Was this aimed at ASR?

[Jas0_0]

Just saw this posted on the Stereophile website. Can’t help but think the author had a specific target in mind.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/hoisted-your-own-petard

 

[waynel]

Stereophile is just adding to the circle of confusion here.

 

[amirm]

Definitely reads that way. Good news is that they are reading what we have to say!

 

[pozz]

Magazine language is so elevated. Hoisted? Petard?

I could feel the article flip a switch somewhere around the fourth paragraph, where the relativism subroutine took over.

 

[Jorj]

It seems an apples-to-apples comparison with hard numbers simply astonishes and frightens subjectivists. Yet another page of drivel from Stereophile and Jim Austin, which begins by firmly establishing the laurels and accolades of Floyd Toole, and proceeds to leverage that legacy of excellent, scientific work for a few paragraphs of subjectivist hand-waving. Moving on....

 

[Jas0_0]

Definitely reads that way. Good news is that they are reading what we have to say!

Definitely rattled!

 

[Jimbob54]

Just saw this posted on the Stereophile website. Can’t help but think the author had a specific target in mind.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/hoisted-your-own-petard

Im not sure at all. But does it matter? As far as speakers go, @amirm says it how he sees it (via measurements) but also how he hears it (listening impressions).

I see no issue with this approach, it enables us (the consumer) to know that much heralded kit (per subjective reviews) may objectively not deliver. Up to us as to whether to discount said kit from our selection or include in auditions/ trials.

But to be honest if measurements are a mess and Amirs more subjective listening tests say its an irredeemable mess too and we still buy blind, why do we bother being here?

EDIT- I also have no real problem with the article itself. People are free to make and buy whatever they choose. I have issues when reviewers ignore the failings of some kit and only wax lyrical about the (perceived? Imagined? Made up?) benefits.

 

[Feanor]

The thing about standard objective measurements is that they are reliable & replicable. That's just not true of subjective judgements.

OTOH, are objective replicable measurements necessarily valid? How do we know that they are measuring what people want hear? Jim Austin asserts that while Toole & Olive's testing scientifically establishes what "Joe Average" likes best under testable conditions, he wonders whether their approach really measures what the individual audiophiles want to hear -- personal preferences are totally ignored.

What is true for speakers is just a true for electrical components. ASR does great objective measurement which are, presumably, replicable, but can or should Amir et al. attempt to address some subjective aspects? I note that Amir usually gives his subjective impression of speakers but rarely pf electrical components.

I have personal hypotheses regarding amplifiers in particular. The reason people like tubes and zero-feedback amps is because they produce relatively more 2nd and/or 3rd order vs. higher order harmonic distortion, because:

• It sounds nice, often described as "harmonically richer", "organic", or simply "musical"
• It masks higher order harmonic distortion in reproduction chain. (It's been known since antiquity that higher harmonics sound discordant and increasingly unpleasant)
• It can often improves recordings that weren't well recorded or mastered.

I wish some scientists would test these hypotheses systematically. Then maybe the harmonic spectrum as well as THD could be routinely reported and informed comment made pertaining to likely individual preferences.

 

[gvl]

Damage control...

 

[Vini darko]

At the risk of catching a ban hammer to the face. I'm guilty of being "that poster" he mentions. In short I've been jumping on the narrative bandwagon and attacking products and statements that don't conform to it. I will try to be less aggressive with eccho chamber adoption. The world's suffering enough as a result of social media group think without me adding to it.

 

[BDWoody]

They all are feeling the heat.
Love it...keep them on defense.

 

[Theriverlethe]

Just saw this posted on the Stereophile website. Can’t help but think the author had a specific target in mind.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/hoisted-your-own-petard

The author weirdly conflates the Harman Curve with a flat frequency response, and ignores the all-important dispersion characteristics in his diatribe. I can easily understand someone preferring a different tonal balance, but who wants a speaker with poor dispersion? That is, in fact, a result of ineptitude and not a design choice.

 

[Andreas007]

Actually, I had similar thoughts that Amir‘s site could lead to a world of speakers which all sound the same.
But let‘s face it: Many speakers are poorly designed and claim that they are state of the art. Do we want to pay money for that?

Furthermore, companies can still design speakers with deliberate sound signature - if it is done correctly (e. g. with controlled directivity, low distortion, etc.). They could even promote their sound signature as a feature (more highs for older people ). But at the moment, we see mainly speakers which suffer from serious design flaws producing very different sound signatures depending on the room they play in.

 

[tmtomh]

The headline makes no sense. "Hoisted on your own petard" suggests that someone is being victimized by their own punishing rule, or that they're being forced into a hypocritical position because what they like doesn't conform to what they think they should like. None of that is true here.

As for a swipe at ASR, it's a glancing blow at best - "someone on a forum says 'that designer is incompetent'."

Finally, as with seemingly every attempt these smug geniuses seem to make at attacking the dominant culture at a place like this, they gloss over the core problem - which is that while it is certainly true that someone can intend to make a nonlinear device rather than accidentally doing so out of sheer incompetence, there is no way for anyone to tell whether it's intent or incompetence unless the maker clearly states that they're shooting for nonlinearity or coloration or a "very particular voicing" or some such.

But - as folks here say over and over (and over) - the problem is that the audiophile woo-woo marketers try to use terms like realism, fidelity, detail, "lifted veils" and so on that suggest their nonlinear products are more linear than products that actually measure linearly.

If they'd stop insisting that their products are both lower fidelity and higher fidelity at the same time, there wouldn't be any disagreements.

 

[Jimbob54]

At the risk of catching a ban hammer to the face. I'm guilty of being "that poster" he mentions. In short I've been jumping on the narrative bandwagon and attacking products and statements that don't conform to it. I will try to be less aggressive with eccho chamber adoption. The world's suffering enough as a result of social media group think without me adding to it.

That kind of talk will get you excommunicated from the Cult of ASR! Stick to the dogma, boyo.

 

[RayDunzl]

I occupy the middle ground with both conforming and non-conforming speakers.

Guess with which pair I listen attentively?

I even have a Stereophile subscription.

 

[pozz]

If they'd stop insisting that their products are both lower fidelity and higher fidelity at the same time, there wouldn't be any disagreements.

+1

 

[Inner Space]

I didn't see it as an attack on ASR specifically. I saw it as a kind of maintenance-dose comment, saying, "Yeah, engineers and researchers, as is inevitable, are slowly converging on a consensus ... but we want to keep the bubble alive, so let's all agree there's plenty of wiggle room for us to operate in."

That message isn't just in the magazine's interest - lots of consumers want it to be true too, because they love the way they do things. It's a kind of benign conspiracy, or a willing collective suspension of disbelief, enjoyable because none of it really matters. It's a kind of participatory showbiz, where people feel special, and it will never go away.

 

[audiophile]

Was this aimed at ASR?

Not necessarily ASR. There are many hard-core objectivists on Reddit, in Youtube comments, other forums. They are now everywhere )

 

[MediumRare]

I don't like the "some critics out there" approach. If you have a specific beef, raise it. But OTOH there is nothing wrong with the concept that legitimate preferences by any one person may not be the same as an average. We are dealing with sensory experience, first of all, so there's 100% certainty that some of us experience a different FR curve than others. Further, my choice of music might reward deep bass more than yours.

I've previously mentioned this kind of preference in the context of wine: There are biological differences in the way we each taste and some aspects of wine preference are driven by that. Perhaps, someday, when we have a bigger database of both products and listeners, we can score ourselves and then match our style preference to reliably determined "flavor styles" of speakers. That could be completely scientific yet not one-size-fits-all.