Can You Trust Your Ears? By Tom Nousaine

[krabapple]

Which is imo a strange reaction to oivavoi´s post.
Maybe it would help to read something about qualitative methods and why it is often used in scientific work; sometimes a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods gains really astonishing results.....

You need to decide if you are interested in whether a report of difference accords with objective reality, or in the phenomenology ('subjective reality') of audio perception.

Regardless of what 'qualitative' methods may show, a single device is not two devices; a phantom switch experience (e.g. like what Amir reported, where he *thought* he had made a difference, but realized later that he had not) is not an experience of an *objective* difference.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Wrong. As someone who's been listening to music through gear for 40something years, I'm happy when such level of performance has reached commodity status. I want that to be true for all the gear in the chain.

Wow. After a long absence, you suddenly reappear with a burst of enthusiastic posts. Did you just get out of jail or something?

But, I agree with the above. I wish I could just go down to Best Buy, pay a few hundred bucks, bring it home, plug it in, and, like magic, it sweeps me away. Actually, many, even most, people do precisely that. And, in fact, I suspect their sound in many cases ain't terrible. I have no doubt it has improved enormously over my lifetime, even from the bargain bins.

 

[NorthSky]

How about just accepting that you might be wrong?

Only through other's own expert set of eyes.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Conversely, if 'training' via a raised-level audition of a fleeting 'tell' is the only way you can ace the ABX, it indicates you probably do not really hear a difference at all under normal , 'pre-trained' listening conditions, much less a difference even remotely approaching the 'night and day, veils were lifted, the sound just bloomed, even my wife could hear it' etc nonsense that audiophiles (and hi end reviewers) routinely report.

+1

 

[Blumlein 88]

Wow. After a long absence, you suddenly reappear with a burst of enthusiastic posts. Did you just get out of jail or something?

But, I agree with the above. I wish I could just go down to Best Buy, pay a few hundred bucks, bring it home, plug it in, and, like magic, it sweeps me away. Actually, many, even most, people do precisely that. And, in fact, I suspect their sound in many cases ain't terrible. I have no doubt it has improved enormously over my lifetime, even from the bargain bins.

I think the main thing that prevents this from being true, the swept away part, is loudspeakers. Too many loudspeakers are highly reactive loads and inefficient. They require over-built amplifiers to handle that without limiting sound quality. Otherwise a basic good AVR would likely be just fine.

Of course I say this owning Soundlabs. A mad scientist's idea of how to torture amp designers. "yesssss, we will make it reactive like a capacitor, that becomes a near dead short in the treble. And just for kicks it will be very, very, very inefficient. Yes, let us see them make an amp for that...hahahahahhahahahahahahaha!"

 

[RayDunzl]

hahahahahhahahahahahahaha!

With what do you power them now?

(and before?)

 

[Blumlein 88]

With what do you power them now?

(and before?)

I first powered them with a Classe 25. That worked pretty well. I eventually had the amp go kaput. Though it was an input stage problem not related to the speaker load. (Still have that amp laying around, need to repair it).

I next tried a few things, and found a Conrad-Johnson FET based SS amp of 200 watts did a nice job and I thought sounded better than the Classe on these speakers. This was a goofy cheap ebay purchase to get by until I found a replacement. Who sells CJ's on ebay? I have tried some tube amps and large ones do well, but I, former tube lover, couldn't bring myself to use something with lots of expensive power output tubes in it. VTL's were best of those I tried briefly. A friend used some ARC tube amps successfully though with loudness limitations on the larger Soundlabs which are more efficient than mine.

I for a time used a TACT power amp which really wasn't enough power and didn't like the low impedance. I put a 1 ohm power resistor in series with the speaker and let the EQ sort of fix it. The sound was the best yet in quality though you had to tread lightly on the volume knob. Without the resistor at times the sound would distort on peaks.

I currently use a Wyred4Sound ST500 which powers them wonderfully well. Sounds very nice, and seems completely unbothered by the load. Definitely by a wide margin the best thing I have had on the speakers. They have real dynamics compared to all the others. I did hear Soundlabs with a pair of bridged Classe 25 amps once. That would be around 1000 wpc with considerable current capability. That was excellent, but the ST500 seems to match the ability to play with dynamic power and sound better at the same time. A friend with similar Soundlabs uses Bel Canto Reference Mono 300s to good effect on his. The switching amps seem to be the way to go with these. Then again, if your speakers don't have some weird interaction with the output filtering switching amps seem the way to go period. They have an apparent speed and see thru quality I heard from Spectral designs and seem to have ample power like monster conventional SS amps without the drawbacks.

 

[Jakob1863]

You need to decide if you are interested in whether a report of difference accords with objective reality, or in the phenomenology ('subjective reality') of audio perception.

