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

[Hasan Aydin]

Was that captured electrically or with a mic?

of course electrically. with the ADI-2 Pro ADDA converter

Bass sample is from Rebecca Pigeon-Spanish Harlem

you can even see the waveform without zooming. so clearly audible!

 

[antcollinet]

Difference between SD Fast and LP Fast filter of a Bass Note.

EDIT: i exported the delta as WAV and looked at it further with a real time spectrum analyser. at the peak it even reaches -55dbfs difference at 120 Hz.
Similar results between Fast and Slow.

So at 120Hz, the absolute threshold of audibility is at 30dB.

Your peak difference is -55dB - so you'd have to be blasting that bass note at 85dB just to get the difference up to the absolute edge of human hearing. And you think that difference - alongside 85dB of no difference is going to be audible?

 

[danadam]

So at 120Hz, the absolute threshold of audibility is at 30dB.
...

You are late. The 1 year anniversary of the post you responded to was three days ago.

 

[antcollinet]

You are late. The 1 year anniversary of the post you responded to was three days ago.

 

[krabapple]

zombie claims, you just can't kill 'em

 

[Miguelón]

To me always was easy to avoid subjectivism in audio, or video.

I think the snake oil current in audiophile “subjectivism” tries to impose a paradoxical position: “this DAC or this speaker is more musical or spiritual, or whatever we feel when listening to music”.

Obviously the musicality and emotions are created by the musicians and the edition process. Once finished, the audio gear is a transducer. Should be as transparent as possible.

Today we know that transparency is measurable, and human acoustic sensitivity is quite limited (not the brain processing if acoustic information, which can transport us to another world of emotions with some tracks, but just the sensorial discrimination.

So let’s mathematical models and instruments to evaluate the intervention of the audio gear on the chain, from DAC to room interaction, and we can make some final decisions with our preferences.

 

[Ilkless]

To me always was easy to avoid subjectivism in audio, or video.

I think the snake oil current in audiophile “subjectivism” tries to impose a paradoxical position: “this DAC or this speaker is more musical or spiritual, or whatever we feel when listening to music”.

Obviously the musicality and emotions are created by the musicians and the edition process. Once finished, the audio gear is a transducer. Should be as transparent as possible.

Today we know that transparency is measurable, and human acoustic sensitivity is quite limited (not the brain processing if acoustic information, which can transport us to another world of emotions with some tracks, but just the sensorial discrimination.

So let’s mathematical models and instruments to evaluate the intervention of the audio gear on the chain, from DAC to room interaction, and we can make some final decisions with our preferences.

Good post.

I personally think of compartmentalising it. Through self-awareness and self-reflection, isolate the subjective parameters/traits that doesn't relate to raw acoustic output.

This means I can lust after an Accuphase for its use of an advanced volume control, haptics, build, looks, aftersales, or circuit attributes etc. entirely separate from an above-average SINAD. I think that's fair game so long as there's no self-delusion or actively harming performance for vastly more spend.

 

[Miguelón]

I think in a perceptive field that is audio, all of us should be in a middle point.

Suppose we buy a speaker, measurements show nice values but our perception is quite negative. This can be unusual but let admit it as hypothesis.

Objectivists can run to an ORL specialist to check their hearing, subjectivists will throw the mic out from the window...

But in practice none of us will do that, we trust either our ears and the measurements. Maybe measurements are poorly executed (subjective impression governs) or we may wait for a certain time to adapt for tonality (measurements trusted).

 

[tmtomh]

I think in a perceptive field that is audio, all of us should be in a middle point.

Suppose we buy a speaker, measurements show nice values but our perception is quite negative. This can be unusual but let admit it as hypothesis.

Objectivists can run to an ORL specialist to check their hearing, subjectivists will throw the mic out from the window...

But in practice none of us will do that, we trust either our ears and the measurements. Maybe measurements are poorly executed (subjective impression governs) or we may wait for a certain time to adapt for tonality (measurements trusted).

The answer is rarely 100% in either direction as you say - but it's also just as rarely halfway in the middle.

There is another option besides throwing out the mic and measurements on the one hand, or getting our hearing checked and trying to adapt on the other hand.

The other option is to investigate further. This is what most people do - objectivist audio folks because they know something probably isn't right, and subjectivist audio folks because whatever they might say at the time about loving the sound, odds are heavy that in a few weeks or months they will be posting again about their ongoing "journey."

