Role of the "Mind" in subjective audio evaluation???

[amirm]

EDIT: These discussions were in another thread and have been moved here.

Science can not explain how such a Rube Goldberg scheme can detect sound difference of millisecond degrees.

We don't need to explain how the brain works. We simply need to observe what it does. People like ice cream. Do you doubt that observation because we don't know exactly how the brain arrives at that conclusion across so much of the population?

By the same token, when it comes to audio, tremendous amount of listening tests have been performed by many researchers (both in medical field and entertainment/education). That research is then combined to draw conclusions that are durable and hugely useful.

Here again is an example from Dr. Toole's book:

Here listening tests are used to determine audibility of room reflections. They present the same complexity you are talking about where reflections arrive at slight delays. We see that depending on the delay&level, we don't hear them as "echos."

Now do we care why that so called Haas effect occurs? No. We just need to know that and stop worrying about room reflections causing smearing of sound (common myth).

Likely reason for this is that once man moved into caves, reflections became the norm and the brain adapted to ignore them if they are a constant. But again, that aspect is for some other researchers to worry about than us trying to enjoy music and need to know how to configure our speakers in a room.

The key thing is that the things people say audio science doesn't understand, we do understand. There are no mysteries here.

 

[RB2013]

The heart of the investigation into our illusion of sound perception ends at the Philosophical notion of 'Qualia' (as do all human sensory perceptions)

"In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia are claimed to be individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. "

"Frank Jackson (1982) later defined qualia as "...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes"

"What's it like to be?" argument
Main article: Subjective character of experience
Although it does not actually mention the word "qualia", Thomas Nagel's paper "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" is often cited in debates over qualia. Nagel argues that consciousness has an essentially subjective character, a what-it-is-like aspect. He states that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." Nagel also suggests that the subjective aspect of the mind may not ever be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science. He claims that "if we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done." Furthermore, he states that "it seems unlikely that any physical theory of mind can be contemplated until more thought has been given to the general problem of subjective and objective."

I added the bold underlines. This is just one of many very compelling arguments for subjective human Qualia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia#Explanatory_gap_argument

Even more fun -
Hard problem of consciousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Cheers!

 

[RB2013]

We don't need to explain how the brain works. We simply need to observe what it does. People like ice cream. Do you doubt that observation because we don't know exactly how the brain arrives at that conclusion across so much of the population?

Perfect example! Some people like ice cream - not 100% of people. And worse some like chocolate some vanilla some Cherry Garcia! But why? If all human brains are basically the same (reductionist conclusion), and ice tastes basically the same, the logical conclusion is ALL people have to like ice cream.

But they don't. Anyway how do a few thousand taste buds - sweet/sour/saltly/umami etc... produce such a rich palette of flavor? Again it can't be explained - other then through the Qualia perspective. It's all happening in immaterial consciousness...dare I say subjective consciousness...

 

[RB2013]

"The auditory system is thought to use two main sets of sensory cues to localize sound sources. The first is the inter-aural time differences (ITDs), which you refer to in the question. ITDs arise when the location of the sound source relative to the observer's head causes the sound to be received by the left and right ears at slightly different times. These mainly provide information about the azimuth of the sound source, i.e. its left-right position relative to the observer's head. For example, if the sound is received by the left ear slightly before the right ear, this indicates that the sound originated to the left of the observer. The larger the time difference between the two ears, the further left (or right) the sound is perceived.

ITDs are only part of the picture. As the question correctly notes, there are locations in space for which the generated ITDs would be identical. At a given azimuth location (say, 30º left), there is an entire 2D plane of locations that would generate the same set of ITDs (roughly), including points in space at different angles of height/elevations and points in front of or behind the observer. An additional limitation of ITDs is that they can only be neurally "computed" for sounds in the lower frequency range. Neurons can only fire so quickly -- roughly, once every few milliseconds -- and at higher frequencies the neural refractory period is larger than the period of the sound itself. So the brain isn't very good at comparing the phase of the sound received by the different ears at these frequencies."

https://www.quora.com/Hearing-How-can-human-ears-locate-the-source-of-sound

 

[RB2013]

The Qualia concept or explanation - goes right to the heart of this forum. Trying to judge audio gear by nothing other then - test bench measurements.

