Why is there never any test data?

[Spiffyfast]

Uh oh, long post again. Plus I'm supposed to be working. Working on the acoustics of a Hare Krishna temple today, would you believe.

It's OK, I think most of the ppl that post on here during the day are "supposed" to be working.

 

[sploo]

Hey, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if *I* should start selling $1,000/metre cable and oak feet!! I would probably never get exposed as a fraud, so why not?!

You're not alone. A mate of mine told me he'd been challenged to sell 'magic beans', so we came up with the idea of enclosing dried haricots in a black velvet bag with rubber pads. Then sell it as a CD player upgrade - "Reduces the effects high frequency vibration on your player, leading to a more stable and focussed soundstage!".

Offer a "100% money back if you don't hear a difference" guarantee, and the poor misguided fools would be lining up to pay you money .

 

[wilkenboy]

You have tiptoed up to the greatest divide of audio - believers and nonbelievers. In your first post! Believers say "I'll give it a shot and see what happens", where nonbelievers choose not to believe unless something is proven to them..

Excellent characterizaion of the two market segments relative to data. Me, I'm a believer, but also an engineer at heart. So while I believe what my ears hear, I'll always want to be able to assign a number or plot to it that shows how and why, so I can do a first cut comparison at the spec level without having to set aside a tremendous amount of time to find and audition things live.

After reading through a bunch of HT mags off the shelf I was almost so discouraged as to give up reading ANY reviews- descriptive words about audio mean as little in these mags as someone trying to describe a color. Very often these "reviews" dedicate pages to describing the obscure audition material (which I may have no personal reference to) instead of the performance of the system!

Which brings me to my question / proposal for the group:

We throw around terminology that I sometimes struggle to tie back to actual measured performance, or even what I should expect to hear. I'd love just to hear the "layman" explanation of what people are trying to describe by these, followed by what they mean in terms of frequency response, attack, decay, off-axis frequency response, phase, distortion, etc, things that can be quantified. Here are just a few examples:

Bright
Harsh
Flat
Mellow
Warm
Neutral
Boomy
Muddy
Forward
Laid Back
Congested
Tight
Loose
Articulate
Fast
Imaging
Detailed
Dynamic
Spacious
Musical
Sound field
Revealing
Resolution
Clarity

Anyone care to give some of these a shot??

 

[jaxvon]

You're not alone. A mate of mine told me he'd been challenged to sell 'magic beans', so we came up with the idea of enclosing dried haricots in a black velvet bag with rubber pads. Then sell it as a CD player upgrade - "Reduces the effects high frequency vibration on your player, leading to a more stable and focussed soundstage!".

Offer a "100% money back if you don't hear a difference" guarantee, and the poor misguided fools would be lining up to pay you money .

You're too late man. That's already been done. Check out this awesome product...

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm

"Brilliant Pebbles..."

 

[Spiffyfast]

You're too late man. That's already been done. Check out this awesome product...

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm

"Brilliant Pebbles..."

wow, the internet, taking money from dumb people one poor sap at a time

 

[sploo]

Here are just a few examples:

Bright
Harsh
Flat
...

wilkenboy,

I think you've made a really good point here.

I'd describe my current setup as being very 'laid back' - in that it's wonderful for quiet acoustic music, but chuck on some aggressive rock and it sounds well, like it's a little disinterested.

I'm more than happy to believe it's down to frequency response and (lack of) a little distortion, but I'd love to see figures. I had thought about trying to measure the responses of different CD players in an attempt to quantify the coloration that designers are adding.

 

[Duffinator]

It's OK, I think most of the ppl that post on here during the day are "supposed" to be working.

Or studying?

And the Hare Krishna's are really into music. I've just happened to be in Venice Beach during their Festival of the Chariots (I think that's what it was called) and most of the festival was focused on music.....and a little chanting. They seemed like they were having a good time and nobody asked me for money.

 

[miklorsmith]

Subjective Reviews

I don't think all subjective reviews suck. I've plugged into Srajan Ebaen's reviews and we are like-minded dudes. Of course, we have almost the same exact stereo. In my own defense, I got the preamp and speakers before he did. . .

 

[sploo]

You're too late man. That's already been done. Check out this awesome product...

http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm

"Brilliant Pebbles..."

Dammit! There's always someone around more crooked than you

Ah well, at least someone is relieving the mugs of their money.

 

[MrQ]

Ha ha!!! I love the little pot of pebbles! How about cans of "rhythmically-enhancing ultra air" to spray around the room?? Compressed air is cheap and often comes in cans with removable labels

Now onto the sound-describing words. Well, some of these are real but some, I suspect, are basically just from journalists who ran out of words to use.

Bright - probably just to do with an elevation in high freqs. Wouldn't have thought phase motion would make any difference but obviously moving off axis will cause a drop in HF.

Harsh - rough-sounding signal, either because of sharp waveforms (sawtoothy-type stuff) or low equipment headroom. You can probably make anything sound harsh by whacking up the gain.

Flat - technically, means uncoloured frequency response. In aesthetic description, probably means unexciting or dull.

