Your hearing is not that good… Sorry, it’s just not

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

I'd like to see the listening impressions done prior to measuring. Confirmation bias is a big deal.

Agreed. Not only would it remove some bias but it might provide some interesting learnings.
Of course it would not remove all bias. Ideally listening would be done with no knowledge of the product but that’s not really practical.

 

[Theta]

It's scary how true it is that young people can hear better - over Christmas I had my 11, 14 and 16 year olds listen to a varying-frequency set tones and raise their hand when they hear it and they were consistently able to hear high-pitched tones that my wife and I couldn't.

Here is your answer:

 

[Ken Tajalli]

When it comes down to listening to music, many people like to think that there is something magical and special about their ability to hear.

Let me clue you into something: there is nothing special about your hearing. In fact, compared to many mammals, humans have rather poor hearing.

At best, the dynamic range where humans can actually discern the quality of the music or audio they are experiencing is about 100 dB. That’s it.

When you get louder, audio than 100 dB, your ears’ ability to discern the finer qualities of the audio starts being degraded. Just like with a microphone, those two little microphones on either side of your head start to get overloaded. So that’s it… Human hearing is basically stuck around 16 bits of dynamic range. Of course, we can hear a great deal of detail within that dynamic range, but don’t get all proud of yourself and think that you’re ability to discern the most minuscule detail is close to infinite. It’s not!

This all gets down to the subject of whether our hearing is as good or better than Amir’s test equipment. Sorry, it’s not even close. The test equipment is much, much better than human hearing.

As the wonderful Ben Stern used to tell his young son, Howard, “Don’t be stupid, you moron!”

jeff henning

Sorry, what did you say?
sounded like mumbling . . .

 

[Count Arthur]

Here is your answer:

My counter to that would be: given that storage is now so cheap, why do we need tiny file sizes?

In addition, it's an extra step to compress it.

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

What did you say?

 

[Cbdb2]

Neil Young PONO player Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the discontinued Neil Young PONO "high resolution" player. It is on kind loan from a member. Online prices today range from US $400 to $600 and more! The player comes in an attractive wooden box with nice accessories such as a pouch to hold the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

A terribly measuring DAC gets great reviews. These were not cherry picked, the first ones that came up. Stereophile even measures its bad performance, but its still "great".

Pono PonoPlayer portable music player

In the 1960s, musical giants walked the earth. I vividly remember the first time I heard a song called "Expecting to Fly," in a UK record store. The vast, reverberation-drenched sound was extraordinary; the frail, shaky alto voice of the singer riveting. "Who is that?" I asked the clerk. "It's a...

www.stereophile.com

Hands on: Home review

First impressions of the PonoPlayer – now with unboxing video – the portable high-res music player that's part of Neil Young's soon to be released PonoMusic high-res ecosystem.

www.whathifi.com

REVIEW : PONO Player (and comparison to Fiio X5)

REVIEW & COMPARISON : PONO – PORTABLE AUDIO MAGIC PROS : SQ, power, UI, form factor, build (for the most part), ease of use, value. CONS : Lacking key features (eg EQ), battery performance. RRP : $399 (Standard) - $499 (Ltd Edition) INTRODUCTION Anyone who’s followed my recent...

www.head-fi.org

The PONO Player: Worth The Hype?

The (in)famous Pono Player - A Guest review by JOE - The Headphone Enthusiast's Website

www.headfonia.com

A "hi-def" player that dosnt even reach CD quality. How much more proof does one need.

 

[Cbdb2]

Read this and tell me M Fremer dosnt have an huge ego or isn't an asshole.

Gizmodo Won't Post My Comment So I'm Posting It Here

Mario Aguilar, a Gizmodo blogger with a history degree and little if any meaningful audio listening experience, recently posted a story on that site titled "Don't Buy What Neil Young is Selling" in which he condemns Neil Young and his Pono player. His second sentence is "You shouldn't buy it"...

www.analogplanet.com

 

[Anton D]

This^
I’m always amused when people, not realising that it’s defined that way, hold our ability to hear 0dB as something extraordinary.

As I mentioned, that is equivalent to 0.000002 Pascals, which I find magnificent.

In controlled conditions, I have seen articles that say we can (ideally) we can hit -23 dB, or so.

I had a teacher once say we can almost hear Brownian motion, and can get so low in threshold that Brownian motion can be a limiting factor affecting what we can hear. (I will leave it to Kal to say if this is 'truthy.'

.

 

[Speedskater]

ChickenMan
He's Everywhere

 

[MattHooper]

Read this and tell me M Fremer dosnt have an huge ego or isn't an asshole.