A hopeless, but not fruitless task. Hopeless in the sense of using this criteria alone to judge if someone's subject evaluation of what 'sounds' better to them is illusionary - this is utter foolishness. But using testing to determine possible paths of design and engineering to direct one's later subjective evaluation is very fruitful. And why I appreciate and thank you for what you do.

Thank you very much!
Cheers

 

[RB2013]

Our instrumentation is not attempting to judge how something sounds. Instead, it shows detected variations from ideal. We then apply psychoacoustics to see if that difference is material to what is heard. Since psychoacoustics is based on listening tests, we are incorporating both (hearing and instrumentation) in our analysis.

Yes I understand - but again listening is based on a subjective interpretation of the SQ. Like ice cream. True some will like a lot of high frequency tonal balance (like the many 50 and 60 yr old men who dominate high end audio with hearing loss in the upper frequencies). Do I want that with normal hearing? For a truly useful declaration of 'psychoacoustics' to be objectively complete - those doing the ABX testing would have to have their hearing exam results published right along with your listening test results.

What typically happens is this - folks find a reviewer and read their reviews and suggestions. But some - and either hate it, love it, or find it does nothing special. For those tat loved the recommended gear (and again they are not WRONG to like it!) - they will now put more weight into that reviewers recommendations.

If your panel of ABX testers disagree - or if your testing disagrees with the objective validity of their subjective approval of that gear - who is right?

Do you have any validity to criticize the gear they have bought with their money and they subjectively appreciate? Well I'd say no!

But that is exactly what goes on here - in a very cultish way. With lot's of mocking. All part of the human desire to 'be part of a group' or 'be accepted' - tremendous social pressure. That is not useful and is a very big turnoff. You do not do that, and why I respect you. But it seems to be encouraged and rewarded. Some of it is just humorous that's fine. Anyway...

Please get a Schiity Eitr and test it! I'm in Seattle too, maybe I can locate one to provide to you. Can't wait The HF, SBAF and CA would not be happy if it's not the 'ultimate' USB solution as claimed.

"USB, Solved: Gen 5 Technology
The Eitr features the same unique Gen 5 USB input technology as in our upgradable DACs. It’s simply the highest-performance USB input available today, with complete electrostatic and electromagnetic isolation (via transformers), self-power of all critical low-noise and rechecking sections, and separate, precision clock sources for both 44.1 and 48kHz multiples. (And if you don’t understand the technobabble, here’s the point: it works great and sounds great, too.)"

 

[fas42]

But my point is - no one can truly explain how the Ear/Brain/Mind can produce such an apparently detailed illusion from the minuscule timing differences from two point source just feet away. The auditory nerve chain is just two slow to process the fractional timing differences. And the wave inference patterns are just to complex for the Ear/Brain/Mind to process in real time for dynamic complex music. Yet we hear it any way.

Not quite the situation. There is a whole field of research that has gone under the radar of the audio enthusiasts, called Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA), which investigates this - and is very active as we speak. Simply put, the human mind builds up a huge repository of understanding as we grow about what various sounds mean in the real world, and automatically compensates for the "missing bits" when the full details aren't actually there, for whatever reason. This can work with the most miserable level of actual information, but will fail if there are too many contradictory signals - the brain rejects a possible scenario if the detail received is too confusing.

Facinating area - there's a whole thread here discussing the topic: http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/auditory-scene-analysis.236/.

 

[RB2013]

Not quite the situation. There is a whole field of research that has gone under the radar of the audio enthusiasts, called Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA), which investigates this - and is very active as we speak. Simply put, the human mind builds up a huge repository of understanding as we grow about what various sounds mean in the real world, and automatically compensates for the "missing bits" when the full details aren't actually there, for whatever reason. This can work with the most miserable level of actual information, but will fail if there are too many contradictory signals - the brain rejects a possible scenario if the detail received is too confusing.

