Michael Fremer Responds To The Skeptics

So the one thing that really caught my attention in his response was his claim (which I presume is true) that in a double-blind test, he identified the tube amp 5 times out of 5. Then he went on to say they tossed his result because it was a statistical outlier.<br />

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If that is true, then whomever was doing the tests wasn't analyzing the data correctly.<br />

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The chance of getting it right 5 times out of 5 by chance is quite low (3%). So unless you have a very large sample, then tossing out his result is wrong. Even if it was not wrong to toss out his data point, all the test then demonstrates is that most people can't perceive a difference. The real question of interest is whether <b>he</b> actually can (and others trained to listen can), or he is faking it.

It would be more like saying "lifting 100kG with ease and control". In which case, practicing with a greater amount would seem apropos.<br />

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It is only my opinion, and in my experience the gear I like tends to have much larger bandwidths than 20-20k.

Whatever analogy you want to use, the fact is that nowadays we are able to yield but an only approximately flat response in the most important hearing range.<br />

Also, remember that the weakest link in your chain determines the quality of a system. Even if your ears could perceive 100 kHz, there is no speaker out there capable to throw out such frequency.<br />

I don't get any money from sugar talking about specific gear here, but if you are curious as to what gear I have that to me approximate at best a flat response in the important frequency range with a more than comfortable dynamic headroom, I can suggest some stuff. But first... TREAT YOUR ROOM!

<i>"Companies certainly don't lack of the ability to talk to engineers and mathematically prove that Lavry's philosophy is wrong. Why has it never being done then?"</i><br />

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Not sure what you're implying with that statement. If you're trying to imply logic that since nobody has done it, it must be true you know as well as I that's terribly flawed logic. <br />

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<i>"Even if your ears could perceive 100 kHz, there is no speaker out there capable to throw out such frequency."</i><br />

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There are a number of speakers that reproduce 100 kHz. TAD Reference One loudspeakers are one example.<br />

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P.S. I just wish you could talk to the people at Spectral to ask why they build amps in the mHz range and why things like toroidal are terrible to use in audio components etc... It's very different to ask the people doing it than to be an armchair engineer professing to have all this licked.<br />

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I believe that audio measurements are to the art of sound reproduction what phrenology is to psychiatry. Measurements, whether simple or complex, will never explain art. Are there measurements that can determine how accurately a photograph reproduces its' subject? A live performance is exactly that.. live, a one-of-a-kind event. The assessment of its'"accuracy" when reproduced electronically will always be largely subjective. And when it comes to subjectivity, one must accept that there are individuals who are more observant than others. Their talents are honed through experience and a devotion to learning.

The logic is flawed, but from a practical point of view proving that Lavry's philosophy is wrong would put companies that comes out with 192 kHz products under a better light. It is more than a philosophy, anyway. It's backed up with a fundamental theorem of communications and the common sense that to put theory into practice there are a lot of down to earth considerations to be done.<br />

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I'd like to see the real frequency response of those speakers in an anechoic chamber...<br />

I'd like to know what kind of preamp and amp is capable to deliver flat response up to 100 kHz, and with what ripple in band.<br />

I'd like to know how they come out with those numbers too.<br />

There's all sort of tricks that manufacturers can do to hype their products.<br />

Finally, the last transducer is your ear. It is a physical object, composed of a membrane, three bones, a liquid in a closed chamber and a 'few' other things. Just like everything else on earth it has a frequency response, and it's way below 100 kHz, like it or not.<br />

I'm not saying the approach of coloring the sound is wrong, all I'm saying is don't try to tell me that pseudo-physic explanations are a good theoretical back up for transparent sound reproduction.<br />

Mathematics is undisputable. You may object that sometimes transparent isn't enough, and you want 'more'. Well, that more is coloration, and I happen to try to avoid it. Other people don't. Like the song goes, if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad...

