A question about what is measurable.

[fas42]

CoCo indeed it was - he was totally into it, pushed it as far as it could go, a full on tweaker - then, he moved to the Amiga ...

 

[amirm]

Amir, how do you test whether a mechanic has fixed a faulty car? Do you demand he supply graphs, and documented test results - or, do you simply drive the car?

Depends on what you need the answer for. If it is for you, then you don't need anything beyond what you personally require. If you want to go and argue with other mechanics what was fixed to give you extra horsepower, then yes, you need evidence if that is controversial.

Where I'm coming from, that's how it works - fixing up a poor interconnect link may solve a flaw in the system because of the poor quality construction of the link - asking me for data about it is quite meaningless.

Again, if it is not something you want to advocate in a forum you can do as you please. But if you are here to explain how you fixed that flaw with changing the interconnect, then we need more than that.

 

[amirm]

CoCo indeed it was - he was totally into it, pushed it as far as it could go, a full on tweaker - then, he moved to the Amiga ...

You could "poke" a value in a memory location and the thing would run faster! Problem was that it would get lost on every power up so you had to keep doing it.

I did not own an Amiga but boy did that have a cult following. There are people even today that use those machines. Someone even built an ASIC to emulate the whole machine, bugs and all!

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

My my John, a bit paranoid? I was responding to Tim. Ok, so stereo isn't 3D, it's 2D left to right? Really?
I'm guessing my links went over your head?

Not really. I didn't make the statements you quoted from my OP above, I was quoting John.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

In your blind ranting you fail to see that Plonk is quoting me in this text - exactly the same text you quoted & responded to "Amir, are topics to be avoided which "accepted audio science/engineering" have nothing to offer?"

Please, your attempts at pissing contests are tiresome & childish.

This thread might have something useful to offer if you stay out of it with your off-topic rants?

Oh I wouldn't want AJ to stay out of the thread. He actually answer the question.

Tim

 

[John Kenny]

I saw of all the terms, soundstage is one gray area. Yes we can measure all that may contribute to it. But soundstage is a subjective concept created in our mind.

Oops, all we hear is created in our mind - I'm really not with you on this.

Quantifying it with absolute measurements can be hard. There certainly is no number that says the depth of the soundstage.

OK, so in answer to Tim's o/p, there are things we all agree that we hear but which we can't really quantify - let me be more specific, if I say that I perceive a difference in soundstage depth between A & B, it is not expected that I can produce measurements for this difference - it is agreed that there are no measurements which show this. What about timbre then?

That ambiguity though is not a license to attribute everything to it though. Saying you changed an interconnect and soundstage became a lot deeper is still not an acceptable notion in this forum. Some things are just too out of reach and that is an example of it. Of course these notions can be challenged by showing measurements, listening tests, etc. that demonstrate real cause and effect here. We just can't declare them just because soundstage depth is a hard thing to quantify with a number.

OK, so far this forum prohibits discussion of soundstage & timbre unless measurements or blind tests are available.

Can I check this - if I produced this evidence which isn't conclusive but suggests that soundstage is differentiated - is this acceptable?
From here : "Interestingly, there were a few listeners who got five right and we invited them to try again. When asked what they were listening to, one replied the cymbals, and another said the depth of the soundstage."

It's certainly not as rigorous as AES would accept but the criteria for what is acceptable here is not that it's publishable, right?

 

[John Kenny]

Oh I wouldn't want AJ to stay out of the thread. He actually answer the question.

Tim

Sure Tim, whatever floats your boat & I know you like a bit of ranting yourself
As to his answering the question, are you sure you have decided this on technical reasons rather than which person appeals to you most

 

[amirm]

Can I check this - if I produced this evidence which isn't conclusive but suggests that soundstage is differentiated - is this acceptable?
From here : "Interestingly, there were a few listeners who got five right and we invited them to try again. When asked what they were listening to, one replied the cymbals, and another said the depth of the soundstage."

It's certainly not as rigorous as AES would accept but the criteria for what is acceptable here is not that it's publishable, right?