And this is where the question of measurements becomes meaningful: when you investigate, what do you do? Do you read subjectivist articles and watch subjectivist YouTube videos and buy a new DAC or a new amp that is claimed to "pair" better with your speakers? Or do you take another, closer look at the frequency response, measurements and dispersion pattern of your speakers, the distances and geometries of your speaker positioning and listening position, your room treatments or lack thereof, and so on?

In fact, there is some degree objectivist-subjectivist overlap in this: everyone experiments with speaker positioning, and subjectivists are generally not at all opposed to the idea of room treatment and listening position adjustments.

But the point is that a middle ground is precisely not what is useful: for example, using PEQ to tweak what might be a very small but low-Q (in other words, wide) peak or dip in your speaker's anechoic response in a certain frequency range, but also buying a new, expensive DAC and audiophile speaker cables "just in case" is not a terribly useful middle-ground course of action.

 

[Miguelón]

The answer is rarely 100% in either direction as you say - but it's also just as rarely halfway in the middle.

There is another option besides throwing out the mic and measurements on the one hand, or getting our hearing checked and trying to adapt on the other hand.

The other option is to investigate further. This is what most people do - objectivist audio folks because they know something probably isn't right, and subjectivist audio folks because whatever they might say at the time about loving the sound, odds are heavy that in a few weeks or months they will be posting again about their ongoing "journey."

And this is where the question of measurements becomes meaningful: when you investigate, what do you do? Do you read subjectivist articles and watch subjectivist YouTube videos and buy a new DAC or a new amp that is claimed to "pair" better with your speakers? Or do you take another, closer look at the frequency response, measurements and dispersion pattern of your speakers, the distances and geometries of your speaker positioning and listening position, your room treatments or lack thereof, and so on?

In fact, there is some degree objectivist-subjectivist overlap in this: everyone experiments with speaker positioning, and subjectivists are generally not at all opposed to the idea of room treatment and listening position adjustments.

But the point is that a middle ground is precisely not what is useful: for example, using PEQ to tweak what might be a very small but low-Q (in other words, wide) peak or dip in your speaker's anechoic response in a certain frequency range, but also buying a new, expensive DAC and audiophile speaker cables "just in case" is not a terribly useful middle-ground course of action.

Agree, audio is very peculiar perception field, in which measurements play a major role.

Specially interesting is the late case in the “I buy the super expensive cables just in case but I let my room change tonality”.

My argument was more on the avoiding total extremes than pointing at a hypothetical mid point, because after all which metric we use to determine where it is?

Another thing is perhaps you’re also introducing “rationalist vs irrationality” in the subjectivist vs objectivist. The cable case lie more on the irrational behavior because very probably the “victim” has no subjective point of view other than marketing influence, nor objective measurement either (neither?)

 

[tmtomh]

Agree, audio is very peculiar perception field, in which measurements play a major role.

Specially interesting is the late case in the “I buy the super expensive cables just in case but I let my room change tonality”.

My argument was more on the avoiding total extremes than pointing at a hypothetical mid point, because after all which metric we use to determine where it is?

Another thing is perhaps you’re also introducing “rationalist vs irrationality” in the subjectivist vs objectivist. The cable case lie more on the irrational behavior because very probably the “victim” has no subjective point of view other than marketing influence, nor objective measurement either (neither?)

All reasonable points. I don't mean to say that objectivist-subjectivist can simply map onto rational-irrational. As you say (or at least imply), we can say that a subjectivist is trying to change the wrong thing for the desired effect, but if they are changing the wrong thing based on bad information, then they are behaving totally rationally - they are just misinformed.

On the other side of the coin, if an objectivist gets overly concerned about the performance of a DAC whose SINAD is 114dB because another DAC's SINAD is 121dB, one can make an argument that that's a bit irrational since the objectivist surely must know that both will be equally transparent in practice.

But to my previous point, I would say that the irrationality in audio is not exclusively a subjectivist thing - but nor is it 50-50 across objectivists and subjectivists. I would say it's more prevalent in subjectivism because that approach, by its very nature, more easily lends itself to it.

