Guttenberg and designing by hearing/listening instead of measuring.

[Kal Rubinson]

Not even the 4:33?

Only if the mastering engineer also used them.

 

[cjfrbw]

I let my dog listen to the stereo system first, and if he doesn't run out of the room with his ears back, I'm good to go.

 

[Alisterkoran]

That’s called integrity.

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

Sadly, my opinion of Weiss went through the floor when they decided to sell 'Audiophile' cables at snake oil prices. 425 for a 1m AES/EBU cable for example. Anything over, say £40 for such a cable is a rip off. I say £40 because, for example, a ready made Industry standard, broadcast standard AES/EBU cable can be bought for under £20 Canford Audio AES/EBU cable

I'm being generous by doubling the price for 'audiophile' rebranding and marketing by a third party company such as Weiss. Even if you double that to allow for 'profit' it still comes out at £80.

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.

Indeed. Please stop encouraging him and giving him extra royalties.

IMO, Guttenberg is a dangerous person. I say that because his arguments appear quite logical and rational on the surface. It's only when you think deeper into what he says does one notice he's actually very crafty. I put him in the same category as flat earthers. Logical arguments designed to suck in unsuspecting and not very bright people.

Sadly he also manages to suck in intelligent people, although I don't understand how.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Sadly, my opinion of Weiss went through the floor when they decided to sell 'Audiophile' cables at snake oil prices. 425 for a 1m AES/EBU cable for example. Anything over, say £40 for such a cable is a rip off. I say £40 because, for example, a ready made Industry standard, broadcast standard AES/EBU cable can be bought for under £20 Canford Audio AES/EBU cable

I'm being generous by doubling the price for 'audiophile' rebranding and marketing by a third party company such as Weiss. Even if you double that to allow for 'profit' it still comes out at £80.



Indeed. Please stop encouraging him and giving him extra royalties.

IMO, Guttenberg is a dangerous person. I say that because his arguments appear quite logical and rational on the surface. It's only when you think deeper into what he says does one notice he's actually very crafty. I put him in the same category as flat earthers. Logical arguments designed to suck in unsuspecting and not very bright people.

Sadly he also manages to suck in intelligent people, although I don't understand how.

Mind you, Weiss makes no claims about his nice looking cables. He simply claims they are within specification Ohm wise.

Selling overpriced goods to (mostly «crazy» Asian/Russian?) customers who wish a certain price level above alle else, what’s wrong with that? It’s the charlatans and quacksalvers who are the big problem.

 

[cjfrbw]

Guttenberg does have some interesting interviews. He has two by "Billy", who is I presume is jazz drummer Billy Cobham describing his favorite vinyl drum records and his various stereo systems and preferences. Billy is pretty competent in talking about his subjective impressions of different kinds of systems and speakers.

 

[DonH56]

Selling overpriced goods to (mostly «crazy» Asian/Russian?) customers who wish a certain price level above alle else, what’s wrong with that? It’s the charlatans and quacksalvers who are the big problem.

The problem I have with this whole mess is that local salesmen (persons) make $$$ selling more expensive cables to people like my kids who don't know better (well, mine ask me, but...) and are convinced they need $100 or $200 worth of cables for their $1000 system. I'd rather they spent that money on music, movies, or food. I rather abhor dishonesty in general whether it causes me personal harm or not.

 

[ScofieldKid]

Is that Billy Cobham? I don't know. Really cool album review from a drummer perspective regardless... here's the link:

And for a full on Cobham interview, I was reading this:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/20...u-orchestra-miles-davis-peter-gabriel-etc-etc

 

[hvbias]

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.

Thou shant partaketh in thy aural pleasures of the devil - Samuel 4:18

 

[patient_ot]

The drummer in Guttenberg's video is this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Drummond

He does suggest some great music in both videos. Several albums I still need to track down.

 

[Bjorn]

If the goal is to design electronics with as low audible distortion as possible, measurements are sufficient the way I see it. Obviously you need to know how the measurements correlate with our hearing. So listening would be more just to confirm at the end what the data are showing.

If you are however, designing electronics with the goal of some audible distortion is would make sense to do more listening. But on the other hand, when you have started to understand how distortion sounds (which we do know a great deal about), also looking here solely at measurements might very well suffice.

Basically it comes down to understanding the correlation between measurements and sound. The more you understand this, the less you need to listen.