Facinating area - there's a whole thread here discussing the topic: http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/auditory-scene-analysis.236/.

Yes that is good research. I will check out the thread.

But still misses the critical part - the consciousness awareness centered processing. Where nerve impulses become subject Qualia.

This is operating a level of mind/brain impossible to measure.

I refer to noted Mathematician and Theoretical Physicist Sir Rodger Penrose's Orch-Or theory of human consciousness - that is a quantum level - in organelles called micro-tubules.

And as any quantum function subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

"Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR) is a hypothesis that consciousness in the brain originates from processes inside neurons, rather than from connections betweenneurons (the conventional view). The mechanism is held to be a quantum physics process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by molecular structures called microtubules. Objective reduction is proposed to be influenced by non-computable factors imbedded in spacetime geometry which thus may account for the Hard Problem of Consciousness. The hypothesis was put forward in the early 1990s by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist and psychologist Stuart Hameroff."

Non-computable factors...no materialist reduction to basic matter possible...

The proof for this is quite profound.

"The Penrose–Lucas argument states that, because humans are capable of knowing the truth of Gödel-unprovable statements, human thought is necessarily non-computable."

"In 1931, mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel proved that any effectively generated theory capable of proving basic arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. Furthermore, he showed that any such theory also including a statement of its own consistency is inconsistent.

Penrose made Gödel's theorem the basis of what quickly became a controversial claim. He argued that while a formal proof system cannot prove its own consistency, Gödel-unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians. He takes this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not describable as formal proof systems, and are therefore running a non-computable algorithm. Similar claims about the implications of Gödel's theorem were originally espoused by the philosopher John Lucas of Merton College, Oxford.

The inescapable conclusion seems to be: Mathematicians are not using a knowably sound calculation procedure in order to ascertain mathematical truth. We deduce that mathematical understanding – the means whereby mathematicians arrive at their conclusions with respect to mathematical truth – cannot be reduced to blind calculation!

— Roger Penrose"

We can study the behavior of human hearing, model it, and manipulate it (well of course - or we wouldn't have nice realistic sounding stereos!). But ultimately it is a subjective based experience. And ultimately only subjective experience can determine what sounds good to any one individual.
So only ones personal subject experience matters.

To argue against this is futile, let alone deride those that choose their audio equipment based on this. It is the ONLY rational way to select your equipment.

 

[Don Hills]

A lot of words to say, "Buy it if you like the sound of it." (and by "sound", I don't just mean the audible experience.)

 

[fas42]

Yes that is good research. I will check out the thread.

But still misses the critical part - the consciousness awareness centered processing. Where nerve impulses become subject Qualia.

This is operating a level of mind/brain impossible to measure.

I refer to noted Mathematician and Theoretical Physicist Sir Rodger Penrose's Orch-Or theory of human consciousness - that is a quantum level - in organelles called micro-tubules.

And as any quantum function subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

"Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR) is a hypothesis that consciousness in the brain originates from processes inside neurons, rather than from connections betweenneurons (the conventional view). The mechanism is held to be a quantum physics process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by molecular structures called microtubules. Objective reduction is proposed to be influenced by non-computable factors imbedded in spacetime geometry which thus may account for the Hard Problem of Consciousness. The hypothesis was put forward in the early 1990s by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist and psychologist Stuart Hameroff."

Non-computable factors...no materialist reduction to basic matter possible...

The proof for this is quite profound.

"The Penrose–Lucas argument states that, because humans are capable of knowing the truth of Gödel-unprovable statements, human thought is necessarily non-computable."

"In 1931, mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel proved that any effectively generated theory capable of proving basic arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. Furthermore, he showed that any such theory also including a statement of its own consistency is inconsistent.

Penrose made Gödel's theorem the basis of what quickly became a controversial claim. He argued that while a formal proof system cannot prove its own consistency, Gödel-unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians. He takes this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not describable as formal proof systems, and are therefore running a non-computable algorithm. Similar claims about the implications of Gödel's theorem were originally espoused by the philosopher John Lucas of Merton College, Oxford.

