If you are listening at home for your own pleasure makeing adjustments to suit your preference. Adjusting recordings because they sound "thin" or whatever. Sticking in whatever gear you like with whatever level of distortion. Then anything goes. Fill yer boots.
So sighted listening can be useful, correct? Is there some reason this is “ only useful in one’s home?” I don’t see why there is some apparently Magic dividing line like that.
The problem comes when people take this sighted listening and try to inform others about the characteristics of the gear.
Why? If one is making a fairly accurate inference from sighted listening in My Home, why does that suddenly become “ Wrong” or useless when I am part that information to other people?
I have found, for instance, that my friend’s descriptions of loudspeakers in his room are quite accurate. And he finds the same with me.
If perhaps the idea is that room effects mean one person’s impression of a loudspeaker in one room cannot tell you anything about how it will perform in another room, I would disagree. The first thing is that, as Toole remind us, We are quite adept at “ hearing through” room effects (with the exception of room effects on bass) to the direct character of a loudspeaker. That’s why loudspeakers not to sound startlingly different from room to room.
That has been my experience. if I hear a loudspeaker in one place and then another, the character remains essentially the same.
The other thing about this is that audiophiles usually aren’t randomly shoving their speakers into corners or things like that that will exacerbate the worst room effects. Most audiophile and reviewers are carefully dialling in the loudspeakers and listening position to get the smoothest most ballast sound they can get. So while not absolutely perfect, one can gain a reasonable acquaintance with the performance of a loudspeaker this way. And with good enough skills, convey that sound character to somebody else.
Some people are good at this some people less so. But you can use discretion in finding people who seem to be good at accurately describing the characteristics of loudspeakers, and you can winnow this down either by seeing if their descriptions contradict known measurements, or if they have accurately described loudspeakers you are familiar with.
That point would subsume a description about Erin as well. Of course there are liabilities and nobody is expecting perfection. But that doesn’t mean inferences aren’t unreasonable or useful.
Sighted listening therefore - while perfectly valid for getting your home system working the way you like it - has absolutely no value in informing anyone else how they will experience any particular piece of gear.
I disagree. That’s where people here tend to go too far and my view. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In my experience, the sonic reports from other audiophiles and reviewers (personally vetted in the way I described) have been extremely helpful and guiding me to some of the most wonderfully equipment I have ever enjoyed. I’ve read descriptions of certain loudspeakers that sounded intriguing, when I had a chance to listen to those speakers in various stores, that was indeed how they sounded, and some of those loudspeakers I ended up with in my home, where they continue to sound as described.
Again, the “ accuracy” of Sonic descriptions I’m talking about is not always in the context of “ first hearing the description and then listening to the loudspeaker.” It is also very often having heard the loudspeaker first and afterward encountering very accurate descriptions. It goes both ways.
Plenty of people have even found my own descriptions of equipment to be useful.
For instance, somebody on another audio forum was asking if somebody had experience with two loudspeaker brands - one that he owned (Harbeth) and one that he was interested in (Joseph Audio). As it happened I owned exactly the same Harbeth speaker he did, as well as the Joseph audio loudspeaker he was interested in! So I was able to give him a detailed description of the characteristics of each loudspeaker, the pros and cons, and contrasting their different qualities. Others familiar with those loudspeakers (including owners) said my descriptions were very accurate, and since this guy owned the Harbeths and found my description insightful, that gave him some more confidence in my description of the Joseph speakers as well. so he ended up getting the speakers in to try, and he was ecstatic, saying that I had absolutely nailed their Sonic qualities and how happy he was with his new speakers.
That clearly is an instance of subjective descriptions, drawn from sighted listening being helpful to another person.
Another example: I’ve brought this up many times before but…the Devore Fidelity O/96 speakers. This brand is pretty much excoriated on this forum for being outside of “ best practises” and not measuring up to snuff. However, subjective reviewers including Art Dudley we converging on describing some very intriguing aspects to the presentation, of the very type that I am interested in. And when I finally auditioned those loudspeakers, which I did several times in different rooms, they had exactly the specific type of characteristics described by those reviewers, a rich heavy dense sound with substantial body, beautiful timber for acoustic instruments, “ disappearing, and sound staging imaging” surprisingly well given their design, and being particularly excellent at conveying the rhythm and dynamics in recordings, especially drums.
They immediately became one of my favourite all-time loudspeakers.
On ASR, nobody would give those loudspeakers a second look, let alone recommendation to hear them. And when I would ask people to describe how they would sound just from the Stereophile measurements, I got ridiculous responses like “ would sound like a kazoo.” Grossly misleading to say the least.
See the problem is that it takes a significant amount of experience correlating the measurements of all sorts of different speaker designs to their Sonic consequences. Most audiophiles have not had that experience. That means they either rely on sighted listening, or on somebody very technically proficient to translate measurements into “ how the speaker will sound.” And the problem there is: 1. There aren’t measurements and somebody available to do this for you, for the majority of loudspeakers. 2. The type of person most adept at understanding the measurements also happens to be the type of person least likely to care about Sonic descriptions, And also typically will have strong ideas as to what they think is a good or bad design. That means that if you get any sort of description, it is usually pretty shallow, and also the same person is more likely to dismiss various designs as unworthy anyway.
And that’s a type of stuff that often occurs on a forum like this.
I personally get the gist of speaker measurements, but I cannot tell precisely how every loudspeaker will sound from the measurements (and many experienced people can’t either). That’s why I need to hear it.
A place like this would likely never have sent me towards the Devore speakers as worth anyones time. (and has never reviewed them.)
It was instead the reports from subjective reviewers that were helpful in identifying speakers as having certain wonderful qualities, that led me to discovering one of my favourite loudspeakers. Very useful!
So again, you or other people here may not find any use in sighted speaker reports, but that doesn’t mean they are useless for others.