Sax512, how do you choose your clothing? Do you buy whatever fits you most accurately, or do you buy what you like the look of and what makes you feel good? <br />

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Is any one choice less valid than another, or more deserving of praise?<br />

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I own a hifi, I certainly don't want it so sound entirely neutral and flat. Do people really care that an album sounds is it was 'intended' to sound by the producer? Did he intend it to be heard on a transistor radio, in the car, on the beach via your ipod or through a system to rival the neutrality of the studio it was recorded in- did he even care?<br />

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There's a lot of foo about, no disagreement there, but there's also a great deal that we do not know about, factors we have no measurement for or little understanding of. Call it audio qualia if you like

I already said that there is a fundamental difference in the philosophy of some audiophiles respect to that of others. What more can I say?<br />

I took a look at TAD specifics. -10 dB at 100 kHz. To me it means that it doesn't reproduce 100 kHz. But that is just to me.<br />

Rockerz, that's a pretty big steaming pile of balderdash you ladled out there.

Actually I think he described pretty exactly the other kind of philosophy. I appreciate his comment. But all I wanted to do was to give suggestions and hints to people that look at sound reproduction the same way I do, while all I get here seems to be people from the other side try to tell me why their way to look at it is better.

<i>"But all I wanted to do was to give suggestions and hints to people that look at sound reproduction the same way I do, while all I get here seems to be people from the other side try to tell me why their way to look at it is better."</i><br />

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This statement appears a little disingenuous. Suggestions and hints? It really seems you are trying to tell everyone why your side is better. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. Also, everybody here is aware of the opinions you express because they've likely researched them many times in the past. I think everyone here has simply put forth an argument. It would be pretty weird if everybody commenting thought their way was inferior yet decided to support it. Nobody here is any different than you are although their opinions differ. Plus, less than 1% of CA readers actually post in the forum. I'm willing to bet it's about a 50/50 split between people who are on both sides of this discussion. <br />

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As a side note, can you share your educational background and work experience pertaining to audio component design? Of course you don't have to answer, but it would help everyone put some perspective on your comments. For example if you've conducted a longitudinal study on the affects of frequencies above normal human hearing etc... that would be very good to know. On the other hand if you're a physical education teacher who has picked up knowledge on DIY internet forums that would also be good to know.<br />

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I'm certainly know audio component design expert or electrical engineer focussed on audio components. I simply do my own research, find those who are experts and ask them questions.<br />

Hi sax512 - I just noticed a post from you elsewhere asking the following question.<br />

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<i>"Are there any programs that will get as input high resolution 192 khz 24 bit tracks and make an hdcd?"</i><br />

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You'll need a Pacific Microsonics Model Two A to D converter to get real HDCD encoding and reach the 24/192 sample rate you so desire.

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"Companies certainly don't lack of the ability to talk to engineers and mathematically prove that Lavry's philosophy is wrong. Why has it never being done then?"<br />

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why should they bother?<br />

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it's just a theory, and the only "proof" is in the listening.

I'm not trying to tell anybody that my side is better. It is better for me, and I have researched on this stuff like you did, talked to people who work on the field, but most of all I base my opinions on pure math. This is a question of faith. Either you fully rely on physics, or you have faith in the fact that there's something 'artistic', personal and unexplainable.<br />

I was trying to get replies from a certain kind of audiophile, but I got replied from the other side. It's ok, I still appreciate every input. We really don't disagree, all in all. We just start from a different perspective.<br />

I didn't do any study on the effect of ultra sound frequencies on hearing. I just think that before taking care of those frequencies, people that look for a transparent reproduction should stick with gear that tries to be optimized for that task in the audible range. Once hardware and gear improvement will get to the point of exactly reproducing the important stuff, I'm not against going further. It just isn't the right time yet, and by going further I mean that a guy like me can't take -10 dB as acceptable. Either you reproduce a frequency within a decent specific range, or you may as well not reproduce it at all. That's how I see it.<br />

All I'm saying makes perfect sense from a logical point of view, and it is valid even if was said from a teenager, but since here the subtle innuendo is about my 'moral' right to spread my beliefs based on some kind of education and experience, I must say that I am an electronic engineer, I've been a musician for the past 16 years and I have worked on signal processing, even if not for audio applications, more than a lot of people can claim for... but it doesn't mean anything. All that matters is a certain mind set and logic reasoning.<br />

If we don't agree on the definition of great sound, then we are just telling the other suggestions that they don't want to hear, if not only for the delight of exchanging point of views.

