"Things that cannot be measured"

[Emlin]

Are you a lifelong bachelor or just lucky?

Have you been a lifelong misogynist or has your mother done it to you more recently?

 

[Emlin]

Partly agree wtih you. I looks, however, they do not objectively "measure" their final fine tuning, but they do it by ear-brain listening...

I look forward to Amir's review.

 

[restorer-john]

Are you a lifelong bachelor or just lucky?

The former appears most likely.

My partner loves the WAF thing. For every sexy/curvy/styled pair of speakers I bring home, it buys me at least 5 pairs of normal looking speakers.

 

[restorer-john]

Have you been a lifelong misogynist or has your mother done it to you more recently?

 

[Wombat]

Have you been a lifelong misogynist or has your mother done it to you more recently?

Always treated women equally and with respect. My experience, personal and with circle of friends, corroborates WAF. YMMV.

I always thought there was a 'nest authority' thing involved.

The current focus on small bookshelf speakers, towers and headphones is possibly the long-term outcome.

 

[dualazmak]

Emlin, sorry but my reply should be to Wombat's post of;

I read their description of musicality to mean accuracy.

Partly agree wtih you. It looks, however, they do not objectively "measure" their final fine tuning, but they do it by subjective ear-brain listening...

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Something the subjectivist crowd often brings up. "There are things we cannot measure but the human ear/brain can hear it."

My feeling is that the "subjectivist crowd" first need to demonstrate that the bolded part is in fact true

 

[Inner Space]

It looks, however, they do not objectively "measure" their final fine tuning, but they do it by subjective ear-brain listening...

Unless that's just a dog and pony show to cover all the PR bases. In fact I bet it is.

 

[Blumlein 88]

This is an eternal issue for endless discussion, I assume...

Just let me share this again here, which I have once shared in my thread post #316;

I had interesting communication at Watchnerd's thread entitled "Poll: Best Looking Stereo Integrated Amp", and the specific communication on "musicality" started by Doodski's post #851 showing Yamaha's (advertisement) YouTube video clip for the development of their integrated amplifier A-S1100;

In the video clip at 1:09, Mr. Taro Morii, Supervisor HiFi Group, specialist on fine tuning of Yamaha amplifiers, said;
We have developed it (A-S1100) based on the concept from A-S3000. The sound concept is "musicality", or to be more specific, the quality of low frequencies, the straight-forwardness of response, and authenticity of the sound...

really subjective comment, but it looks they are/were actually fine tuning the amplifiers based on this, i.e. what they call "musicality", in the final stage of their development by using their ears and brain.

And I believe no amplifier nor speaker is released to the market without the intensive ear-listening final fine tuning. Then the whole of "audio gears + room + environmets" is our HiFi "music istrument"...

Furthermore, we (you) do not always "like" the audio gear(s) which measured to be the best.

He is lying to you. Telling the tale to make the sale.

Below is the result of Amir testing one of their AVR's.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...channel-4k-8k-dolby-av-receiver-review.17204/

The amplifier results were just below mid-pack (and better than the very poor line level results). Nothing special. I know you say he is referring to the big iron stereo amp not an AVR. Except the claimed, claimed mind you, specs for the big iron amp are 16 decibels less good than this AVR managed in its mid-pack performance. Unless extra distortion and noise are musicality then he is speaking a bunch of fluff.

 

[Mnyb]

Much off the fluff audiophiles speak off are properties no audio components can have so ofcourse it’s not measurable

A DAC does not have “musicality” it’s you or the record.

Or miss attributes it .

A DAC does not have “soundstage” it’s the speakers or the recoding.

 

[pma]

Something the subjectivist crowd often brings up. "There are things we cannot measure but the human ear/brain can hear it."

We retort, an analyzer can hear much better than any human can. Which is the truth. But thinking about the question I did being to wonder... Could it be possible for there to be a form of measurement we have not found yet? Is science completely clear on this point? Or is there possibly another measurement out there be to found. Usually in my experience science is evolving.

Of course, I am not saying that the measurements used are not valid, they have helped me personally assemble some amazing sounding systems. I'm not as well versed in the science of audio as others in this forum. But I was wondering if there is a possibility, that there could be other measurements "underdiscovered". Or at this point are we just increasing our abilities to further analyze (as well as improve the actual technology) in the ways we already know how?

When limited to electric signal that bears musical information, we can measure everything. When we broaden it to perceived musical experience in every single point of the concert hall with the philharmonic orchestra playing, I strongly doubt in measurement completness.

 

[posvibes]

Entire religions, whole cosmologies, worlds without end, the realm of fiction, fairy tales and alternative pasts, futures and presents not to mention evolving complex conspiracies, have been imagined into existence, do you really think a little wider or deeper soundstage or a more tuneful bass, fractionally more detail in the treble can't be imagined while listening to a new piece of kit you bought?

 

[makinao]

I'm in the "things that haven't yet been measured" camp. It find it too smug to claim we know every measurable parameter of things at present.

 

[TimF]

Have you been a lifelong misogynist or has your mother done it to you more recently?

oh for pete's sake! Once in my adult life I saw one woman at a meeting of the Minnesota Audio Society. Never other than that have I seen one woman at a meeting. How many women log onto this site (ASR) more than once? I've seen misogynist groups, and this isn't one of them.

