How do you SUBJECTIVELY quantify improvements in sound

[gks333]

"That system was twice as good as the other system I just heard" would be a preposterous claim.

"Under these circumstances, that system feels twice as good to me as the other system I just heard" would make more sense.

Your second sentence is worded better no doubt. But since, in my example, the 2nd system that I "just heard" being twice as good. It should be known that I am stating my opinion based on what I just heard and perceived it to be twice as good. Why would we even need to say "under these circumstances", "feels twice as good". Is that how you normally talk outside of a purely objective environment like a science lab?

I explain to numerous people often in percentages of my perceived impression of X Y and Z products and never once have I ever had an issue with someone not understanding what I am trying to say. But here, for some reason the word SUBJECTIVE is like dropping the F bomb. For others its like I am trying to take something subjective and make it objective. Numbers in this case, my initial question "how do you subjectively quantify improvements in sound" is just another form of communication. Not meant to be taken as objective undeniable fact.

Well, the horse has been beaten 7.3% from death. Moving on. Lesson learned....maybe ;?)

 

[Robin L]

for some reason the word SUBJECTIVE is like dropping the F bomb.

That's right, there's a swear jar at the end of the bar, you can leave your dollar bill there.

For others its like I am trying to take something subjective and make it objective.

Kinda like taking something chocolate and making it vanilla.

 

[Jimbob54]

Your second sentence is worded better no doubt. But since, in my example, the 2nd system that I "just heard" being twice as good. It should be known that I am stating my opinion based on what I just heard and perceived it to be twice as good. Why would we even need to say "under these circumstances", "feels twice as good". Is that how you normally talk outside of a purely objective environment like a science lab?

I explain to numerous people often in percentages of my perceived impression of X Y and Z products and never once have I ever had an issue with someone not understanding what I am trying to say. But here, for some reason the word SUBJECTIVE is like dropping the F bomb. For others its like I am trying to take something subjective and make it objective. Numbers in this case, my initial question "how do you subjectively quantify improvements in sound" is just another form of communication. Not meant to be taken as objective undeniable fact.

Well, the horse has been beaten 7.3% from death. Moving on. Lesson learned....maybe ;?)

Saying "changing the amp led to a 7% improvement" sounds odd- we get you mean "made a small but noticeable improvement" and if you said an 80% improvement it would be game changing. What none of us can understand is why you would choose to do this- and how you decide the small but noticeable change was 7 % or 8% on your entirely arbitrary scale.

 

[Jimbob54]

Saying "changing the amp led to a 7% improvement" sounds odd- we get you mean "made a small but noticeable improvement" and if you said an 80% improvement it would be game changing. What none of us can understand is why you would choose to do this- and how you decide the small but noticeable change was 7 % or 8% on your entirely arbitrary scale.

And then we would ask what controls you had implemented in the listening tests ;-)

 

[egellings]

"Subjectively quantify"? Somehow, those two words just don't seem to go together very well, much like "military intelligence".

 

[Galliardist]

And then we would ask what controls you had implemented in the listening tests ;-)

And that would be a disconnect, since what is being suggested as reported here is the listener's response to the system and not the sound waves, so it has to be sighted, it has to be "normal" use (so reported at a distance from the change because the listener has to adjust to everything about the change - sight and ergonomics included, since what we hear can be affected by those things).

The point of the controlled test is to get us and the listener closer to the output of the audio system.

When we deal with a pure subjective response, the "system under test" includes the listener, and the output of that system is the description of the listener's response, a big step away from the sound waves in the room.

 

[Killingbeans]

Why would we even need to say "under these circumstances", "feels twice as good". Is that how you normally talk outside of a purely objective environment like a science lab?

Of course not, but this thread is about weighing an experience on a subjective scale. And by underlining that in the rhetoric, you make it clear that the experience means everything to you as an individual in that particular situation, but essentially nothing to anybody else, unless they dig deeper to find out what factors are contributing to the experience.

Something could sound 7% better to you and 30% worse to me, and we'd both be right. The next day it might sound 50% better to you and 3% better to me, and we'd still both be right. There's no right or wrong numbers, so what use do they have?

Not meant to be taken as objective undeniable fact.

It's the use of the word "quantify" that's giving me tics

 

[Jimbob54]

And that would be a disconnect, since what is being suggested as reported here is the listener's response to the system and not the sound waves, so it has to be sighted, it has to be "normal" use (so reported at a distance from the change because the listener has to adjust to everything about the change - sight and ergonomics included, since what we hear can be affected by those things).

The point of the controlled test is to get us and the listener closer to the output of the audio system.

When we deal with a pure subjective response, the "system under test" includes the listener, and the output of that system is the description of the listener's response, a big step away from the sound waves in the room.

Yes, but I have a funny feeling the OP might not see it that way.

 

[dc655321]

It's the use of the word "quantify" that's giving me tics

It's like one consonant away from making any sense.

 

[gks333]

Time to eat crow. After doing some research and talking to others, I have been misusing the term Quantify. Thanks to Justjones, I think he's the only one that replied stating such. It a Qualitative measurement. Qualitative is the term I should have been using.

Apologies to all. This post is a total bust but a lesson learned on my part.
Apologies to anyone who may have gotten aggravated during this thread. Was not my intension.

Going to sit in the penalty box for a bit.

