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Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?

MattHooper

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3d movies suck .

I think cynicism sucks more. ;)

just a cash cow to lure the sheep in . i followed one such for "titanic 3d" it sucked . threw away the glasses and watched blurred . only went see if the sound mix was still as same when i projected it at warner bros village 12 plex 1998 . digital cinema rubbish . i saw colour banding noise at the start of the hard-drive-movie . this wasn't film it wasn't 35mm i once recall .

So you saw a 3D movie, didn't like it, and now everyone else who attend or enjoy 3D movies are just "sheep?"

That's quite a leap.

I really enjoy 3D movies, both in the theater and at home (on my projection screen). Of course the quality is variable, but plenty have been amazing. Gravity in 3D was mind-bending for me in the theater - the 3D absolutely added to the experience for me. It's one of my favorite 3D movies to play on my projection screen too - the sensation of a "trip to space" can be uncanny at times.

But if other folks don't care for it, no biggie.

I'll never get this impulse to leap from

"I don't like X"

to

"Anyone else who does is a dupe or a sheep."


(Except, of course, for the obvious sense of self-superiority it gives the person making such claims).
 

tvih

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I saw maybe less than ten 3D films... So not very many. I wasn't particularly impressed but I certainly don't begrudge others liking them - well, unless you count 2D viewings being preferable to me, cheaper and unavailable at the times I was able to go back then due to the popularity of 3D, but I have since stopped going to cinemas anyway and wouldn't be timeframe-limited either regardless. But actually the biggest issue for me with the 3D viewings were the supremely uncomfortable glasses my local theater had. Absolutely incompatible with the shape of the bridge of my nose, and hard (as well as heavy). Painful after just a few minutes already.
 

Axo1989

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I enjoyed Gravity. Went from a heat wave in Sydney to an icy theatre to spend a couple of hours spinning in space.

The other 3D I recall watching was one of the Spy Kids series. Also fun, but I was probably the right age.

@Andysu may be a bit of a misanthrope, but at least he likes cats. :)
 

Mart68

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3D is just a gimmick, like excessive CGI. Someone discovered that it was easier to use gimmicks to get people into the theatres than it was to provide a good plot, characters, and memorable dialogue. So we get films that no-one is interested in seeing more than once, and no-one will be quoting classic lines from them twenty years on.

I can watch a film like 'The Maltese Falcon' any number of times and enjoy it just as much as the first, yet it's just a handful of people talking in a room. It's not even in colour. However I've no desire to see 'Ready Player One' ever again.
 

Blumlein 88

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IMAX can be fun. 3D can be fun. I liked Avatar in 3D, but it washed out the color too much. I liked an old 3D flick, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein. Also thought it was worthwhile in of all things Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Didn't see Gravity in 3D, but it probably was one that would be fun.
 

Newman

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Like your all-encompassing avatar?
 

Beershaun

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Everything is mostly nothing.
At the galactic level this on point. Space is BIG. It has a lot of...space.
 

Newman

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Gee, and a pinhead has a lot of...pinhead.
 

Mart68

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“Space, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-boggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.''
 

Azazello13

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I honestly don't think there are many musicians on this site. I say this because a lot of musicians like things that color the sound. Like there are a ton of plugins and hardware that is made just for this very reason. Like you would run a clean signal through it to color the sound. A lot of people also like something like this in their hifi setup. People here seem to think it is wrong to like such things. I think that is very narrow minded myself.

Just reading through this thread months later, but as I was reading this an analogy struck me. Photographers use various filters to achieve a particular lighting effect, and if the photographer is good then the result will be an image that is pleasing in a way that the photographer intended. One could view audio colorations the same way, and certainly musicians are very aware of things they can do to tweak their sound and achieve a desired effect. But that should all end up in the music, right, either what goes into the recording or what comes out of the instrument or the amp? Playback devices that "color the sound" would be similar to always wearing a certain color sunglasses to art galleries.
 

sonitus mirus

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Just reading through this thread months later, but as I was reading this an analogy struck me. Photographers use various filters to achieve a particular lighting effect, and if the photographer is good then the result will be an image that is pleasing in a way that the photographer intended. One could view audio colorations the same way, and certainly musicians are very aware of things they can do to tweak their sound and achieve a desired effect. But that should all end up in the music, right, either what goes into the recording or what comes out of the instrument or the amp? Playback devices that "color the sound" would be similar to always wearing a certain color sunglasses to art galleries.

