Master Thread: “Objectivism versus Subjectivism” debate and is there a middle ground?

[dlaloum]

It's that slight light fruit forward sound of the female voices, combined with the typical barnyard earthiness of the underlying bass, clearly identifying the terroir .... an excellent quaffing speaker....

 

[JaMaSt]

You don't use words. You use measurements. That's what measurements are for. If measurements don't show what you want to describe, then what you want to describe doesn't exist. It's just your imagination.
OTOH, if double-blind listening tests show that you reliably hear it, then measurements will show it. You need to know the correct measurements and how to obtain them, but they will show what you hear

Has anyone thought to ask why we need to "show" what what we "hear" looks on a visual graph? << Hint: We are monkeys. >>

 

[antcollinet]

Has anyone thought to ask why we need to "show" what what we "hear" looks on a visual graph? << Hint: We are monkeys. >>

Monkeys have a tail. We are apes.

 

[ahofer]

It's that slight light fruit forward sound of the female voices, combined with the typical barnyard earthiness of the underlying bass, clearly identifying the terroir .... an excellent quaffing speaker....

An impudent speaker, with a saucy hint of air, atop a slam bottom.

 

[MaxBuck]

I select electronic components almost entirely on the basis of measurements. But I select transducers purely on my own subjective judgment. (With that said, I pay attention to speaker measurements so as not to waste time listening to crap speakers.)

 

[steve59]

It's enlightening to just listen with no fore knowledge, like at axpona last weekend just walk into a room and hear how the system performs in that enclosure will influence a lot of comments even knowing the setup is what killed the sound, or saved it. We can't listen to a graph either. Most folk on this forum would be surprised to find they're lucky to be getting half of what their systems capable of.

 

[Holmz]

,,. We can't listen to a graph either. …

But a graph does show step function and impulse response.

Why even listen when the impulse and step function are wrong.

 

[steve59]

This forum challenges me always. Dear Holm, if I understood what you just said I would attempt an intelligent answer. I have my 2 ears and what survived the 70’s remaining between them. If the midrange sounds believable I’ll probably pay attention oblivious to lab results.

 

[Vacceo]

It's enlightening to just listen with no fore knowledge, like at axpona last weekend just walk into a room and hear how the system performs in that enclosure will influence a lot of comments even knowing the setup is what killed the sound, or saved it. We can't listen to a graph either. Most folk on this forum would be surprised to find they're lucky to be getting half of what their systems capable of.

Those are not bad impressions, but the problem comes when you take the gear home. Real and usual dwells typically force you to play the game of getting good sound with a large amount of handicaps. The key to win most battles is knowing what you´ll be facing, audio is no different.

Buying audio gear of a certain quality is not cheap. Because it is not cheap, measures give you an excellent look at what you´ll be turning your hard earned money into.

And in case of doubt, get the subwoofer that looks like a Goth washing machine.

 

[Holmz]

This forum challenges me always. Dear Holm, if I understood what you just said I would attempt an intelligent answer. I have my 2 ears and what survived the 70’s remaining between them. If the midrange sounds believable I’ll probably pay attention oblivious to lab results.

It generally sounds more believable when a step function produces a saw tooth, and an impulse function looks more like the Dirac delta function.
If there are only two plots, then I’ll take those two.
They are both time domain things.

Compression is another plot that is not a time domain thing.

So there are other things than solely the frequency response.

 

[Snarfie]

Here under my room frequency response with sometimes a more than 14db difference. I can asure you their is no place in my room an i realy tried (objectively subjectivly) where any speaker sound even remotely reasonable. Only option was rebuilding my room with acoustic treatment or using DSP did the latest. At least from a objective point of view i could measure an determine what was wrong an correct it getting the desired result.

 

[tuga]

You don't use words. You use measurements.

