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

[RexrothPigeon]

It is very likely because thy already proved multiple times to be good engineers.

"I've never caught my husband cheating, and he's a good provider and father to our twins, Brayleen and Croyfisch, so of course I trust him when he says he has no idea where those women's panties in his blazer pocket came from"

 

[RexrothPigeon]

several of Einstein's theories were not born out in measurements until after his death

But he published them so anyone skeptical could at least know what he thought and why he thought it. He didn't say "trust me bro, hand over the Nobel".

 

[kemmler3D]

I would submit, that our recordings sound worse because they were recorded to be played back in live rooms. If we all agreed to use dead rooms for playback and made recordings appropriate for those rooms, I think we could significantly reduce the errors in the circle of confusion.

Another reason is that over-treated rooms also tend not to treat all frequencies equally. So you generally end up with no reflection in the treble region, and almost no absorption in the low bass, which also sounds pretty bad in and of itself, regardless of any positive contribution of room reflections.

 

[kemmler3D]

Why are so many of these companies under the radar? Because they do not want to fight a battle with the "objectivist tribe", reveal their innovations to competitors in the process, and lose anyway, since many of you are unwilling to buy a slightly better product if it costs much more due to the research and development behind it.

But you have to admit this statement also provides cover for snake oil. If we look at the business in OP, Purifi is neither under the radar nor very shy about at least sharing some of their development process. Even Shunyata shares "research". (They just correctly count on their audience not understanding what it demonstrates).

The people I see most often claiming that they invented something groundbreaking but don't want to prove it (because the establishment is mean) are actual perpetual motion scammers, and figurative ones.

 

[Paul7777x]

Well… this didn’t become tediously entrenched almost immediately did it?

 

[Buckchester]

TRUST ME BRO!

 

[Timcognito]

It was stated a few times a few pages back that any audible temporal distortion would only occur below 100hz so with those low frequencies and long wavelengths it should be measurable. But I'm no expert in this field. I think Lars was throwing a bone to the golden ear crowd to keep them in good graces. My 2c

 

[Mr. Widget]

Another reason is that over-treated rooms also tend not to treat all frequencies equally. So you generally end up with no reflection in the treble region, and almost no absorption in the low bass, which also sounds pretty bad in and of itself, regardless of any positive contribution of room reflections.

Agreed... most treated rooms are poorly treated. My point was that if we had a standardized listening room (never going to happen, I know), we could then create recordings that accurately recreate the sound the musicians and producers want to share with us.

As it stands, we will continue to live in the circle of confusion and spend inordinate amounts of time talking past each other about what we hear and what good sound reproduction is.

 

[krabapple]

Hello,


I think everyone here in the town hall of "the objectivists tribe" has to read the great keynote by Lars Risbos.

Unreasonable Audio Innovation

Keynote at the AES160th Convention Reception, Cityhall of Copenhagen,May 29th, 2026

purifi-audio.com

Thank you @Lars Risbo for your great Keynotes.

Best
Thomas

I read it. I also read Floyd Toole, JJ, and Sean Olive's responses to it, on Facebook.

 

[krabapple]

In the end, doesn't it come back to the simple question: Can one detect it in a controlled blind test?

Much depends on the test signal. And the room (if using speakers) matters.

These are among his main points. They aren't wrong. But they aren't unknowns and they aren't ignored in the literature. Claims made by researchers in peer-reviewed work are pretty typically qualified, avoiding too-broad generalizations. As Lars notes, Floyd Toole's work is like that too: " He was careful about limitations."

So I guess he's talking about a 'tribe' of online warriors, with a side nudge to actual investigators.

 

[krabapple]

I was intrigued when he proposed a bi- or mulitmodal distribution of listener preference (in the case he was referring to, speaker performance), because I'm pretty sure Toole has written about that very thing with regard to related research on preference: for 'envelopment' vs 'detail', with the general consumer tending to prefer the former, while audio production engineers (and IIRC, musicians? I forget the details) the latter. (I take that as a proxy too for mid/far field listening vs near field. It makes intuitive sense.)

I *don't* think this so much impacts the preference trend for the speaker performance represented on a 'good' spinorama/Klippel graph, and the curve measured at the MLP when using such speakers in a 'good' room (i.e., 'flat' but tilted a bit clockwise) -- I don't know that there's a multimodal population contra that finding. I don't recall Toole et al reporting one (if you do recall it, remind me!)

But I gather this is one of the things he's asking to be investigated, making sure that the room is really good. Sure! I wonder who will fund that research, though!

 

[krabapple]

@test1223, thank you very much for making me aware of that article.

This is one of the passages that caught my attention:

"when a study reports a result is not statistically significant, that does not mean the effect is absent. It means the study failed to reject the null hypothesis — which could mean the effect isn’t real, or it could simply mean the study was not powerful enough to detect it.

"“Not proven audible in this study” is routinely translated into “not audible.” That translation is wrong. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We say this but do not act like it."

Yes, this is a common sort of 'god in the gaps' argument -- we can't test everything exhaustively, therefore there's always some room for an effect. At worst it uses the statistical/probabilistic nature of virtually all scientific findings against science itself, at best against over confidence in a particular finding.

But it works both ways!

There's a risk of rejecting a 'true negative', of being too underconfident in the finding.
I take persistent failure to demonstrate an effect, as 'evidence of absence' -- i.e., reason to be skeptical of its existence....until proven otherwise.
Scientist are always challenging each other improve their experimental conditions to be more sure that what they claim is 'true', is true.