Imo first of all we should decide if we are interested in _correct_ results and therefore being interested why people respond to stimuli (and the conditions under which the stimuli were presented) in the way they do.
As we already know, people tend in same/different tests to give the wrong answer when the same stimulus is presented twice in a row.
(According to numbers from well documented large(r) scaled listening tests fail rate might be as high as ~80% in some trials)

Regardless of what 'qualitative' methods may show, a single device is not two devices; a phantom switch experience (e.g. like what Amir reported, where he *thought* he had made a difference, but realized later that he had not) is not an experience of an *objective* difference.

I was mainly responding because it seemed strange to use a special case as sort of final decision tool in deciding if qualitative methods have their merits.
In the same line of reasoning you coud argue that usual "blind tests" aren´t worth anything as long as participants miss differences they actually should detect.

Perception is a complex thing and imo it is more sensible to use all the different methods to find out what´s happening.

 

[krabapple]

Only through other's own expert set of eyes.

Whatever sense this is trying to make, it fails for me.

But if it means you think you can't ever be wrong about what you hear, you're delusional.

 

[krabapple]

I think the main thing that prevents this from being true, the swept away part, is loudspeakers. Too many loudspeakers are highly reactive loads and inefficient. They require over-built amplifiers to handle that without limiting sound quality. Otherwise a basic good AVR would likely be just fine.

Absolutely. Electromechanical parts of the signal chain have the most room for improvement, along with acoustical treatments (digital or physical) to rooms.

(Leaving aside the whole issue of lousy production on recordings themselves, producing a GIGO situation for home listeners. )

 

[amirm]

Wow. Did you grow a brain or something?

That is quite rude. If you keep this up your time will come to an end here in a hurry.

 

[amirm]

Versus: 'Did you just get out of jail or something?'

Nary a peep from you about that. Hypocrite.

If you contributed to the forum regularly and broadly, I would cut you a slack too. And at any rate, he didn't insult me which you are doing now so you are not even with him. My advice to you remains. We don't come here to bash each other into a dumpster.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

And you insulted me by singling out my words and not his. Your excuse for favoritism, about frequency and breadth of contribution here is , to put it mildly, weak. And it's not like we're strangers.

I'm not here specifically to bash you or your pals. But if one of them gets snide with me, unprovoked, I'm not going to 'cut him slack'. And neither should you, *Admin*.

Hey. Sorry if I got you riled. It was intended as a joke and not maliciously. I just had not seen you here for quite a long time. But, methinks thou doest overreact.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Hmmm. I hear two systems playing the same music but the tonal balance is strikingly different. How to choose............................

 

[fas42]

I think the main thing that prevents this from being true, the swept away part, is loudspeakers. Too many loudspeakers are highly reactive loads and inefficient. They require over-built amplifiers to handle that without limiting sound quality. Otherwise a basic good AVR would likely be just fine.

I only just appreciated what was said here. Yes, a good AVR can do the job, but only with extremely 'benign' speakers - in the latter category would be Klipsch: very efficient, and highly comfortable impedances for the amplifier; I witnessed remarkably competent sound from a "cheap" Japanese receiver driving such.

More "ordinary" speakers give amplifiers a hard time - but this is only because the amplifiers are not engineered well enough; no need for overbuilding, merely correcting poor design choices.

 

[Thomas savage]

Moderator action...,
i deleted some posts, its perfectly possible to express your opinions without being unpleasant and aggressively argumentative. On the subject of being argumentative best stick broadly to audio or the topic of the thread at least, any " it's not fair , life's not fair.., your being extra mean to me boo hoo" will be deleted.

If anyone feels a desperate need to protest take it up in private with myself and/or amir , I don't want to read through such protestations in our public threads.

Cheers

 

[RayDunzl]

 

[Blumlein 88]

I think both fellows are good guys. We simply had a case of:

 

[NorthSky]

Whatever sense this is trying to make, it fails for me.

But if it means you think you can't ever be wrong about what you hear, you're delusional.

No, it meant that YOU are the master of all knowledge, only you can have the final judgement on everything important that requires only expert opinions.
You are the grand master of the inter-audio galaxy; your six senses allow you to be on that higher level above all.

You are not alone, without others there wouldn't be the need to grand masters.
Experts have the best ears and eyes, and only through them (you) can we receive the proper education, us the students, the pupils, ...all that jazz.

Bravo Master!

 

[Arnold Krueger]

The important part of the message was imo:
"The A/B/X was proven to be more sensitive than long-term listening for this task."

Although the "proven" part is debateable, it is well known that different test protocols produce different results and that it is important to find the right one for the task.

Krabapple is technically right if he thinks any ABX with raised levels and using small excerpts to find a detectable difference _under_ _these_ _conditions_ does not tell so much about the difference under "normal" conditions.

There is a huge straw man, a 5,000 pound gorilla in this post: The word normal. 'Nuff said.