The inescapable conclusion seems to be: Mathematicians are not using a knowably sound calculation procedure in order to ascertain mathematical truth. We deduce that mathematical understanding – the means whereby mathematicians arrive at their conclusions with respect to mathematical truth – cannot be reduced to blind calculation!

— Roger Penrose"

We can study the behavior of human hearing, model it, and manipulate it (well of course - or we wouldn't have nice realistic sounding stereos!). But ultimately it is a subjective based experience. And ultimately only subjective experience can determine what sounds good to any one individual.
So only ones personal subject experience matters.

To argue against this is futile, let alone deride those that choose their audio equipment based on this. It is the ONLY rational way to select your equipment.

Ahh, concepts of human consciousness ... heavy duty stuff to throw at one when one is just interested in getting decent sound out of gear .

Yes, it's all subjective - but the kicker for me was that 3 decades ago I managed to push the SQ to a point where a highly conventional playback chain, especially in terms of the speakers - bottom of line B&W boxes - was able to pull off a full conjuring trick; completely "invisible" no matter how hard I tried to locate the drivers using my ears - this was "big magic stuff" for me back then. And, it was easy for it slip back to a conventional presentation - it would do the latter all by itself! The behaviour was completely controllable, and repeatable - for 100's of DBTs if one was so inclined, .

Strangely enough, I preferred the "no speakers" variant - though, I must admit great surprise upon coming across audiophiles who do want their speakers to sound like speakers - I guess it takes all sorts in this world.

Back to your setup, which sounds very interesting - do you notice anything curious when listening to a pure mono recording?

 

[RB2013]

A lot of words to say, "Buy it if you like the sound of it." (and by "sound", I don't just mean the audible experience.)

Well how do you know if you like the sound of it to buy it? By saying buy it - implies you don't own it.

Anyway the finer point lost on you is this site's seeming 'objective' dogma...with denigration for those who enjoy their audio gear...wrapped in a false sense of scientific reductionism.

 

[RB2013]

Ahh, concepts of human consciousness ... heavy duty stuff to throw at one when one is just interested in getting decent sound out of gear .

Yes, it's all subjective - but the kicker for me was that 3 decades ago I managed to push the SQ to a point where a highly conventional playback chain, especially in terms of the speakers - bottom of line B&W boxes - was able to pull off a full conjuring trick; completely "invisible" no matter how hard I tried to locate the drivers using my ears - this was "big magic stuff" for me back then. And, it was easy for it slip back to a conventional presentation - it would do the latter all by itself! The behaviour was completely controllable, and repeatable - for 100's of DBTs if one was so inclined, .

Strangely enough, I preferred the "no speakers" variant - though, I must admit great surprise upon coming across audiophiles who do want their speakers to sound like speakers - I guess it takes all sorts in this world.

Back to your setup, which sounds very interesting - do you notice anything curious when listening to a pure mono recording?

I have both - the magic of 'no speaker' life sized and sound field depth and width completely devoid of the source. But my source is not a box(very hard to pull off) but 5ft di-pole planars, with no cabinet, or circular drive radiation patterns to deal with. The sound is so captivating - it would be too distracting for background music wile working.

So in my office system - I use monitors - largish monitors. But boxes none the less. Very musical with rich tonality. Perfect for back ground classical. A great productivity enhancer - masking a great deal of ambient noise around my office.

My main systems sound field presentation and extreme dynamics (both micro macro) and be quiet unsettling to those not used to such a realistic presentation. So I can see why some would like a more familiar boxy presentation.

BTW - I paid $800 for my Maggie 1.6QR's like new. And do not have a turntable anywhere...all analog gear long sold. 100% computer based digital.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Yes that is good research. I will check out the thread.

But still misses the critical part - the consciousness awareness centered processing. Where nerve impulses become subject Qualia.

This is operating a level of mind/brain impossible to measure.

I refer to noted Mathematician and Theoretical Physicist Sir Rodger Penrose's Orch-Or theory of human consciousness - that is a quantum level - in organelles called micro-tubules.

