Misleading Measurements

[pkane2001]

9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

So, if I want to confirm that there is no possibility of electrical noise causing any audible differences to my playback, I should ring the manufacturers, and ask to talk to the engineers who designed my kit - to ask them how they tested it?

 

Sounds like a very advanced, first world country, solution, to me ...

Measurements, Frank. Measurements.

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Measurements, Frank. Measurements.

 

So, you know, say, that your own rig is fully competent in every area that matters - because you have a full set of Measurements that you can quite quite easily reel off ... ?

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

So, you know, say, that your own rig is fully competent in every area that matters - because you have a full set of Measurements that you can quite quite easily reel off ... ?

But of course! Fully tested and measured, mostly by me.

[sandyk]

5 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

But of course! Fully tested and measured, mostly by me.

 What a joke. 🤣

That's why so many electronic devices have this disclaimer in their handbooks.

Very few manufacturers are willing to claim total immunity for their products, let alone any measured by you or anyone from ASR

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 What a joke. 🤣

That's why so many electronic devices have this disclaimer in their handbooks.

Very few manufacturers are willing to claim total immunity for their products, let alone any measured by you or anyone from ASR

No joke, Alex. I don’t measure for ‘total immunity’. I measure for my own use, in my own house, for my normal application.
 

What I find to be a joke is manufacturers that develop products claiming full immunity while having no measurements to back this up. I can’t imagine the process of developing an electronic product to perform a specific function while having no way to confirm that the product actually does what it’s designed to do.

[sandyk]

22 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

I don’t measure for ‘total immunity’. I measure for my own use, in my own house, for my normal application.

 I don't care how thorough people think their measurements are in this respect, as not all interference results in obvious audible degradation. It may come down in some cases to a diminished S/N in another device as  a result of this interference.

Even a nearby DTV in Standby mode can cause this to nearby audio equipment. Note that I am not necessarily saying a marked degradation. I am basing this on personal experience using a very low noise Preamp and C.R.O.

[fas42]

18 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

No joke, Alex. I don’t measure for ‘total immunity’. I measure for my own use, in my own house, for my normal application.
 

What I find to be a joke is manufacturers that develop products claiming full immunity while having no measurements to back this up. I can’t imagine the process of developing an electronic product to perform a specific function while having no way to confirm that the product actually does what it’s designed to do.

 

Right, so you measure for your own use, to meet your standards of acceptability - so, poor ol' Joe Blow, who hasn't got your expertise and equipment, and who perhaps has higher standards - Heaven Forbid! - has no hope of knowing whether what he has is up to standard ... except, except, except, he uses his ears to assess what he's got ... oh dear, did I just hear the Laws of Physics crumple and crash to the ground ... 🙂.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

Right, so you measure for your own use, to meet your standards of acceptability - so, poor ol' Joe Blow, who hasn't got your expertise and equipment, and who perhaps has higher standards - Heaven Forbid! - has no hope of knowing whether what he has is up to standard ... except, except, except, he uses his ears to assess what he's got ... oh dear, did I just hear the Laws of Physics crumple and crash to the ground ... 🙂.

but I have no problem with that, just use your ears properly! ;)

 

[fas42]

Just now, pkane2001 said:

but I have no problem with that, just use your ears properly! ;)

 

 

Define, "properly".

[manueljenkin]

5 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Seems you totally missed the context. Oh well. But funny how everything winds up being about ASR.

 

Look, produce something interesting and objective for us to discuss, something other than your opinion or I'm simply going to stop responding to you.

I'm pretty much on line. You're the one missing the point. I gave a link to another place which I find to be a reasonable objective information source.

 

Also, thought for the day. Bacteria objectively existed before we could Identify them.

[yamamoto2002]

6 hours ago, sandyk said:

 Even a nearby DTV in Standby mode can cause this to nearby audio equipment. Note that I am not necessarily saying a marked degradation. I am basing this on personal experience using a very low noise Preamp and C.R.O.

 

Fluorescent light glow starter and refrigerator are also problematic

 

It seems it is better to avoid office chair with gas lift as well on critical audio listening 🙂

 

https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/738618-display-intermittently-blanking-flickering-or-los

[manueljenkin]

1 hour ago, yamamoto2002 said:

 

Fluorescent light glow starter and refrigerator are also problematic

 

It seems it is better to avoid office chair with gas lift as well on critical audio listening 🙂

 

https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/738618-display-intermittently-blanking-flickering-or-los

Turn off the lights, sit on the floor and meditate when listening 😊. Two tasks done in one shot.

 

Note: I've actually tried this, no clue of sound quality changes, but it sure is more enjoyable than otherwise.

 

Side note: display link is like the worst case scenario - adapting a standard made for a specific, although general purpose'y task, to do something that's generally not expected of it. Not that I'm saying hdmi, or displayport would be completely rid of the problems that displaylink would show, but they are less likely to be affected and/or show much lesser deviations/aberrations (or a different type of, subjectively less jarring) in similar scenarios.

[pkane2001]

7 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Define, "properly".

properly adverb (CORRECTLY)

[manueljenkin]

Hearing is mostly an involuntary process. Not sure what is there to specifically say "to use ears properly". Maybe if this was regarding safe limits, it could have been phrased, "be careful". Or are you suggesting to have further rigorous training on mind (eg, yoga, etc) since a significant part of the hearing process happens in the brain?

[pkane2001]

5 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

Also, thought for the day. Bacteria objectively existed before we could Identify them.

 

Right. Did electronics exist, objectively, before we could identify it?

[pkane2001]

8 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

Hearing is mostly an involuntary process. Not sure what is there to specifically say "to use ears properly". Maybe if this was regarding safe limits, it could have been phrased, "be careful". Or are you suggesting to have further rigorous training on mind (eg, yoga, etc) since a significant part of the hearing process happens in the brain?