That type of test is perfectly acceptable to present to this forum. It would be a test of transparency of digital systems, not whether soundstage really does or does not change with digitization. For that there needs to be more information than what is at the link.

 

[amirm]

BTW that test is worthy of its own thread.

 

[fas42]

You could "poke" a value in a memory location and the thing would run faster! Problem was that it would get lost on every power up so you had to keep doing it.

I did not own an Amiga but boy did that have a cult following. There are people even today that use those machines. Someone even built an ASIC to emulate the whole machine, bugs and all!

It was an absolutely remarkable machine, a tour de force as a design and engineering exercise - what it was capable of doing in a raw state was so much more advanced than anything else around at the time - and, as the movie says, build it and they will come! Sharp programmers, that is. I remember a text editor that could scroll on the screen like an F1 car, it made anything in the DOS/Windows world look like a horse and cart.

Stuffed up by the later, lousy management, the old story - they milked it for as long as possible ... and it faded away ...

 

[AJ Soundfield]

it is agreed that there are no measurements which show this.

No.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

BTW that test is worthy of its own thread.

It looks exactly like the test I proposed, except with one possible flaw. Could you see it?

 

[fas42]

John, I would suggest trying to set up a thread that people like Opus111 and me would tune into, and see if it was acceptable to Amir.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

I say that I perceive a difference in soundstage depth between A & B

Your perceptions are in error due to method.
If not, how did soundstage depth difference get designed and manufactured in A vs B?

 

[John Kenny]

John, I would suggest trying to set a thread that people like Opus111 and me would tune into, and see if it was acceptable to Amir.

Why? You think that AJ won't do his territory urine-marking on a new thread?
Let's see?

 

[fas42]

Your perceptions are in error due to method.
If not, how did soundstage depth difference get designed and manufactured in A vs B?

The simple answer is that soundstage depth always exists in the recording - it's perceived as depth when the acoustic cues are heard clearly. The difference between A and B is that one may distort those acoustic cues less than the other.

 

[fas42]

Why? You think that AJ won't do his territory urine-marking on a new thread?
Let's see?

John, you don't appreciate that AJ doesn't do urine testing unless he's double blinded - of course, some would say he's already double blinded, - and so if that thread is so afflicted then it's a piece of data, worthy of its own thread. You know, an AES paper on how good AJ's accuracy is ...

 

[March Audio]

I think the parameters of this forum have been clearly explained. This isn't an exclusive club, anyone is welcome to contribute, but they have to accept those parameters. It strikes me that some are having difficulty accepting that.

If some want to engage in purely subjective discussion then there are plenty of other outlets for that, however this forum is not going to be yet another cesspit of subjectivity.

 

[Opus111]

The difference between A and B is that one may distort those acoustic cues less than the other.

My hypothesis about this is that when artifacts are introduced they cannot be constructed by the brain within the audio landscape. So they always appear to come from the surface of the transducer, without any corresponding depth. This is how I explain 'forwardness' reported by some listeners in various systems - if a system is 'forward' its inaccurate - it 'drags' the soundstage forward by virtue of the phony sources now at the surface of the drivers.

 

[fas42]

My hypothesis about this is that when artifacts are introduced they cannot be constructed by the brain within the audio landscape. So they always appear to come from the surface of the transducer, without any corresponding depth. This is how I explain 'forwardness' reported by some listeners in various systems - if a system is 'forward' its inaccurate - it 'drags' the soundstage forward by virtue of the phony sources now at the surface of the drivers.

Yes, the artifacts have zero acoustic cues associated with them, hence zero depth and other spatial information - you "hear" the driver. A 'forward' system is inaccurate, because the ear can't discern, unravel the acoustic information - when the playback is very poor, it devolves to a raucous mess, the brain is overloaded with "corrupted data" - and it becomes impossible to decipher anything, almost.

The Zu speakers mentioned in another thread allow that mess to be replayed effortlessly at high levels, which is why people run from the rooms they're in, when the system is poorly set up. A very conventional speaker sounds exactly like a Zu, when you go right up to a single speaker - the efficiency of the Zu just allows the damage to obviously spread out further ...