And as any quantum function subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

"Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR) is a hypothesis that consciousness in the brain originates from processes inside neurons, rather than from connections betweenneurons (the conventional view). The mechanism is held to be a quantum physics process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by molecular structures called microtubules. Objective reduction is proposed to be influenced by non-computable factors imbedded in spacetime geometry which thus may account for the Hard Problem of Consciousness. The hypothesis was put forward in the early 1990s by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist and psychologist Stuart Hameroff."

Non-computable factors...no materialist reduction to basic matter possible...

The proof for this is quite profound.

"The Penrose–Lucas argument states that, because humans are capable of knowing the truth of Gödel-unprovable statements, human thought is necessarily non-computable."

"In 1931, mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel proved that any effectively generated theory capable of proving basic arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. Furthermore, he showed that any such theory also including a statement of its own consistency is inconsistent.

Penrose made Gödel's theorem the basis of what quickly became a controversial claim. He argued that while a formal proof system cannot prove its own consistency, Gödel-unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians. He takes this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not describable as formal proof systems, and are therefore running a non-computable algorithm. Similar claims about the implications of Gödel's theorem were originally espoused by the philosopher John Lucas of Merton College, Oxford.

The inescapable conclusion seems to be: Mathematicians are not using a knowably sound calculation procedure in order to ascertain mathematical truth. We deduce that mathematical understanding – the means whereby mathematicians arrive at their conclusions with respect to mathematical truth – cannot be reduced to blind calculation!

— Roger Penrose"

We can study the behavior of human hearing, model it, and manipulate it (well of course - or we wouldn't have nice realistic sounding stereos!). But ultimately it is a subjective based experience. And ultimately only subjective experience can determine what sounds good to any one individual.
So only ones personal subject experience matters.

To argue against this is futile, let alone deride those that choose their audio equipment based on this. It is the ONLY rational way to select your equipment.

I have never found Penrose convincing. Neither do plenty of other people. He needs more data to fill in his hypothesis. And maybe he or someone else will get it one day.

The part I think your missing is that rationally selecting your gear subjectively is in no way a contradiction to what this forum is about. If your quest is high fidelity sound, that isn't done with highly biased listening only. The Harman testing is built upon subjective listening. Only removing as many biases as possible. Using what understanding that is available (and that does not need to work to the beginning of creation) can help you satisfy your musical hungers most expeditiously. As even then you can choose gear for other reasons. Panels are cool.

 

[RB2013]

I have never found Penrose convincing. Neither do plenty of other people. He needs more data to fill in his hypothesis. And maybe he or someone else will get it one day.

The part I think your missing is that rationally selecting your gear subjectively is in no way a contradiction to what this forum is about. If your quest is high fidelity sound, that isn't done with highly biased listening only. The Harman testing is built upon subjective listening. Only removing as many biases as possible. Using what understanding that is available (and that does not need to work to the beginning of creation) can help you satisfy your musical hungers most expeditiously. As even then you can choose gear for other reasons. Panels are cool.

Well hard to argue his Godelain thought process. This solid logic shows that human thought is not a solely computational mechanism...so what is it?

There is now a growing body of evidence of biological quantum processes going on:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v9/n1/full/nphys2474.html?foxtrotcallback=true
"Recent evidence suggests that a variety of organisms may harness some of the unique features of quantum mechanics to gain a biological advantage. These features go beyond trivial quantum effects and may include harnessing quantum coherence on physiologically important timescales. In this brief review we summarize the latest results for non-trivial quantum effects in photosynthetic light harvesting, avian magnetoreception and several other candidates for functional quantum biology. We present both the evidence for and arguments against there being a functional role for quantum coherence in these systems."

Go back to Qualia - the 'Mary's Room' thought experiment. Say Mary has lived her whole life in a single black and white room, feed black and white food, and has a black and white computer screen. She has no mirror and has never cut herself. So no exposure to the color red per se. Yet see devotes her life to the study of the color red. She has read millions of pages on the scientific basis of the light spectrum and peoples anecdotal explanations of what it's like to see red things. For sake of this thought experiment she has perfect and complete physically based information about the color red.

