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

[Buckchester]

The irony is that what looks like an excommunication here, is really a family affair .

Yes, Purifi is a business and as such it needs a story, there's no way around that for survival.
Thing is though, that Lars is one of the people who absolutely belongs at this very community (who now seems in distress) and has built gear that this community pray to.

What's our problem? The words?
I haven't seen trashing Kef about Muon for example, even though is the pinnacle of the "old" way.

There's a smell of old, sheltered/settled people who refuse to even doubt, and that's a shame either scientifically or humanly.

(if this forum wants a real scientific tag to it, it must ban one single word: "my" .
This "my" is the fountain of all evils.

I don’t see any distress. Many are simply looking at this critically.

Seems like this company has made some products that perform remarkably well. Let’s next ask for some evidence as to their audibility. Seems fair to me.

 

[Putter]

Words matter.. Practice what you preach.

Is it? They are very much engineering-driven, optimizing their speakers in all kinds of details that might or might not be audible in practice. They don't seem to imply that we're missing critical parts in our measurement systems. Likewise, Topping isn't claiming that their 125 SINAD DAC sounds much better than their previous 124 SINAD DAC.


The problem is that the facts are not in evidence. There is no research indicating that magnetic hysteresis distortion leads to a granular texture in the sound.

Please define "granular texture". If I have a pile of sand I can explore the grain sizes, but no such properties exist for sound.

In other words, you can't design a scientific experiment unless you can actually define the end point.

 

[NTK]

The part about acoustics and preferences and the weakness of a research, whether it's Harman or somewhere else, is obvious and something I've discussed here several times.

The result of such test only gives answers to that particular room with its acoustics and with the type of music is used.

When the speaker is far away from the side wall and there is also maybe absorption on the rear wall that will influence the result. With very close proximity to side walls and for instance proper diffusion on rear wall, you'll have a different result.

When someone claims objective truth about directivity preferences based on a test under mainly one acoustic circumstance without paying attention to the time of arrival of side wall reflections etc. it's clear it's not much science.

It does not help much either if the narrower speakers tested don't have broadband directivity. Or cleae abberations in the directivity like for instance JBL M2 has.

The way the the so called science of preferences are operating today, there will continue to be a major split between this community and a large part of the audiophile community.

What disappoints me the most is the lack of humility with the obvious weaknesses in the tests and the so quick attitude to claim objectiveness.

This probably doesn't reach many of you, but I personally have had speakers with broadband wide directivity and broadband narrow directivity for years and tested them against each other in several rooms with many positions and music genres .

For critical listening I generally prefer narrow broadband directivity speakers, though there are certain things you can achieve with a wide directivity speaker with especially the use of diffusion (phase altering) on opposite side walls. And clearly things change for a backround speaker in a very wide room. Music genres also plays a role.

The claim by Dr Toole that we "listen through rooms" is supported by results from studies. If you assert otherwise, please bring supporting data.

That a pianist doesn't seem to have different favorite pianos for different concert halls, for example, also seems to support Dr Toole's notion.

 

[Buckchester]

The claim by Dr Toole that we "listen through rooms" is supported by results from studies. If you assert otherwise, please bring supporting data.

That a pianist doesn't seem to have different favorite pianos for different concert halls, for example, also seems to support Dr Toole's notion.

View attachment 536559

Exactly.

 

[voodooless]

Please define "granular texture". If I have a pile of sand I can explore the grain sizes, but no such properties exist for sound.

In other words, you can't design a scientific experiment unless you can actually define the end point.

I'm not going to do any such thing; it wasn't me making this claim.

 

[Buckchester]

If they designed a speaker (or an amp) that has objectively lower distortion, can we subjectively hear the difference, in a reliable, statistically significant manner?

How many of us can get behind a statement like that?

Does that make us an objectivist or a subjectivist? Neither IMO.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

"THD as a “surrogate marker”
The article compares audio metrics like THD to surrogate markers in medicine. THD is useful, measurable, and worth optimizing, but it is not the final endpoint."

