Psychological &/or philosophical rejection of DSP

[pablolie]

Yes, yes, to be sure. But the question concerns psychology more than the reality of using rigorous methods to prove/disprove audible differences. The crowd I refer to actively rejects such methods, or the specific evaluations, as being flawed when no audible differences are found. Either the test was done wrong, listeners were untrained, etc etc. The idea, I think, is that music has some unmeasurable qualities that can only be heard by golden-eared listeners.

To a certain degree, I also think hobbyists in many fields seem to project something like a "soul" to the object of affection. Which is also tangential to the Schopenhauer comment someone made above. We like to live in a state of wonder, it seems.

I sometimes find myself doing that with my motorcycles, so it's not that far-fetched to project some living qualities to our audio gear (which audio language often goes for).

 

[ahofer]

If there is an influence on audible sound by a DSP or digital sound, a proper double-blind study can with acceptable probability reject or demonstrate the influence. Toole and Olive used double-blind studies to validate the subjective parts of the spinorama evaluations.
Other assessments of audible impact are scientifically meaningless.

Neuro

And consider this blind test. Better yet, ask the DSP critics to take it, presuming they think the multiple digital transformations are the problem.

Listen and choose the 8th generation digital copy.

Each of these zip files will open into three wav files. One is labeled Reference, one is A and one is B. These are 30 second snippets of full songs. The originals were from CD so all 44.1 khz and 16 bit. Either A or B has been thru 8 generations of DA to AD copying. The other is identical...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[AndyBell]

Yes, yes, to be sure. But the question concerns psychology more than the reality of using rigorous methods to prove/disprove audible differences. The crowd I refer to actively rejects such methods, or the specific evaluations, as being flawed when no audible differences are found. Either the test was done wrong, listeners were untrained, etc etc. The idea, I think, is that music has some unmeasurable qualities that can only be heard by golden-eared listeners.

My mood (and alcohol intake lol) probably affect my listening experience more than anything.

One day Beethoven’s 9th is the best thing ever, the next day it is meh. All on the same equipment and settings.

Personally, I think that ‘upgrading’ some element in my audio gear, especially for a ‘better’ component, raises my expectations to the the point I listen more closely and ‘hear’ the difference.

Music is, after all, an art form and emotion not logic dictates how we react to it. Anything that affects my mood affects how I hear the music. And I don’t know of any way to measure that.

The only thing I can reliably identify as audibly different is DSP/EQ. I can tell if I’ve the wrong EQ settings on for the headphones I’m using, for example.

 

[ahofer]

My mood (and alcohol intake lol) probably affect my listening experience more than anything

There’s a whole thread on another…enhancer.

Effect of Cannabis use on hearing

I wonder how does weed affect you guys while listening to music. And if you know if any Scientific studies on this specific effect in particular. For me when i smoke the Devil’s grass I experience few effects. 1) Bass is more pronounced, I would be perceiving it louder than it actually is...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[DSJR]

To a certain degree, I also think hobbyists in many fields seem to project something like a "soul" to the object of affection. Which is also tangential to the Schopenhauer comment someone made above. We like to live in a state of wonder, it seems.

I sometimes find myself doing that with my motorcycles, so it's not that far-fetched to project some living qualities to our audio gear (which audio language often goes for).

I've (unfortunately) tended to bond with many of my audiophile-s**t turntables and especially the irreplaceable and restored Spendors which I sold to a school pal's Dad back in 1974, the more I've had to do to them, the stronger the bond! On the other hand, a Beogram 3000/SP12 I have, looks, 'sounds' and basically performs just fine for the vinyl medium, yet in a silly way it's too much to me like a record playing 'appliance' for the very reasons it and its descendants were designed... Place the disc, press a button and that's that!

 

[Neuro]

Yes, yes, to be sure. But the question concerns psychology more than the reality of using rigorous methods to prove/disprove audible differences. The crowd I refer to actively rejects such methods, or the specific evaluations, as being flawed when no audible differences are found. Either the test was done wrong, listeners were untrained, etc etc. The idea, I think, is that music has some unmeasurable qualities that can only be heard by golden-eared listeners.

Just because many people have the same opinion that DSP and/or digital audio affects audible sound, does not mean that it is true. Conformity on a matter without scientific support is interesting psychologically. Usually the cause is low education and low intelligence as well as other variables where the group itself is important to the individual.

