Accuracy Part 3.

So... it all sounds the same then?

 

Merlin, as Michael pointed out, the first comment was a statement of fact (at least as far as oedipus is concerned...) The second comment is an honest question followed by a semiserious jibe (note the smiley). The third, I believe, is actually an honest suggestion rather than the insulting implication about your tastes/hearing ability that you seem to be taking it for. The fact that you instantly assumed it was meant as an insult corroborates oedipus' assertion rather nicely...

I agree that oedipus' tone has been condescending and arrogant, but no more so than some of the subjectivists (yourself included, from time to time ), and when you have a discussion between strong-willed people with strongly-held beliefs you're going to have to put up with a bit of arrogance. Nothing in this thread has been especially insulting in a personal nature - only in a vague "people who think *this* must be fools" sort of way that's bound to crop into a discussion like this.

In short, everyone should just take a chill pill, man. Then maybe people might get off their high horses and engage in discussion an the ground with all us plebes.

"Give peace a chance" Dunc

 

I watched a few weeks ago a scientific documentary on TV.
They were talking about scientist and moral today and about an international institution that had to be created in order to keep an eye on the results of physicists and mathematicians because in these days they are more and more cases of frauds.
And again I don't want to put everyone in the same basket but it seems that the moral of these scientists (as also chemistry,and...) is getting worse and worse at the point that it isn't better then any other branch.

The scientists are today under lot of pressure for funding which today is much more difficult then it was 10-20 years ago. Interesting, though, are also the more and more cases of scientists who tweek / massage their results to become famous (greedingness of fame).
I really got a shock watching this TV programme but it opened my eyes believing everything a scientist says.

Shall we now start talking about accurancy about the scientists?

 

I'm a subjectivist. I listen to what each scientist has to say and then decide what sounds best to me.

 

Steve, IMO this is one of the best posting in this forum.

 

outstanding post steve, time for the anal retentive brigade to take note and get a clue. so have fun and and stay cool in some cases frosty.
for those about to rock we salute you, glod bless and thanks for comming, see you on the next tour, sadly not on this channel .
big thanks to all those guys who have done some sterling work here.
I'm afraid its all bit too much for my poor brain to take in guys, the fun seems to have gone from this place.
take us away from the combat area number 1, warp 6.............all the best Wm

 

Mine sounds the same. Does yours?

More seriously, "sounds the same" is both an objective question (measurement) and a subjective one (what makes me happy and increases my listening pleasure). Subjectively I hear differences between things, even if my rational brain tells me I might be fooling myself, or the differences might be smaller than I imagine. Since audiophilia as a hobby, rather than a manufacturing process, is largely about the subjective enjoyment of music and the equipment used to play it back, my considered opinion is, Who really cares? On that level the objectivists are missing the point. (Having said that, no-one who hangs about internet hi-fi forums is really an objectivist, even Oedipus owns some relatively expensive source equipment after all, no doubt because he enjoys using it more than he would something cheap.) One thing I do know is that Titian's setup is by some distance better than any other that I've heard, it comes closer to sounding like the live experience of music (even orchestral music) than any other I've heard, it's clearly an example of a very large and obvious difference from the norm of domestic hi-fi, so I can understand his annoyance. I'm sure he thinks every part of the system contributes to that performance, not just the speakers and subs.

WM, I hope you're not really leaving.

-- Ian

 

Titian,

After this I no longer have mixed feelings... from what part of Switzerland are you from?!

I told you: HE CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH!

 

I am currently sitting here at Titian`s and experiencing undoubtedly the best sound I have heard from a home system. Some room treatment and subtle repositioning of the speakers, oh and a fixed amp, since last time and WOW.

The invite has always been there but only SideShowBob, GrahamN, Tones and myself have bothered, and boys you don`t know what you are missing. Titian lives in OberArth BTW. He would answer but he is cooking me dinner

 

I felt the same way too when I was at Tube Dude's and for a fraction of the price... that's WOW... and WOW!

 

You mean...it's even better than it was the last time? Omigosh, there's no hope for us...

 

Out of interest what kit has TD got?

 

Tube Dude kit:

Integrated Amplifier: 30W class AB solid-state of its own design in a Pioneer amp box (only the box is Pioneer and because it has lots of empty space inside);

Source: Philips CD-202, two 14-bit TDA1540, one per channel, 4x oversampling (with noise-shaping, would you believe it?!... its only mistake, I believe) and heavily modified (almost completely) by TD's design.

Speakers: Monitor Audio Studio 20SE with moddified cables and crossovers which were putted in non-magnetic external boxes.

Cables: Cheap solid core, low capacity Cyrus cables (DNM like) through out, except for the interconnects which are of its own design, solid core, low capacity, and even cheaper.

 

I have also heard TD's system and can agree that it's comfortably the best system I've ever heard in anyone's house. I'd love to hear titian's system one of these days.

Michael.

 

you were always invited

 

Thanks titian It's entirely my fault for not getting off my butt and booking a flight to Zurich. Sometime in the new year I'll have to get organized....

Michael.

 

Sure we can do that.