 

[masterhw]

I think there is always a bias toward overvaluing more readily available and understood metrics. It is relatively easy for me to look up on ASR that some Topping DAC or amp has 120 dB SINAD, where the meaning of this value 1) is readily understood by the (intended) audience, and 2) should perform about the same for everyone who has one. I don't need an APx555 or a Klippel as long as someone (who shares measurements on equipment I'm interested in) has one. They can even help interpret the results - how convenient!

However, there are swaths of factors out there that influence our audio enjoyment/fidelity which are not easy to understand, are specific to your listening environment, and are costly to measure (time/money/both). I feel there is a tendency to irrationally underscore the importance of these things. I wonder how many of us know the (approximate) SINAD of our electronics but not what our room's RT60 is. Or whether my front towers are interacting with each other in an undesirable way, oblivious to me since I only ever measure them independently. Or whether I should have my grills on or off. Even if you did measure, no one is going to interpret these results for you and help you understand what is holding back your setup (except for the nice people of the Room Acoustics subforum). I would expect probably some or all of these to influence sound reproduction more than graduating from 90 dB sinad to 110 dB sinad would, and yet I have to fight the tendency to occupy my mind with comparing power and distortion figures.

In fairness, these listening environment-specific topics are discussed, and probably moreso on this forum than subjectivist ones. But I think they're far off occupying a share of the discussion proportional to their influence on our fidelity. I'm not sure that will ever be a reasonable expectation to have, since I can't really get Amir or other ASR users to spend time on my couch listening to my gear. The only specifics we can discuss are gear, so gear we focus on.

What we can learn from a perhaps ideal version of subjectivism is the self reflection to truly listen to what you're hearing and ask yourself what is preventing you from enjoying this more. If you don't even know because you've never heard truly superb stuff, then make solving that a goal of yours. The answer may be something you couldn't have measured at all, like that playing at volume levels I would really like get me a knock at the door. As frustrating as it is to have a problem that costs $500k to solve instead of $500 (a house instead of a new amp), I think it is an important step on the path to audio enlightenment. Similar to the beliefs I've come to hold in engineering, objectivism/the focus on measurements is a very useful tool to have in your toolkit, but it shouldn't be your only approach. Sometimes your senses can tell you things measurements can't. Often measurements can tell us things no senses could. Figure out what you're after, and bring the right tool for the job.

 

[tobyjug]

I am a relative newbie to ASR and objective approach to HiFi. When my Denon 2930 ci cd player died I used a cheap Toshiba DVD to play my CDs straight out the phono connections.It was a compromise I could live with.That then died.
Due to being on a very tight budget I bought a Sony DVD as a transport,and also to play our DVD collection.The Sony coax output measured very well on here.
I also matched that to the highly rated smsl 200 dac. A combination that measurements tell me is giving me exactly what is on the discs.
It's early days yet, but I am enjoying clearer vocals and details, but I find the sound to be a bit lightweight, bass light and the whole presentation a bit shouty. Acoustic guitars seem to lack the natural tone.
Im sure this is probably a reverse honeymoon period, but so far some bonuses and some losses.
Is this a common occurrence when suddenly having a totally clean signal.?

 

[Purité Audio]

If the electronics are transparent and the amp capable of properly driving your speakers then the sound you are hearing is totally down to the speakers and the room.
Keith

 

[steve59]

If I hear a difference between amp A against amp B there's likely a qualified reason someone like bob Carver would understand that a music lover wouldn't, fair to say? Would recognizing that be a sort of middle ground? Hearing people from the engineering side say there's no specific measurement for resolution, imaging or soundstage is allowing for subjective discussion also, with the exception that if there isn't a measurement then it can't exist, for those there's no middle ground.

 

[Jimster480]

I am a relative newbie to ASR and objective approach to HiFi. When my Denon 2930 ci cd player died I used a cheap Toshiba DVD to play my CDs straight out the phono connections.It was a compromise I could live with.That then died.
Due to being on a very tight budget I bought a Sony DVD as a transport,and also to play our DVD collection.The Sony coax output measured very well on here.
I also matched that to the highly rated smsl 200 dac. A combination that measurements tell me is giving me exactly what is on the discs.
It's early days yet, but I am enjoying clearer vocals and details, but I find the sound to be a bit lightweight, bass light and the whole presentation a bit shouty. Acoustic guitars seem to lack the natural tone.
Im sure this is probably a reverse honeymoon period, but so far some bonuses and some losses.
Is this a common occurrence when suddenly having a totally clean signal.?