 

[JPA]

Guess through how much DSP almost any music track went before it even entered your house? Unless you only listen to < 80s pressed CD and LPs, all of it would have gone through a massive amount of all the things audiophiles despise: regular cables, massive amounts of DSP processing, proper DACs, ADCs, and over their dead body: opamps... huge amounts of them!

So, considering all the processing that goes on in the recording chain, why did Direct-To-Disc fail? Shouldn't the Audiophiles have lapped it up?

 

[AndyBell]

Just because many people have the same opinion that DSP and/or digital audio affects audible sound, does not mean that it is true

DSP is measurable. It’s not an opinion. And it’s as easy as it comes to test it for yourself. If you play about with the EQ and can’t hear a difference then a hearing check is needed.

 

[ahofer]

DSP is measurable. It’s not an opinion. And it’s as easy as it comes to test it for yourself. If you play about with the EQ and can’t hear a difference then a hearing check is needed.

I think the contention here is that intentional EQ is audible, but the idea that there’s some (unmeasured or unmeasurable) degradation of the sound from using DSP is typically false.

Well - the “unmeasurable” part, that would *always* be false.

 

[klettermann]

DSP is measurable. It’s not an opinion. And it’s as easy as it comes to test it for yourself. If you play about with the EQ and can’t hear a difference then a hearing check is needed.

Absolutely correct. However, on Audiophile Style this issue gets very, very muddled. DSP comes in many flavors and colors - upsampling, conversion to DSD, conversiion from DSD, EQing, room correction and more. Yet their conversations typicallgyoften don't specify the DSP goal and use and you see the commentgs like "DSD causes distortion or blurring or ...". So yeah, room correction obviously can be measured. But not many of those guys do room correction using REW etc. and nobody posts measurements for discussion. More often it's push-button methods like Dirac. Thde other odd inconsistancy is love for HQP which is apparentlhy exempt from the anti-DSP views. Go figure.

 

[RDoc]

To a certain degree, I also think hobbyists in many fields seem to project something like a "soul" to the object of affection. Which is also tangential to the Schopenhauer comment someone made above. We like to live in a state of wonder, it seems.

I sometimes find myself doing that with my motorcycles, so it's not that far-fetched to project some living qualities to our audio gear (which audio language often goes for).

That's all nonsense, motorcycles are just steel and aluminum (except for my beloved Ducati (RIP) of course).

 

[RexrothPigeon]

The Pathetic Fallacy

 

[klettermann]

The Pathetic Fallacy

Hadn't heard that term. Brilliant! Lots of it going around.

 

[Mnyb]

Frankly I also think that many audiophiles are so used to "speaker sound " that they cant get used to bass without room resonances or their small 2 ways don't give real bass but they must rely on "pseudo slam" from room modes to feel the music ? and don't know the difference ?

And of course would never admit that they don't like clean bass , but that the DSP robed the soul of their music ?

or that they like "speaker sound " not real sound from an acoustic ensemble ? Fww most music don't have a real counterpart so there's that to ?

Or only experienced badly applied full tilt full bandwidth room correction ? When we know that extra care is needed if you want to anything above the transition frequency , for example have the speaker anechoic response available ?

 

[Putter]

Frankly I also think that many audiophiles are so used to "speaker sound " that they cant get used to bass without room resonances or their small 2 ways don't give real bass but they must rely on "pseudo slam" from room modes to feel the music ? and don't know the difference ?

And of course would never admit that they don't like clean bass , but that the DSP robed the soul of their music ?

or that they like "speaker sound " not real sound from an acoustic ensemble ? Fww most music don't have a real counterpart so there's that to ?

Or only experienced badly applied full tilt full bandwidth room correction ? When we know that extra care is needed if you want to anything above the transition frequency , for example have the speaker anechoic response available ?

This seems like a 'nose in the air' post. After all isn't about musical enjoyment? Not everybody has the budget, room size or even the interest to try to simulate live sound. For that matter I would argue that multichannel stereo does a better job of creating a live sound that any stereo system. Incidentally, I'm one of those 'audiophiles', a term typically used in derision who uses 'small' 2 ways albeit supplemented with small subwoofers with some effort to equalize using automated systems.