Mellow - don't have a clue but probably something to do with having a soft, wide Q peak in the mid. Again, most stuff can probably be made to sound more "mellow" by messing around with the mid.

Warm - ditto

Neutral - erm, no idea. Might be something to do with flat...?

Boomy - spectral. Narrow Q peak in the low mid. Often also arises because of room acoustics... room mode frequencies are the ones to excite if you want boominess.

Muddy - could be anything. Acoustically means too much reflected sound (anti-clarity, see below). Audio wise, might mean a very strange EQ profile, low headroom thing again, phase stuff causing a narrow image, etc. Really vague way of describing an imbalanced sound.

Forward - not a clue.

Laid Back - and again.

Congested - what? What is a "congested" sound? Might be muddy, I suppose...?

Tight - two things I'd say. Firstly, very short reverb time in the room that makes everything sound anechoic, with no distinguishable reverb tail. Secondly, very responsive (i.e. high suspension stiffness) speakers that make everything sound very instant (hence why small speakers sound tighter than large ones at the same freqs, I guess).

Loose - anti-tight

Articulate - erm... maybe something to do with there being a good balance of tightness, suitably colourful EQ and a wide image. If so, would definitely be affected by phase because playing with phase lets you mess about with the image.

Fast - the second bit of tight, I'd say.

Imaging - phase stuff again. Plus there's some funny DSP stuff you can do to manipulate the image (Ambisonics or the ISVR Virtual Acoustics project, for example).

Detailed - tight again. Also maybe describes an EQ profile that lets you hear the typically quieter stuff, e.g. drum brushes, fret noise, brass/woodwind breath noise, etc.

Dynamic - very vague. Again, could be used to describe a tight sound, broad image or a very carefully shaped EQ curve that brings selective narrow bands out more than others. But I reckon I could use dynamic to describe most things really....

Spacious - wide image? Maybe also means envelopment, which is another room acoustics thing.

Musical - an EQ curve tailored to bring out the melodic quality of a particular type of music. Common example would be the Brubeck curve which makes Unsquare Dance sound like a lot of fun.

Sound field - volume of interest when looking at the listening space. Sounds obvious but when I talk about the field, I'm usually talking about the space in front of the speakers, mostly with regard to interference issues.

Revealing - probably very akin to "detailed".

Resolution - utterly, utterly misquoted. Digital signals have resolution (i.e. sample bit rate) but analogue signals do not! The *music* may have melodic resolution but once that's encoded or recorded, it can't be changed by the playback equipment. That's another one that riles me up a bit, hearing people talk about a high resolution signal coming out of their turntable. Noooooooooo

Clarity - a bit misunderstood, but understandably so. Acoustically, clarity (C80 or C50) means the proportion of direct to indirect signal present after 80ms or 50ms. It's used to talk about speech intelligibility and discernibility... typically a reverberent space contains a less clear sound, as compared to an anechoic chamber that gives you an immensely clear one. To non-nerds, it's probably very similar to detailed.

Wahey, no work today! But I won't post again over the weekend because I might use up all the Audioholics server space. Oops.

 

[Buckle-meister]

...sipping single-malt...

Which?

I'm one of the (the only?) fly in the ointment.

You are not alone.

Regards

 

[jaxvon]

Nah...there's more than enough space here.

Quick question, what is the Brubeck Curve you speak of? I'm a big fan of Brubeck and all of his stuff...is there something I'm missing out on?

 

[MrQ]

I've got my sketches of the Brubeck curve somewhere. It's not complicated... as I recall, it has two troughs and a peak so you'd need a half-decent three stage parametric to get it just right (but you could also probably pull it off on a 31+ band graphic).

I don't know how it works but on the nearfields I was using when I tried it, it made the bass notes in Unsquare Dance sound like they were being played about four inches in front of my nose. Fantastic! I'll see if I can find it for you.

 

[mtrycrafts]

My goodness, what a nice sensible collection of individuals.


Clearly this is one of those things where, unless you can prove to someone that what they're saying is wrong/misadvised/a lie, which when it comes to psychological effects we generally cannot, the arguments will go on and on.

A test under bias controlled protocol, DBT, will show them how good their hearing is, or not so good, but then they start making excuses about the testing method, or other irrelevant factors. But you are right, they are seldom convinced of their errors.


Putting room acoustics right is often not hard and to a large extent (although not completely) can be compensated for using decent EQs tuned from an analyser profile. Speaking of which, I went into a well-known British hi-fi specialist chain recently and asked why no-one ever bothers to buy equalisation for their hi-fi these days. I was told by the 18 year old commission-based smartass that putting an EQ inline "compromises the purity of the signal path". That was red rag to a bull....

As you can see, once the urban legend is generated, it is impossible to eradicate it. The audiophile world lives on such mythology, bs, voodoo.

 

[mtrycrafts]

my thoughts exactly, but ppl are dumb and will buy anything

They want to so desperately believe, like religion

 

[Buckeyefan 1]

They want to so desperately believe, like religion

Speaking of religion, what happens to the man that worships the golden cow and seeks an afterlife as, say an animal, and ends up in a Christian heaven with little angels and clouds? Boy is going to be pi$$ed!

