Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...

[krabapple]

As a classic example of nearsightedness. Well intended. Articulated, but nearsighted.

Agree completely with Keith there. First CD mastered were very poor, engineers did not understand the medium yet, hardware was lacking, and we can go MEASURE many of the short comings.

Many 1st gen CDs (outside of classical) were sourced from tapes equalized to compensate for the deficiencies of vinyl, but were played on a new medium that had none of those deficiencies. There was also a curious and variable use of pre-emphasis, a practice that fell away fairly quickly.

Still, many early CD pressings are much sought after by subjectivist audiophiles on forums like this one.

The 'lacks' of the early hardware are measurable (assuming 35 year old hardware is operating today as well as it did back then) but their routine audibility is debatable.

 

[killdozzer]

Many 1st gen CDs (outside of classical) were sourced from tapes equalized to compensate for the deficiencies of vinyl, but were played on a new medium that had none of those deficiencies. There was also a curious and variable use of pre-emphasis, a practice that fell away fairly quickly.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one repeating this anymore. A lot of early CDs sounded bad because of masters being prepared for vinyl cutting.

 

[Killingbeans]

My wife does not know, nor cares what box I am playing or even if I am testing, yet she can call it out every time. Explain that as my bias.

@Blumlein 88 mentioned the clever Hans effect in post #2124.

If you had communicated the "problem" to her prior to her giving her input, and she was in a position to read you body language, there's a real risk of her adopting your bias through that. For instance, if you at some point had told her that the supposed glare was bothering you, and she now saw irritation in your body language or just felt it in your verbal communication, she'd be inclined to conjure up the glare in her own mind as well.

 

[killdozzer]

@tvrgeek
Just don't get mad and keep in mind no one here is saying you're surely imagining things. Some are merely warning you that you haven't done enough to rule it out even though you seem to think you have.

 

[DanielT]

.... Claiming I can't actually hear a difference and declaring the limited set of measurements perfect is making the conclusion first. Completely against the scientific method. How is this not clear enough? ...

If you can imagine that you hear differences, you can just as easily imagine that you do not hear differences. You can fool yourself in so many different ways.

Edit
Or if it sounds kinder to say that you persuade yourself.

 

[tvrgeek]

Yes the tests we perform are very good. Never said they were not. What makes you think they are perfect or complete? Just because they are as good as you understand today? I know they are not and have suggested several places they may be improved that could, or could not, describe differences some of us hear. Why does that scare you?

Measurements have changed and gotten better over time. Once upon a time, SNR and DF were the benchmarks. Before that, we reveled in a flat frequency response. Once amps had a wider bandwidth that 20-20, some proclaimed victory ( @ 5% distortion) Then we went crazy over SID, which was found to be better described by IM. Roll back 30 years. Would you still have had the same bias that the tests are perfect and no one can hear differently? ( I remember the argument then) Or do you sell some bit of kit that the subjectivist have panned that measures well so you have a campaign to proclaim everyone can't hear and your product must be perfect? Proclaiming everyone but you wrong is just not conducive to moving the question forward. I don't know what you can hear or care if you do hear. I know what I hear, consistently and would like to further measurements to describe it.

 

[rdenney]

@tvrgeek There are reasons that explain why your wife may have noticed a difference. Even a change in level a tenth or two of a dB can be perceived as a difference (and a preferential difference at that) without actually sounding "louder".

But there are other possibilities, too. One is that you messed something up during setup. You noted that you had to turn down 3KHz on your equalizer to get rid of the "glare". Did that change the frequency response? You can actually measure that with REW (free) and a sound-card interface. That would be one simple and low-cost way to ensure that there was no missed mistake in the setup. I once chased my tail for three days before discovering one of my patch cords had a flaky RCA plug. I have even recorded the output of a device I though was distorting using my Benchmark ADC, and then studied the waveform in Audacity.