I understand you're trying to critique completely subjective audiophiles, but think you're using too broad a brush.

 

[ahofer]

1. People get used to the sound they know
2. People seek status in all pursuits
3. People are suspicious of new methods, and resistant to the rigors of scientific comparison, and put off, maybe ‘disgusted’, by the lack of a human element in the purely scientific pursuit.

People worry about the safety of self-driving cars even when the stats are already wildly in favor. I was listening to an interview the other night about AI use in journalism. Someone said they would not continue to read a journalist who admitted to using AI in composition of their article. When asked to explain she said “because..ick”. I am a low ‘ick’ person (i learned this from taking the yourmorals.org survey, BTW). If something is good, I don’t really care about its provenance, and that would include a magazine article or a piece of music. But “disgust” is definitely a huge part of human ‘reasoning’, both moral and logical.

You put all these human foibles together (status, habit, suspicion, disgust) and you get things like the science-rejection of high end audio, various fashion items, food claims, vintage guitar sound claims, etc. etc. History may not repeat itself, but people do.

For the most part, this goes to ‘whatever floats your boat’. But when the status competition and disgust instinct comes out, people get understandably annoyed. So if you try to avoid those, dialogue is safer.

People do change their mind though. I did. It started with a Stereo Review article (amplifier blind test) in the 1980s. I still sort of rejected it at the time, but it piqued my curiosity enough to keep me looking for more evidence. Then the internet came along.

 

[Mr. Widget]

History may not repeat itself, but people do.

Especially on many of these threads.

 

[ahofer]

Especially on many of these threads.

Guilty as charged.

 

[WillBrink]

Help me understand. I've recently been browsing a bunch of "audiophile" forums in hope of learning something new about DSP, room treatment, noise reduction, etc. To my surprise most of what I found in the 2ch audio world was a widespread aversion to DSP, whether for EQ, room treatment or much of anything else. Lots of concern about preferring "signal purity" and stuff like that. And often (or mostly!) this goes hand in hand with the "digital noise" crowd that's concerned with some kind of distortion that can't be measured but still heard as "less blackness" and similar descriptors. And it seems measurements of anything are nowhere to be found. I had one guy advise me to abandon all DSP and instead undertake a tunable room treatment project that would have cost tens of thousands of $$$. ????

This all strikes me as snake oil adjacent at best. Can anybody comment or clarify this mindset? Or am I getting it all wrong? Thanks and cheers,

Often the same people who will tell you the new power cord they added made a major difference to their system. Such people can be safely ignored.

 

[Mnyb]

This seems like a 'nose in the air' post. After all isn't about musical enjoyment? Not everybody has the budget, room size or even the interest to try to simulate live sound. For that matter I would argue that multichannel stereo does a better job of creating a live sound that any stereo system. Incidentally, I'm one of those 'audiophiles', a term typically used in derision who uses 'small' 2 ways albeit supplemented with small subwoofers with some effort to equalize using automated systems.

I understand you're trying to critique completely subjective audiophiles, but think you're using too broad a brush.

Hey you use subs with some EQ , the stereotypical audiophiles don’t . 2 ways with subs is a good solution.

I don’t have multichannel for music these days my system is basically a 2.2 system 2 speakers 2 subs . And the room EQ to make it work
(WiiM room fit or manual PEQ in ROON ).

What I tried to ridicule was the paradox with uber expensive 2 ways instead of decent towers ( or subs + small speakers ) ”fast bass” and all that . A tower speaker occupie the same space as two ways on stands .
If a ”purist” tries a bigger speaker they get into a game off trying all kind of placements and it’s still booming to much.

What happened is our usual problem of small room acoustics ! If you bring bass capable speakers into a small room you get some issues.
The practical way too solve this is DSP . Which some people don’t want at all.

So you trade a real pragmatic solution against imagined purist benefits ?

You can also have very extensive room treatment but for bass these are very invasive expensive and unpractical , you need to afford to have a whole room set aside for music only.

It’s the mindset , instead of some pragmatic insight try some DSP or acoustic room treatment, let’s buy a fancy power cord ?

When I was younger I was one of those why tried expensive cables and ”upgrades” I think had some silly cones and green rims for my CD’s.
It was girlfriend why bringed the first CD player, at the time I was ofcourse a vinyl only person, what a fool I was .