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Amplifier for Focal Kanta Nº2
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D
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Your logic is faulty.
Some cars have speedometers that are accurate at 75 mph. We know this because we have tested them with instruments.
Some cars have speedometers that are inaccurate by 5mph at 75 mph. We know this because we have tested them with instruments.
If we drive a car on the open road, but don't know whether the speedometer has tested slow, accurate or fast, can we identify by our senses which is the case? Making the assumption that we can is unwarranted. Not only that, but if you state that you can, then the next step is to prove what you say. That takes instrumentation.
Note: If we were talking about an error of 35 mph instead of 5 mph, the outcome would be obvious. Some tube gear and some extremely cheap and shoddy solid state gear are like that.
Note also that if there was another car driving alongside you in this test, and you knew it was accurate at 75 mph, the test would be much, much easier and more accurate. That's how blind ABX tests work.
Also ... what you believe you hear and whether the result is the same for someone else is entirely unpredictable. You can make it more predictable, however, by telling a listener that there is a difference, or even what sort of difference to try and hear. Expectation bias is powerful.
Jim
What's the difference of my view on the difference between sound signature of the two amps and this?
JBL 708P Review (Professional Monitor)
This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 708P studio monitor (active speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,799 each. Unlike the lower-end in the series, the 708P exudes seriousness both in look, feel and controls: I appreciated the handles on each side as...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Were double blind test performed before and after this EQ filter? Did you ever use a parametric equalizer while listening to music? Did you perform a blind test after each movement of each filter band to finally stop adjusting?
I don't find arguing for the sake of arguing very meaningful. It only increases universal entropy. I have shared crossover phase adjustment settings for Kanta 2s in this post. I have explained Gabor limit theorem. I have explained why a high impedance amp will not sound good with Kanta 2s and passed my own experience with two amps with these speakers. I have clarified speaker cables may degrade the sound if they are above a certain gauge and length. Mostly after I was asked to do so. The way you guys collectively defend a number of oscilloscope measurements against every possible argument, experience, knowledge and openly insult and attack from every possible angle makes me question your real benefit from measurements now more than ever.
Yes you are wrong
- but I agree about them sometimes sounding bright - and you already hit on the reasons - which are the tough load and the amplification. They often get partnered with expensive, boutique amps that are really just Sanyo in a fancy case. They can't maintain voltage into the low impedance load the speaker presents, with consequent effects on sound quality.
I think there are actually Focals that do have measured mid/HF lift but it's by no means all of them.
That was addressed in the review: "The tonality didn't change much but there was a perception of more clarity and more open sound (could be placebo but I feel good saying otherwise)."
Usually, I perform blind tests when differences are subtle as to which way is better. But there is almost always clear audible differences. It preference that can be fuzzy depending on music, etc.
D
Deleted member 21219
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My first post was in response to this:
I disagreed, pointing out the difference between enjoyment and analysis. You then posted this:
I then posted the post which you seem to have trouble understanding. That might be my fault; sometimes I'm not sufficiently clear. Basically, the point I made was that differences that are not egregious are not reliably detectable by ear.. That's what I referred to when I used the analogy of trying to ascertain your speed with only a 5 mph difference and an open road. I then made the statement:
You seem to have an unshakeable belief that your ears are "accurate enough" (my words). My point is that for anything other than differences that are glaring (egregious), instrumentation is necessary to prove that the differences are statistically significant, are repeatable, and what their characteristics might be.
My last comment was simply a caution against fostering confirmation bias in someone with whom you are conversing. I made that comment because you said, "I believe most of you will also instantly recognize the difference". This is called "leading". If you invite people to listen to your system and make that statement beforehand, it will "lead' listeners to hear whatever you have mentioned. It's another common bias.
Jim
and I didn't claim anything beyond that at any time Amir.
I admit I don't swap gear often (I upgrade when I can every couple of years since my early 20s and I have a habit of spending over my budget to hifi like most of you here I guess). I don't fancy overspending to Sanyos disguised in expensive boxes but sometimes you need power as @Mart68 explains above and it doesn't come cheap (or does it, please advise if you know an amp that will beat a Michi and cope with 2.3ohm loads at 100Hz at half the price for instance, I will happily switch! - I live in Europe and we don't have half the gear here you have easy access to on the other side of Atlantic).
