Why evaluating the sound of a single speaker is essential

[sublemon]

It's not that you "allow" anything. It's that you cannot prevent it.


You (and we) cannot pick and choose which biases are in control of us. It doesn't work that way.


And how do we identify which extent is at work, and in whom ... including ourselves?


A Double-Blind Test is the best method to control bias that we've found. It depends on physical control, self-discipline and rigor, not self-reflection.


There is no "degree" to which everyone is susceptible to "sighted listening effects". To believe that is to deceive yourself as regards your bias.


Please read my reply above.

The criticisms that members have aimed your way involve the statements you have made, listed above. When it comes to the effects of bias, denial is not in the cards. Either we recognize it, accept the universality of it, and work to control it ... or we fall deeply in thrall to it.

You may think people here are just arguing with you for the sake of argument. That is not true. ASR is not a site like that. We are trying to help you understand the differences between science (which lacks emotional attachment) and human bias (of which emotional attachment is part and parcel.)

C'mon over to the Dark Side. We have cookies.

Even though I don't post much, I've been a member and reader here for quite a while and am fully aware of ASR's general predilections...

With all due respect, I am not arguing against most of this at all (I'm certainly not against double blind testing.) But, I do think that perceptual and cognitive biases are not uniform, and there is research to support this, and both can be mitigated to some extent. Read the last section of the link you provided, "Strategies for Minimizing Its Influence", that is more what I was talking about. I'm not a psychologist but what I have read in this area makes sense.

If this was taken as "subjectivist blather" as someone put it, apologies. aside from saying that I liked listening to my speakers in stereo better than singly, which is expected *objectively* anyway, I haven't given any personal subjective impressions. I wouldn't take all emotional attachment out of audio, but that is me. I might even choose to own a speaker I liked to look at over one I did not, but I would be aware of that bias I guess, and not attribute better performance to the speaker due to the aesthetic qualities. Does this make sense?

 

[sublemon]

.. hides flaws until there is something hard panned to one of the speakers. Then the flaws are exposed. This just means we will accept objectively bad sound and believe it sounds good until something knocks us out of the confirmation bias/feedback loop of what we are told by advertising and purely subjective reviews.

I mean, true, but let's say you are not starting from objectively "bad" sound, still there are always some flaws in speaker response. I was just wondering what is the true reason that the flaws are minimized. Fortunately there are few times in most music where something is soloed and hard panned.

 

[sublemon]

You may think people here are just arguing with you for the sake of argument. That is not true. ASR is not a site like that.

are you sure tho?

 

[Jim Taylor]

I wouldn't take all emotional attachment out of audio, but that is me.

There you go again with the straw man. No one said anything about taking all emotional attachment out of audio ... far from it. The enjoyment of audio (music) is intrinsically bound to emotion. That's what makes it worthwhile and enjoyable. We all deeply appreciate that.

The only process where emotion is controlled and restricted is the process of ANALYSIS. As I said above, analysis is a scientific process, and science is unemotional (or dispassionate). Enjoyment, OTOH, is entirely emotional. How many times do we need to bring that division to your attention?

are you sure tho?

Yes, I'm sure.

I'm beginning to see why some members believe you're not here in good faith.

 

[LevityProject]

. Fortunately there are few times in most music where something is soloed and hard panned.

Umm. Ok. Be aware that you really don't know what you are talking about. There's a lot of smoke to sift through in the comments you're making.

Having said that, if you aren't starting from objectively bad sound, the only way to objectively know you aren't starting with poorly designed speakers is through ... measurements like the ones done at ASR. Subjective reviews will not provide anything worth standing on, and "just using your ears" will definitely not help. Measure first, then listen. Even measuring with a basic set up of multi points around the speaker with REW is better than not measuring at all and believing blindly that you have good speakers.

 

[Mr. Widget]

So true. When I look back on the many tests of listener bias I think of the quote in Ferris Beuller's Day Off "You can trust me, I'm a professional" uttered by a parking garage valet before he and a buddy roar off in daddy's Ferrari for a joyride. The tests Sean Olive and I did shortly after arriving at Harman, where there were several professional loudspeaker designers who thought they could be objective, revealed awkward truths. In the sighted versions of the tests listeners actually ignored easily heard differences that were clearly revealed in blind tests. It's in my books and in:
Toole, F. E. and Olive, S.E. (1994). “Hearing is believing vs. believing is hearing: blind vs. sighted listening tests and other interesting things”. 97th Convention, Audio Eng. Soc., Preprint 3894.

