Subjective Rating System

[Kal Rubinson]

3 hours ago, esldude said:

5.0 is Imperceptible

4.0 is perceptible, but not annoying. 

3.0 is slightly annoying.

2.0 is annoying.

1.0 is very annoying. 

Mebbe we can rate posts/threads that way.

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

"The Bozak Concert Grand is a loudspeaker dreams are made of..."

- Stereopile, 2005

I didn't write that nor would I but the Bozak Concert Grand figures in my dreams because a pair of them were the face of the first stereo system I had ever heard.  Sometime in the mid-to-late 50s at an audio shop on Radio Row on Cortlandt Street in lower Manhattan (soon to be cleared for the construction of the World Trade Center), I was treated to a stereotape of Beethoven's 7th Symphony performed by a long-forgotten conductor and orchestra.  The tape was played on a Magnecorder via a lot of McIntosh electronics and the sound emerged from the Concert Grands.  Having heard only mono recordings before, although sometimes through more than one speaker, this was a revelation.  And I stand by that description.  Hooked me good.

[Ralf11]

ok, "revelation"

 

not to be confused with the horsemen in Revelations

 

 

I had the same experience with Bose 901s in Cambridge one day

[fas42]

5 hours ago, esldude said:

 

You listen in comparison and rate 1 thru 5 the level of impairment. 

5.0 is Imperceptible

4.0 is perceptible, but not annoying. 

3.0 is slightly annoying.

2.0 is annoying.

1.0 is very annoying. 

 

 

 

Being serious, that's exactly how I view the playback of real world systems I come across - nearly all rigs lie in the 1.0 to 3.0 range; with the obvious goal at the top ...

[esldude]

Maybe audio nirvana then is to start with mono, and add one channel every two years.  You'll get regular doses of those experiences like first time with stereo, and first time with 3 channel, and quadraphonic, and 5 channel surround so on and so forth.  With Dolby's offerings you'll not run out of channels to add.  

[Summit]

At the bottom:

• It leaves me cold
• chifi junk
• It sucks
• It sucks big time
• WTF
• OMG
• Poo poo

 

At the top:

• Good but no cigar
• Night and day 
• Holy shit
• OMG
• True bliss
• I got tears in my eyes
• My wife got tears in her eyes
• Mike Tyson got tears in his eyes
• Even the f*cking robots at work got tears in their eyes

[marce]

9 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Being serious, that's exactly how I view the playback of real world systems I come across - nearly all rigs lie in the 1.0 to 3.0 range; with the obvious goal at the top ...

Try enjoying the music, at the end the main goal is too listen to music... To me the replay system is secondary, the beat comes first.

[daverich4]

Forced to leap from my chair and boogie around the room...

[marce]

These days my boogie is more like a badly programmed robot fed by a SMPS, the rhythm is in my head, the extremities seem to have their own rhythm, with about 1 second jitter and a grating noise, that I presume is my joints! its not rock and roll this is croak and fall.

[kumakuma]

 

 

[RickyV]

It’s like an angle peeing in my ear.

 

 

[Ralf11]

angle or eagle?

 

maybe a screaming eagle...

[fas42]

14 hours ago, marce said:

Try enjoying the music, at the end the main goal is too listen to music... To me the replay system is secondary, the beat comes first.

 

The key word there is "try" - let's say you have the use of a Porsche to drive for the day - everything's good, but, unfortunately the gearbox has a problem ... every now and again it does completely the wrong thing, and brings the car to a shuddering halt - or fails to select the right gear when you need to accelerate hard ... will your memories of the day be the great driving - or of every time it was almost a disaster when the car "did the wrong thing"?

 

You see, that's how listening to an ambitious but flawed rig comes across to me ...

[Ralf11]

your driver sounds shiftless

[Ralf11]

the car isn't supposed to select the right gear, the driver does that

 

 

[Hugo9000]

I am going to suggest areas of measurement, their units, and scales.  This will be followed by some discussion of rationale for choosing or rejecting certain terms and/or scales.
 

Property:  Transparency

Unit of measure:  holt

Scale:  0 to 7 (0 holt=perfect transparency/fidelity to the source; 7 holts=no transparency)

 

This is suggested by the clarity scale of diamonds, but while that scale goes from 0 (flawless/internally flawless) up to 10 (see Note 1 below), Transparency for audio only goes to 7, due to the quantity of veils worn by a fully-clothed Salomé (0=nude or no veils, on up to 7, denoting all 7 veils yielding 0 transparency).