With regards to modern digital devices and the typical interconnects involved with reproducing an audio signal, visual and aural comparisons are more along the lines of being able to identify the differences with a solid green, one-kilometer square on the surface of the moon's near side, and moving that square 10 meters in any direction and claiming it impacts your perception of what you are seeing from Earth.
 

chych7

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Just reading through this thread months later, but as I was reading this an analogy struck me. Photographers use various filters to achieve a particular lighting effect, and if the photographer is good then the result will be an image that is pleasing in a way that the photographer intended. One could view audio colorations the same way, and certainly musicians are very aware of things they can do to tweak their sound and achieve a desired effect. But that should all end up in the music, right, either what goes into the recording or what comes out of the instrument or the amp? Playback devices that "color the sound" would be similar to always wearing a certain color sunglasses to art galleries.

But what if the musician was analogously wearing those certain color sunglasses when they were creating their music? How do we know the intent of the artist? A few more points:
- What the musician hears when playing is not the same as what the audience/microphone hears
- For recorded music, the recording engineer has a huge impact on the end result
- The artist is listening to their recording over some specific set of studio monitors or headphones; perhaps we need to be using the same equipment, with all its colorations, to more accurately hear what the musician was hearing
- Are all musicians audiophiles (in the sense of people in this forum)? Or perhaps musicians have a wider tolerance of what their music can sound like, and people like us are nitpicking way too much and missing the whole point of the music and message the artist was trying to communicate...
 

rwortman

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Playback devices that "color the sound" would be similar to always wearing a certain color sunglasses to art galleries.
Or maybe the art gallery putting in soft warm lighting that makes almost all the paintings look better.
 

Robbo99999

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The trouble with all metaphors is that, just like a knife, they only work up to a point.
Ha, a metaphor for a metaphor! I agree, I find metaphors to be a really poor way of arguing points (probably in general) and certainly here on ASR during the topics that we discuss.
 

Tangband

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I have a scale for how much measurements matter for each category of products:

DACs: 100%
Amplifiers (headphone and speaker): 80 to 90% due to variability of available power. Hard to internalize how much power is available/enough without listening tests.
Speakers: 70 to 80%
Headphones: 50 to 80% (measurements too variable)

This is why you see me do listening tests for the last two categories and half of second (headphone amps).
I also think a lot like this.
I would say bad installation of two loudspeakers in a room ( randomly set up, no stand, no acoustic treatment ) can make that 70% loudspeaker a 50 % .
 

Ken Tajalli

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We don't, we can't, and we shouldn't worry about it.
Do you live in a house? What was the intent of the carpenter?
Have you taken a cab somewhere? What was the intent of the cab driver?
Do you take medicine? What is the intent of the pharmacy?
Do you eat at a restaurant? What is the intent of the chef?
Did you attend school? What was the intent of your teachers?

The endeavors of different people in society, artists included, are similar to the interwoven threads of a tapestry. Each little thread contributes its own detail, but that detail has no meaning until the larger overall view of the tapestry is revealed. You can lose threads, yet the tapestry survives, as does its overall meaning. And you can lose artists, yet music, itself, goes on. So don't worry about the intent of an artist; it's not important. Ponder instead the meaning of music ..... in your life and the lives of others. That has the greater importance, and is a "grand tapestry" that has survived millions of artists for thousands of years.

Have a musical day. :) Jim
If I remember correctly, Archimago once said "All we can expect a device to do, is to be faithful to the recording at hand, we can not guess the intentions of the artists or the engineers who produced it".
That is very true! a harsh recording should sound harsh, a soft recording . . . . .
The same goes for bright recording, Warm recording (whatever that means).
Hence, the measurements are vital as a design tool, and I do believe everything that can be heard, can be measured - but that does not mean, what we measure today is the final word, we must keep learning/investigating about measurements, new measurements, and their relative audibility.
 

Azazello13

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But what if the musician was analogously wearing those certain color sunglasses when they were creating their music? How do we know the intent of the artist? A few more points:
- What the musician hears when playing is not the same as what the audience/microphone hears
- For recorded music, the recording engineer has a huge impact on the end result
- The artist is listening to their recording over some specific set of studio monitors or headphones; perhaps we need to be using the same equipment, with all its colorations, to more accurately hear what the musician was hearing
- Are all musicians audiophiles (in the sense of people in this forum)? Or perhaps musicians have a wider tolerance of what their music can sound like, and people like us are nitpicking way too much and missing the whole point of the music and message the artist was trying to communicate...
I guarantee musicians in general give this stuff very little thought. Many times they pay significant attention and give some input on what the recording and the mix sound like, probably through very neutral, accurate (NOT colored) studio gear like some $100 Sony MDR7506 headphones. If they want to add "color" or whatever to their music, they do it here. They don't intentionally make their music yellow with the idea that everyone will listen to it with lavendar shades.
 