Gizmodo Won't Post My Comment So I'm Posting It Here

Mario Aguilar, a Gizmodo blogger with a history degree and little if any meaningful audio listening experience, recently posted a story on that site titled "Don't Buy What Neil Young is Selling" in which he condemns Neil Young and his Pono player. His second sentence is "You shouldn't buy it"...

www.analogplanet.com

I don't think that's a controversial opinion.

He's quick to insult and I've been slagged by Fremer in his comments section.

You can find big egos and obnoxiousness in pretty much any industry.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

As I mentioned, that is equivalent to 0.000002 Pascals, which I find magnificent.

In controlled conditions, I have seen articles that say we can (ideally) we can hit -23 dB, or so.

I had a teacher once say we can almost hear Brownian motion, and can get so low in threshold that Brownian motion can be a limiting factor affecting what we can hear. (I will leave it to Kal to say if this is 'truthy.'

.

I'd have to look that up. I suspect so but only under special conditions.

 

[Emlin]

Hearing and listening are different. Hearing is biological, listening is cognitive. That's how I think of it at least. No one can learn to hear better, but people can learn to listen better.

When I put new tweeters in some vintage speakers, my cats noticed right away. It took me some time to pick out the differences. They have great hearing. As for how much detail they perceive when they listen to music, you would have to ask them.

Listening can be trained and improved. I do think people who listen first, then predict what they will see in the measurements, then measure... those are the people training their listening skills in the best possible way. Can people learn to listen better without measurement? Sure. But having an objective reference for our perceptions of sound grounds up and keeps our brains from hearing things that are not there. Or corrects us when our brains play tricks on us.

For me, I could tell a big difference between my AV amp and a small TPA 3255 amp. When I was swapping cables to compare. Then I got an a/b switch, and the differences were a great deal less obvious. Still differences, but far less different than I thought. A 30 second delay was enough that my ears were trumped by my brain.

When we compare A/B testing with measurements, we learn to listen to smaller and smaller differences, and learn to pick them out when there are lower levels of difference. Kind of like designers learn to distinguish more color variation than the average person. That's how anyone can learn to listen better, no matter what they hearing might be (within reason of course).

I am done training my listening, btw. I can certainly pick out problems in, say, the 80-120 region, but I know I can't tell the difference between a 90 and 100 problem by listening. I don't want to get to the point where I will pick out problems with anything I use. I am going to get some new speaker in a couple of months, and I will measure them and set them up for the room. But I will 100% NOT a/b them with other speakers.

As a result, I am sure they will sound perfect!

Did your cats come in from the kitchen to tell you how much they liked your new tweeters?

 

[BlackTalon]

Did your cats come in from the kitchen to tell you how much they liked your new tweeters?

They were too busy licking the food off the plates washing the dishes.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Read this and tell me M Fremer dosnt have an huge ego or isn't an asshole.

Gizmodo Won't Post My Comment So I'm Posting It Here

Mario Aguilar, a Gizmodo blogger with a history degree and little if any meaningful audio listening experience, recently posted a story on that site titled "Don't Buy What Neil Young is Selling" in which he condemns Neil Young and his Pono player. His second sentence is "You shouldn't buy it"...

www.analogplanet.com

I'm sure we can find something that makes every every single human on earth seem like an asshole. You can find something I've written or I can recall something I've said and done.
This is the difference: Some people stick up their head much more than average. Everything online is archived forever.

 

[Mnyb]

I'd like to see the listening impressions done prior to measuring. Confirmation bias is a big deal.

As for humans....

What do people want?

Put a shell up to your ear...we can hear our own circulatory system. That's pretty good!

We can even hear zero decibels (maybe lower.) That sound pressure level (SPL) corresponds to 0.000002 Pascals — a measure of vibration or pressure waves that we really hear.

I think we do great.

The little brown bat should get some B&W speakers

 

[Multicore]

Same attitude over here: I like clean reproduction because if something goes wrong, there is a source of issues I can already discard.

That's it exactly. Amir measured the sources we use as clean and quiet. The amp is clean, quiet and way more power than we need. So I only need to pay attention to the boxes and the room. Knowledge of the transparency of the electronics sweeps cluttering thoughts aside. That's a huge simplification that I really like. I don't need golden ears that can hear it to enjoy the benefit of measured transparency.

