Audio is a hobby for me, and a quite engrossing one, but it is subservient (for me) to the music - an odd statement, perhaps, from a guy who spent the better part of a year building his own speakers and amps. On the other hand, I just got back from an all-Mozart chamber concert. (It's Wolfgang's 250th birthday!) A good performance can move me over a crappy OEM dashboard speaker in a Ford cargo van. In fact, it has.
As for questions of "religion", I am a pretty hardcore DBT advocate and skeptic as everyone here knows. I take the view that the reproduction of sound lies purely in the realm of the phyiscal world and is thus a scientific and engineering problem - so the methods of science and engineering are the most appropos to evaluating and understanding audio as for the rest of the physical world. Science in the form of experimental psychology also tells us that human perception is easily fooled; thus open ended listening without controling for variables and especially human bias is of limited value in judging the quality of audio gear. Audiology and physiology tell us the capabilities and limits of human hearing - strongly suggesting that "golden ears" do not exist. The place for subjectivity is in teh enjoyment music. It would be ridiculous to DBT musical performances!
Now, if one prefers the sound of (say) tube amps -- that's a subjective judgement. One can disagree with it on many grounds but ultimately it's up to individual taste and judgement. I hold the view that the point of acquiring all these shiny boxes of circuitry is to achieve a system that adds or subtracts as little as possible to the sound. Many (not all) tube systems do not do that. Some find that quality pleasing. Different strokes... People like me would be a lot less, um, cranky if vinyl/tube enthusiasts would stifle the airy fairy verbiage about the magic they hear and simply say, well, I know it's not necessarily accurate but by gosh I just happen to like a little more second-order harmonic distortion and a little roll-off of the highs, and this brand XYZ amp does that best to my ears and/or with my speakers.
(Hey, I admit it. A lot of recordings benefit from a little less accuracy. I just prefer to dial my signal processing in as I see fit...not hardwired in a one-size-fits-all manner. Again, different strokes...)
I digress. Given the above, it should of course be obvious that the only really reliable way to be sure that the equipment is neutral is via measurement, not unreliable, unaided human perception. The signal coming out should be an exact match for the signal going in. Or, if one prefers the output to have a little "something extra", then the "something" that many people prefer can also be isolated via measurement and controlled listening tests. <b>Every truly audible difference can be measured. Some easily, some less so. There are no mysterious "X factors" in audio.</b>
Yes, the "common" measurements quoted in specs do not necessarily tell the whole story. There are genuine scientific controversies in the professional audio community about new measurement methods and many current ones. THD, for example, has long been regarded an an overly simplistic measurement. But remember this too: which specs are quoted to you in ads and manuals (and how truthful they are) are determined as much or more by marketing people as by the engineers.
Many consider the scientific approach to audio sterile and emotionless. To that I can only reply for myself: I am not a scientist or engineer. My background is in music and theater. I'm a pretty emotional, artsy-fartsy kinda guy! Yet, the scientific approach to this hobby has not only acquainted me with a broad and fascinating realm of scientific knowledge in fields from physics to acoustics but also allows me to realize a very close facsimile to a thrilling live performance in my home without taking out a second mortgage, because I am able with the knowledge I have acquired to concentrate my resources on those things that make a real (or at least the most) difference.
By Jove, I believe this is the closest thing to a coherent statement of my "audio philosophy" as I have managed to write! Thanks for the inspiration.
Of course, if you want to explore this more my Website has a really good page of links...
