"Things that cannot be measured"

[solderdude]

Yes a group of people who have the same goal hifi Lifelike reproduction and good experience and who know the reference the live music.

I too would consider myself amongst people who have the same goal hifi reproduction and good experience and who know the reference the live music. But at least I know darn well that 'blind' testing is essential and don't claim to have superior hearing and gear.

Why do you not think such a group can arrive a more accurate result than the individual blindfolded ????, they can !!!, That’s what it’s all about, and then you can stick your demonstrably useless blind test up where it’s very dark.

No one talks about blindfolds. Also the result is NOT more accurate because they KNOW what is 'tested'.

I was actually hoping you could demonstrate that blind tests are demonstrably useless.

You have a group of 10 people who are into art, photography and image manipulation. You show them an optical illusion where things appear to move. Everyone sees this. Including the 10 mentioned people. They know through their expertise that the image doesn't move (it is on paper) yet perceive it. They know it isn't so but cannot deny their eyes tell them so. Does the picture not move to them ?

 

[Raindog123]

Acoustic power of a 75 person symphonic orchestra is about 70W. Considering a 3% efficiency of an average loudspeaker, you would need some 2.3kW

Power of an orchestra might be 70W, but in what [concert hall] volume? At what listening range? You do not need that power (level) in your room, at a few meters (It will deafen you). And even it a speaker efficiency is 3% (sounds way low, maybe another ‘matter of definition’ disconnect), yet regardless, there is hardly a problem providing 2.3kW of (now electrical) amplification.

 

[fmplayer]

Emotion is subjective. I have seen people get tears while listening certain passages of classical music. To me they sounded crap

Emotion is measurable. Take the polygraph (aka lying detector). What is not measurable to my knowledge is what leads to the emotional reaction

 

[fmplayer]

Power of an orchestra might be 70W, but in what [concert hall] volume? At what listening range? You do not need that power (level) in your room, at a few meters (It will deafen you). And even it a speaker efficiency is 3% (sounds way low, maybe another ‘matter of definition’ disconnect), yet regardless, there is hardly a problem providing 2.3kW of (now electrical) amplification.

The problem is rather of the driver side. 2.3 kW Pfuu.
We agree as to listening level. You can easily get 130 dB in your room, but once again, acoustic level is not acoustic power: from Sound power(Wikipedia) :
"sound power is neither room-dependent nor distance-dependent. Sound pressure is a property of the field at a point in space, while sound power is a property of a sound source, equal to the total power emitted by that source in all directions."
Acoustic power = Sound power (W)
Acoustic level = Sound pressure, sound level (dB)

 

[audio2design]

I skimmed about 1/3 of the pages, so apologies if I missed anything.

Thought exercise: You have two signals going to a speaker. The first signal, A, is a perfect recreation of the signal. 0 measurable anomalies. None, nada, zip. The second signal, B, has very measurable anomalies. It is not a perfect recreation.

QUESTION: Which is high fidelity, A or B?

Answer: If your answer is anything other than, "I don't know", or "There is not enough information to determine an answer", then your answer is wrong. You cannot say with accuracy that A is high fidelity and B is not because you are only looking at the signal going to the speaker, not what is coming out.

Take a step back. My mantra, that I repeat daily, is that if you did not listen blind, you did not listen. One of the reasons why I don't post with my real name is a portion of my customer base would not take kindly to that stance. However, they buy my stuff.

At a signal level, yes, we can measure with more than enough precision to confidently say whether a difference is audible or not. I am very confident in that statement. However, to my thought exercise, the perfect electrical signal does not guarantee the most perfect signal out of the speaker.

Two channel audio is so grossly flawed though, that saying "high fidelity", is almost laughable. Microphones are flawed, every recording engineer and mixing engineer hears differently, you are not listening with the same speakers, or room as all that mixing work was done, we don't know the mood of the engineer when they did the final mix, etc. The only proper definition of high fidelity would be recreation of the original performance, but 99.9% of recordings are so far from that that it is a pointless exercise.

