Having recently purchased.... room treatment (bulk chunks of Roxul 7 x 24 x 48 batts)
Just confirming that the batts are 7" thick? If so, why so thick?
Having recently purchased.... room treatment (bulk chunks of Roxul 7 x 24 x 48 batts)
Just confirming that the batts are 7" thick? If so, why so thick?
There's a certainty of self deception, fallibility and faulty conclusion Jacob with all human subjective appraisals of audio devices.
The conclusions audiophiles ( and it's only audiophiles as 'normal ' humans just accept the sound coming from a device more or less) make reminds me of those who wish to assign human feelings and meaning onto animal behaviours.
Johnny Morris and the like.. it's very appealing but it's total bollocks.
There's 2 certainties in life, death and doubt, the rest is just the best we can do.
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I have no idea what you are talking about here. If it is some sighted listening impressions just say so. I'll ignore the issue. Audio electronics should accurately with low distortion, low noise and flat response reproduce the signals they are fed. DACs are widely available at relatively low cost that accomplish this to nigh on theoretical perfection.
I rely on the best evidence available. For items that have some goal or standard those getting closest to that are better. Whenever possible I do not wish to rely on recommendations by others. I prefer external evidence. Some areas and some products are simply not that cleanly delineated. So it will be a mix. If it becomes a preference, then you'll need to figure out what your preferences lean toward and use recommendations of those with similar preferences. Now there are other aspects of products like reliability. If I look on Amazon and actual owners liked how a product works, but are saying it went kaput in a few weeks or it broke or it wore out too soon then I'll of course pay attention to that. I will repeat, I'll use best evidence available.
Well, given we are a faulty unreliable measuring device and can't known when we are right or wrong best avoid the trouble and stick to objective measurements that take the human out of the equation.Certainty? Not sure.
It´s more a probability, means in the long run, everyone is most likely sometimes wrong, but always? Certainly not. There are of course people, who are wrong nearly everytime. Reminds me to a story told in one of the fundamental textbooks about sensory evaluation, describing a longtime participant in tests, who was always sure there was no difference, but his data showed that he detected one everytime in around 20 tests.
Might be, as said before, "audiophiles" are as heterogenous as other groups as well, but imo the main problem is the generalization of any issue and the jumping to conclusions about the causalities.
But back to the decision strategy; stick to measurements is at first glance a good advice, but if there is the choice between two (or more) alternatives, all departing from the ideal to a similar degree but in different ways, it gets difficult.
Unfortunately i don´t understand the "Johnny Morris hint".....
So, it´s more a mix depending on more than one variable?
How were the measurements made? Presumably with ADCs - based on the same technology. If we don't believe our DACs are right, why should we believe our ADCs?I was referring to the measured problems over the decades- this some threads in this forum and in other sources as well - with DACs
No, it is just a question of probabilities...
Yes, probabilities and standalone preferences that do not in any way indicate a 'better' system or any applicability outside the experiment. I am left wondering what the point of them is!
... Controlled listening tests are nevertheless important for various reasons and within that is the chance to get corrobation for sighted impressions.
You may not have seen earlier discussions where I said exactly the same things - I am basically a DBT sceptic. My stance is that an audio system is a relatively simple, human-defined, designed and manufactured system, not a natural system that we should observe scientifically. I'm not even all that excited by measurements, which I see as trying to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted. For me, as long as the system is designed to meet the definition of an amplifier, DAC, speaker, etc. and the measurements confirm it is working properly, the job is done. After that, it is perfectly reasonable to use one's ears to tweak any room-dependent settings and shuffle the speakers around, etc. (But I do not hold with room correction, except maybe for the bass). It is also perfectly reasonable to use one's ears to decide whether you need bigger speakers, omnidirectional speakers and so on.As said before, i don´t share the argument that only "unsighted listening" is able to provide useful results; the people producing the music don´t rely on "unsighted listening" and nobody i know does only "unsighted listening" for evaluation purposes. Controlled listening tests are nevertheless important for various reasons and within that is the chance to get corrobation for sighted impressions.
This is a fine strategy for staying sane in audio and not spending your retirement fund.You may not have seen earlier discussions where I said exactly the same things - I am basically a DBT sceptic. My stance is that an audio system is a relatively simple, human-defined, designed and manufactured system, not a natural system that we should observe scientifically. I'm not even all that excited by measurements, which I see as trying to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted. For me, as long as the system is designed to meet the definition of an amplifier, DAC, speaker, etc. and the measurements confirm it is working properly, the job is done. After that, it is perfectly reasonable to use one's ears to tweak any room-dependent settings and shuffle the speakers around, etc. (But I do not hold with room correction, except maybe for the bass). It is also perfectly reasonable to use one's ears to decide whether you need bigger speakers, omnidirectional speakers and so on.
