Everything sounds the same

[Albrecht]

6 minutes ago, marce said:

How do you think audio equipment is designed, by engineers, especially the digital side of the playback chain. 

As to the rest, again because quite often the physics dose not back up your reality, then the physics is wrong!

Often the questions asked are what is the mechanism that is causing the perceived change in sound, often asked by a someone who is curious, if the reply is contrary to the belief then the fun starts. Instead of dissing measurements and science look into it or provide a possible mechanism yourself for why something causes a change.

There is NEVER, EVER, ever wrong physics in the design of any piece of audio gear.

If the "physics" is wrong, - the equipment doesn't function.

And the "design" is always secondary to the PERFORMANCE of the system. 

 

I am not dissing measurements and especially not science, - indeed when the potential customer engages the scientific method by conducted repeated and frequent comparative listening tests, - they are indeed acquiring knowledge via scientific investigation: the heart of it.

And of course, - measurements are important to the designer/builder. Blue Circle pours/builds their own capacitors and are constantly measuring them to ensure their variances are within spec. Indeed the choices to use "better" and (necessarily) more expensive resistors & capacitors, chokes, etc. that have less +/- variances are important aspects of designing great gear. Unfortunately it is these cost-to-build aspects that are so cavalierly dismissed (or ignored) as being "overkill" by the naysayers here.....

I am not dissing measurements by any means, - but measurements are largely irrelevant for any consumer, - as no measurements ever reflect on how the whole system sounds, and mostly, - do not reflect the performance of an individual component. (I use mostly, as there are some important stats like jitter that do).

[PeterSt]

6 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

I am not dissing measurements by any means, - but measurements are largely irrelevant for any consumer

 

But they shouldn't be. If they'd exist though ... (at reasonable cost for those applying them).

[Ralf11]

in order to continue in keeping this thread away form the usual automotive analogies, here is some more verification of English cooking:

 

“You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country [Great Britain] with the worst food after Finland.”
French President Jacques Chirac in a remark on the eve of the G8 summit in 2005

[sandyk]

8 hours ago, marce said:

you have to investigate and produce a theory

 

WHEN WILL YOU AND MANSR GET IT THAT THIS IS THE JOB OF QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO PERFORM !!!.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, sandyk said:

WHEN WILL YOU AND MANSR GET IT THAT THIS IS THE JOB OF QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO PERFORM !!!.

QUALIFIED people like The Colloms?

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

1 hour ago, marce said:

Instead of dissing measurements and science look into it or provide a possible mechanism yourself for why something causes a change.

 

Ach so.

Danke. -  Peter

 

I have little doubt that if Peter had the time and inclination that he could do exactly that with the reports by myself, Manishander and others.

[marce]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

in order to continue in keeping this thread away form the usual automotive analogies, here is some more verification of English cooking:

 

“You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country [Great Britain] with the worst food after Finland.”
French President Jacques Chirac in a remark on the eve of the G8 summit in 2005

Have you seen our salt, micro-grain so you can load the veg before 3/4 hour boiling till grey...

[marce]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 

WHEN WILL YOU AND MANSR GET IT THAT THIS IS THE JOB OF QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO PERFORM !!!.

 

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 

I have little doubt that if Peter had the time and inclination that he could do exactly that with the reports by myself, Manishander and others.

The truth is out there...

Anyway back to the topic in question:

Due to my unbreakable objective belief, the constant return to this thread has overcome my expectation bias and now everything sounds the same to me, grainy due to my passionate love of SMPS's, a soundfield flatter than my paint (and that's Dulux flat matt pro. but I digress), I suppose having mundane hearing/system/dog/cat etc. allows me to enjoy the music...

[Blake]

[kumakuma]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

WHEN WILL YOU AND MANSR GET IT THAT THIS IS THE JOB OF QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO PERFORM !!!.

 

 

Why would anyone with qualifications in the applicable fields waste their time investigating the audio equivalent of the paranormal?  

 

[Teresa]

11 hours ago, marce said:

you have to investigate and produce a theory

 

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

WHEN WILL YOU AND MANSR GET IT THAT THIS IS THE JOB OF QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO PERFORM !!!.

 

7 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

Why would anyone with qualifications in the applicable fields waste their time investigating the audio equivalent of the paranormal?

 

In such a case there can be no investigations and no theories as music lovers are not qualified to perform such work. So objectivists have to look elsewhere or just forget the whole thing.

[Superdad]

1 minute ago, kumakuma said:

Why would anyone with qualifications in the applicable fields waste their time investigating the audio equivalent of the paranormal?  

 

Just remember that in the earlier days of digital, few engineers paid attention to jitter.  And there was a time in doctors who were concerned with sterilizing surgical tools were ridiculed.  Now look where we are.

 

I can also assure you that attention to detail in parts selection and circuit topology makes more differences in preamp/amp SQ than have been correlated by measurements taken (by either the designers or reviewers).

Such is only controversial to those who have neither designed nor experienced first-hand the differences that careful parts choices can make.  There are reasons why a Caddock MK132 resistor will sound different than a Holco, or why one film cap dielectric will convey the tune in a more natural way than another that leaves you cold.  But good luck trying to make such choices on the measurement bench.  Ask any successful speaker or electronics designer... 

[fas42]

4 hours ago, marce said:

 

Often the questions asked are what is the mechanism that is causing the perceived change in sound, often asked by a someone who is curious, if the reply is contrary to the belief then the fun starts. Instead of dissing measurements and science look into it or provide a possible mechanism yourself for why something causes a change.