 

[Andysu]

Because, for one thing, not everyone can look at speaker measurements and know exactly how a speaker will sound - the actual subjective consequences on music played through the speaker. So there's an upper midrange peak in measurements? So what? What does that mean for the sound and why should I care? So it can help to have someone perceptive describe the sonic characteristics. And, there are subjective reviews where there aren't accompanying measurements. But the descriptions can be helpful.

Even on this forum I have found that not everyone is good, even on this forum, at inferring the sound of a loudspeaker from the measurements.

As a related aside, I've been looking up more reviews of the Alta Audio speakers among different subjective reviewers, even the dreaded youtube reviewers, and there is a clear pattern that emerges in their descriptions in terms of the speaker traits - a sense of impressive scale to the sound, in terms of soundstaging and the "heft" and weight of the sound, and powerful bass. It's mentioned constantly. I think it would be too facile to simply dismiss all of them as "just hearing things" and describing fantasies.

jaws , should get some used JBL professional cinema to get those proportions correct , JBL Jaws Bites Low frequency
take a long close look at projection screen , those JBL proportions are correct

how much high frequency ? depends on the turning of DCX 2496 , no clipping of signal , class d amplifier input sensitivity , amplifier power that provides dynamic range , how much high frequency above 8KHz to 16Khz or 18KHz i'm able to actually hear ? or soundtrack mix ?
star trek VI the undiscovered country 1991 , has some high , high frequencies i doubt many here even noticed few scenes where uses two or more high , highs

 

[Emlin]

When it comes down to listening to music, many people like to think that there is something magical and special about their ability to hear.

Let me clue you into something: there is nothing special about your hearing. In fact, compared to many mammals, humans have rather poor hearing.

At best, the dynamic range where humans can actually discern the quality of the music or audio they are experiencing is about 100 dB. That’s it.

When you get louder, audio than 100 dB, your ears’ ability to discern the finer qualities of the audio starts being degraded. Just like with a microphone, those two little microphones on either side of your head start to get overloaded. So that’s it… Human hearing is basically stuck around 16 bits of dynamic range. Of course, we can hear a great deal of detail within that dynamic range, but don’t get all proud of yourself and think that you’re ability to discern the most minuscule detail is close to infinite. It’s not!

This all gets down to the subject of whether our hearing is as good or better than Amir’s test equipment. Sorry, it’s not even close. The test equipment is much, much better than human hearing.

As the wonderful Ben Stern used to tell his young son, Howard, “Don’t be stupid, you moron!”

jeff henning

That's what happens when evolution decides to make your ears from bits of lizard jawbone and then some people decide that their hearing was given to them by a God.

 

[MattHooper]

jaws , should get some used JBL professional cinema to get those proportions correct , JBL Jaws Bites Low frequency
take a long close look at projection screen , those JBL proportions are correct

how much high frequency ? depends on the turning of DCX 2496 , no clipping of signal , class d amplifier input sensitivity , amplifier power that provides dynamic range , how much high frequency above 8KHz to 16Khz or 18KHz i'm able to actually hear ? or soundtrack mix ?
star trek VI the undiscovered country 1991 , has some high , high frequencies i doubt many here even noticed few scenes where uses two or more high , highs

While I appreciate the riff on my screen name (a long time favourite movie), I'm afraid that was too cryptic even for me.

 

[BobbyTimmons]

When it comes down to listening to music, many people like to think that there is something magical and special about their ability to hear.

Let me clue you into something: there is nothing special about your hearing. In fact, compared to many mammals, humans have rather poor hearing.

At best, the dynamic range where humans can actually discern the quality of the music or audio they are experiencing is about 100 dB. That’s it.

When you get louder, audio than 100 dB, your ears’ ability to discern the finer qualities of the audio starts being degraded. Just like with a microphone, those two little microphones on either side of your head start to get overloaded. So that’s it… Human hearing is basically stuck around 16 bits of dynamic range. Of course, we can hear a great deal of detail within that dynamic range, but don’t get all proud of yourself and think that you’re ability to discern the most minuscule detail is close to infinite. It’s not!

This all gets down to the subject of whether our hearing is as good or better than Amir’s test equipment. Sorry, it’s not even close. The test equipment is much, much better than human hearing.

As the wonderful Ben Stern used to tell his young son, Howard, “Don’t be stupid, you moron!”

jeff henning

You miss the point from this. Your ears can't detect something then it's irrelevant because it's not audible. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If something sounds good or bad to you that's all that matters as the consumer of the end product. This isn't science the criteria is only consumer satisfaction. Measurements are helpful for reviewers or designers previewing or designing new systems, predicting the sound would be enjoyed by a larger or smaller market share.