Now she is let out of her room and see a red rose - does this add to her understanding/perception/concept of the color red? Well yes of course it does.

BTW that quantum physicist genius Schroedinger was a big believer in Qualia...hard to argue with that guy!

Now I'm not denying the study and testing of audio gear to help direct one to the best gear to try. And any use of 'Harman' testing as a substitute for one's own listening experience is a poor choice. There are just too many variables involved - room, system, hearing of the listen panel, even experience and ability to discern sound quality levels. Really, just another illusion of 'scientific basis' for what is ultimately Qualia.

 

[DonH56]

Well how do you know if you like the sound of it to buy it? By saying buy it - implies you don't own it.

Anyway the finer point lost on you is this site's seeming 'objective' dogma...with denigration for those who enjoy their audio gear...wrapped in a false sense of scientific reductionism.

Not sure exactly your purpose in this (or any other) thread here, but by and large folk read into responses what they expect. An objectivist on a subjective site gets bombarded from all sides with "science doesn't matter" and every post becomes an attack; same thing happens here on the other side. Call it dogma or whatever, but I think a lot of folk here are simply trying to be more like "mythbusters" when confronted with claims that do not match their science (and I include myself in that camp, wholeheartedly). Does not mean the science is always right or complete, of course, since bias happens both ways. But I do not see wholesale denigration of people for liking their gear, but questioning the competency of that gear certainly happens when it doesn't measure up (pun intended). "Scientific reductionism" -- I'm a hairy-knuckled engineer who happens to like audio and playing music, semantics be too fancy for me.

I owned Maggies for many decades (still do but they are in storage right now). Like tube circuits, that I also happen to like but am not using right now, I know their pros and cons and accept they may not offer the most accurate sound but I like them anyway. I don't think anyway has bashed me for my preference, but if I claimed they were are as accurate over their full claimed frequency response and had the same dynamic range as my Salon2's I'd probably have to to prove it. And probably fail.

Not owning something means I can't comment on it? Where's the fun in that? I can read about it, compare specs, look at the pretty pictures, and draw some conclusions that may or not be valid but are probably worth discussing anyway even if I don't own it. And hopefully draw some owners into the discussion.

Whatever - Don

 

[Deleted member 65]

Not sure exactly your purpose in this (or any other) thread here, but by and large folk read into responses what they expect. An objectivist on a subjective site gets bombarded from all sides with "science doesn't matter" and every post becomes an attack; same thing happens here on the other side. Call it dogma or whatever, but I think a lot of folk here are simply trying to be more like "mythbusters" when confronted with claims that do not match their science (and I include myself in that camp, wholeheartedly). Does not mean the science is always right or complete, of course, since bias happens both ways. But I do not see wholesale denigration of people for liking their gear, but questioning the competency of that gear certainly happens when it doesn't measure up (pun intended). "Scientific reductionism" -- I'm a hairy-knuckled engineer who happens to like audio and playing music, semantics be too fancy for me.

I owned Maggies for many decades (still do but they are in storage right now). Like tube circuits, that I also happen to like but am not using right now, I know their pros and cons and accept they may not offer the most accurate sound but I like them anyway. I don't think anyway has bashed me for my preference, but if I claimed they were are as accurate over their full claimed frequency response and had the same dynamic range as my Salon2's I'd probably have to to prove it. And probably fail.

Not owning something means I can't comment on it? Where's the fun in that? I can read about it, compare specs, look at the pretty pictures, and draw some conclusions that may or not be valid but are probably worth discussing anyway even if I don't own it. And hopefully draw some owners into the discussion.

Whatever - Don

Wish I could express myself as eloquently and clear as you do Don, not my native language in here though ... ;-)

/Take care
Lars

 

[Don Hills]

Well how do you know if you like the sound of it to buy it? By saying buy it - implies you don't own it.

You missed the point I went to the trouble of specifically spelling out for you. Which is, you don't have to hear it to "like the sound of it". You read reviews and the opinions of others (whether they in turn have heard it or not) before you decide to hear it.