...from the brink just a bit. A lively discussion is great fun, but no one should feel attacked.<br />

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sax512, I am supposing you enjoy listening to music through your system, and that is what we are all after, so in this we all agree. I do not think anyone is saying (at least I certainly am not) that your way of achieving this is any less valid than another. Let me set out some propositions, and perhaps we can agree on some or even all of them.<br />

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1. While at this stage there is art to it (and will be until and unless we reach some sort of collectively agreed perfection), the best audio reproduction is fundamentally a matter of science and engineering.<br />

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2. That being said, audio science and engineering has not yet reached the point of collectively agreed perfection. There are frontiers of electronics, acoustics, and hearing still to be explored.<br />

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3. There is certainly snake oil in the audio industry, along with well-meaning and sincere people who are simply incorrect in believing they know how to produce good sound. There are also good, careful scientists, engineers and others who actually do produce equipment that consistently sounds good (meaning true to the source).<br />

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4. Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking we hear things that are not present. <br />

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5. On the flip side of #4, if we take care in listening (meaning we listen repeatedly and hear the same things consistently; that perhaps we recruit non-audiophile friends and spouses and ask them to listen and tell us what they hear), we should not be afraid to trust our ears and the ears of other listeners.<br />

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6. If we do not know the explanation for why we hear certain things, it does not mean no one knows the explanation. There are people in the audio industry far smarter than I am. Even if no one knows the explanation, it does not mean our hearing is playing tricks. See proposition #2; and recall past episodes, such as when CDs first emerged, for examples of real audio phenomena experienced by listeners that only later found scientific explanation. (I refer of course to the early reservations of many listeners regarding CD sound, widely ridiculed at the time, which only later were at least partially explained by the discovery and scientific exploration of the phenomenon of jitter.)<br />

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So with that background, let me say a few other things:<br />

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Keith O. Johnson is a very smart man (much smarter than I am, likely in general and certainly about audio). I come to this conclusion not only from reading many things he's written and lots of interviews with him; not only because reviewers and others in the audio industry uniformly speak of their great admiration for what he has done; but also because I have listened for over two decades to a great deal of audio equipment he has designed and a great many recordings he has made, some of it in my own home; and it sounds wonderful, by which I mean it reproduces much of the sound and emotion of actual performance. If he says there are good engineering reasons why he has designed his equipment to reproduce frequencies up to 1 mHz I am prepared to believe him; when I listen to the equipment and it sounds wonderful, I am moved a good way toward being convinced. (Yes, I'm quite aware there aren't speakers that will reproduce those frequencies.) As I said earlier, I do seem to recall that according to Fourier analysis, frequencies up to the 7th harmonic are necessary to faithfully reproduce square waves and thus the characteristic waveforms and timbres of musical instruments, but I could be wrong or confused about that.<br />

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There are other examples of audio designers and engineers saying things that I don't know enough to evaluate for myself, but the equipment they make provides a certain amount of credibility by its performance. For example, there are Pierre Sprey and Ron Bauman of Omega Mikro. They make the best audio cables, digital (S/P-DIF) and analog, that I have ever heard. I have had cables of theirs in my system for nearly 20 years. (Pierre also makes some of the best-sounding recordings I have heard, under the Mapleshade label. Interesting how these designers are constantly working with the sound of live performance and thus know when their equipment is coming close to it.) One of the contentions of Omega Mikro is that cryogenic treatment improves the sound of cables. To me this seems rather "far out." But the audible performance of their cables is undeniable. And now the people producing Locus Design cables (highly thought of by the audio press, I believe including Chris, as well as many listeners commenting on Computer Audiophile) say the same thing. This encourages me to think the evidence of my own ears over many years isn't the result of fooling myself, though I don't personally have an engineering understanding of why cryogenic treatment should affect a cable's audio/electronic performance.<br />

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In the end I suppose what I would like to encourage you to do is only what you probably already do - don't fear to make listening the final arbiter of your enjoyment.