This is something that I experienced as well when I first reached state-of-the-art technical performance on my DAC. I found the limit of my amplifier and my speakers.
Usually poor performing gear will curtail the higher frequencies and even sometimes bunch up the mids. So what you've been used to listening to might have masked the limitations of your speakers or amp(s).
This is why many people say they like a "warm sound" because older equipment tended to be warmer since the performance for technically perfect high frequency audio wasn't there (on most gear).
Also our hearing seems to be more tolerant to technical error in the bass region (I know mine is) than in a higher frequency where it's easier to detect /notice technical error.
I'm not sure what system you have but my guess is your speakers or amp are being "exposed" now for technical deficiency.
This might be able to be tapered with room tuning (assuming you are using speakers) but that requires additional hardware.

 

[tobyjug]

This is something that I experienced as well when I first reached state-of-the-art technical performance on my DAC. I found the limit of my amplifier and my speakers.
Usually poor performing gear will curtail the higher frequencies and even sometimes bunch up the mids. So what you've been used to listening to might have masked the limitations of your speakers or amp(s).
This is why many people say they like a "warm sound" because older equipment tended to be warmer since the performance for technically perfect high frequency audio wasn't there (on most gear).
Also our hearing seems to be more tolerant to technical error in the bass region (I know mine is) than in a higher frequency where it's easier to detect /notice technical error.
I'm not sure what system you have but my guess is your speakers or amp are being "exposed" now for technical deficiency.
This might be able to be tapered with room tuning (assuming you are using speakers) but that requires additional hardware.

Hmmm not sure about that. I use Croft all valve pre and hybrid power.Harbeth C7 es3 speakers. I think I maybe someone who prefers a coloured sound.

 

[Jimster480]

Hmmm not sure about that. I use Croft all valve pre and hybrid power.Harbeth C7 es3 speakers. I think I maybe someone who prefers a coloured sound.

No idea the performance of any of that. You definitely would be used to colored sound though.

 

[krabapple]

I am a relative newbie to ASR and objective approach to HiFi. When my Denon 2930 ci cd player died I used a cheap Toshiba DVD to play my CDs straight out the phono connections.It was a compromise I could live with.That then died.

i.e. RCA jacks, ok

Due to being on a very tight budget I bought a Sony DVD as a transport,and also to play our DVD collection.The Sony coax output measured very well on here.
I also matched that to the highly rated smsl 200 dac. A combination that measurements tell me is giving me exactly what is on the discs.
It's early days yet, but I am enjoying clearer vocals and details, but I find the sound to be a bit lightweight, bass light and the whole presentation a bit shouty. Acoustic guitars seem to lack the natural tone.
Im sure this is probably a reverse honeymoon period, but so far some bonuses and some losses.
Is this a common occurrence when suddenly having a totally clean signal.?

Having the CDP do D/A (your Denon setup) versus having an downstream DAC do it (your Sony setup): any truly audible difference here is most likely to be a simple level (voltage) difference at analog output.

Manifesting as 'bass light', or 'shouty presentation' or 'non neutral tone' -- these are all things our funny brains tell us when they don't know what's really going on.

How to know? measurements and blind comparison

 

[DSJR]

Hmmm not sure about that. I use Croft all valve pre and hybrid power.Harbeth C7 es3 speakers. I think I maybe someone who prefers a coloured sound.

The Croft hybrid power amp (Series 7?) was tested in HFN and like the integrated which was annihilated technically in Stereophile, has an output impedance in the mids of around 2 to 2.5 ohms. It's enough to equalise many of the speakers it's used with and especially the Harbeths with a roller-coaster impedance curve. Apologies, but I was never ever a fan of the ripe-toned C7-ES3 and was totally blown away by the transformation wrought in the C7-XD revision. Now this XD is revised slightly into XD2, the previous XD may come up at a favourable price and I'd urge you to look out for a pair. Amazing what tweaks of damping and crossover can achieve without spoiling the measured response At the time of launch, I found the 7XD and SHL5+XD to sound quite close to each other, the 5 obviously sounding slightly 'bigger.' Unlikely at present that I'll get to hear the newest ones though.