Years ago I experienced the Harman speaker shuffler during one of the dealer tours and found it an extremely humbling experience. What I would have assumed would be extreme differences diminished significantly behind the black curtain.

 

[sublemon]

Umm. Ok. Be aware that you really don't know what you are talking about. There's a lot of smoke to sift through in the comments you're making.

Having said that, if you aren't starting from objectively bad sound, the only way to objectively know you aren't starting with poorly designed speakers is through ... measurements like the ones done at ASR. Subjective reviews will not provide anything worth standing on, and "just using your ears" will definitely not help. Measure first, then listen. Even measuring with a basic set up of multi points around the speaker with REW is better than not measuring at all and believing blindly that you have good speakers.

what I meant was, in most music (at least what I listen to), you rarely have a soloed track hard panned to one side while the full mix is playing on the other side. I guess it happens, just not all that much. I acknowledge there are plenty of early stereo recordings kind of like this, but anyway, is this controversial? There is no smoke to sift through here.
Again I have never once argued against measurements.

 

[sublemon]

There you go again with the straw man. No one said anything about taking all emotional attachment out of audio ... far from it. The enjoyment of audio (music) is intrinsically bound to emotion. That's what makes it worthwhile and enjoyable. We all deeply appreciate that.

The only process where emotion is controlled and restricted is the process of ANALYSIS. As I said above, analysis is a scientific process, and science is unemotional (or dispassionate). Enjoyment, OTOH, is entirely emotional. How many times do we need to bring that division to your attention?

hmm, was it a straw man? maybe a weak one. But you said "We are trying to help you understand the differences between science (which lacks emotional attachment) and human bias (of which emotional attachment is part and parcel.)" -- that was condescending, but also a misrepresentation of what I was actually saying, which was not a conflation of science and bias at all.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

hmm, was it a straw man? maybe a weak one. But you said "We are trying to help you understand the differences between science (which lacks emotional attachment) and human bias (of which emotional attachment is part and parcel.)" -- that was condescending, but also a misrepresentation of what I was actually saying, which was not a conflation of science and bias at all.

Bruh you've already derailed this thread enough without "boohoo you did a condescend on me". Give it a rest.

 

[sublemon]

ok "bruh"

 

[LevityProject]

what I meant was, in most music (at least what I listen to), you rarely have a soloed track hard panned to one side while the full mix is playing on the other side. I guess it happens, just not all that much. I acknowledge there are plenty of early stereo recordings kind of like this, but anyway, is this controversial? There is no smoke to sift through here.
Again I have never once argued against measurements

Ok, so Benefit of the doubt ... What we mean by an element hard panned is exactly that. One element in a song. A hard panned guitar or tom in a stereo mix is a mono element. It may exist only in the left or only in the right Channel. Therefore, it's mono. Vocals and bass panned straight up the middle of a mix are also mono elements. Many mixes additionally keep bass elements below 100hz mono.

All the talk of "listening stereo is better for critical listening" is hype. It is objectively not better. Just different. It's More exciting, and more spacious if that's how the song was crafted. But Mono is king for critical listening, measuring, and design.

 

[sublemon]

Ok, so Benefit of the doubt ... What we mean by an element hard panned is exactly that. One element in a song. A hard panned guitar or tom in a stereo mix is a mono element. It may exist only in the left or only in the right Channel. Therefore, it's mono. Vocals and bass panned straight up the middle of a mix are also mono elements. Many mixes additionally keep bass elements below 100hz mono.

All the talk of "listening stereo is better for critical listening" is hype. It is objectively not better. Just different. It's More exciting, and more spacious if that's how the song was crafted. But Mono is king for critical listening, measuring, and design.

You don't have to give me benefit of the doubt. I never said anything about stereo being better for speaker evaluation, critical listening, whatever. I'm just not sure one mono element in an otherwise stereo soundfield will reveal existing flaws much, that's all. I think it would be sort of hard to measure.

But also what I meant before, suppose you had a mono vocal on one speaker, with a full orchestra on the other, like some early stereo recordings (edit: I usually hate recordings like this). If a speaker is somewhat flawed, will it stand out then? Or will there be too much room interaction? This is a genuine question by the way. I can probably fish out some such recordings but then I also have to do some measuring and stuff, so happy to hear other's input.

I think it's actually a *good* thing that stereo masks some response flaws, right? Of course I want the best speakers, but I can't justify the $10k genelecs, and also I think they are kinda fugly. So, gotta make some compromises. Fortunately most of what I want to listen to is in stereo.