 

[Beershaun]

I'll put my current experience into this thread to get some feedback on what I think I'm hearing.
I just swapped out my NAD t778 for an Anthem mrx1140 in my home theater system this weekend to compare the two. On paper the sinad, power etc are roughly equivalent. What I am hearing different is not subtle and measurable.

I am measuring in "Upstairs Butt Vibration Factor" (UBVF). With the NAD the speakers were putting out less bass power and exciting the room less at the same listening level (70-75db). Such that when sitting on the couch upstairs I could not feel the bass rattling the downstairs theater. With the Anthem, at the same 70-75db listening level, I am vibrating the upstairs couch and more sound effects and music are leaking through the ceiling. So definitely getting more sound with the Anthem.

So my question is, what is actually happening at the Amplifier and speaker level to create this extra low end sound pressure levels with the Anthem that Is not happening with the NAD?

 

[Beershaun]

My current hypothesis is the Anthem has more peak power than the NAD and it's the reason I'm getting stronger impulse from my woofers and higher UBVF.

Will see if I can set up time for Amir to measure my Anthem. Since I'm definitely going to keep it instead of the NAD.

 

[tomtoo]

Room shaking Bass, House shaking Bass, Earthquake like Bass.

 

[egellings]

Close my eyes and listen. If it sounds more like a band with the speakers out of view, then I deem it realistic.

 

[Xulonn]

After reading this thread, had it not contained 27.2% snark, my intelligence would have temporarily dropped 7.63%.

 

[Robin L]

Room shaking Bass, House shaking Bass, Earthquake like Bass.

 

[dasdoing]

two things I want to pass my mind:

"damn, that sounds realistic af"

"damn, I never hear this stuff in this song"

 

[pablolie]

To me it's just a function of - can I really immerse myself and enjoy the music, or should I just regard the music as some background muzak that I barely pay attention to?

It doesn't bother me the least when I go to friends' places and just have some sort of basic Sonos or JBL all in one stuff. It sounds ok, but please don't tell me to concentrate and "listen to this great rendition Beethoven's Eroica" while standing around it, please.

My current girlfriend is a super gifted piano player. She was the type that's "when I want to listen to great music, I play it myself" and was never interested in having a decent system at her place.... until she listened to stuff at my home in one of our early dates and started asking questions (can you imagine? :-D). As I started spending time at her place, she asked me to set up a compact system with a budget. I just bought her the stuff of course, and several of the components I just had already. It's by no means an expensive system - an old laptop running Linux and Logitech Media Server that's hidden away, a Logitech Squeezebox Classic, a NAD D3020 and Totem Dreamcatcher speakers with a small Yam sub. *But* I can totally enjoy great music and immerse myself through that system, too. It does not feel like a much worse system at all. And in fact I have listened to $100k systems (I live in Silicon Valley, lots of showing off here) that sound worse. How? lacking in balance, overdone bass, poorly set up... very often tragically nothing to do with the components and their price tag we obsess about so often in here...

 

[Robin L]

To me it's just a function of - can I really immerse myself and enjoy the music, or should I just regard the music as some background muzak that I barely pay attention to?

It doesn't bother me the least when I go to friends' places and just have some sort of basic Sonos or JBL all in one stuff. It sounds ok, but please don't tell me to concentrate and "listen to this great rendition Beethoven's Eroica" while standing around it, please.

My current girlfriend is a super gifted piano player. She was the type that's "when I want to listen to great music, I play it myself" and was never interested in having a decent system at her place.... until she listened to stuff at my home in one of our early dates and started asking questions (can you imagine? :-D). As I started spending time at her place, she asked me to set up a compact system with a budget. I just bought her the stuff of course, and several of the components I just had already. It's by no means an expensive system - an old laptop running Linux and Logitech Media Server that's hidden away, a Logitech Squeezebox Classic, a NAD D3020 and Totem Dreamcatcher speakers with a small Yam sub. *But* I can totally enjoy great music and immerse myself through that system, too. It does not feel like a much worse system at all. And in fact I have listened to $100k systems (I live in Silicon Valley, lots of showing off here) that sound worse. How? lacking in balance, overdone bass, poorly set up... very often tragically nothing to do with the components and their price tag we obsess about so often in here...

I remember being a guest of John Curl's at a Stereophile show, late 1990s. He told me about demonstration rooms that needed VIP passes and showed me one of them. Radically expensive stuff that didn't sound as good as the stuff on the main floors. I don't think either one of us had anything to say about the sound, we just quickly left the room.

 

[egellings]

I lost it. I was replying about what an active guard was when I hit a key and launched out of the thread somehow. A shielded cable has quite a bit of capacitance, often around 30pF/foot or so, and a long length of cable can capacitively load down a device under test or DUT (I worked as a test EE) if it's necessary to test a device long distance away at the end of a long cable like that. So to get around the capacitive loading problem, an actively driven guard (shield) is used. At the signal source (could be a preamp) end of such a cable, a unity gain buffer with high input impedance is connected to the preamp's output along with the signal carrying center wire in the cable. The buffer's output is connected to the shield of the long cable and drives the shield with the signal. The center conductor and its shield now are driven together, but isolated by the buffer from each other, effectively eliminating the capacitance of the cable from the DUT's output, since the center wire and the shield are always at the same instantaneous voltage. Since the shield buffer driver's output impedance is very low, it effectively acts like a shield to extraneous external disturbance signals. A separate ground wire connects the DUT ground to the source's ground. The driven shield is not grounded at the signal destination end. I have used this approach in both my test engineering and a couple of audio installations, and it worked well in both settings.