 

[TimF]

And about emotion, you might read something. It is a series of ordered squiggles that we know as code. Is there any emotion in that code? Is there a world of deeper sensory phenomena and emotion buried in that code? No. The letters are dead material on top of dead material. They are dead and lifeless. The same with sound carried over the air or some other medium. The sound is dead and is carried on a dead lifeless medium. This is not to say there is no sparkle in what we read, or what we see in a work of art on a wall, or in music we hear. We humans have ways of conveying messages via code and symbols.

 

[Leporello]

In the video clip at 1:09, Mr. Taro Morii, Supervisor HiFi Group, specialist on fine tuning of Yamaha amplifiers, said;
We have developed it (A-S1100) based on the concept from A-S3000. The sound concept is "musicality", or to be more specific, the quality of low frequencies, the straight-forwardness of response, and authenticity of the sound...

really subjective comment, but it looks they are/were actually fine tuning the amplifiers based on this, i.e. what they call "musicality", in the final stage of their development by using their ears and brain.

And I believe no amplifier nor speaker is released to the market without the intensive ear-listening final fine tuning. Then the whole of "audio gears + room + environmets" is our HiFi "music istrument"...

Maybe they do fine tuning, then again maybe they do not. This is called marketing.

 

[Leporello]

It could be a ridiculous question for all I know.

Is it the case that every single thing can be measured?

That is actually a request to prove a negative. The correct question is: what evidence is there of audible phenomena that cannot measured?

But usually it goes like this:

1. Listen to your equipment carefully.
2. Keep track of you subjective impressions and try to characterize them verbally.
3. One day you will notice that the bass is kind of "porous". Another day the treble sounds definitely "red".

Ergo: since no measurements can measure the porousness or redness (or whatever) of the sound, measurements are next to useless.

 

[Sal1950]

Partly agree wtih you. It looks, however, they do not objectively "measure" their final fine tuning, but they do it by subjective ear-brain listening...

And what area of performance are they "tuning"? If they know what sound property they want to effect they must know how to modify the amps measurable performance to get there. They don't just stand over an amp and wave a magic wand or sprinkel magic dust on it do they? Remember the Stereophile Carver challenge?
So NO, there aren't any electrical properties of components that effect their sound qualities that we do not know yet. That's subjective BS to cover their butts on making claims of sound differences in things like power cables that just don't exist.

 

[solderdude]

Something the subjectivist crowd often brings up. "There are things we cannot measure but the human ear/brain can hear it."

In the electronics realm everything can be measured down to the smallest possible (physical noise floor) and frequencies well into the GHz range.
The 'problem' is that one needs to make a whole bunch of different measurements with suitable equipment and knowledge on ow to interpret them.
For the latter it is handy when one understands hearing limits. One can be told what research says it is (tone or music and what music on what transducers) or find this out for yourself The latter, again, requires time, rigor and knowledge on how to do it.
There is no 'signal' or measurement method that still is unknown yet needed. Those claiming that do not understand the outcome of all measurements and how to interpret them and know their hearing limits just use it as an argument because they can't correlate.
Besides, the things they do hear are not the electronics but the transducers acoustics.

Then there is mechanical and acoustical measurements. Yes, we can measure a lot. But take the 'simple' task of measuring a headphone.
There are many different 'standard' test fixtures and HATS. Put them all next to each other. Use a few headphones and 'measure' them all on all rigs.
Then put the headphones on the actual heads of people with in ear mics or at the actual drum level and compare all the frequency plots alone (let's forget about all the other possible measurements for now, just FR). They will all differ. And they will do so many (audible) dB's.

Not so with electronics alone. Audible frequencies are easy to measure.

Speakers.. There are several methods on measuring some important aspects. They all will lead to different results. The more expensive and correctly calibrated, the smaller the differences could be. We can get nice plots, impressive ones. You will need a lot of knowledge about acoustics to 'predict' how a measured speaker will sound in your room, in your chair. Yes, we can improve with corrective equipment (microphone + software) a lot but would only be valid at the spot the mic was and not 1 meter away. But we can get closer.

Then we have the brain... another can-o-worms that is so easily fooled. Regardless of who you are. Correlating measurements to what the brain 're-creates' is tricky... because of the brain.

Then, lastly but not unimportant. We use recordings of actual music. These recordings are mere 'registrations' and manipulated ones at that.

So I would agree. We cannot measure everything but most of all the vast majority of people do not know how to correlate measurements with what they personally experience with their recordings, on their gear with their ears and brain. Psycho acoustics also is a field where, most certainly, the general public has no knowledge of.

What does one do if one doesn't understand ?

 

[Tks]

Something the subjectivist crowd often brings up. "There are things we cannot measure but the human ear/brain can hear it."

We retort, an analyzer can hear much better than any human can. Which is the truth. But thinking about the question I did being to wonder... Could it be possible for there to be a form of measurement we have not found yet? Is science completely clear on this point? Or is there possibly another measurement out there be to found. Usually in my experience science is evolving.

Of course, I am not saying that the measurements used are not valid, they have helped me personally assemble some amazing sounding systems. I'm not as well versed in the science of audio as others in this forum. But I was wondering if there is a possibility, that there could be other measurements "underdiscovered". Or at this point are we just increasing our abilities to further analyze (as well as improve the actual technology) in the ways we already know how?

Ironically, if there is, the only sound way of knowing would be blind testing for the phenomena's existence, and then quantification attempts begin. By way of perhaps a new specialization, or field of science.