 

[LevityProject]

You don't have to give me benefit of the doubt. I never said anything about stereo being better for speaker evaluation, critical listening, whatever. I'm just not sure one mono element in an otherwise stereo soundfield will reveal existing flaws much, that's all. I think it would be sort of hard to measure.

Depends on what it is. Someone else in this thread could hear issues with a panned vocal not seeming to sit right in some speakers. And it is hard to measure ... But people can and are measuring it with the kippel devices. You see the thing so many people are saying is that these mono speaker measurements reveal the exact thing you are saying are hard to measure, and you keep coming back to "well I listen in stereo anyway and I don't listen to music with only one thing on one side" which makes it seem like you don't get it. Like, at all.

The WHOLE point here is that the ONLY reliable way to measure a speaker is to measure it as a mono single. If you want a stereo pair to listen to stereo music, or a 7.1 surround, the speakers MUST pass the mono measurement tests. If they don't it does not matter what you do with them, because they are not good. PERIOD. FULL STOP. Do you see?

But also what I meant before, suppose you had a mono vocal on one speaker, with a full orchestra on the other, like some early stereo recordings (edit: I usually hate recordings like this). If a speaker is somewhat flawed, will it stand out then? Or will there be too much room interaction? This is a genuine question by the way. I can probably fish out some such recordings but then I also have to do some measuring and stuff, so happy to hear other's input.

It will stand out in some way. It depends on the flaw. There are distortion flaws, frequency response flaws, port interference flaws, resonance flaws, dispersion flaws ... Etc.

I think it's actually a *good* thing that stereo masks some response flaws, right? Of course I want the best speakers, but I can't justify the $10k genelecs, and also I think they are kinda fugly. So, gotta make some compromises. Fortunately most of what I want to listen to is in stereo.

No it is not a good thing. It is one of THE reasons bad speakers get touted as hifi. This hiding smears the sound and kills your ability to locate things in a song. It's really just trading one problem for another.

And you don't need to spend 10k on speakers to get something that sounds amazing. I had to make a budget purchase and got a pair of Adam T5Vs. I took time to get them tuned flat to within 2db+/- from 70hz-20khz and they sound awesome with every master reference track I audition. They sound good as a mono single, a pair in mono AND as a stereo pair.

They aren't perfect, but they are close. I can make accurate judgements about what I hear through these and I don't need to second guess myself much. If it sounds good on these, it sounds good everywhere. This is the magic of a well designed speaker.

 

[sublemon]

Depends on what it is. Someone else in this thread could hear issues with a panned vocal not seeming to sit right. And it is hard to measure ... But people can and are measuring it with the kippel devices.

It will stand out in some way. It depends on the flaw. There are distortion flaws, frequency response flaws, port interference flaws, resonance flaws, dispersion flaws ... Etc.


No it is not a good thing. It is one of THE reasons bad speakers get touted as hifi. And you don't need to spend 10k on speakers to get something that sounds amazing. I had to make a budget purchase and got a pair of Adam T5Vs. I took time to get them tuned flat to within 2db+/- from 70hz-20khz and they sound awesome with every master reference track I audition. They sound good as a mono single, a pair in mono AND as a stereo pair.

They aren't perfect, but they are close. I can make accurate judgements about what I hear through these and I don't need to second guess myself much. If it sounds good on these, it sounds good everywhere. This is the magic of a well designed speaker.

I get that but I hope *truly* bad speakers don't overcome their shortfalls by being heard in stereo, they don't last in the market, aside from a few brands/models I won't mention by name...

 

[Newman]

You don't have to give me benefit of the doubt. I never said anything about stereo being better for speaker evaluation, critical listening, whatever. I'm just not sure one mono element in an otherwise stereo soundfield will reveal existing flaws much, that's all. I think it would be sort of hard to measure.

But also what I meant before, suppose you had a mono vocal on one speaker, with a full orchestra on the other, like some early stereo recordings (edit: I usually hate recordings like this). If a speaker is somewhat flawed, will it stand out then? Or will there be too much room interaction? This is a genuine question by the way. I can probably fish out some such recordings but then I also have to do some measuring and stuff, so happy to hear other's input.

I think it's actually a *good* thing that stereo masks some response flaws, right? Of course I want the best speakers, but I can't justify the $10k genelecs, and also I think they are kinda fugly. So, gotta make some compromises. Fortunately most of what I want to listen to is in stereo.