Like the vast majority of you (Marty doesn't count - he's a science guy), I was raised with a religious background, went to church every week up through high school (still try to make it once a month), and (possibly due to brainwashing, Marty) would hope there is something after this life. I'm not one to argue religion (although I did ask my dearest mother last week about the golden cow dilemma - she didn't have an answer), but I will say it's not a bad thing in a society that sometimes forget about the morals in life. The catholic schools here in Columbus continually rank at the top of all schools for acedemics. That may be due to economics, or parents taking more of an interest in their childs welfare, but you cannot argue the results.

It's funny how religion takes a lead role in those approaching the end. We take life for granted right now. We think we are invincible. But introduce something like a life threatening illness, or old age, and walaa, we drop to our knees and beg for forgiveness.

Any of you who have read Stephen Hawkings book, "A Brief History of Time," can relate to the world of science as well as religion. He had an interesting lecture titled "Does God Play Dice" that has also raised a few eyebrows.

 

[Buckle-meister]

It would not be for the first time that whilst reading responses in threads, I have pondered the analogy of the 'scientists', who always require proof, and 'non-scientists', who do not (sorry for stereotyping here), to religious non-believers and believers respectively.

I always think how interesting it would be to see if there exists a correlation between the 'scientists' and non-believers, and the 'non-scientists' and believers respectively.

They want to so desperately believe, like religion

mtrycrafts, are you judging those who follow a religion?

Regards

 

[mtrycrafts]

Like the vast majority of you (Marty doesn't count - he's a science guy), I was raised with a religious background, went to church every week up through high school (still try to make it once a month), and (possibly due to brainwashing, Marty) would hope there is something after this life. .

Good try but you are not psychic yet
I happened to have a similar path in life but then I started reading and questioning. I stumbled on an old book called 'The Passover Plot' that started the questoning. If one part is wrong, then others are wrong, hard the believe any is true. And, here we are today And yes, we are/were brainwashed. It certainly wasn't our free will that discovered religion. It was out parents insistance on teaching us and forcing us to believe. What did we know as toddlers and kids about the world and universe around us? Or, to think for our selves?

Why do we need anything after life? Why is it only us and not all the other creatures? Just because we can reason? Following some accounts in astronomy, what is going on in the universe, we are insignificant, don's count for anything on a universal scale of things. We don't exist But I am not a philosopher

 

[mtrycrafts]

It would not be for the first time that whilst reading responses in threads, I have pondered the analogy of the 'scientists', who always require proof, and 'non-scientists', who do not (sorry for stereotyping here), to religious non-believers and believers respectively.

I always think how interesting it would be to see if there exists a correlation between the 'scientists' and non-believers, and the 'non-scientists' and believers respectively.

There have been articles on this in Skeptical Inquirer over the years. They have somethings on line and you may want to subscrive although it is not inexpensive. It shows a path of inquiry, thinking.




mtrycrafts, are you judging those who follow a religion?

Regards

No, I am not in a position to judge anyone. Just mystified that still in the 21st century it has such a following and in many instance, a fervent following and a desire to convince and force others to think as they do.
But, I think it comes with our standing in the pecking order on the planet and perhaps in time, this may change. I am still not a philosopher

 

[Buckeyefan 1]

And yes, we are/were brainwashed. It certainly wasn't our free will that discovered religion. It was out parents insistance on teaching us and forcing us to believe. What did we know as toddlers and kids about the world and universe around us? Or, to think for our selves?

Right, on the free will front. But you also must add how we were brainwashed to play with Barbie dolls, with trucks and trains, to play baseball, or take dance lessons. Or for that matter, to attend school, to listen to our teachers, and to butter our bread with a knife instead of our fingers.

The top brass in major corporations must be brainwashed. For they are always listing their most important goal as God or religion, in front of family or work.

Why do we need anything after life? Why is it only us and not all the other creatures? Just because we can reason?

Some would say to meet up with our lost loved ones. Catholicism says your soul will be saved and will rest in Heaven. Do Catholics even know what that means? Quite possibly there is a God, and a soul may have nothing to do with us on a material level, and Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind we cannot comprehend. There is still so much we don't understand - about astrology, cures for diseases, science, our spouses , and religion.

Mankind may be eliminated from the face of the earth long before any of these questions are answered. Like you said, we are insignificant in the whole scheme of things. The universe if a vast place, and who are we to think we are the supreme beings. Why should we be saved and not that spider you just stepped on near the cat litter? All pertinent questions. Philosophy classes have answers, but people still revert back to religion.

IMHO, people use faith out of fear moreso than being brainwashed. There's always that "what if I were wrong and didn't believe?" How bad would it $uck to be eternally stuck in pergatory while the wife, kids, family, friends, the cactus plant, and Fido are hanging out in Heaven, sippen on Molsen watching re-runs of Seinfield/ Had to throw in a little humor.