It comes as no surprise that there is fraud in science, there has been from the beginning. Alchemy, for instance, was a bust. However, as time has progressed we've got better at weeding out the frauds from the facts. The peer-review system is acknowledged as not being perfect, but it is the best that we have. Good journals have standards for how to control bias in experiments and the reviewers know how to determine if a result is statistically significant for the construction of evidence.

When science goes wrong there are checks and balances: you must document your experiment sufficiently well that others can try it out, and thus they can verify what you are saying. Occasionally results are reviewed as correct, even though the reviewer hasn't performed the experiment to verify it. There is a heirarchy in scientific publications which lends credence to results based on the title of the journal and the review process tends to be better.

Scientific fraud is possible, but futile; you can't generally build products based on science that doesn't work. If your result is purely academic, then someone is likely to try and build on it, and in the process determine whether your results are valid. In the latter case you'll be quickly exposed as a fraud. Occasionally, fruads, or rather errors are rapidly exposed, like the debacle of Fleischmann and Ponds not correctly validating their cold fusion result before announcing it to the world. In summary the upside for fraud is limited, and the downside is very high (exposure as a fraud isn't conducive to further employment).

One of the easiest paths to commiting a scientific fraud is to decide what the result should be before gathering and analysing the evidence. Once you've decided the result, then you merely cherry-pick the data so that when it is analysed it supports your hypothesis. This can be a little tricky in cases where the reviewer know to look for bias. It's made harder by statistical significance which requires more than 2 or 3 supporting pieces of evidence. Massaging the evidence isn't easy, the checks and balances of the review process should catch this kind of sleight of hand. Perpetrating this kind of "fraud" isn't necessarily a "concious" choice on the part of the scientist.

So, to do science, you need to outline a (repeatable) experiment in sufficient detail that others can perform it, gather data to test you hypothesis and then analyse that data for statistical significance. You also need to implement bias controls, so that the experimenter can't rig the result, and that the experimentee can't guess the correct answer. Finally, you need to change just one variable at a time.

Now, what does science have to do with the process through which people buy hifi? In short nothing.

For instance, some people claim that cables make a detectable difference to the sound of their system (perhaps going as far as proclaiming "night and day" differences or claiming changes in part of the frequency response and so on..)

However, the trap these folks have fallen into is "experimenter expectation": they've decided the result before the test has even been started. An environmental bias (magazine review, the price of the item, how shiney it is, some "voodoo science" about magic properties etc) has colored their judgement.

They then compound that error by just running ONE trial: try "old" item; try "new" item; decide new item better, end of test. Rarely, if ever do people swap back and forth, and if they do, the number of trials is not significant because there are insuffient swaps.. (It can be tedious to swap back and forth, but it's worth reflecting on just how tedious it was to earn the money you are spending before deciding that swapping back and forth is a waste of time.)

When folks do swap back and forth, they know what they are listening to: new toy, or old toy. A clear example of bias.

Next up, changing more than one variable: listening to a new component in a strange system - what might be called the "dealer demo". And let's not forget the demo room has a substantial effect even of all the components are the same as at home.

The next big bias control is "level matching" - minor level differences in volume alone explain the perceived differences in CD players.

The next source of bias is the difference in frequency response - it is quite easy to make components sound different by fiddling with their frequency response (Wadia, for instance, do this). The difference is audible, but is something that could be readily acheived with a simple tone control.

Just about every review of each item on the market, every dealer demo, and most manufacturer literature is a generated by a process which is worthless from a scientific standpoint. Naim (for instance) will never get a paper published on the "audibility of microphony" anywhere other than their own marketing literature.

Moreover, the reason Science isn't validating the claims made about differences in amplifiers, cables, cd players is because the experiments have been run and no one, in proper tests, has been able to provide any evidence that such differences are audible..

Perhaps you should have explored the word "mostly" in "After 5K, it's mostly willy waving" before lauching into this rather poor Impulse Response (a little joke there for the EE types):

These are the very traits you are exhibiting in the following paragraph:

If there is a "huge difference" in sound (not withstanding bass extension, and the effect of the different rooms) between your system and one that measures well, but costs substantally less (like $5k), then there is something wrong with your system.

Your speakers and your room are 99.9% of the sound you are getting. If your tube amps are particularly bad, then 5% of your sound might be your amps (distortion), and if you have a really badly designed CD player that might have a non flat response and also be "contributing".

There are perfectly rational scientific explanations to why your system sounds the way it does and, if you think you can hear something that science can't explain, then you need to familiarize yourself with a different branch of science: psychology..

 

Well I have got to say most of what is posted on this thread I think is tecno bollocks, to me its how it sounds to me and how it makes me feel that is the important thing, you could rant about the rites and wrongs of distortion and accuracy until we are all blue in the face but the fact will always remain sonic delight is in the ear of the listener.

Nankin :MILD:

 

Er no there is something wrong with the $5k system.

You are assumming that the $5k system is the point of reference of an excellent sound, which as yet has not been proven.

So how about naming names. What is the kit that would make up this $5k reference system? Otherwise your assertions are no more than the conjecture that the cable believers have.

 

I'm still waiting for this dac recommendation