 

Continuing with diamond grading as inspiration, and as they are graded on multiple properties, the same could be done with audio equipment, thus I propose two for audio, based on their figurative parallels.  Transparency equating to Clarity, and of course we have literal Color for diamonds as well as figurative "color" for audio.

 

Property:  Coloration

Unit of measure:  none (see Note 2 below)

Scale:  A to Z (A=absence of coloration from the source, Z=maximum coloration)

 

Diamond color is graded from D to Z.  D (for diamond itself) being colorless--"a chemically pure and structurally perfect diamond has no hue, like a drop of pure water" (hence a gem of the first water)

 

Since we are talking here about Audio rather than diamonds, we will use A to represent the least audio coloration, which expands our coloration grades from A to Z, whereas transparency (clarity) shrunk from 11 grades in diamonds to only 8 for audio.  So we still have ample scope for differentiation. 

Note:  

 

 

Rationale for rejecting the rather more obvious veil as the unit of measure of transparency:

 

As we decreased the scale to 8 whole units (0 through 7), it is quite likely that reviewers would begin dividing into partial units.  This leads to inevitable problems and confusion.   0.5 veils would suggest "half a veil" to the casual reader, while others might presume that it refers to a single veil of half-thickness.  The whole point of this proposed system of measure/rating is to reduce ambiguity, not add to it.  If we truly mean "half a veil" (which covers only a particular half of the audible range), then the holt unit allows for that without ambiguity:  simply state 1 holt covering the upper frequencies, and 0 holts for the lower, or vice versa.  If we mean a veil of half-thickness, then it seems that 0.5 holts is perfectly clear.  (Obviously, it's more likely that it would be some odd portion of a veil rather than half, certainly if we use the conventional range distinctions of treble, midrange, and bass, we have third-veil portions in that sense (although the midrange is greater than one-third, and many would say it was all-important, musically).)

 

Best to use the holt, and describe a loudspeaker as having 0 holts in the treble region, but 1 holt in the bass or midrange, for example.  If you actually mean that the veil is finer than normal, then you'd state that the loudspeaker exhibits 0.5 holts overall.  If using veils, you'd have to specify 0.5 veils, with treble fully transparent, and no clearly logical way to distinguish a half-thickness overall, due to the problem of perception over the designation 0.5 veils as noted earlier.

 

 

 

Some other possibilities, and reasons in favor or against:

 

Unit of measure:  atkinson

(1 atkinson being equivalent to number of new worlds birthed)

Main reason for rejection:  MQA is generally considered vaporware on the most-viewed discussion of the subject on the internet, so the general reader will have no frame of reference, thus requiring lengthy footnotes to reviews.  Additional considerations:  ambiguity of the sense of world.  Is this in the sense of planets, as in our own world, planet Earth?  Or is it in a more figurative sense of everything meaningful around us, potentially meaning the entire universe.  Is it renewal of this world, or a completely separate world?  A parallel world?

 

Unit of measure:  harley

(1 harley being equivalent to number of jaws dropped, or possibly to measure Coloration)

Main reasons for rejection:  Coloration, being rated A to Z rather than having a numeric scale, needs no unit of measure.  Simplicity is best.  Jaws dropped as being part of a unit of measure or scale seems to sacrifice clarity or sense.  Do we allow for all jaws in the world, theoretical limit of jaws in the known universe, number of jaws that theoretically could be contained in the listening room?  If only the jaw of the reviewer, then it has little utility, as the jaw will either drop or not, so we have two possibilities only, 0 harley or 1 harley.  What a mess, and too much ambiguity needing additional clarification in the footnotes of each review.  Other significant reason to reject the unit harley for any type of measurement:  ambiguity potential, as readers might assume it is named in honor of the motorcycle, thus a higher number on the scale would seem good to those who enjoy or admire the brand, while detractors would consider 0 harleys to be the optimal or perfect designation on the total scale.

 

Unit of measure:  hirsch

No proposed area of measurement, rejected due to ambiguity or perceived lack of utility/possible bias of those who might have a belief that it suggests a state of events where "all electronics sound alike."   General audiophile readers might assume at most a binary scale, where 1 hirsch means it works/powers up, and 0 hirsch where it is completely broken.  Thus any attempted use of the hirsch as a meaningful unit of measure would require lengthy footnotes appended to every review.

