D
Deleted member 24508
Guest
Gee having worked with hundreds of Phd graduates for decades the vast majority were completely useless at anything remotely practical.Except as the research (which extends far beyond audio engineering into far more consequential fields like psychology and physiology) I linked indicates, hearing the music with your ears is invariably moderated by what you see or know, even at a subconscious level. You see the aesthetics, you read the backstory, you attribute certain characteristics to certain circuit topologies. These affect the perception of difference (let alone preference), introducing huge amounts of unrealiability. Read Zielinski and Rumsey, linked many times on this forum before we can have a productive discussion. Anecdotal experience convinces no one in this place.
You have 2 options: 1) to accept your evaluations are corrupted by these non-auditory stimuli and to take your listening impressions as that of a multi-sensory experience only partially constituted by the actual sound. Your perceptions bear a tenuous link with the actual sound (ie. moving air) output at best. That is the only intellectually-honest way to articulate anecdotal sound evaluations without basic experimental controls. There is no shame in that. I will readily admit I'm shopping for Jeff Rowland gear for that reason - I'm a sucker for the billet aluminium and Lundahls, but I'm under no delusion that they meaningfully change the empirical phenomenon of sound.
Or 2) to accept that such claims are dead-on-arrival as far as validity goes due to these multiple, well-documented sources of massive distortion of our auditory perception, such that it describes an empirical phenomenon. Even multiple sighted impressions that describe the same thing are not valid.
Anything is wilful and abhorrent anti-intellectualism and arrogance. Essentially that you think you aren't bound by the human ear and brain physiology. And that is a claim I, and other right-minded members here, will condemn and call out at every turn. We have provided the resources. There is no excuse.
Do the work. Don't arrogate your layman intuition and anecdotal experience is remotely equal to decades of PhDs working on the subject.