But I swap digital filters more often than probably anyone else in the World because I run a channel dedicated only to creating digital filters (and ONLY with free tools for that matter). I also help others design custom filters for free since years. And there are usually clear (and sometimes very subtle but almost always audible) differences from filter to filter. It's relatively easy to remove room modes from the bass response. But most of a good DRC is about optimizing cohesion between the left and the right speaker in the room and there's no way you can measure that kind of thing with a single speaker. Most of the improvement in imaging and image depth and precision is about removing phase differences between the left and right speaker for example. Phase is not very audible but phase differentials are very audible. You can equalize both speakers' FR to perfection but you can end up in a major bass hole at the LP due to phase differences (or more specifically differences in regional group delays) and it will be very audible (as in -6dB drop at 100Hz which is half the volume compared to other frequencies). Btw, in my experience with people's data, this is so common that it almost deems every other improvement in gear pointless. It will also be visible with vector averaging and measurable with both speakers running the same sweep simultaneously. You can tell if the singer is at the dead center or shifted to one side audibly quite easily. Again that can not be measured easily although one can "suspect" that from phase anomalies between speakers in measurements.
In that respect, I am also quite aware of most of the dangerous biases I face like volume inequality, recency bias, expectation bias, day/night bias - if that's a thing and I do my best to remove these from the equation. But at the end of the day, a stereo filter's supremacy can only be heard. I can show you 10 different filters for the same room which all have the exact same flat frequency response but 9 of them will sound awful (audibly and not so easily measurably!).
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He seems polite and well-mannered, which is a great way to gain my respect for starters. And the other part was explained in my post already.
Well, Admin deleted my post. I wonder where I crossed the rules of that forum, but I start to get a hint of behavioral patterns here.
Do You have a guy measuring cables and their differences video in mind? Without pretending to be an engineer or scientist, I can only provide these pieces of evidence on my behalf and my subjective experience. Why are they silly? What was "silly" in that video?
I will not dwell on this anymore. I don't intend to convince anyone, and there is limited fun in this conversation here. I am accused of bias, and yet I seem to see all the signs of actual bias here from the other side of the fence. Isn't discussion and opinion sharing the foundation of a scientific process? It seems to me that only posts and opinions matching one agreed truth are allowed and welcomed here, nice, that is some kind of forum administration on a science-focused forum, for sure.
D
Deleted member 21219
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That seems to insinuate that you prefer a possible con man who is suave over an authority who is more acerbic. Please remember that it is the forte of con men and scam artists to maintain a suave demeanor; that is their weapon. Look at what the presenter is actually doing and not doing, and you will begin to see the truth of what they are and what they have to say. Opinions that go against proven tests promote ignorance and disrespect of proven scientific principles. If you want something you can respect, respect the Scientific Method, disciplined thinking and logic. They have built the world you see around you and that you enjoy; all the electronics, hydraulics, construction and medical facilities, plus the groceries you see in every store and the roads on which you travel.
But don't respect con men. That's not a good idea.
I don't pretend to be a doctor of medicine. Therefore, I listen to my doctor, and do what he says.
I don't pretend to be a car mechanic. Therefore I believe what my mechanic says.
I don't pretend to be a chemist. When the label on the ammonia says don't mix it with bleach, I believe them.
If you've come here acknowledging that you don't know as much as many of the members here, why do you persist in arguing?
1. That video directly contradicts known and proven science.
2. If you had perused this site, even cursorily, you would have known that. There is much to read here, please avail yourself of it.
No. Discussion and fact-finding is the foundation of science. Acceptance of what can be proven, and rejection of what cannot. Opinions are merely personal views, and as such they may be supported by evidence or they may be refuted by evidence.
There is no such thing as "one agreed truth". There is only one body of knowledge that can be corroborated by data, and another which cannot.
Would you have a science-based forum welcome lies, half-truths, skewed data, and the goals of con men? Would you have a science-based forum promote attractive but disingenuous behavior over hard data?
Look around you. The things that you see of benefit to us all ... were they made by opinion?
I think not.
Jim
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A recurring theme in this forum is the swift dismissal of listening experiences based on perceived biases, even when data seemingly supports them. This raises a crucial question: without quantifiable measures for these "ubiquitous biases," their invocation risks devaluing nuanced listening experiences.