That's a blinkered, somewhat simplistic view... Too much "Cience"?
From that Toole book:

The slight upward trend in output from about 100 Hz to 3 kHz suggests that the sound may be somewhat
thin,
bright
or
hard
depending on the program. Perceived
“brightness”
is often associated with frequencies much lower than is commonly thought. The depression at higher frequencies deprives the listener of balanced instrumental overtones (see Figure 4.1), possibly leading to a loss of
openness
and
articulation,
and perhaps even a hint of
dullness.

 

[Axo1989]

That's a blinkered, somewhat simplistic view... Too much "Cience"?
From that Toole book:

The slight upward trend in output from about 100 Hz to 3 kHz suggests that the sound may be somewhat
thin,
bright
or
hard
depending on the program. Perceived
“brightness”
is often associated with frequencies much lower than is commonly thought. The depression at higher frequencies deprives the listener of balanced instrumental overtones (see Figure 4.1), possibly leading to a loss of
openness
and
articulation,
and perhaps even a hint of
dullness.

One of the reasons Toole has been so influential, is that he is both literate and numerate.

People who "don't use words" don't write (good) books, generally.

 

[600_OHM]

Love this thread! Part of the problem is that sometimes subjective things DO become objective when our brain tells us so.

Ever hear your alarm clock going off in the other side of the room, you don't want to get up and "tune it out" so you can get a few more winks? And then when late to work you "swear" your alarm didn't go off?

Hifi story - after a huge power outage (on / off / brownout / off / on) in my area, a few days later I was listening to my local LPFMer classic country. (KZNQ 101.5/stream). I listen off-air FM analog.

But I couldn't listen for more than 10 minutes. On the surface seems ok, but the inexpensive so-called studio cans I was using didn't instantly reveal anything wrong. Just wanted to take the cans off after 10 minutes. Same thing in the car - 10 minutes and I was done. Overall nothing stands out, but my ears were bleeding.

Switched to my Sennheiser 650's. And there it was! The power outage had totally fried the firmware in the audio compander. Deep random sub-bass canon-balls notes!

I knew Tammy Wynette had some nice chops, but she surely couldn't throw out those sub-bass canonballs!

"Sometimes its ... thub thub thub .. hard to be ... thub thub .. a woman .. thub thub"

My less than perfect studio cans couldn't reproduce those low sub-bass notes, so it wasn't immediately obvious, but they were wrecking things everywhere else.

The Sennheisers revealed the problem. In pure fidelity, but there was no way you could listen to it for long with sub-bass canonballs coming out of the fried compander.

Sorry for the long story - helped fix the fried compander problem after a phone call from a nerd listener (me), and what I thought was merely a subjective change in my listening taste actually turned out to be an objective problem at the source.

 

[antcollinet]

Love this thread! Part of the problem is that sometimes subjective things DO become objective when our brain tells us so.

Ever hear your alarm clock going off in the other side of the room, you don't want to get up and "tune it out" so you can get a few more winks? And then when late to work you "swear" your alarm didn't go off?

Hifi story - after a huge power outage (on / off / brownout / off / on) in my area, a few days later I was listening to my local LPFMer classic country. (KZNQ 101.5/stream). I listen off-air FM analog.

But I couldn't listen for more than 10 minutes. On the surface seems ok, but the inexpensive so-called studio cans I was using didn't instantly reveal anything wrong. Just wanted to take the cans off after 10 minutes. Same thing in the car - 10 minutes and I was done. Overall nothing stands out, but my ears were bleeding.

Switched to my Sennheiser 650's. And there it was! The power outage had totally fried the firmware in the audio compander. Deep random sub-bass canon-balls notes!

I knew Tammy Wynette had some nice chops, but she surely couldn't throw out those sub-bass canonballs!

"Sometimes its ... thub thub thub .. hard to be ... thub thub .. a woman .. thub thub"

My less than perfect studio cans couldn't reproduce those low sub-bass notes, so it wasn't immediately obvious, but they were wrecking things everywhere else.

The Sennheisers revealed the problem. In pure fidelity, but there was no way you could listen to it for long with sub-bass canonballs coming out of the fried compander.