I understand your points, but your argument is entirely about personal standards, which is not interesting in the sense that it's undiscussable. For example, one might be fully satisfied with music over AM wave to a portable 1963 transistor radio, and after listening to us discussing audio for 5 minutes, announce that the essence of the music is perfectly transmitted over his radio, and we are all fussing over trivia. Well, that is actually about his personal standards more than about audibility, or even sonic preference. Another example: in a discussion among demanding audiophiles who are all devoted to critical listening, if one of them says that the surface noise on vinyl between tracks is completely unacceptable to him, half of the others will insist that he is being rather picky and maintain that such noise, and even the occasional pop in the music, doesn't bother them at all. Well, whoops, their petticoats are showing, and their standards are lower than the person who won't accept them and is bothered by them. A statement of how one's personal standards are not that high is not an argument that the audible flaw is okay.

Similarly, how much masking of speaker colourations occurs in stereo, and how often the speaker's mono mode reveals its colourations, and how much or how little you care, is something for you and your standards to sort out between the two of you. Frankly we can't discuss it on the forum, other than to hear you say "nah, I'm easy", and to reply, "excellent, you do you".

cheers

 

[Thomas_A]

I can say that even without blind tests, I can tell if something sounds "wrong". Perhaps it means I am "trained and critical" + used tp my own speakers having quite linear frequency response. But I guess the errors need to be quite large on such casual tests, but going back looking at measurements of those speakers that were auditioned, I was quite correct. But as I've said before, two speakers in a stereo setup sound different than one mono speaker - so there is always a grey zone.

 

[RickS]

The main catalyst of off topic banter here has been thread banned. As I posted earlier, expect to be moving or deleting many of these posts once I determine whether there is more appropriate thread.

Thanks for your support and please try to stay on topic here.

 

[JanL]

The art - the recording - is not in any way standardized, nor can it be. It varies in all possible ways, spectrally, spatially, including deliberate compression, and sometimes added distortion.

Dynamic range compression is a given for 99% of music released in the last 50 years. Even if the original recording was not compressed in any way, the mastering used compression and limiting to adapt to the medium, be it tape, vinyl or digital.

Now, not many audiophiles might realize this, but distortion is the spice of music production. It is generously sprinkled on individual tracks and mixes. It takes the form of clipping the components in the signal path, as in "driving the preamps", hitting the tape", "slamming the mix bus" or using their digital equivalents in the form of various plugins for computer based recorders. The same happens during mastering stage. Everyone wants a full sounding, loud record and mastering engineers are giving their customers what they want.
A pop music mastering signal chain might have 5 to 10 processors in series, each adding a bit of harmonic distortion to the final product. That way they get it to sound full and loud without resolving to hard limiting, which was popular in the 90's and early 2000's but produced harsh sounding masters.

So now we can have well-engineered speakers or headphones, and super clean amplifiers, and we listen to sounds that are enhanced through added harmonics in amounts that would disqualify any part of the reproduction chain in a typical review on this website. We are talking 10-20% THD on every track at all frequencies. This is why the best reference tracks come from the time before DAWs and plugins were ubiquitous. Back then they used compression to make things sit in the mix correctly, but they didn't use deliberate distortion as much. It was there but sparse. Now it's everywhere.

 

[Jim Taylor]

I don't mind having gear that imparts a character on my reproduction chain. Why? Because ... I have opinions.

Nothing wrong with having opinions. But it's kinda like sex. No one cares what you do in your own home. However, trying to get everyone in town to do it the same way you do is .... well, kind of a problem.

 

[Mr. Widget]

Now, not many audiophiles might realize this, but distortion is the spice of music production. It is generously sprinkled on individual tracks and mixes.

I'm definitely in that group. I don't mind having gear that imparts a character on my reproduction chain. Why? Because I have been doing audio professionally for many years and I have opinions. I also know that the music I listen to was made by people with their own opinions, which I might or might not agree with.
There is no reason for an audiophile to blindly trust the music producers. As Floyd Toole pointed out repeatedly, they are a part of the circle of confusion. They make decisions based on the gear and rooms they have and more importantly their own taste.

All good points, but as a counterpoint, if you have a system that adds a bump here or there, or sprinkles on a little distortion of one type or another, you will undoubtedly find some music that sounds better on this system than any other systems, but there will be other pieces of music that sound terrible on this system. A transparent system will give you the best playback for the broadest selection of music.