In the modern recording process, yes, noise and distortion is being added to recordings to make them more "real". The goal is to sell music, not perfect recreation. Not to all of them, but it is common. There are plug-ins to simulate analog tape machines as well.

Synthetic purely resistive loads do not perfectly simulate how an amplifier will behave into a real speaker load even from a classic high-fi definition, but they are still the standard in testing.

Audio science within the framework of audio recreation is ultimately about what the brain perceives, so perhaps we need to be a bit broader in our definition of high-fi. We are still working with our highly flawed two channel setup, so let's be realistic that it is not "high-fi".

p.s. not sure this was covered, but yes, film capacitors for cross-overs have been measured to have electromechanical resonances that are measurably within the realm of audibility. This was presented at AES.

 

[Objectivist01]

Emotion is measurable. Take the polygraph (aka lying detector). What is not measurable to my knowledge is what leads to the emotional reaction

In terms of the quality of an audioequipment it's not. So it's a baseless thing to audio. Varies vastly from people to people

 

[Raindog123]

"sound power is neither room-dependent nor distance-dependent. Sound pressure is a property of the field at a point in space, while sound power is a property of a sound source, equal to the total power emitted by that source in all directions."
Acoustic power = Sound power (W)
Acoustic level = Sound pressure, sound level (dB)

This is what I said in my first reply “Certain amount of power gets emitted at the sound source. With its max [power] level. Than it travels throughout the space, and as it fills larger and larger volume, it’s [power] level gets lower and lower...” I’ll add to that, acoustic power is delivered through acoustic pressure.

Don't get me wrong, but you are a rather confused individual. Just like with Fourier, I would suggest you get consistent, continuous understanding of the field - through going through a course or a book rather than a few definitions on internet - and then build your understanding model, and share it with the world.

 

[ahofer]

I whitnessed the conductor of my local symphonic orchestra doing this without comparison ... Golden ear

Perfect Pitch, more likely.

 

[ahofer]

Yes a group of people who have the same goal hifi Lifelike reproduction and good experience and who know the reference the live music.
Why do you not think such a group can arrive a more accurate result than the individual blindfolded ????, they can !!!, That’s what it’s all about, and then you can stick your demonstrably useless blind test up where it’s very dark.

Unsupported assertion ("they can")+vulgar exclamation ("stick..up") with embedded unsupported assertion ("demonstrably useless"). We know that you are outnumbered, and that's stressful, but could you try to get it together?

 

[solderdude]

Answer: If your answer is anything other than, "I don't know", or "There is not enough information to determine an answer", then your answer is wrong. You cannot say with accuracy that A is high fidelity and B is not because you are only looking at the signal going to the speaker, not what is coming out.

You can say that A is providing the correct signal to the speaker. The only thing you cannot say is what the speaker makes of it. Obviously you can also conclude that there is an inferior signal sent by B. You cannot say what the speaker makes of this.
It won't be 'better' unless the added distortion is exactly compensating errors made by the speaker. Unlikely.

All one can say is that people prefer the added distortions.

. The only proper definition of high fidelity would be recreation of the original performance, but 99.9% of recordings are so far from that that it is a pointless exercise.

Hi fidelity for the reproduction is simple. Accuracy towards the reproduced signal. Not to what once was and cannot be recreated or what people prefer.

 

[BluesDaddy]

You must admit that perception is something subjective and purely individual. Hallucinations occur when your perception (visual, auditive, ...) is not true to reality.

An illusion is not the same as an hallucination. You seem to have a habit of conflating concepts to attempt to support your position. True auditory hallucination is the perception of sounds without any auditory stimuli present. What you have with sighted listening are auditory illusions. Like watching a moving with either no center channel or the center channel above or below the screen - your brain will pretty much always perceive the sound of a voice coming from the position of the person on the screen. The whole of stereo reproduction is an illusion.

 

[CMOT]

Very accurately said, mostly because we do not achieve the same results, but as I mentioned, if a group listens hears something really good Hifi or bad hifi the group will agree. Even the measurement mafia and those who are more subjective agree.

