A proposal: the Objectivist Audio Review magazine

[Milt99]

21 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Huh? Perhaps you’ve been gone for a while or are just ignoring our articles by mitchco and archimago. 

 

I prefer to offer both subjective and objective points of view. 

First off, I post here infrequently but I did recently suggest some speakers for you to consider.

I must have made a real impression ?

 

Sorry Chris, I should have been more specific. My post was overlong.

I'm not saying that you are a flaming anything except music lover ?

But in my experience, the majority of forum threads on this site deal with subjective topics.

 

Obviously, you are famously flexible on thread topics and content.

You only 86 the most egregious members besides trying to talk them down 2 or 3 times.

I know I wouldn't\couldn't be as forgiving as you.

 

EDIT:

Yes beerandmusic, I am asleep.

I prefer to call it napping.

 

[sandyk]

3 hours ago, mansr said:

Does constructing a USB de-evilizer count?

 

  Have you been able to verify that it may under some circumstances result in a SQ improvement ?

If it does, measurements that can show the improvement /changes would be nice at a later more convenient time. ( given the availability of suitable test equipment) .
 

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

I prefer "objectionist."

OK, good natured objectionist!

 

Did I spell taht correctly?

[austinpop]

I agree that the labels of "subjective" and "objective" are meaningless, and end up being used here as weapons rather than meaningful labels.

 

Can we step away from our corners and look at this from a different angle? Ponder this: why are we all here - on a site called Computer Audiophile? Aren't we here because we love the experience of listening to music on computer-based audio systems?

 

If we can agree to that, then the next question is: what are our objectives when we participate on this site?

1. To learn how to "improve" our audio systems from the collective knowledge of the community?
2. To contribute our knowledge to help others in the community?
3. To debate and argue about topics related to computer audio?
4. To mock and bait the "other side?" I admit - this is a fun pursuit!

As an empiricist - I like @lmitche's description - I'd like to understand the objective approach to 1 and 2. Let's focus on 1. Say you have a system comprised of an end to end collection of gear. You are interested in upgrading your digital component A, and based on your interactions and learnings here, you have settled on B. How does this work in the objective world?

1. Do you only consider replacement candidates for A that measure "better" than it? 
2. Assuming candidate B measures better, do you still listen to it - gasp, subjectively! - before you buy it?
3. Or are measurements good enough for you?

The reason I ask these questions is that I see a lot of hostility and ridicule for subjective methods here on CA, but are there threads here that show people going from A to B using purely objective criteria? If so, any examples?

 

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I agree that the labels of "subjective" and "objective" are meaningless, and end up being used here as weapons rather than meaningful labels.

 

Can we step away from our corners and look at this from a different angle? Ponder this: why are we all here - on a site called Computer Audiophile? Aren't we here because we love the experience of listening to music on computer-based audio systems?

 

If we can agree to that, then the next question is: what are our objectives when we participate on this site?

1. To learn how to "improve" our audio systems from the collective knowledge of the community?
2. To contribute our knowledge to help others in the community?
3. To debate and argue about topics related to computer audio?
4. To mock and bait the "other side?" I admit - this is a fun pursuit!

As an empiricist - I like @lmitche's description - I'd like to understand the objective approach to 1 and 2. Let's focus on 1. Say you have a system comprised of an end to end collection of gear. You are interested in upgrading your digital component A, and based on your interactions and learnings here, you have settled on B. How does this work in the objective world?

1. Do you only consider replacement candidates for A that measure "better" than it? 
2. Assuming candidate B measures better, do you still listen to it - gasp, subjectively! - before you buy it?
3. Or are measurements good enough for you?

The reason I ask these questions is that I see a lot of hostility and ridicule for subjective methods here on CA, but are there threads here that show people going from A to B using purely objective criteria? If so, any examples?

 

 

Honestly ausinpop, this whole post is a strawman from the subjectivist side.  Ironically you have just shown the usefulness of the subjective/objective "labels"...

[Milt99]

austinpop, ya got my vote

[beerandmusic]

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I agree that the labels of "subjective" and "objective" are meaningless, and end up being used here as weapons rather than meaningful labels.

 

Can we step away from our corners and look at this from a different angle? Ponder this: why are we all here - on a site called Computer Audiophile? Aren't we here because we love the experience of listening to music on computer-based audio systems?

 

If we can agree to that, then the next question is: what are our objectives when we participate on this site?