Sorry for the long story - helped fix the fried compander problem after a phone call from a nerd listener (me), and what I thought was merely a subjective change in my listening taste actually turned out to be an objective problem at the source.

That is a perfect example.

If you can hear a a difference, it is possible to investigate, and find the cause of that difference. If no cause can be found it is ususally possible to test if a difference is genuinely there by doing blind ABX.

Sometimes, for example if you are hearing a difference where there should not be one (eg between two well measureing DACs), it is easier to start with the blind ABX - to prove there actually is a difference before investing the effort to find out why.

 

[600_OHM]

Sure enough. Even if analytical headphones aren't to your taste, if you are fortunate enough to own one, they are a good investment when tracking down problems.

Become familiar with it, even if they aren't your daily-drivers that may have a bit more "character".

Personally, I give myself time when doing A/B to allow the sliders in my brain to adjust.

That is, if I'm wearing the analytical cans and immediately switch to the studio cans, I'll barf. My "brain sliders" are still in the analytical can setting. Likewise, if I'm wearing the studio cans for a long time, and immediately switch to the analytical ones, they will be OVERestimated and sound sparkly and bright and full of character. Sometimes painfully so.

The little guy in my brain at the studio board is getting on in age, and isn't so fast at adjusting the sliders.

At times, I use a Schiit Loki between cans, and have learned when making adjustments so that when I reach the desired response, I then back it off just a little to give the brain engineer time to move *his* slider... heh heh.

 

[Hasan Aydin]

The topic of subjectivity vs objectivity in audio seems to constantly come up in various threads or dedicated threads of the same. So we thought it is best to have one master thread for it so interested people can participate here, and others not seeing it spread everywhere. If you do post about the topic elsewhere, don't be surprised if it either gets moved here or deleted for being out of place.

Note that the use of the term "subjectivism" is as used in audio food fights. It is NOT the proper term in audio research which is controlled listening tests. That topic can be discussed elsewhere.

Happy arguing.

I have a question about the perception of sound of different dacs.
i use an ADI-2 Pro fs with Audeze headphones and noticed that although the ADI-2 sounds much cleaner, the Headphone output of my Macbook sounds more pleasant at the low frequencies, at least to my ears.
Probably it is because of distortion or the DAC filter.
I also tried to switch between different filters on the ADI-2 and found that the filter of the Cirrus Logic chip in my Macbook sounds different and none of the AK4493 Filters can match. I think it is something between the SD Sharp and Low Dispersion Filter.
Does anyone have any idea why my MacBook output sounds more pleasant to me?

 

[dc655321]

I have a question about the perception of sound of different dacs.
i use an ADI-2 Pro fs with Audeze headphones and noticed that although the ADI-2 sounds much cleaner, the Headphone output of my Macbook sounds more pleasant at the low frequencies, at least to my ears.
Probably it is because of distortion or the DAC filter.
I also tried to switch between different filters on the ADI-2 and found that the filter of the Cirrus Logic chip in my Macbook sounds different and none of the AK4493 Filters can match. I think it is something between the SD Sharp and Low Dispersion Filter.
Does anyone have any idea why my MacBook output sounds more pleasant to me?

If you have not very carefully matched electronic output levels between the devices, then your comparison is moot.

Differences in volume, even slight, will skew results to the point of invalidity.

 

[Killingbeans]

Does anyone have any idea why my MacBook output sounds more pleasant to me?

Probably the fault of the headphone power stage and not the DAC. Output impedance and/or power capability... assuming it's not placebo.

 

[Hasan Aydin]

I have tried to match the volume by ear. In the next few days I will try to measure and match the volume correctly.
Maybe I will also upload some measurements here.

This is not a placebo because I can hear the difference clearly within seconds. There is definitely distortion in the low frequencies which sounds better to me and also the impulse response is different.
The headphones I use are the Audeze LCD-1, these headphones do not require much power and have a flat impedance.