 

 

Note 1:  For the sake of simplicity, I am following the example of the American Gem Society's 0 to 10 scale, rather than VVS, VS, S, and I ratings in the GIA scale, although both systems in fact have 11 grades including "flawless/internally flawless."

 

Note 2:  Coloration, being rated A to Z rather than having a numeric scale, needs no unit of measure to be clearly understood.

 

General Notes:

Carat weight and Cut in diamonds have no special parallel in audio equipment, other than things already served by conventional measures and descriptions.  Cut loosely parallels categories like "tube" or "solid state," or "dynamic" versus "planar," etc.  We already have weight in audio gear as representative of value (just like diamonds, the heavier it is, the more value--as everyone knows when comparing amplifiers).

 

Other Important Concerns:

I have not addressed a time-based measurement, as I feel that timing issues in components can be covered by their effect on either Transparency or Coloration or both.  Anything such as bad AD or DA stages causing temporal blur will necessarily reduce transparency to the source, just as having one speaker cable that is longer and thus requiring a few extra nano-seconds for signal arrival will reduce Transparency or induce Coloration.  Perhaps more important is the concern that Coloration by definition/logic is a reduction in Transparency, thus perhaps it should not be considered a separate and valid category of measurement at all.  Certainly, a component with Coloration of Z cannot have full fidelity to the source recording, so it could not also have Transparency of 0 holts.  So as one or the other gets further from perfect, by necessity the other is also further from perfect.  The exact ratio presents some problems.

 

 

Disclaimers:

I've mentioned number of veils, with a maximum of seven (source:  Oscar Wilde, in his play Salomé, later made into an opera by Richard Strauss), in threads discussing these matters in various places on the 'net and in real life before, as have countless others independently, I'd imagine, as it's so obvious.  Likewise, I'm certain that nearly everything else here has been suggested many times by many different people, just like the origin of helen as the unit of measure for beauty (1 millihelen=beauty to launch one ship, and suggestions for -1 helen=ugliness required to sink a battleship), which has multiple claimants including Asimov.  All to note that I make no claims to originality with any of the above.  I also make no claims that it's funny, as it's also so obvious that it is of course low hanging fruit.  So sue me!  Also, I'm a touch-typist using a good keyboard, so it really didn't take long to write this up--in the extremely unlikely event anyone cares how much time I wasted on this haha!

[JezQ]

Gentlefolk of the Forum. Why complicate things when we already have the GUTB binary rating system? It's either "mass consumer junk" or it's not.

 

[marce]

12 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

 

One of my hero's👍

[RickyV]

9 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

angle or eagle?

 

maybe a screaming eagle...

Ah crap, I meant angel of cause. A screaming eagle would be way to loud and a peeing eagle that’s just nasty.

[esldude]

9 hours ago, RickyV said:

Ah crap, I meant angel of cause. A screaming eagle would be way to loud and a peeing eagle that’s just nasty.

Do angels pee?  And is it really any better if they do?

 

Of course an eagle doesn't just pee, it is always a combined expelling.  Definitely not what we want.

[Ralf11]

but you have to acknowledge the raw power from a stream of uric acid

[rando]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Do angels pee?  And is it really any better if they do?

 

Yes, and most definitely yes.  It is a reference to good wine tasting as if an angel is peeing across your tongue.  Also the most memorable wine fountain I've been served from was a peeing angel/aerator.  

 

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Of course an eagle doesn't just pee, it is always a combined expelling.  Definitely not what we want.

 

For laughs I like to imagine this is vodka.  

 

[RickyV]

7 minutes ago, rando said:

For laughs I like to imagine this is vodka.  

 

 

I don’t know man, a screaming eagle farting vodka. Careful or this has political consequences. 

[AudioDoctor]

Real Merican liquor...

 

Owned in America, and made in America, by a Veteran buddy of mine.

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

 

a volatile combo

 

 

Doc, sounds like you haven't had a good Aufhebung in a while. This should fix you right up: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipe/gluten-free-flaxseed-muffins

 

Please carry on with the withering vivisection.   🦄

 

It's like you're trying to be at once as off topic as possible while escalating the banal college professor shtick.  It's getting progressively more difficult to understand WTF you even mean, or perhaps this is your idea of what high brow trolling looks like.