1. To learn how to "improve" our audio systems from the collective knowledge of the community?
2. To contribute our knowledge to help others in the community?
3. To debate and argue about topics related to computer audio?
4. To mock and bait the "other side?" I admit - this is a fun pursuit!

As an empiricist - I like @lmitche's description - I'd like to understand the objective approach to 1 and 2. Let's focus on 1. Say you have a system comprised of an end to end collection of gear. You are interested in upgrading your digital component A, and based on your interactions and learnings here, you have settled on B. How does this work in the objective world?

1. Do you only consider replacement candidates for A that measure "better" than it? 
2. Assuming candidate B measures better, do you still listen to it - gasp, subjectively! - before you buy it?
3. Or are measurements good enough for you?

The reason I ask these questions is that I see a lot of hostility and ridicule for subjective methods here on CA, but are there threads here that show people going from A to B using purely objective criteria? If so, any examples?

 

 

I mostly come here to find the best bang for the buck.

I like to read and share about new products.

I likely would buy anything (within my budget) that measured better, even without trying first, because i could always return or resell it.  i have tried literally hundreds if not thousands of different pieces of hardware.  

I also come here because i "enjoy the debate".  I also come to read and share song and album choices....my listening tastes have expanded exponentially thanks to input here.

 

As far as your last question:  but are there threads here that show people going from A to B using purely objective criteria? If so, any examples?

 

Absolutely....the 2 people i trust the most here are achmiago (sp?) and miska...they both are unbiased, honest, have a lot of knowledge, are professional without the BS, are very objective, and i take almost everything they say as gospel!  (mansr, I would rate higher if less BS -smile...but spice is good).

 

 

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

i take almost everything they say as gospel! 

 

Struggling to understand how this is objective?

[Ralf11]

is it objective or subjective if you do a listening test that is blinded and statistically valid?

[jabbr]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

As an empiricist...

 

Empiricist is a reasonable philosophical position (not considered current science but has a history). Objectivist/subjectivist seem to be purely audiophilia. What does empiricism mean to you? Ever hear of "sense data"? How do you integrate measurements into your empiricism?

 

For example: if you look through a telescope are you seeing what you look at? If you hear with the aid of a microphone/speaker are you listening?

[fas42]

It's quite easy to look at things from both sides of the fence - what I call competent playback is so striking in its subjective impact - the difference that, say, Fitzcaraldo215 would hear between well done multichannel playback, and stereo - that testing people 'objectively' as to whether they could distinguish these two levels of experience would be a trite exercise.

 

The only thing that matters is getting the switch from one level to the next - trying to be objective about perceived differences between two varieties of the lower level is close to being a completely pointless exercise - like comparing the handling of two cars built in the 1960's ...

[opus101]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

If I could find someone in the US to do measurements for a reasonable amount, I'd have a measurement section here at CA.

 

He's not actually in the US (pretty close) but his rates don't look too extortionate : https://www.neurochrome.com/product/amplifier-performance-measurement/

[beerandmusic]

9 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Struggling to understand how this is objective?

Both Miska and Archimago opinions are almost always objective, and I buy what they say....glad Jabbr chimed in...he also is another i respect a lot.  Knowledgeable, unbiased, objective, and not a lot of BS.  I also like barrows and superdad also, although they both have agenda with their products, they also offer a lot of objective information to the community.

[lmitche]

11 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Empiricist is a reasonable philosophical position (not considered current science but has a history). Objectivist/subjectivist seem to be purely audiophilia. What does empiricism mean to you? Ever hear of "sense data"? How do you integrate measurements into your empiricism?

 

For example: if you look through a telescope are you seeing what you look at? If you hear with the aid of a microphone/speaker are you listening?

The wikipedia definition of empirical evidence applies nicely to audiophilia.

 

Empirical evidence, also known as sensory experience, is the information received by means of the senses, particularly by observation and documentation of patterns and behavior through experimentation.

 

Isn't empirical evidence the basis for hypothesis testing? Empiricism doesn't rule out observations taken by measuring tools. All forms of evidence count.

[wgscott]

Empirical evidence is the basis for any experimental science, like chemistry, physics, biology, etc.

 

I think you are confusing it with anecdotal evidence, which is also a subset of empirical evidence (but is not considered to be the basis of any well-established field of science).

[lmitche]

Thanks, and nope no confusion on this point here.

[semente]

I could do without the subjective reports; I never read them anyway.