The working assumptions should be: Items that measure with (essentially) zero distortion and flat frequency response should sound the same. If they don't, then there is clearly some difference of application versus the test conditions. Is the DAC overdriving the preamp input? Is the DAC turned down digitally and then overamplified downstream resulting in a gain structure that is clipping? This isn't that hard to do. The outputs of the DAC have to be plugged into something. If you are using two inputs of a preamp and switching back and forth between them have you confirmed that both are set up for line-level inputs of the same and appropriate level? I've seen preamps that provided different input sensitivities for some line-level sources versus others, and the "standard" for singled-ended line-level inputs (such as it ever was in consumer audio) did change from 1V RMS to 2V RMS when CD players were introduced. Some DACs that serve as preamps put out more than that (not the D30Pro, however). I've known people to plug line-level devices into phono inputs (and vice versa). Have you checked your playback software to ensure that there isn't some EQ setting you are not seeing hidden in there somewhere? It's even not impossible that the DAC (or whatever it was plugged into) was simply defective. Have you systematically investigated all those possibilities?

And there is this undeniable fact: What was glaringly (so to speak) obvious to your wife in the next room is utterly unnoticed by the many users of the devices in question. When my experience differs from 1.) measurements and 2.) broadly reported experience, it is not my instinct to believe that both of those are wrong and I am right. That would seem to me a little presumptuous at the very least.

The point is: where are our instincts? Your instinct is that measurements are inadequate and you use your example to demonstrate that. Hearing a difference met your expectations and your investigation ended there. The instincts of those debating you are that measurements have not been shown to be inadequate to describe things people can actually hear (particularly hot response at 3 KHz), and therefore want evidence to suggest that 1.) you are actually hearing what you think you are hearing, and 2.) you have fully investigated all the other possible causes of the result you perceive. You cannot persuade people who do not share your instincts without addressing those instincts, and continued effort to do so is simply unproductive.

Rick "who blamed a series of electronics for a fault in a pair of headphones, and did so recently" Denney

 

[Freeway]

 

[audio2design]

Yes the tests we perform are very good. Never said they were not. What makes you think they are perfect or complete? Just because they are as good as you understand today? I know they are not and have suggested several places they may be improved that could, or could not, describe differences some of us hear. Why does that scare you?

Measurements have changed and gotten better over time. Once upon a time, SNR and DF were the benchmarks. Before that, we reveled in a flat frequency response. Once amps had a wider bandwidth that 20-20, some proclaimed victory ( @ 5% distortion) Then we went crazy over SID, which was found to be better described by IM. Roll back 30 years. Would you still have had the same bias that the tests are perfect and no one can hear differently? ( I remember the argument then) Or do you sell some bit of kit that the subjectivist have panned that measures well so you have a campaign to proclaim everyone can't hear and your product must be perfect? Proclaiming everyone but you wrong is just not conducive to moving the question forward. I don't know what you can hear or care if you do hear. I know what I hear, consistently and would like to further measurements to describe it.

It is not 1975 any more.

But more than that, we recognize the strong influence of confirmation bias and the lack of blind testing showing differences in sound except, at the electrical level, except when the measurements indicate their should be. In fact it is more often the case that we expect a detectable difference but there is not. That is because real music masks a whole lot of stuff.

 

[Spkrdctr]

You have to take into account that the one I love and the one that loves me is always on my side. A wife is not a best measuring device regardless of what one might think.

It would be much better if the wife can clearly hear a big difference while she is gardening in the back yard. Now that would be amazing!

 

[Mart68]

When you think how much time and money has been spent over the years setting up controlled blind tests when all along all that was required to get the same level of accurate data was an adjacent room with a wife in it. It's a revelation.

I think the situation is that people have to properly demonstrate that they can really hear these differences before anyone starts running about trying to measure them, or find ways to measure them.

It's not happened yet despite so many people being so confident about what they perceive and people even offering cash rewards if they succeed. Funny, that.

 

[SIY]

I'm quite proud that my article in Linear Audio a decade or so ago was (I think) the first to connect the non-audiophile wife in the next room and the mathematical horse. But note what the cue was for my disillusionment- not body language, but choice of music.

 

[Spkrdctr]

It is not 1975 any more.

But more than that, we recognize the strong influence of confirmation bias and the lack of blind testing showing differences in sound except, at the electrical level, except when the measurements indicate their should be. In fact it is more often the case that we expect a detectable difference but there is not. That is because real music masks a whole lot of stuff.