I have worked in many medicine areas where surrogate markers are used extensively. In many cases, these surrogate markers had demonstrated "HARD ENDPOINTS" as well, so even the regulatory authorities allow them.

To me a very striking example is vaccination for HPV. Theoretically, eliminating these viruses in the young would result in a lower incidence of uterine and related genital cancers. But you can't do a 40 or 50 year old study to show that giving the vaccine to kids would results in these adults having less cancers. So they chose "warts" as a "surrogate endpoint". The existence of genital warts was a good predictor of future genital cancers, so the trials had prevention of warts as an endpoint. When the vaccines were approved, they only had warts prevention as "data". Only decades later it was demonstrated that children who were vaccinated against HPV did not get genital cancers, and that warts did behave as an accurate surrogate marker.

Blood pressure control, LDL levels are good examples of useful surrogate markers.* But you will find these days that many people believe that GLP-1 weight loss is a good surrogate marker for preventing death or other complications. The science HERE is not completely settled. Maybe soon, but there are confounding variables of weight loss itself as a predictor of survival. The statistical analysis will be very tough and controversial. For example, some claim that GLP-1 drugs help with osteoarthritis but there is no biological plausibility for this. It is lower body weight that reduces the impact of osteoarthritis [pain], but people make claims...

When antivirals for hepatitis C were approved, the FDA wanted to know if viral eradication did prevent liver cancers and death. That was a very controversial subject, but now it is clear that viral eradication can be considered a cure.

If Lars wants to say that THD is not fully established, and he says that "listening experience" IS the endpoint, then he has to show the methods and demonstration for this argument. Otherwise, that statement is pure subjectivism. For now!

EDIT: * despite blood pressure control and LDL levels being widely accepted as good surrogate markers of survival (death), a drug manufacturer still has to conduct studies to demonstrate the hard point if they wish to make the claim. Otherwise, they can only claim LDL or BP control WITHOUT the hard endpoint. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time to do these studies. Many pharmacies companies try to take some shortcuts but in the end, a good study is what is needed.

Thank you. I found this helpful and informative.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

I mean, he's not wrong to call for more science, but, like, so? The problems are (as is always the case) structural. The cost of doing that science is very high, those who are willing to finance it will only do so for material gain, so they will keep the results proprietary and the rest of us will never gain access.

 

[HalSF]

A number of people here are responding to this argument with defensiveness and a degree of butthurt. That’s fine, this is all openly intended to be debated and disputed and confronted rigorously as a blatant provocation.

But can we acknowledge that the keynote is far more damaging and challenging and contemptuous toward the subjectivist “tribe” and its untenable denialism and hostility toward centering engineering and hard science and measurement (including psychoacoustics)? It should land like a bombshell among the high-end trust-your-ears connoisseurs and cultists, and it should provide a guiding star to any new chapter in the history and evolution of an overly credulous subjective magazine like Stereophile, which should be charting its new course as a shakeup and a revolution that takes on the challenges of this keynote, rather than embracing mere “continuity.”

On a minor note, I understand Amir’s keen interest in LLM AI tools but I’m disappointed to see him deploy a bunch of verbose Chat-GPT slop as part of his response above, a poor choice which for me puts a chink in his leadership and seriousness as this crucial debate unfolds.

 

[Bjorn]

The claim by Dr Toole that we "listen through rooms" is supported by results from studies. If you assert otherwise, please bring supporting data.

That a pianist doesn't seem to have different favorite pianos for different concert halls, for example, also seems to support Dr Toole's notion.

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How can you know when Toole hasn't really tested some quality treatment or done any comparisons here? This is exactly the problems with such studies, they are very limited.

And what exactly does "listen through rooms" mean? That the room has no influence on sound quality?
Clearly that's not the case considering how much the room influences, something everybody knows who either has experiences same setup in different rooms, been to hifi shows or tested different positions in rooms or experienced with treatment.