I'm not saying that they're not useful, only that they are generally not observation-driven.

This is a good example of what a speaker review should be (blind auditions, six person listening panel, direct comparisons with competing equipment, measurements):

 

S100_HiFi News.pdf

 

 

This lens testing website produces lens measurements, sometimes using samples supplied by readers:

 

http://www.opticallimits.com/

 

 

[Jud]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

Empirical evidence is the basis for any experimental science, like chemistry, physics, biology, etc.

 

I think you are confusing it with anecdotal evidence, which is also a subset of empirical evidence (but is not considered to be the basis of any well-established field of science).

 

Not to say anecdotal evidence can't be a spur for hypothesis formulation in scientific or science-related fields, but for actually testing hypotheses you need more.

[mansr]

19 minutes ago, Jud said:

Not to say anecdotal evidence can't be a spur for hypothesis formulation in scientific or science-related fields, but for actually testing hypotheses you need more.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny…” — Isaac Asimov

[austinpop]

I think the two "sides" actually agree more than we realize, on the need for rigor and robust experimental design. I give a lot more credence to a claimant who has posted a listening impression on "a change," when they have demonstrated that they constructed their listening experiment with care.

• have they described their system in sufficient detail?
• Are they using the proper controls? Are they only varying exactly one thing - the item under test?
• have they controlled for level differences?
• Are they doing sighted or blind listening? This is a a fraught topic in itself, but just speaking for myself, I don't dismiss either, as long as they demonstrate rigor.

Here is where the differences come in. To some, measurements are necessary, in 2 places:

1. preceding the experiment. You only conduct the listening experiment on a "change," if it is something that has been found to measure better, not because some dude said so.
2. during the experiment.
   • for some, you measure the impact with instrumentation, rather than listen with your ears
   • for others, you measure the impact with instrumentation, AND you listen with your ears.

Fair enough. Whether you need the measurements or not, it's ultimately about trust, isn't it? Because in the end, all that matters is:

1. the end result to your, the reader's, ears. Whatever the claimed finding, and whether based on measurements, listening, or both, were you able to reproduce it in your system, as heard by you? Yes, heard, not measured. End users don't - overwhelmingly - measure outcomes with instruments, they either hear, or don't hear, them.
2. If you hear the same effect as the claimant that reported the experiment, and this has happened enough times, to enough people, you eventually start to treat the claimant as a trusted source.

Just as I have come to trust @lmitche's findings. Just as @beerandmusic trusts his peeps.

 

We're not so different. Kumbaya, anyone?

[crenca]

39 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I think the two "sides" actually agree more than we realize, on the need for rigor and robust experimental design. I give a lot more credence to a claimant who has posted a listening impression on "a change," when they have demonstrated that they constructed their listening experiment with care.

• have they described their system in sufficient detail?
• Are they using the proper controls? Are they only varying exactly one thing - the item under test?
• have they controlled for level differences?
• Are they doing sighted or blind listening? This is a a fraught topic in itself, but just speaking for myself, I don't dismiss either, as long as they demonstrate rigor.

Here is where the differences come in. To some, measurements are necessary, in 2 places:

1. preceding the experiment. You only conduct the listening experiment on a "change," if it is something that has been found to measure better, not because some dude said so.
2. during the experiment.
   • for some, you measure the impact with instrumentation, rather than listen with your ears
   • for others, you measure the impact with instrumentation, AND you listen with your ears.

Fair enough. Whether you need the measurements or not, it's ultimately about trust, isn't it? Because in the end, all that matters is:

1. the end result to your, the reader's, ears. Whatever the claimed finding, and whether based on measurements, listening, or both, were you able to reproduce it in your system, as heard by you? Yes, heard, not measured. End users don't - overwhelmingly - measure outcomes with instruments, they either hear, or don't hear, them.
2. If you hear the same effect as the claimant that reported the experiment, and this has happened enough times, to enough people, you eventually start to treat the claimant as a trusted source.

Just as I have come to trust @lmitche's findings. Just as @beerandmusic trusts his peeps.

 

We're not so different. Kumbaya, anyone?

 

Austinpop, you appear to be struggling to synthesize a coherent relationship between two descriptive terms (i.e. "subjectivist" and "objectivist") and their meaning and place in how an audiophile or reviewer would go about determining good sound/gear (i.e. what you call, somewhat wrongly, an "experiment").  I appreciate that I really do!

