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Guttenberg and designing by hearing/listening instead of measuring.

confucius_zero

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sergeauckland

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For religious reasons H.D. Harwood, the famous BBC speaker designer, never listened to music (only spoken word). And yet he is a legendary speaker designer.
Ditto Peter Walker of Quad. Listening was to noises, test signals etc, not music.

I only ever used listening to speech or music as a final 'reality check' after the design phase to make sure nothing obvious was missed.
S.
 

andreasmaaan

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Listening - done with suitable controls - is an integral part of audio design, and even if it's not carried out in the design process of a specific component, knowledge of psychoacoustics and the human auditory system - all obtained through listening tests - should play a key background role in the design of any good audio product.

This doesn't seem to be the kind of listening Guttenberg is talking about though ;)
 

Gomjab

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“Do you think there are any eh totally deaf designers in audio....”

Beethoven did compose his last 5 sonatas and the Ninth Symphony after he was totally deaf.
Seems he managed to understand music and how to make it sound great without actually hearing his own composition!
 
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SIY

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Heaven help us if the metric of a good sound is what a single gray haired guy thinks is good!

To be fair, he has enough gray hair for at least 5 or 6 of us.
 

svart-hvitt

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INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL WEISS

How do you audition the equipment that you build? Do you do listening tests at all?
No, basically I don’t do that. I have some Strax headphones for some listening, but I don’t judge the electronics based on listening tests.
Does anyone else in the company do that?
No.
So it’s purely an engineering product?
Yes.

.................

What about DAC chips—How do you evaluate and compare them? Because so much depends on the implementation.
Well there aren’t that many possible implementations for a given chip. I evaluate them based on the specs usually. I don’t do listening tests, I look at the specs.

.................

Source: http://ukiro.com/2011/05/12/interview-daniel-weiss/
 

svart-hvitt

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From the same interview:

If you had a room and a system and choice of music that you have full control over, do you think you could tell a €200 CD player from a €15000 transport feeding one of your DAC’s?
I wouldn’t expect to hear a difference actually.

That’s called integrity.

And that’s why I would consider buying his expensive gear.

That’s called human nature, I think ;)
 

Kal Rubinson

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Can we please stop giving this man YouTube views? I worry he will die from Collyer Syndrome if he squeezes any more Zu products (purchased with YouTube royalties) into that room.
Frankly, I find his choice of Zu speakers a reason to discount a lot of what he says.
 

RayDunzl

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Heaven help us if the metric of a good sound is what a single gray haired guy thinks is good!

You might might wanna rephrase that a little?

My first thought was

1548217893110.png


And what about gray beards?

1548217920438.png


Ok, so maybe they aren't single.

You win again.
 

invaderzim

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Frankly, I find his choice of Zu speakers a reason to discount a lot of what he says.

Someday I'd still like to hear them. A lot of people love them but then I've also reads one place that it sounds like you are listening to your music through a guitar amp :(

I used to be all about the listening over the numbers and then I built a LM3886DR with the thinking that it would sound cold and harsh and now end up listening to music more than before.
 
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Purité Audio

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They are fantastic, sometimes you can even recognise the song that is playing.
Keith
 

Purité Audio

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I suppose if you disconnected them from the amplifiers, Zu’s tend to be run with valves, 4.33 of hum.
Keith
 
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