Ex-subjectivists on ASR

[computer-audiophile]

I don't accept the frame.

Good to the point. That would not occur to me either.

 

[Galliardist]

The big question regarding objectivism in audio is why we hear things differently to what measurements would suggest, sighted.

In other words, there are properties to objects that aren't covered by measuring the resulting changes in sound, that cause us to "hear" a difference or no difference.

Until we understand those other properties and how they affect us, we can't realistically take a hard objectivist stance. And if those other properties will always vary in their effect from person to person, we are stuck with subjectivism in some form (and other than just working with the actual soundwaves as controlled testing seeks to do).

What then is the way forward, that doesn't involve those damn $10000 fuses that do nothing to the sound?

 

[computer-audiophile]

But music is somewhat magical, subjectively speaking.

Music can be art. Even an audio system can express an artistic signature and promote said magic or be a part of conceptual art. I'm glad that there is such a thing.

 

[mhardy6647]

The first time I saw error bars, the world (and science) made more sense.

E.g., seeing two curves plotted using means that are clearly different -- until the errors around those means are shown, too, and it becomes clear that the two curves are indistinguishable.

I like to remind my glycobiology students that the mean isn't always the best way to describe a collection of data, by showing them a photo of our erstwhile cat, Zappa. Zappa was grey on the average.

 

[fpitas]

That said, I get what you're saying. Some of these preference rules are based on a few dozen people, with error bars long enough to pitch a tent with, but there are many who flog the Olive / Toole work as if there were no questions worth asking anymore. Certainly those studies are the best we have to work with, but they don't comprise what I'd call a real settled science.

I think they did a good job determining what they wanted to know, which was the typical preference of potential customers. That doesn't mean any particular person will have those preferences.

 

[threni]

But that isn’t what I said, in particular the part about “never be constructed”. There are plenty of things that can be measured that aren’t in a common suite of measurements.

I wasn't talking about whatever tests were in "a common suite of measurements".

 

[Curvature]

In another thread, @MattHooper mentioned that many in ASR are former subjectivists. I am one of them.

Unfortunately ASR does not allow posting of multiple polls within the same thread, so I had to merge two questions into one. Here is an explanation of the poll options:

The first two options are:

- Yes. You started off as a subjectivist and you are now an objectivist, or you are still transitioning (see second part)
- No. You started off as an objectivist.

- I am a subjectivist. Measurements have no correlation with audibility. You are still buying audiophile cables, fuses, and tweaks.
- I am a soft / moderate objectivist. You pay attention to measurements, you might even do them, but ultimately all your decisions are made on subjective grounds. You might own high end amps and DAC's that you bought because you think they sound nice.
- I am an objectivist. You believe that anything that can not be measured is not audible, and that claims of audibility are due to placebo. You are a purist who believes that fidelity to the recording is all that matters.

I have been in this hobby for 30 years, and have only started looking at the objective side of things in the past 10. I still have my speaker cables and interconnect to prove it. Transitioning has been both difficult and rewarding. Rewarding, because I get much better sound. Difficult, because of the learning curve. I don't mind learning curves, but what was even more difficult were my friends, who thought that I was crazy for (1) selling my turntable, (2) going all digital, and worse still, (3) manipulating the signal with DSP.

I think that former subjectivists think differently to objectivists. I am still a "listen first" guy. If I think I hear something, I try to correlate it with something measurable. This is a useful exercise for confirming what I heard, and also for suggesting a strategy to improve / remove whatever I think I heard or what I think is missing. I know what kind of sound that I want, and it is not necessarily what many on ASR seem to want, which is to hear the recording as the producers intended it.

So my vote: former subjectivist / currently a soft objectivist.

Your categories are subjectivist. I don't know if you realize that. The only real habits and opinions they reflect are those of "subjectivist" audiophiles. The "objectivist" position you describe is made up. People don't act that way.

Most of what happens on this forum is writing and reading descriptions of events and making some assessment about their truth or the underlying circumstances. The "objective" part is asking for more than listening alone: listening controls for example, certain audio related tests or measurements of one kind or another. Listening is always "first". The main divide is how to handle the moment of listening, and what responsibilities after the fact when reporting the event.