You can measure the good Hifi, but there is no guarantee that it measures more accurately than what sounds bad.
And I'm pretty sure you can not look at a set of measurements and say wov!!! this will sound absolutely fantastic, the opportunity can of course always be there.
I still think an assessment with ear and brain and a defined reference is superior in terms of measurement, in terms of what matters to the listener.
And measurement is best to check if the devices work as they should. Both have their place, but some obviously weight what they measure as more significant than what they hear. Or what?

While you overall statement is reasonable - that almost everyone finds it easier to identify/distinguish samples at the two ends of a distribution - is basically correct, there are few important points that should be made:

1. depending on the variance of the distribution, it may not be particular hard or more challenging to identify/distinguish samples in the center of the distribution. So the distance between one tail and the mean might be obvious, but equally so for two samples that are the same distance apart, but equidistant to the mean. Distance in the space matters (and the variability in that space), not whether something sits on the tails or not. This is also one reason everyone should use dprime (d') as their measure of sensitivity in discriminations (and not accuracy or hits).
2. Depending on the learner, it may be that tails are actually noiser for discriminations than the region around the mean. If "really good Hifi or bad hifi" is relatively rare, depending on how one "learns" about the hifi space, then the low samples for most people in these regions means that they may be poorer at making judgments (with full DBT of course). Telling really good from really bad should be easy because the distance is large, but for nearer samples at either tail, one might predict more variability in listener judgments than for samples near the more common samples near the mean. (good example - people are better at telling apart/individuating faces for races which they experience frequently, and poorer for faces for races they do not encounter as often)

However, I can't agree with "I still think an assessment with ear and brain and a defined reference is superior in terms of measurement, in terms of what matters to the listener." as you state it. I could agree with "an assessment with ear and brain and a defined reference is superior in terms of measurement, in terms of what matters to the listener, IF that assessment is done fully double blind with appropriate controls and experimental design" That is, given a set of audio devices with some set of fairly similar measurements (or even not so similar), if one wants to decide between them in terms of what matters to you, then go ahead, but don't fool yourself - do it completely double blind and controlling for all other factors - you might discover there is no preference and then just save money or if you can reliably tell and prefer one device from the others under fully double blind conditions and you prefer that device, then go for it.

The one other thing worth raising in this entire discussion is variability across listeners - it is nothing special. Individual perceptual abilities are like any other physical attribute - a roughly normal distribution with a mean and a variance. You might be near the mean or you might be on a tail. But physical listening abilities, learned listening abilities, etc. behave like any other human characteristics and I have seen no evidence that they are noisier, more variable or less repeatable than anything else humans can do. Think of this way - your running times for 100 meters are determined by your physical attributes, your fitness, and your personal motivation - if you were to repeat the 100 meter run over many different days, your times would be very consistent around a mean. And depending on your points on the distribution relative to others, your performance would be reliable relative to other human runners. Some day-to-day variability, but around a consistent mean. And this kind of performance (whether physical or perceptual or cognitive) can be measured/modeled/predicted just like the measurements that are relevant to device performance. This is what Google etc are now making money on (collecting data on you, then predicting your behavior in complex contexts - to get you to buy stuff...)

 

[Raindog123]

It won't be 'better' unless the added distortion is exactly compensating errors made by the speaker. Unlikely.

Is not it what all that room measurements/compensation novelty is all about?

 

[BluesDaddy]

Emotion is measurable. Take the polygraph (aka lying detector). What is not measurable to my knowledge is what leads to the emotional reaction

But it can't measure what is triggering the physiological response. It is a significant reason why lie detector tests are not admissible in court. "Emotional impact" is not a characteristic of a hi-fi system, but the cumulative effect of all the stimuli, internal and external, on the listener at that moment. In other words, it is a purely subjective perception (within the brain of the individual listener). Otherwise, if a hi-fi system were actually transmitting some "emotional impact" EVERY listener with what might be termed "normal hearing" would have the same experience.