Therefore, to equip ourselves for future discussions, let's explore the potential quantification of these oft-cited biases:
Therefore, to equip ourselves for future discussions, let's explore the potential quantification of these oft-cited biases:
- Expectation Bias: To what degree (dB shift) does our anticipation color our perception of sound? Does "reverse expectation bias" exist, and if so, is its influence demonstrably weaker?
- Recency Bias: Does this bias manifest as a flat spectral shift or with a frequency-dependent slope?
- Cognitive Bias: Which specific frequency ranges are most susceptible to its influence?
- Pre-Echo Bias: Can a bias generate the perception of pre-echo in the absence of the actual sonic event?
- Anti-Mode Bias: Could any bias potentially counteract undesirable room acoustics, effectively serving as a free EQ / Room Treatment tool?
- Measurement Bias: Can objective data itself be subject to bias, leading us to misinterpret a neutral soundscape as exciting due to reliance on measurements alone?
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D
Deleted member 21219
Guest
One should certainly hope so. "Nuance" has no connection to science or logic. Here is the definition (and etymology) of the word "nuance":
nuance (n.)
"slight or delicate degree of difference in expression, feeling, opinion, etc.," 1781, from French nuance "slight difference, shade of color" (17c.), from nuer "to shade," from nue "cloud," from Gallo-Roman *nuba, from Latin nubes "a cloud, mist, vapor," from PIE *sneudh- "fog" (source also of Avestan snaoda "clouds," Latin obnubere "to veil," Welsh nudd "fog," Greek nython, in Hesychius "dark, dusky").
The bold is mine.
"Expression, feeling and opinion" are not objective elements, they are elements of subjectivity. As such, they properly promote personal enjoyment and appreciation. They are not, however, elements of science or logic, since science and logic are dispassionate and devoid of emotion in order to come to a replicable (reproducible) conclusion without bias.
I (and possibly others) have mentioned the Scientific Method several times. I was under the impression that you understood it, and were arguing a position from which it was taken into account. The more I read, the less sure I am that is the case.
Here is a reasonably accurate description of the Scientific Method:
Scientific method - Wikipedia
Notice the reliance on skepticism, empiricism and data. This site is science-driven, and as such it values data to support an assertion. If there is no data, then the assertion is met with a great deal of skepticism.
Jim
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Ken1951
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MarkS
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It's really very simple: if you think component A sounds different than component B, you should be able to tell which is in your system by sound alone. Right?
But decades and decades of experience by many thousands of people shows that our brains easily trick us into believing that we can hear differences when in fact they are not there.
Have you ever participated in a well-controlled blind listening test? I have done several myself, and every time, differences that I thought I was SURE I heard went away when I didn't know which component was which.
So when someone comes along and says, well, actually, I can hear these differences, and I don't need to verify it under blind conditions, most of us here at ASR are just not inclined to believe it. Because it goes against this vast amount of prior experience, including for many of us our own personal experience.
This is not to say that audible differences NEVER exist. Some available amps have low enough damping factors to produce audible differences (compared to an amp with a high damping factor) on some speakers. If you play loud enough to drive one amp into clipping but not the other (being compared), that is likely audible. But again, these cases can be verified by a properly controlled blind listening test.
TL,DR: Uncontrolled unblind listening has, over the decades, proven to be too unreliable to reach a meaningful conclusion without verification by controlled blind listening.
I follow that in my speaker/headphone reviews and never see that kind of "dismissal." The dismissal comes when the data doesn't exist, or is completely unreliable. Come with data and we will have a proper discussion. A listening test for example needs to come with its protocol and statistical rigor. I heard it "blind" doesn't do it.
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See you should be able to prove this statement with a calibrated mic. Swap the amp, level set, run sweeps. I can absolutely prove that placement and toe in have a repeatable effect with this method. I have not been able to replicate this with cables or amplifiers. people who do this tend to move the mic to pretend something changed or some other uncontrolled variable. I swapped hypex, purifi, ait, and crown amps…measurements were the same in room. enjoy your journey and be open to the fact there are some very smart, educated people here who are happy to help (I’m not one fyi, journeyman only)
