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The ASR "objectivists tribe" ;) has to read the Keynotes at the AES160th by Lars Risbo

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test1223

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Hello,


I think everyone here in the town hall of "the objectivists tribe" ;) has to read the great keynote by Lars Risbos.
purifi-audio.com

Unreasonable Audio Innovation

Keynote at the AES160th Convention Reception, Cityhall of Copenhagen,May 29th, 2026
purifi-audio.com purifi-audio.com

Thank you @Lars Risbo for your great Keynotes.

Best
Thomas

Note added by staff:

Per ASR rules, a summary is required for offsite content. If you are interested, Amir provides one here:

www.audiosciencereview.com

The ASR "objectivists tribe" ;) has to read the Keynotes at the AES160th by Lars Risbo

That is a very nice essay and appropriate for the AES, thanks for posting. JJ here is an expert in psychoacoustics, I am not. ASR has a section on it. Dolby and many university psychology and medicine researchers have ideas. The tuning of mp3 audio compression on music is an example of the...
www.audiosciencereview.com www.audiosciencereview.com
 
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I think Toole's research is being misrepresented in that keynote, although I'd be interested to hear @Floyd Toole comment on it, if he has the time and inclination.

To be clear, Purifi obviously has legitimate engineering chops. But also, they obviously have an incentive to claim that their engineering (and resulting pricey products) is solving audible problems, even if the evidence we have would suggest otherwise.
 
I'll say it one more time, mixing "audibility" * with engineering belongs only to the bin thread to win debates interchanging the two in any way that suit us.

Right or wrong, @Lars Risbo is my exact way of thinking about audio, a wonderful, evolving, exciting field for the curious.

*Edit: of course I'm talking about the nihilistic point of view about audibility, hence the quotes.
 
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test1223 said:
Hello,


I think everyone here in the town hall of "the objectivists tribe" ;) has to read the great keynote by Lars Risbos.
purifi-audio.com

Unreasonable Audio Innovation

Keynote at the AES160th Convention Reception, Cityhall of Copenhagen,May 29th, 2026
purifi-audio.com purifi-audio.com

Thank you @Lars Risbo for your great Keynotes.

Best
Thomas
Click to expand...
How about you summarize it and explain why you think it's important?
 
My take is that measurements are still valid but we may overemphasize the measurements that are easier to read / simpler to measure. Also people overinterpret lack of studies. It happens in medicine; there is no evidence that this works just means there is no evidence it doesn't mean it doesn't work it just means there are not enough studies.
 
kyuu said:
I think Toole's research is being misrepresented in that keynote, although I'd be interested to hear @Floyd Toole comment on it, if he has the time and inclination.

To be clear, Purifi obviously has legitimate engineering chops. But also, they obviously have an incentive to claim that their engineering (and resulting pricey products) is solving audible problems, even if the evidence we have would suggest otherwise.
Click to expand...
Right - solving a solved problem is repetition, not innovation.

But people should read this nonetheless. Chapter 3 made me almost cry. THE EAR, TIME, AND THE MISSING DIMENSION :facepalm:. And then there is Chapter 4:

"One mechanism we focused on was magnetic hysteresis distortion in loudspeaker motors. You may have heard this in a system without knowing what it was. A granular texture in the sound."

I guess we can learn so much from this amazing pitch and just swipe our cards to get the Pure goodies at premium price. They should also make a bundle with some high end cables and cable raisers so that we make sure that hysteria is eradicated from our good and honest speakers, whatever they are.
 
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He claims the room had an effect on listener preference, but from what I understand, various tests were done in various types of rooms and the best measuring speakers were consistently preferred to a statistically significant degree.

If I also remember correctly, when bass was controlled for, e.g. when all the speakers being tested had similar bass performance the correlation between the best measuring speakers and listener preference was nearly 1 ( 1=perfect).
 
Buckchester said:
Good grief he’s also comparing himself to Einstein. I thought I sensed a tinge of blow-hardiness as I started to read this. My sense under estimated its degree. :facepalm:
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You read the exchange with Dr Klippel and the result of this exchange.
To me is just an example of how things should evolve.

We all know the stories by the way, and many use them the same way.
 
I think of it like race cars. Lap time predicts race performance pretty 1:1 but it's still worth studying tire temperature, suspension behavior, or aerodynamics. Toole's research is lap time but there may still be unexplored contributors to performance.
 
Sokel said:
You read the exchange with Dr Klippel and the result of this exchange.
To me is just an example of how things should evolve.

We all know the stories by the way, and many use them the same way.
Click to expand...
Sorry but being odd, I don't know all the stories. Is there example of how amplifiers should evolve?
 
Temporal Smearing? Wasn't that what MQA was all about? Not equipped to debate so support or shoot the messenger Risbos not me.
 
First off, I laughed, because intentionally or not he did the meme:

quietly overturned the establishment he was working outside of. His name was Albert Einstein.
Click to expand...

That aside, I think this is a good post / speech and although maybe it's a little uncharitable to the state of psychoacoustics, (I wouldn't actually know) and some of it is a plug for his own work, I agree with the gist.

By simple virtue of my posting volume here I am probably classified as a major member of the objectivist tribe. I and other regulars here often reply dismissively to people who question the efficacy of measurements for characterizing DACs and such.

I would like to be clear that I am very interested when there is evidence of audibility that was previously unknown. I believe it's out there, or that it will arrive in time. Like Bruno I don't assume hearing is a fully solved science in relation to loudspeakers. And even in the science that exists, I don't claim to know everything, or even most of it.

To put it another way, I think the measurements we see most often are good for their intended purpose. I am also willing to entertain the possibility that there are audible types of distortion those measurements don't capture, but so far I've yet to have a forum discussion where someone claims to hear an unexpected difference between two DACs (or whatever) AND shows a graph that indicates what they heard.

I guess at this point the state of audio tech is far enough advanced that you can't just show up and say you heard something, and be taken seriously. We need evidence and the cost of generating that evidence is higher and higher. To some extent there's an analogy to particle physics. Rutherford could do major work on a benchtop with a bit of foil. Today's physicists need the LHC.
 
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test1223 said:
Hello,


I think everyone here in the town hall of "the objectivists tribe" ;) has to read the great keynote by Lars Risbos.
purifi-audio.com

Unreasonable Audio Innovation

Keynote at the AES160th Convention Reception, Cityhall of Copenhagen,May 29th, 2026
purifi-audio.com purifi-audio.com

Thank you @Lars Risbo for your great Keynotes.

Best
Thomas
Click to expand...
It's just an ode to the scientific process, nothing more.

The ''objectivist tribe'' is already fully aware of how it works.

And it doesn't exempt the ''subjectivist tribe'' to bring evidence when a claim is made.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence for sure, but don't forget the concept of burden of the proof either.

Now, I'm really curious of what YOU understood.
 
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Basicly he is saying there are things we hear that are not covered by measurements. A saxophone played in a room excite the same room modes as the speaker playing that saxophone and measurements will capture both, different because of crossover delay that we are not measuring?
 
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