On another forum I recently had a conversation with researcher Earl Geddes. One of the topics had to do with the effect on imaging of a strong early same-side-wall reflection, versus the effect on imaging of the somewhat-later-arriving opposite-side-wall reflection. Earl and Lidia Lee had conducted a study of the subject which they ended up not publishing. Here is his post, copied-and-pasted:

"Dr. Rumsey's comments remind me of an unpublished study that Lidia and I did looking at near wall versus far wall reflections. We asked listeners to define the phantom source locations in the two different configurations. We did not publish because the results were not stable enough for Lidia to agree to publish. (The task was too difficult for the untrained listeners.)

"However, to me, it was clear that a far wall reflections offered a much clearer localization than a near wall reflection. This is critical to understand another rational for why I toe-in my speakers: to avoid a near wall reflection even though it likely increases the far wall reflection - better imaging."

This is like the "not proven audible" case that Lars describes, in that their finding of "not proven audible" was not equivalent to "inaudible".

So you can have people (like me) advocating for something unorthodox (speakers + setup geometry which illuminates the far wall instead of the near wall), and you could easily say "show me the proof" and scoff when "the proof" doesn't exist (because in this case the study that looked into it failed to find proof to a statistically reliable degree). But the unorthodox idea's status of "unproven" is not the same thing as the unorthdox idea being "disproved".

If the evidence to date -- this can be the empirical evidence, but also the rationale behind the claim -- is inadequate to demonstrate the claim, that's pretty important to me. I don't usually use the word 'disproved' unless the evidence for that is good. I like to phrase things in terms of what is 'likely' or not, based on what is known.

 

[MatrixS2000]

reveal their innovations to competitors in the process

Showing a measurement that illustrates the audible gain does not give away their IP. It proves it.

 

[Duke]

I read it. I also read Floyd Toole, JJ, and Sean Olive's responses to it, on Facebook.

THANK YOU for posting this link! I hope everyone who has read Lars' keynote address also goes to Sean Olive's Facebook page and reads that thread. It is quite illuminating to see how three top-tier professionals (@Sean Olive, @Floyd Toole, and @j_j) discuss Lars' keynote address. I daresay the respect they show sets a good example.

I take persistent failure to demonstrate an effect, as 'evidence of absence' -- i.e., reason to be skeptical of its existence....until proven otherwise.
Scientist are always challenging each other improve their experimental conditions to be more sure that what they claim is 'true', is true.

Yes! Skepticism lies in between "this is true" and "this is untrue", and leaves the door open to either being the case.

And skepticism (rather than credulity) as the default makes the most sense, at least until one begins to gather evidence. Pardon me for indulging in the fallacy of argument by analogy:

Evolution evidently occurs because of genetic mutations. Most genetic mutations are either neutral or detrimental, but a few are beneficial. Likewise [edited to add this qualifier: "to a first approximation..."] with loudspeaker design. Most loudspeaker design "mutations" are either neutral or harmful, but not all. For instance, ballpark four decades ago Genelec introduced waveguides around their tweeters and midrange drivers. That has arguably proven to be a beneficial "mutation".

Will the same prove to be the case for loudspeaker motors which minimize non-linear magnetic hysteresis distortion? We may not know for a long time. But I respect @Lars Risbo's approach of minimizing that which plausibly MIGHT generate audible distortion, instead of waiting until the audibility of such distortion is proven one way or the other, which may not happen within his lifetime.

 

[kemmler3D]

Agreed... most treated rooms are poorly treated. My point was that if we had a standardized listening room (never going to happen, I know), we could then create recordings that accurately recreate the sound the musicians and producers want to share with us.

As it stands, we will continue to live in the circle of confusion and spend inordinate amounts of time talking past each other about what we hear and what good sound reproduction is.

What's ultimately needed is speaker and DSP tech that effectively compensates for the room. We're in the early stages of stuff like that with Dirac ART and Atmos and such, but I think we have a long way to go. As long as stereo recordings are the standard there isn't much information to preserve if you are trying to synthesize a sound field Vs. A linear reproduction of an audio signal that happens to radiate in a smooth pattern.

 

[Sernyl]

The point is Lars is no Einstein. Einstein was not the rule, he was the exception. Usually when few believe a new hypothesis it is because it is flawed or incorrect.

" E pur si muove ! "

 

[Duke]

In every sweep I perform on speakers, I clearly hear distortions that don't jump out at you when you see the measurements.

At the risk of publicly aligning myself with the wrong tribe, I'm gonna give away a "trade secret" here:

Yes that happens all the time when I do sweeps on the raw drivers in preparation for doing the crossover design. It's an ugly little truth which my marketing department never mentions. I make note of where I hear these resonances (or whatever they are) without regard to whether they are visible in the frequency response or impedance curves. Then in the crossover design phase I will often deliberately put a dip there. Obviously this will degrade the measured performance, so I'm prioritizing ears over measurements (without controlled blind testing) where I perceive a discrepancy between the two.

 

[krabapple]

And skepticism (rather than credulity) as the default makes the most sense, at least until one begins to gather evidence. Pardon me for indulging in the fallacy of argument by analogy:

Evolution evidently occurs because of genetic mutations. Most genetic mutations are either neutral or detrimental, but a few are beneficial. Likewise with loudspeaker design. Most loudspeaker design mutations are either neutral or harmful, but not all. For instance, ballpark four decades ago Genelec introduced waveguides around their tweeters and midrange drivers. That has arguably proven to be a beneficial mutation.

Well, mutations are generated randomly, and nature selects......I don't think that's how Genelec's tweeters and waveguide came about

 

[Duke]

Well, mutations are generated randomly, and nature selects......I don't think that's how Genelec's tweeters and waveguide came about

Are you suggesting "intelligent design"??

 

[Curvature]

Speaking of Kimmo, when it comes to the time domain, he has recently shared some tests on the audibility of crossover delays. While phase distortion and delays from typical crossovers are notoriously difficult to actually hear in the mid frequencies, his work highlights that they can become quite audible in the low range, in room.

Please provide the links.