The idea of doing a lot of listening and base the product on this alone makes little sense as you will be matching to a certain system and room acoustics and the result will change with other parameters. Actually, the whole idea of system matching is quite odd IMO. Adding a fault to cover another one? Charles Hanse says it well: "I don't believe in system matching. If something is good, it's good. If it only sounds good under certain conditions, it is not good - it is incorrect"

 

[patient_ot]

An interesting point of view here, which I tend to agree with:

Many audiophiles like to embrace the myth that measurements cannot tell you what something will sound like. They like to reflect on the Total Harmonic Distortion competition that amplifiers follied with in the 1970's. True, in the early 70's THD was the only "quality" specification used, but it soon proved to be insufficient. If you look at the complete history, you would find that in the mid 70's a new quality measurement was introduced. This was Intermodulation Distortion. Striding for low THD's engineers chained together many gain stages in series and closed a global feedback loop around them. Intermodulation occurs when the distortion cancelling feedback signal arrives too late to make a complete cancellation. With the introduction of IM testing, the THD wars ended abruptly. And those horrible sounding amplifiers, started to sound nice again. We can all thank Crown corporation for that. You can google it: Crown IMA Intermodulation distortion meter.
History teaches us a couple of things. First it shows that no 2 people hear the same thing the same way. There were many who thought those 0.00001% THD amps sounded fine. But there were others that were certain something was wrong with them. For those that had doubts, some stayed with older designs while others pushed on and found a technical reason and a solution to their dissatisfaction. That is how progress works.
The moral of the story is, when you make the right measurements, you get the right answer. And when your ears tell you that something is wrong, hard work will generally find a measurement to match it. There is never any justification to not measure. None. If Crown never did the hard work, we would still believe that the only way to get good sound was with zero global feedback. And while there are those that still believe that, Crown proved that there was another way.

https://www.kabusa.com/myth5.htm

 

[SIY]

Much wrong there, which is too bad because Kabusa is usually a good source. First, intermod measurements had been done for a looooong time before the mid '70s. And they correlate to THD- it's damn hard to have high intermod and low harmonic distortion in an actual physical system. Second, the low THD amps often actually didn't have low THD across the audio band (a critical measurement!). Third, despite many legends, there doesn't seem to be any actual listening tests of the canonical '70s amps run at levels below clipping and with loads where they weren't oscillating, the latter being especially important.

 

[sergeauckland]

I don't understand this at all. Harmonic distortion is a measure of departure from linearity, and IMD is the result when two (or more) tones are subject to non-linearity. Consequently, I don't see how it's possible to have very low THD and high IMD or vice-versa.

S.

 

[SIY]

I don't understand this at all. Harmonic distortion is a measure of departure from linearity, and IMD is the result when two (or more) tones are subject to non-linearity. Consequently, I don't see how it's possible to have very low THD and high IMD or vice-versa.

I have faster fingers.

 

[patient_ot]

So his point in the last paragraph is good but his technical understanding is lacking? Thanks for clearing this up.

 

[amirm]

History teaches us a couple of things. First it shows that no 2 people hear the same thing the same way. There were many who thought those 0.00001% THD amps sounded fine. But there were others that were certain something was wrong with them. For those that had doubts, some stayed with older designs while others pushed on and found a technical reason and a solution to their dissatisfaction. That is how progress works.

That's another myth. The observations he cites were made with sighted, uncontrolled listening. Those outcomes are routinely wrong. Listening tests published for speakers for example show that we are remarkably alike in detecting what is or is not good sound.

 

[patient_ot]

That's another myth. The observations he cites were made with sighted, uncontrolled listening. Those outcomes are routinely wrong. Listening tests published for speakers for example show that we are remarkably alike in detecting what is or is not good sound.

This refers to the Harman research you've brought up before? I can't remember, but I should read up on that stuff.

So if two people have wildly different subjective opinions about a pair of speakers, we can put that down to the other equipment in the chain, what music was played, room acoustics, etc.? Because in practice these opinions aren't usually formed in a controlled environment.

 

[jsrtheta]

Is that Billy Cobham? I don't know. Really cool album review from a drummer perspective regardless... here's the link:

And for a full on Cobham interview, I was reading this:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/20...u-orchestra-miles-davis-peter-gabriel-etc-etc

God, I first saw Cobham in 1970 when he played with Dreams. Twice, in fact. Genius.

 

[Blumlein 88]

This refers to the Harman research you've brought up before? I can't remember, but I should read up on that stuff.

So if two people have wildly different subjective opinions about a pair of speakers, we can put that down to the other equipment in the chain, what music was played, room acoustics, etc.? Because in practice these opinions aren't usually formed in a controlled environment.

Or visual appearance or opinions held previously or rep of the brand etc etc.

 

[amirm]

This refers to the Harman research you've brought up before?

Correct. There a few AES papers but you can start with Sean's blog post: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2008/12/loudspeaker-preferences-of-trained.html