MattHooper

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We don't, we can't, and we shouldn't worry about it.
Do you live in a house? What was the intent of the carpenter?
Have you taken a cab somewhere? What was the intent of the cab driver?
Do you take medicine? What is the intent of the pharmacy?
Do you eat at a restaurant? What is the intent of the chef?
Did you attend school? What was the intent of your teachers?

Agreed, generally speaking.

If I remember correctly, Archimago once said "All we can expect a device to do, is to be faithful to the recording at hand, we can not guess the intentions of the artists or the engineers who produced it".
That is very true! a harsh recording should sound harsh, a soft recording . . . . .
The same goes for bright recording, Warm recording (whatever that means).

The problem there, though, is the one I keep raising: it seems to leave the ultimate aim for this hobby unmoored - just hanging in the air without justification.

Why in the world should anyone care about "being faithful to the recording" and reproducing it accurately? Stopping there seems to be utterly arbitrary, as if hif-fi is just some academic pursuit of "reproducing a signal for the sake of reproducing a signal."

And this makes a lot of the derision of "colored" components all the more arbitrary. If you can't give a good answer why anyone should, or would want to concentrate on reproducing the signal faithfully, you'd have no right to castigate any deviation from this goal. And yet we see just such derision for colored components here all the time.

The original version of "high fidelity" at least had a sort of north star goal of "reproducing the sensation of hearing real live performances. " As far away a goal as that may be, it was at least some yardstick/goal that seemed non-arbitrary. (After all, why were they recording music performances in the first place, if not to hear that specific sound at the other end - playback?)

I think that if you take the view "I want to reproduce the recorded signal as accurately as possible" you inevitably bring in some sort of "artist intent" in terms of "hearing the artistic choices of the artist, as unmolested as possible."

And then of course there's quicksand there...the circle of confusion.

My own approach navigating all these concerns is this:

Like Jim Taylor said: I don't worry much about the artist's intent.

Notice I didn't say I don't care about the artists intent. There certainly is a sense in which I care very much about the artists intend. After all they made all sorts of artistic decisions in making the music, and those decisions are what make their music "theirs."

But I don't worry much about not getting the intent because:

1. I can't know precisely the artists intent - circle of confusion among other things. But I would say I can infer a more general intent for most musicians: that the listener enjoys their music! I think most artists are happy that you are listening and enjoying their music on whatever system you have, whatever floats your boat.

2. Possibly more important: The reason I don't worry much is that I think it's just not hard to get the general intent of the artists music. That intent, that is the essential character of the music has, since recorded music became available, "translated" over countless different playback systems, from gramaphones, to cheap record players in teenagers rooms with records strewn all over the floor, to transistor radios on the beach in the 60's, to "boomboxes," walkmans, car stereos - you name it. What makes "Hey Jude" by The Beatles sound like Hey Jude comes through loud and clear on practically any system you are likely to find.

So I spend virtually no time fretting "Oh gosh, maybe I'm not hearing this precisely on the equipment the artists intends" since that modus operandi has, for the most part, never really been part of the dissemination of music.

I therefore have no problem nudging the sound of my system in the direction that makes me want to listen to more music.

This doesn't at all mean a perfect abandonment of the relevance of measurements. Clearly they can help people design equipment to more reliably reach the design goal. And clearly measurements can help understand how something sounds, and to a degree predict how something will sound. Generally speaking, I tend to prefer in speakers which exhibit fairly neutral, low distortion sound. It's not because I'm chasing "pure neutrality per se" but rather "a generally neutral speaker tends to sound better to my ears." If I'm too aware of certain colorations - e.g. if voices tend to reliably sound too chesty, muffled, or too sharpened etc, or if the bass has a homogenized droning character - this can be distracting for me. In many areas "lower distortion" just sounds better to me. However, once I've started with a decent speaker in that regard, I'm find nudging the sound a bit with a coloration that, to my ears, adds a bit without sticking out as obvious distortion, one that doesn't cover up the nuances of recordings.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! :)
 
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