 

The problem is that dead horse you keep beating, the one where you assume/believe that objectivism in audio is about "measure(ing) the impact with instrumentation, rather than listen with your ears".  This is but a strawman, and you take it down as you should if it were true but it is not.  Besides,  the objectivist/subjectivist divide is not about that - this caricature that objectivists at the end of the day don't' really "listen with thier ears" but judge/measure sound based solely on an external, instrumented measurement.

 

The divide is rather about things both more subtle and relevant:

 

1)  What IS, exactly, fidelity to a recording & performance?

2)  What, how, when, and where do subjective biases come into play when determining whether some piece of gear is fidelitous to the recording/performance?

3)  What is the relationship of fidelity to personal taste/euphonic gear?

4)  What is the relationship between objective measurements of physical phenomenon (e.g. of a frequency response or a distortion) to fidelity?

5)  What is the relationship between known and widely accepted engineering practices/techniques/habits and artisanal "audiophile" gear that is designed and produced by person(s) who have neither the knowledge, experience, methodology, nor testing equipment that is considered "normative" in consumer electronics?

 

edit:  this is just a partial list of course

[barrows]

Personally, I would have little interest in something which claimed to be "objectivist" only.  While I love to see a full suite of measurements of a given component, I have yet to see anyone be fully capable of correlating measurements with sound quality at anything more than a very coarse level.

Measurements are great, and necessary, for engineering products, to make sure that one has not made any simple errors, and has no gross problems with their engineering, but unfortunately, so far, no one i am aware of has been able to produce the measurements needed to really describe all aspects of the sound quality of a given component.  This is not to say that everything cannot be measured, but it is to say that so far, the measurements which are traditionally used, are entirely inadequate.

Anyone who has been involved in high end audio for very long, either as an audiophile/enthusiast or as a member of the industry has had the experience of comparing two products with near identical measurements, which sound hugely different.  Once one has this experience, what next?  The only choice is subjective evaluation.  Blinded subjective testing has its place, but in my experience is often flawed as well, as this method more often than not makes the listener the DUT instead of the component.

I have  long hoped that some genius engineer would come up with the measurements necessary to really describe sound quality, but so far it has not happened.  I suspect a new measurement paradigm which actually accomplishes this would use actual complex music signals in addition to standard test signals, as nobody listens to 10 kHz square waves anyway...

 

There is another problem with measurements, doing good measurements, especially at the level of performance of contemporary gear, is very, very difficult, and there have been some erroneous measurements published by (that other site) which have done damage to good products, where very clearly the measurements were in error.  So even with objective measuring, one has to be very careful with what gets published, and verify all measurements and measuring techniques.

 

I actually do not have much of a problem with Stereophile, per se.  And I do like that John Atkinson does work hard to publish some decent measurements, and that he makes some efforts to correlate those figures with some aspects of subjective sound quality.  He probably has measured more audio gear than anyone else.  Of course, the best way to read reviews is to learn the biases and histories of the reviewers themselves, as they are human, and are going to have their own sonic priorities, but I find once I am used to a given reviewer's approach, biases, and approaches, I ca usually take away something relevant to me regarding the sound quality of the component in question.

 

One measurement I would love to see would be distortion levels of loudspeakers, as this is an area where there really is a lot of variance, but of course it is quite difficult to measure (microphones, etc).

[barrows]

13 minutes ago, crenca said:

5)  What is the relationship between known and widely accepted engineering practices/techniques/habits and artisanal "audiophile" gear that is designed and produced by person(s) who have neither the knowledge, experience, methodology, nor testing equipment that is considered "normative" in consumer electronics?

I must say I really do not understand the above?  What audio components are designed this way?  I can assure you that most are not.  The high end audio companies I am aware of have engineering staffs made up of actual engineers, and own and regularly use highly technical testing gear.  Who are these so called "artisanal" producers?  This sounds like a myth? 

[wgscott]

Although I think it is quite possible for something to measure well but sound terrible, I'm not sure there are many examples of the opposite -- things that measure quite poorly but sound wonderful (unless it is euphonic distortion, so maybe we should add in accurate reproduction).  

 

In other words, good measurements are probably a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, barrows said:

The high end audio companies I am aware of have engineering staffs made up of actual engineers, and own and regularly use highly technical testing gear.

Well, there's at least one company that consistently blames lack of measurement gear when asked to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the efficacy of their products.