If you aren't willing to do certain tests and academic research, you're subjectivist. If you read books, papers and graphs alone and never perform exploratory listening tests, you're subjectivist. Checking, testing, measuring and rigorously interrogating on top of listening is what I do. When I was younger I had little idea of how and treated my purchases, opinions and listening based on unchecked hearsay, unchecked personal logic and the opinions of laymen and lay professionals. So, yes, I was subjectivist. But I'm not whatever caricature you describe as the opposite now.

 

[Plcamp]

In other words, there are properties to objects that aren't covered by measuring the resulting changes in sound, that cause us to "hear" a difference or no difference.

I think it might be accurate to classify such properties as either real or imaginary. If you believe in them and they are actually imaginary, you will prefer them in sighted tests and not in blind ones?

 

[notsodeadlizard]

Music can be art. Even an audio system can express an artistic signature and promote said magic or be a part of conceptual art. I'm glad that there is such a thing.

And "musical instrument" has so broad range of senses ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_instrument ) that it can be something very unusual, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_studio_as_an_instrument

So no one forbids treating the sound reproduction system as a musical instrument, for example.
This is already a matter of personal attitude to the perception of the process of listening to music, and this perception is obviously different from the perception of music.

Someone constantly listens to electronic music or DJing in earplugs, someone goes to the conservatory to listen to live instruments, and someone tunes their equipment for years, achieving I don’t know what, because only the tuner knows what she wants, if she knows what she wants at all, and this is not satisfaction from the process for the sake of the process (which is also not prohibited).

I personally do not see any problems in the first one (although I have a headache from IEMs and I hate them), nor in the second (I myself enjoy listening to live music, even if performed by students), or in the third, although I am indifferent to tuning the equipment bought in the store, as well as to bringing its choice to the level of madness.

 

[CapMan]

Reflecting on my HiFi journey I guess I was a traditional HiFi shopper in the 90s - visit to a dealer or two armed with a shortlist from a ‘suitable’ specialist publication.

Listen side by side, make some subjective judgements and narrow it down to a preference. There were some pre-programmed biases : Linn = boring, Naim = exciting I am sure.

The dealer (Simon) who sold me my first Naim equipment bounced around on the sofa like an over-caffeinated meerkat on pogo stick - “just listen to that timing and rhythm” , he enthused.

I was then held captive by the Naim cult for many years (too many wasted years to count) where any sense of objectivity totally disappeared.

The Naim forum (like others) is an echo chamber where those with the ‘best’ equipment offer hope to the lowly who have the ‘cheap’ stuff that their route to audio nirvana is by upgrading through the range. It’s just like pyramid selling gig ! Once you’ve bought into the brand and upgrade path you are forever a hostage to your investment and this belief system. Being a subjectivist in that environment makes things easy - the path is laid before you - no critical thinking required , just deep pockets.

Discovering REW was a revelation because I could finally measure and correlate to what I heard for the first time.

I realised the room is the single most important thing in the chain (doh) , followed by speakers.

I downsized from beefy, expensive full range Wilson Benesch’s to cheaper little Harbeth P3s and dual subs - because the measurements showed me this gave a much better outcome in my room.

I wish ASR existed years ago - I would have saved a lot of money and angst.

I do not understand why subjectivists resist the idea that the point of diminishing returns is now at a far lower price point that they think, and why they wish to spend money for zero gain.

 

[Multicore]

Her basic description/formulation of objectivism is congruent—that reality exists independently of consciousness, that we have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that we can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic.

Consensus is that she loses the plot when she postulates moral purpose from those basic tenets (into laissez-faire capitalism, libertarianism, etc mostly outside scope for discussion here).

Taibbi wrote a passage about Rand and objectivismin his 2010 book Griftopia. It's very entertaining. Read it here https://thefsb.substack.com/p/matt-taibbi-on-ayn-rand

 

[Galliardist]

I think it might be accurate to classify such properties as either real or imaginary. If you believe in them and they are actually imaginary, you will prefer them in sighted tests and not in blind ones?

We are noting a difference as a difference in sound. Is it imaginary, or is it misattribution (red sounds better?)

Since we don't know, we can't have a truly objective view of the object. At some point we need to take a deeper view of the sighted response, rather than the blind one, to get to the end of this particular debate.

 

[Galliardist]

Reflecting on my HiFi journey I guess I was a traditional HiFi shopper in the 90s - visit to a dealer or two armed with a shortlist from a ‘suitable’ specialist publication.