Anyway the finer point lost on you is this site's seeming 'objective' dogma...with denigration for those who enjoy their audio gear...wrapped in a false sense of scientific reductionism.

Where have I read that before?
In turn, you miss the point that someone who does not enjoy audio gear is extremely unlikely to be a member here.

 

[fas42]

I have both - the magic of 'no speaker' life sized and sound field depth and width completely devoid of the source. But my source is not a box(very hard to pull off) but 5ft di-pole planars, with no cabinet, or circular drive radiation patterns to deal with. The sound is so captivating - it would be too distracting for background music wile working.

So in my office system - I use monitors - largish monitors. But boxes none the less. Very musical with rich tonality. Perfect for back ground classical. A great productivity enhancer - masking a great deal of ambient noise around my office.

My main systems sound field presentation and extreme dynamics (both micro macro) and be quiet unsettling to those not used to such a realistic presentation. So I can see why some would like a more familiar boxy presentation.

BTW - I paid $800 for my Maggie 1.6QR's like new. And do not have a turntable anywhere...all analog gear long sold. 100% computer based digital.

OK, I'm getting a better handle on where you're coming from - found your posts on another forum, and recognise the language used to describe the listening experience. You've learnt sufficient over the years to mount the hurdle that has to be overcome for digital to blossom ... my path was quite different: I accidentally stumbled upon "special" CD playback 3 decades ago - one day the Big Sound popped out because I had been fussy enough in my tweaking to get sufficient right - everything changed at that moment; and I've been on a journey exploring the in's and out's ever since ...

 

[RB2013]

Not sure exactly your purpose in this (or any other) thread here, but by and large folk read into responses what they expect. An objectivist on a subjective site gets bombarded from all sides with "science doesn't matter" and every post becomes an attack; same thing happens here on the other side. Call it dogma or whatever, but I think a lot of folk here are simply trying to be more like "mythbusters" when confronted with claims that do not match their science (and I include myself in that camp, wholeheartedly). Does not mean the science is always right or complete, of course, since bias happens both ways. But I do not see wholesale denigration of people for liking their gear, but questioning the competency of that gear certainly happens when it doesn't measure up (pun intended). "Scientific reductionism" -- I'm a hairy-knuckled engineer who happens to like audio and playing music, semantics be too fancy for me.

I owned Maggies for many decades (still do but they are in storage right now). Like tube circuits, that I also happen to like but am not using right now, I know their pros and cons and accept they may not offer the most accurate sound but I like them anyway. I don't think anyway has bashed me for my preference, but if I claimed they were are as accurate over their full claimed frequency response and had the same dynamic range as my Salon2's I'd probably have to to prove it. And probably fail.

Not owning something means I can't comment on it? Where's the fun in that? I can read about it, compare specs, look at the pretty pictures, and draw some conclusions that may or not be valid but are probably worth discussing anyway even if I don't own it. And hopefully draw some owners into the discussion.

Whatever - Don

I agree there has to be a combination of test measurements and personal subjective listening. As I have posted before engineering design and implementation, component quality, and test measurements - can give clues as to what my ultimately improve the personal subjective experience. So both are important - but in the end it's the latter that matters most.

As for the pluses and minuses of a planar design vs individual drives in a box - as to which may produce a more realistic sound field experience - my experience with many speakers (including the $25k Talon/Rives Thunderbird Diamonds) points to the former. Frequency spectrum plots in an anechoic camber do not capture anywhere near the measures that make a speaker disappear and produce a realistic image and sound field. The Thunderbirds likely have a flatter freq plot - the Maggies when fed a proper source (they are extremely critical of source quality) and in the proper sized room (they interact with the room in a different manner the box speakers - most folks have too large of a model for their room and equipment - here bigger is not always better)

"There is what we know, what we don't know - and what we don't know, we don't know" - you can add test bench measurements to audio gear after that.

 

[Purité Audio]

A rock solid image is easy, get yourself completely phase coherent , virtual point source loudspeakers.
Vinyl is a very pleasant sounding medium, perhaps not very accurate but it can sound great.
Keith