Do you speaker sound the same whether you place them in a naked 15m2 room with tiles vs a well treated 35m2 room? No, the difference is huge. Frequency response and time domain will be very different. The irony here is that Toole's research support the audibility of difference in frequency response.

I think what Toole is trying to say here is that we can still enjoy music under different conditions. But different conditions that has been tested are very limited. So it says very little about sound quality in regards to the influence of treatment and different types of rooms.

Supporting data? What about just using your ears at some of those YouTube videos where they compare untreated rooms to treated? The difference is striking, even when listening through a phone. "Listening through a room" with such major differences immediately becomes rather silly.

 

[waofner]

Nothing wrong with it, as an engineer you have to ask questions and try to find answers- sometimes you are right sometimes you are wrong or simply fail. The important point is to be open minded and to accept the result.

maybe there are some subtle translation errors, which i miss- reading the English text i translate it back to German.

(the measurements we have are good and all we have now- it only would be dumb to miss additional parameters)

 

[TimVG]

And what exactly does "listen through rooms" mean? That the room has no influence on sound quality?

The gist of it is that to a certain extent, we can seperate room from source, and that while sound quality obviously differs between rooms, the overall preference ranking of the loudspeakers tested remained the same, independent of the room in which they were placed.

 

[Mort]

is far more damaging and challenging and contemptuous toward the subjectivist “tribe” and its untenable denialism and hostility toward centering engineering and hard science and measurement

You'll have to give the quotes, I do not think he said that.

 

[Audio Science Pal]

"NOT TRIBES. COLLEAGUES."

 

[Timcognito]

Please explain what is wrong with this? I don't get it..

"A granular texture in the sound." What are the units of texture?

 

[voodooless]

But can we acknowledge that the keynote is far more damaging and challenging and contemptuous toward the subjectivist “tribe” and its untenable denialism and hostility toward centering engineering and hard science and measurement (including psychoacoustics)?

Absolutely not! All of the points brought are specifically tailored towards the second fictional tribe. The tribe 1 crowd would not at all be impressed by any of this.

 

[PristineSound]

Just remember that, next to a scientist and an engineer, he is also a businessman.

While I agree, but I think Lars has earn the benefit of doubt. However, I am still eagerly waiting for the science of any claims.

 

[PristineSound]

A long time ago, I have also thought about the possibility of such "temporal distortion" and wondered to myself, are there any tests that samples the input signal over a period of time at a high resolution, I don't know, say at 44.1kHz, and compare it with the output signal over the same period of time with the same sampling rate.

Does such test exist? If so, I think that can be a candidate measurement such "temporal variation" as reference to by Lars. If such test does not exist, I can't imagine it being hard to create such a test.

In fact, @pkane, can you use Claude to add this code to multitone?

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

for a 1kHz tone (at the respective moment in the sweep) the 2, 3, 4 kHz harmonics will not reach the ear at the same moment as the fundamental. What is he talking about?
Are my ears broken, as I seem to hear the fundamental and harmonics all at the same time?

If your crossover point is at, say, 2.5khz then the harmonics will emanate from different drivers located a physical distance apart so they will arrive at your ears earlier or later, depending on the geometry of where you are sitting.

But so will all the sounds coming from a grand piano, so while time-aligning the drivers in a speaker enclosure is worth doing, the issue is not something to get all worked up about.

 

[Timcognito]

Maybe I'm missing the point but something is wrong with anyone who is an speaker development engineer who believes that temporal shifts are adding audible distortion to their transducer output enough to write and present their feelings about it and is not trying to measure it as design model and tool. Again, this reeks of the same sales pitch we were getting with MQA and that is just my feeling because we had zero evidence that it enhanced audibility but were asked to pay for it. I guess it could be like gravity with no scientific theory but at least I can't deny that.