controlled listening test, where subjects cannot respond to anything but changes in the sound waves, that shows a high statistical confidence that these infinitesimal changes in the sound waves, that should not be audible without superhuman hearing, are indeed audible.

Your big mistake is to think that your sloppy casual sighted home A/B 'listening' 'tests' are telling you about what is audible in the sound waves. They DO NOT. Your test method is a perfect setup for audio illusions, just as perfect as a David Copperfield 'magic' trick is a visual/cognitive illusion, and your response to your audio 'test' is the equivalent of insisting that Copperfield is actually possessed of supernatural magic powers, that he actually sawed his assistant in half and put her together again, etc.

cheers

Crickey!
How did that Copperfield fellow put the assistant back together?