 

I come from a very unusual perspective, compared to just about everyone else. I both am aware that the "craziest things" can have an impact on the sound - but have no time for crazy theories as to why this is so; I accept that "nonsense tweaks" can solve the issue; but always work towards understanding as to why this happens. Slowly I've built up a fuller understanding of what's going on - but still don't have all the answers!!

 

Why something causes a change, in the areas that count, is that the qualities of the audible distortion vary - one's ears are working hard to hear past these unwanted additives - a cooking analogy! - and any tiny movement in these register. Which means that the best solution is to eliminate them entirely - note, this only counts for the playback chain; what was damaged in the recording sequence I regard as locked in stone - and am not interested in compensating for.

[mansr]

12 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

Why would anyone with qualifications in the applicable fields waste their time investigating the audio equivalent of the paranormal?

Conversely, anyone who investigates such phenomena is automatically disqualified.

[Superdad]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

Conversely, anyone who investigates such phenomena is automatically disqualified.

 

Why?

[rando]

16 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

Why would anyone with qualifications in the applicable fields waste their time investigating the audio equivalent of the paranormal?  

 

He said disregarding any formal self awareness of what highly qualified people actually do with hours of their time every day in this very same place.   

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Superdad said:

Why?

Would you take seriously a "scientist" investigating, say, telekinesis?

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

 

Why would anyone with qualifications in the applicable fields waste their time investigating the audio equivalent of the paranormal?  

 

 

The silly thing is that no paranormal needs to be invoked, for audio. Lack of attention to detail is perfectly sufficient to do all the necessary 'manipulation' of SQ, in all areas - but people want things to be simple, and easily measurable - and, are 'lazy'. If audio was life critical, all this would have been sorted ages ago ...

[kumakuma]

8 minutes ago, rando said:

 

He said disregarding any formal self awareness of what highly qualified people actually do with hours of their time every day in this very same place.   

 

I haven't seen any of these highly qualified people step forward to investigate Sandy Alex's Magical Files.

[look&listen]

10 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Why?

Please not feed troll(s) 

 

Lately they gorged & forums covered with excrement  

[Superdad]

In 2012/'13 we changed winding vendors for our film-and-foil polypropylene capacitors (in continuous production since 1988).  [The winding house that closed--got bought out by a large conglomerate--quickly laid off the entire engineering and manufacturing staff.  This threw a lot of audio firms such as Audio Research, Conrad-Johnson, and Vandersteen into a panic as the same company had been winding different types of caps for them as well.]

 

In replicating the MusiCap recipe and sound with our chosen new winding house, it was far easier to get our "coupling" cap series (the 400V-1000V, 0.01uF to 3uF parts) right than it was to get our larger Speaker MusiCap series just right for our loyal OEM clients on several continents.  I had a LOT of samples made, and when it seemed we were close I sent multiple sets to 4 key speaker builders, each of whom had been using MusiCaps for 12-20 years (and while there was a year gap between MusiCap production under the Hovland Company name and under the UpTone name, they held on because they could not find better sounding parts to satisfy).

 

The sets sent to each of them were of the values they always used in their crossovers.  They each received 4 differing sets (with capacitance values measured and matched within +/-1%), and each set was marked with only the cap value and a letter code.  The differences between the sets were as listed in the table below.  Thermal/voltage burn-in is part of the production process at the factory--wherein the parts are lined up on pegboards with clips to the leads, a voltage is applied to the entire board of caps (about 30 at a time) and the board is placed in an oven at about 275F for some number of hours.  This is NOT some goofy-spoofy thing done just for boutique "audio" caps BTW.

Other variation included the use or not of a copper-enhanced end-spray for the lead termination (these are extended-foil type parts), and differing solder alloy used to tin and terminate the leads to the end-caps.

 

At the same time as I sent the sets of parts to the 4 clients, I e-mailed the below key to each of them as a password-protected PDF.  I did not give them the password until after their trials and reports.  Giving them the PDF before their testing gave them assurance that I would be honest about which variant they chose (I had discussed the variables we would be altering with some of them beforehand, and had preconceived notions about which would sound best.)  

 

After each client turned in their reporting about what they heard and how they ranked the versions--in what could not be more radically different speaker designs--I gave them the password to the PDF key.  

As it turned out, all 4 of them chose the same variant as their favorite, yet the ranked the other 3 slightly differently.  

While the reports by my clients were rather passionate, good luck finding measurement correlations between any of these parts.  

 

 

[jabbr]

27 minutes ago, mansr said:

Would you take seriously a "scientist" investigating, say, telekinesis?

 

?

 

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/comment-page-4/

 

I think she can switch branes with her brain:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lisa_randall-theories-of-the-brane-lisa-randall

 

 

[kumakuma]

31 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Just remember that in the earlier days of digital, few engineers paid attention to jitter.  And there was a time in doctors who were concerned with sterilizing surgical tools were ridiculed.  Now look where we are.

 

 

If we follow this logic to it's natural conclusion, no claims in any field of knowledge should ever be rejected because there is always the possibility that that they may be proven correct at the some point in the future.

[jabbr]

2 minutes ago, Superdad said:

As it turned out, all 4 of them chose the same variant as their favorite, yet the ranked the other 3 slightly differently.  

While the reports by my clients were rather passionate, good luck finding measurement correlations between any of these parts.  

 

I have zero doubt that the differences are easily measurable e.g. looking at nonlinearities and 1/f noise patterns -- the problem isn't that measurements can't show differences, rather as you say, no one has correlated the measurements to listening pleasure.

[Superdad]

5 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I think she can switch branes with her brain:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lisa_randall-theories-of-the-brane-lisa-randall

 

She speaks of "extra dimensions of space."  That is what my wife is always looking for in her crammed-full clothes closet!