 

If you want to use your ears as a measuring instrument, then you should use it properly, as any other scientific device. Calibrated, tested, with known error margins.

[daverich4]

1 hour ago, manueljenkin said:

Turn off the lights, sit on the floor and meditate when listening 😊. Two tasks done in one shot.

 

Enid Lumley, a reviewer for TAS back in the 70’s, used to advocate listening in the nude. I never got around to trying it though. 

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, daverich4 said:

Enid Lumley, a reviewer for TAS back in the 70’s, used to advocate listening in the nude. I never got around to trying it though. 

 

Many veils will be lifted!

[John Dyson]

3 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

If you want to use your ears as a measuring instrument, then you should use it properly, as any other scientific device. Calibrated, tested, with known error margins.

I agree so very much.   Many of us cannot maintain a good, accurate comparision longer than a few seconds -- and drift off into 'opinion' very quickly.   Even then, hearing isn't going to have very good absolute accuracy in general.   I don't know how many people here have sat down and spent several hours per day while training their hearing based upon objective measures....   I  doubt very many of us has done that.

 

Just having 'experience' isn't good enough to claim accuracy, it really DOES require calibration -- I recently have dealt with LOTS of listening opinon, and even though helpful, it has definitely not been definitive.

 

On the other hand, I believe that subjective double checks are definitely okay, and in fact very beneficial -- but also not adequate in any way.   This caveat about hearing stability includes my own.   When in a casual situation, I have not been as careful as I should have been either, and I do KNOW that my hearing isn't reliable.   Sometimes, that is all that we have to test with -- and that isn't good.

 

John

 

[daverich4]

2 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Many veils will be lifted!

Nice one, I saw what you did there. 

[MarkusBarkus]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

Sometimes, that is all that we have to test with -- and that isn't good.

...and wouldn't it be interesting to see hearing test/calibration results posted along with the

reviewer's name in magazines and online? The reviewer's spec sheet, of sorts. 
 

I already take all of that stuff with a dose of skepticism, but imagine if you knew the reviewer was at 75% in one ear.  

[fas42]

8 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

properly adverb (CORRECTLY)

 

Hmmm ... "Correct listening" ... something which one is required to do in places like China 🙂.

 

The battery on the tongue analogy now can come back into play - you use this to determine whether there is any significant charge in the battery - this is, an observation ... actual measuring of it may, or may not, be useful.

 

You listen to a system, and it exhibits distortion, anomalies in the SQ - again, an observation. From then on, it's pointless to extract numbers; all activity is devoted to resolving what is causing the misbehaviour.

 

It's easy to see why the thinking in most audio circles is so lopsided - the fascination is with, "making things better". "Correct thinking", rather than worrying about "correct listening", is what allows one to first pinpoint the presence of flaws in the playback sound, and second to locate and eliminate the causes.

 

Which brings us back to the cable lifting thing - a highly resolving rig makes it easy to hear the audible effects of static noise interference; lifting off the carpet, say, is a quick workaround to attenuate these sort of parasitic behaviours. A well engineered playback chain will have all parts sorted so no anomalous effects occur - it's all actually very straightforward stuff.

[pkane2001]

31 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Hmmm ... "Correct listening" ... something which one is required to do in places like China 🙂.

 

The battery on the tongue analogy now can come back into play - you use this to determine whether there is any significant charge in the battery - this is, an observation ... actual measuring of it may, or may not, be useful.

 

You listen to a system, and it exhibits distortion, anomalies in the SQ - again, an observation. From then on, it's pointless to extract numbers; all activity is devoted to resolving what is causing the misbehaviour.

 

It's easy to see why the thinking in most audio circles is so lopsided - the fascination is with, "making things better". "Correct thinking", rather than worrying about "correct listening", is what allows one to first pinpoint the presence of flaws in the playback sound, and second to locate and eliminate the causes.

 

Which brings us back to the cable lifting thing - a highly resolving rig makes it easy to hear the audible effects of static noise interference; lifting off the carpet, say, is a quick workaround to attenuate these sort of parasitic behaviours. A well engineered playback chain will have all parts sorted so no anomalous effects occur - it's all actually very straightforward stuff.

Lifting off the carpet does what now? Are you talking about static electrical charge inducing audible noise in a speaker cable? Care to explain how this happens?

[sandyk]

35 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Lifting off the carpet does what now? Are you talking about static electrical charge inducing audible noise in a speaker cable? Care to explain how this happens?

 Bear in mind too, that there may also be mains wiring directly underneath the floor where the speaker leads lay, which may induce noise into them. With the prolification of SMPS devices these days, there is also the slight  possibility that RF/EMI from them may get back into the negative feedback area of an amplifier via the speaker leads .

[fas42]

24 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Lifting off the carpet does what now? Are you talking about static electrical charge inducing audible noise in a speaker cable? Care to explain how this happens?

 

It introduces electrical noise into the playback chain - and parts of the circuitry which are not sufficiently well engineered to isolate from this then produce audible anomalies. So, either 'improve' the physical construction of the cables - which is why the vast market of cables of all persuasions exists - or make the circuitry good enough so it "doesn't care"; or use workarounds of separatings parts of the chain that may otherwise cause static.

 

How does this happen? Triboelectricity can kill circuits, stone dead - I used to work on computers covered with stickers threatening anyone who dared to touch them in the "wrong place"; or make them misbehave - there was a printer that regularly went nuts; they spent eons of time and money trying to fix this; ended up being a buildup of static as the cause - solution: spray mists of water into the air, regularly. In audio, much, much more low level - but enough to sneak its way in, and cause audible differences.