Thanks for the HDCD reply, Chris. I had a few files at the time and wanted to experiment...

How does Red Hot Chili Peppers album 'Californication' sound on your systems?

sax512, something else just occurred to me, so I hope everyone will forgive me for writing more after my previous lengthy post.<br />

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I worked with engineers for many years on various things to do with liability, accidents, litigation, and preventing all these. One thing I noticed was that frequently errors occurred not due to mistakes in the theory applied or the calculations, but in leaving something out of the modeling of a situation. Scientists and engineers can't hope to capture all the smallest details of a complex or chaotic situation, so they have to make models. Sometimes the model fails to capture something that turns out to be significant, so the model doesn't behave like real life.<br />

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Perhaps when you mention mathematics, you're referring to the Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem? Let us suppose the theorem is a correct model of reality when what is being sampled is not a single waveform but a performance by multiple musicians. (I don't know that for sure; perhaps it is true. But let's assume it is.) The Theorem was just as true when CDs first came out, and was in fact cited as a reason why those complaining of "glare" couldn't be hearing what they said they did. However, there turned out to be an engineering error: though behavior in the frequency and loudness domains had been modeled, behavior in the time domain - jitter - had not. Once jitter was included in the model, it complied better with audio/electronic/mathematical reality.<br />

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So that, more specifically, is why I babble on about trusting your ears. We haven't modeled acoustic reality perfectly yet, so there is no reason to let imperfect models convince you that what you hear is a figment of your imagination. (Yes, figments of our audio imaginations exist, and we owe it to ourselves and others to guard against them by careful, frequent, consistent listening to our equipment and to live music.)

<i>"How does Red Hot Chili Peppers album 'Californication' sound on your systems?"</i><br />

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Possibly the worst sounding album of all time. I love the content but the over compressed sound hurts my ears.<br />

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P.S. I want to listen to music as the artist intended and without any coloration on my part. If the artist colors the music I am fine reproducing that color through a transparent system.

Once again, I'm not saying that we are at a time when hearing range has been completely been taken care of. I do have to say the ripple in the 20-20.000 Hz band can be processed by our brain and its effects leveled down, just like jitter below a certain level can't be detected.<br />

The fact that real world implementation isn't consistent with theory is in favor of my point of view, to me. Let's first optimize what everybody hears. Let's fix real world details that are not been taken in account in the model. Then, and only then, we can start to think about the ultra sound field. But this is only my philosophy.<br />

Chris, if you want to listen to the coloration like the artist intended to be, then you are one of my kind, and I don't see what you don't get in my reasoning.<br />

I also may say, since somebody came out with the k$ cables, that no RCA can yield the result of a good balanced XLR or TRS cable, as far as 'transparency' revealing. They are just better in the concept. Are there RCA that are more transparent than balanced connections? Probably. The longer the cable, the unlikely this is to happen. What I'm saying about this topic is: why not perfect something that is conceptually superior, instead of spending more money to fix something that is inferior?<br />

There is a reason why -10 dBu is considered the customer standard for a line level, while +4 dBu is the standard for professional gear.<br />

In the studio, which itself is far from perfection, the audio is mixed with certain gear. Since to reproduce the same sound the engineer wanted to convey you would have to be in the same room, listening with the same gear, and with the same ears and brain, I understand who wants to be less stringent on technical specs. I do. But I just have faith in the other approach. It really is a matter of listening 'strategy', all in all.