 

[CMOT]

An illusion is not the same as an hallucination. You seem to have a habit of conflating concepts to attempt to support your position. True auditory hallucination is the perception of sounds without any auditory stimuli present. What you have with sighted listening are auditory illusions. Like watching a moving with either no center channel or the center channel above or below the screen - your brain will pretty much always perceive the sound of a voice coming from the position of the person on the screen. The whole of stereo reproduction is an illusion.

Yes. Precisely - illusions are NOT hallucinations. Illusions are inferences that reveal how our perceptions do not map correctly to the physical world - typically they are reasonable inferences that just don't quite work for a given context/physical situation. Stereo reproduction is an illusion, but not really in that we tend to hold the term illusion for the oddities of inferences where the inferences have "gone bad" - I like to think of stereo reproduction is a perceptual inference that the actual locations of the sources correspond to the positions specified by the ILDs and (to some extent when sitting in the right spot) the ITDs arriving at your two ears - of course that is "wrong" in that the actual sources are the speakers, not the auditory objects/sources you hear and localize. So yeah, an illusion, but a "good" one? If there is such a thing.

And yes, hallucination is typically reserved for purely internally generated experiences....

 

[CMOT]

But it can't measure what is triggering the physiological response. It is a significant reason why lie detector tests are not admissible in court. "Emotional impact" is not a characteristic of a hi-fi system, but the cumulative effect of all the stimuli, internal and external, on the listener at that moment. In other words, it is a purely subjective perception (within the brain of the individual listener). Otherwise, if a hi-fi system were actually transmitting some "emotional impact" EVERY listener with what might be termed "normal hearing" would have the same experience.

See my recent post. Emotions are a physical phenomenon - of your nervous system and connected "sensors" - there is nothing special about it. They might be noisier than other systems, but they can - in theory and ultimately - be measured and predicted based on inputs, context, and your own wiring/experiences. To claim otherwise would be to claim that emotions are "magic" and outside the realm of science. But that is a slippery slope in which you might have to admit that the entire chain is subject to magic.

 

[SIY]

General note: if someone is absolutely resistant to the concepts of evidence, data, and burden of proof, shows no indication of wanting to learn anything, repeatedly demonstrates impenetrable ignorance, and continually argues in bad faith, it really is not worth wasting keystrokes and feeding it.

Ignorance can usually be cured, but it is a sad fact of life that it cannot ALWAYS be cured. That's hard for many to accept, but it's nonetheless true.

 

[CMOT]

In terms of the quality of an audioequipment it's not. So it's a baseless thing to audio. Varies vastly from people to people

ACK... How can people be so reasonable and scientific about measuring hifi equipment then toss out that people are just variable and we can leverage the same science of measurement and understanding to human beings - which are just (complex) physical systems!!! It is either all magic or none of it is. Don't be selective in your science. Different devices might have different measurements or the same measurements with some variability across the space of devices. People are devices and the same is true in measuring their abilities/preferences and having some variability. But it isn't impossible, just hard. (not saying it is a solved problem, just that it is a scientific one)

 

[BluesDaddy]

See my recent post. Emotions are a physical phenomenon - of your nervous system and connected "sensors" - there is nothing special about it. They might be noisier than other systems, but they can - in theory and ultimately - be measured and predicted based on inputs, context, and your own wiring/experiences. To claim otherwise would be to claim that emotions are "magic" and outside the realm of science. But that is a slippery slope in which you might have to admit that the entire chain is subject to magic.

You need to re-read what I wrote. Emotional response can be measured, but why that particular response is triggered is not measurable (not until we can actually "read" thoughts or memories at any rate). You might ask a question during a lie detector session that triggers memories that create the same emotional response that a "lie" would. I'm not claiming any "magic".

 

[Objectivist01]

ACK... How can people be so reasonable and scientific about measuring hifi equipment then toss out that people are just variable and we can leverage the same science of measurement and understanding to human beings - which are just (complex) physical systems!!! It is either all magic or none of it is. Don't be selective in your science. Different devices might have different measurements or the same measurements with some variability across the space of devices. People are devices and the same is true in measuring their abilities/preferences and having some variability. But it isn't impossible, just hard. (not saying it is a solved problem, just that it is a scientific one)

Did you understand what you wrote ? I didn't.