Bless you for this post! Need I say "The Bose" effect again? Proven fact that millions of people believed they were the most accurate amazing best systems in the world. All of this based on clever and exceptionally well done marketing. Then after 20 years, the "Bose Effect" wore off and now you can't even buy Bose setups anymore. Millions fooled. Millions proclaimed audio nirvana and millions dead wrong. Testing and measurements ultimately destroyed the marketing campaign but it took over 20 years. Or, to sum it all up, don't believe everything you hear.

 

[pkane]

I'm quite proud that my article in Linear Audio a decade or so ago was (I think) the first to connect the non-audiophile wife in the next room and the mathematical horse. But note what the cue was for my disillusionment- not body language, but choice of music.

I think just as important as music choice and body language is how the wife communicates her preferences and how that communication is interpreted. For example, does one hoof tap mean "like" or "dislike"?

 

[Robin L]

At high enough SPL the ear is nonlinear. I think it's analogous to distortion in a loudspeaker. I don't know the mechanism but I like to imagine it has to do with those ear bones (malleus, incus, stapes) rattling against each other.

Some emergency vehicles here in Boston have dual wailing sirens so loud that when I get close enough I can here the hetrodyne tone generated in my ear. It's a very interesting sensation because it's a very clear additional tone but I can easily tell that it's coming from in my head. When the siren moves away the extra tone disappears.

Yeah, functionally it's a transducer, closer in design to a microphone than a speaker.

 

[SIY]

For example, does one hoof tap mean "like" or "dislike"?

I used to joke that my ex was so ugly that if you asked her how old she was, she'd respond by hoof taps.

Wait, I still say that.

 

[Jimbob54]

I used to joke that my ex was so ugly that if you asked her how old she was, she'd respond by hoof taps.

Wait, I still say that.

You can lead a horse to the alter.....

 

[Sal1950]

If you can imagine that you hear differences, you can just as easily imagine that you do not hear differences. You can fool yourself in so many different ways.

Edit
Or if it sounds kinder to say that you persuade yourself.

Very true. That's why we all have to use bias controlled DB listening in any attempts to determine the existence or lack of differences in HiFi components. At least if we intend to make public pronouncements on their value.

 

[gsp1971]

I think it would be more fair to say @keith_h got lucky and bought a good product.

Can't prove it, but my guess is @keith_h was after a lifestyle product with a small footprint and a high WAF rather than anything else.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I'm quite proud that my article in Linear Audio a decade or so ago was (I think) the first to connect the non-audiophile wife in the next room and the mathematical horse. But note what the cue was for my disillusionment- not body language, but choice of music.

What a nice article! You had me when I read that you mentioned your lying brain!. I have said that on ASR numerous times. It was a great article for "regular Joes" to read and learn from. So much of it matched my little bit of experience perfectly. The visual/audio cues or tells are especially important for anyone trying to do an at home test with friends. Well, there is a lot to be considered but it also depends on what the test is for. My experience back in the pre-historic era was started out to find out if a change was audible. We kept hitting a wall time and time again. No matter what we changed EXCEPT for speakers, no one could tell any difference even though they claimed they could EASILY and you would have to be deaf to not hear the massive change. Well, after our listeners not being able to tell any changes, we reverted to changing the entire system except for the speakers. Still nothing, then we put crazy (engineering wise) interconnects and speaker wire in, I mean crazy bad. Thinking now we have messed up the system enough that it "should" make an audible difference. Well, still nothing. We found out by just testing and seeing where it lead too. We were all shocked at how little was audible! Mr. Bose wasn't a decade later! Our final conclusion and it still holds in production today, that the speakers are by far the most important item and that everything before the speakers is not all that critical. In other words a clean signal output is a clean signal output. If your electronics don't mess it up, it will be good to go.

This sprang from car audio testing, but morphed into home audio testing too. So, the manufacturers were ready to spend OMG! big bucks and get into exotic high end stereo systems in cars but all the testing showed them to not waste the money. Even today not much has changed in the big picture. These engineers went nuts designing and prototyping serious amazing high end stuff for cars. The results in different areas was truly amazing. Such as an early version of a simulated object audio in a car, mini-Magnepans, mini ribbon speakers. They were at the bleeding edge of audio at that time and were a pretty humble bunch. No egos got in the way. Just more old memories for a guy that says "Remember? Hell, I was there!". I kept my young mouth shut, watched and learned. So much research that never gets to market that is unbelievable.