It's the best of all worlds: only a small repertoire of technology meets the definition, helping in the neuroticism-reduction stakes, and one can be perfectly relaxed about subjective impressions...
It's how you chose to relate consciously to the information your auditory sense have relayed that's the issue, along with the chosen significance you might attach to those impressions.Interesting that mainly to address the "fallability" argument is carefully avoided....
Could it be that is mostly be used as a knock-out argument in the case of "damned audiophile gadgets/tweaks?
Obviously the posters in this thread seem to follow a more pragmatic approach which reflects what people do in all other areas of everyday life where also decisions have to be made. Reading the often narrow or dogmatic statements in audio forums, one could get the impression that the audio field is so special that people aren´t able to get anything done.
Fallability of human senses is something to keep in mind, but that´s also true for the other parts of our life.
@Cosmik,
that digital audio (and analog audio as well) presumably never works perfect is obviously true - Shannon afair had already mentioned the constraints of sampling in his papers - but the "at -80 dB" statement still isn´t reflecting the reality. We discussed it before, the whole dither solution shows that it sometimes matters what happens at <= -80 dBFS (theoretically it is even somewhere around -86 dBFS).
It's how you chose to relate consciously to the information your auditory sense have relayed that's the issue, along with the chosen significance you might attach to those impressions.
If you could stick a probe into the brain and get the 'raw' data then that would be fine.. before our egotistical conscious 'selfs' get involved.
We corrupt things, fidelity in audio in terms of maintaining a original signal is not a POV thing. It's not about wonderings and imagining.. sitting down and listening to cables and such.
It's just about reproduction of a signal, keeping as faithful as possible, low IMD etc..
Preference, well that's down to you.. you want to prefer something then best listen and make up your mind just don't start using those assumptions and asserting a universal value out of them.. that would be wrong.
I was reading a bit of Karl Popper last night while eating my tea - that's the live-life-at-the-edge kind of guy I am.
He was drawing a distinction between Einstein's theory of relativity and Freud's theories, and defining pseudoscience as anything where the experiments are designed to confirm a theory rather than disconfirm it. It occurs to me that in order to practise pseudoscience, you at least need to have a theory (or hypothesis) to disconfirm!
In these listening tests that are designed merely to "establish whether there is a preference", what is the theory or hypothesis that the experiment is hoping to confirm or disconfirm?
If you establish a preference for a certain digital cable, what does that get you? You haven't found the reason why there is a preference, so you can't extrapolate anything from it. It doesn't help you to make a better cable, because you haven't even established what it is that caused the preference. If you can't even imagine how a digital cable could improve the sound, (and the rest of your experiment is constructed from similar cables!), you are just groping about in the dark. If you do have somesuperstitiontheory about noise and grounding or whatever, you need to do experiments with noise and grounding, not messing about with random cables. This general non-scientific-ness of listening tests extends to the blather talked about MQA, etc., etc.
Making up a theory (e.g. introducing aliasing for supposed better timing) and then running listening tests does not demonstrate that the theory is correct. It cannot be extrapolated to anyone else's ears/music/room/equipment even if the particular experiment purports to demonstrate a supposed preference.
Basically, as a potential purchaser, the external evidence of someone else's supposed listening test is worthless unless it homes in on specifics very convincingly indeed. If it makes the extraordinary claim that a deviation from 'high fidelity' is preferable, it needs some extraordinary evidence.
At the end of the day, the question is: do you want 'hi-fi' that meets a definition with measurable specifications, or do you want something *undefined* that some bloke tells you people prefer listening to, with an explanation that is no better than astrology?
If the effect of a digital cable is the item in question, but we don't understand how it could possibly introduce a difference, surely that means that we don't understand how the rest of the experimental apparatus works, either..? It is no good pointing to the switching mechanism and saying that it is truly random, etc. because it may also contain these mysterious effects that shouldn't be there. At some point, you have to draw a line and say "We understand how a wire works in the context of where we are using it". Otherwise, we don't understand anything.The specific hypothesises are a seperate question, but the underlying theory is often that - see those discussions around "audiophile´s stuff" - establishing a preference can´t happen, as according to the known thresholds of hearing, no difference could be detected.
Brief insert: establishing a preference is meant under the conditions of a controlled listening experiment, that incorporates propper randomization. If under theses conditions a preference is established, then a difference must exist, within the constraints of the construct, means probabilities etc.