Listen side by side, make some subjective judgements and narrow it down to a preference. There were some pre-programmed biases : Linn = boring, Naim = exciting I am sure.

The dealer (Simon) who sold me my first Naim equipment bounced around on the sofa like an over-caffeinated meerkat on pogo stick - “just listen to that timing and rhythm” , he enthused.

I was then held captive by the Naim cult for many years (too many wasted years to count) where any sense of objectivity totally disappeared.

The Naim forum (like others) is an echo chamber where those with the ‘best’ equipment offer hope to the lowly who have the ‘cheap’ stuff that their route to audio nirvana is by upgrading through the range. It’s just like pyramid selling gig ! Once you’ve bought into the brand and upgrade path you are forever a hostage to your investment and this belief system. Being a subjectivist in that environment makes things easy - the path is laid before you - no critical thinking required , just deep pockets.

Discovering REW was a revelation because I could finally measure and correlate to what I heard for the first time.

I realised the room is the single most important thing in the chain (doh) , followed by speakers.

I downsized from beefy, expensive full range Wilson Benesch’s to cheaper little Harbeth P3s and dual subs - because the measurements showed me this gave a much better outcome in my room.

I wish ASR existed years ago - I would have saved a lot of money and angst.

I do not understand why subjectivists resist the idea that the point of diminishing returns is now at a far lower price point that they think, and why they wish to spend money for zero gain.

It's not only subjectivists that spend more, and you need to define zero gain. If my partner can operate a more expensive device more easily, and I buy it, is that zero gain?

 

[ahofer]

The first time I saw error bars, the world (and science) made more sense.

Check out these error bars.

 

[krabapple]

The big question regarding objectivism in audio is why we hear things differently to what measurements would suggest, sighted.

In other words, there are properties to objects that aren't covered by measuring the resulting changes in sound, that cause us to "hear" a difference or no difference.

Those properties aren't audible. They are 'confounders', i.e., inputs from other senses.

Your 'question' is answered by the phenomenon known as cognitive bias. It comes in a variety of flavors.

Until we understand those other properties and how they affect us, we can't realistically take a hard objectivist stance.

Your problem has already been solved. So yes, we can take that stance, if we choose to.

But practically, no one can run double blind tests on everything they wish to buy, So the 'hardest' stance is generally precluded.


I know you really, really want thare to be some great unsolved mystery in audio here. But this isn't it.

 

[krabapple]

We are noting a difference as a difference in sound. Is it imaginary, or is it misattribution (red sounds better?)

Since we don't know, we can't have a truly objective view of the object.

We can know, if we put a little more effort into the knowing.

At some point we need to take a deeper view of the sighted response, rather than the blind one, to get to the end of this particular debate.

Says who?

You presume what you need to prove.

 

[Travis]

Some of the former call themselves "objectivists" as if designing a perfect chair was actually possible

That’s brilliant. Or building a chair that is perfect for every person in every environment. Lot’s of great chairs, some tested and certified, but you have to sit in a few of them to know.

 

[kemmler3D]

Since we don't know,

The only physical difference in a true sighted vs. unsighted test exists in the human brain. As such, if we are to run down the causes of differences in sighted tests, it's a question of psychoacoustics or just psychology. Certainly interesting and related topics to what we discuss here, but that can't be properly considered as part of audio reproduction per se.

 

[Axo1989]

Taibbi wrote a passage about Rand and objectivismin his 2010 book Griftopia. It's very entertaining. Read it here https://thefsb.substack.com/p/matt-taibbi-on-ayn-rand

I enjoyed that, thank you. Also, don't get me started.

Remembering Ms Rand's flavour of objectivist hardcore-ism is probably going to increase may appreciation of some of the ironies of ASR. While taking a break from some in the wider world.

 

[Travis]

Here are a few random observations about tests and academic journals:

1. The test, or measurement, or data is objective, but interpretation of the test is subjective.
2. Even laboratory and diagnostic tests are fallible and the result has to be interpreted in context of the clinical picture.
3. In academic journals, how the data has been collected plays a huge role in how meaningful or applicable it is.
4. Double blind placebo controlled trials are the gold standard, but it is easy to achieve a null result if you do not perform your experiment properly.
5. What is published in the journals may not be applicable to the patient sitting in front of you. In fact, it probably isn't.

Great stuff. I bet there is also a No. 6 that comes into play,, consciously or subconsciously, the funding/conflict of interest disclosures.