Card carrying objectivists

[Cosmik]

I'll say this, if modern amps measures transparent, they will image the same.

I agree.

Once the speakers enter the mix, all bets are off.

I disagree in part. If the speakers are carefully engineered to be neutral they are like the amps you mention above: they will all image the same. They have to, unless there's something supernatural going on..? If they are nothing like neutral, like 98.3% of speakers out there, then I agree with what you say.

 

[Blumlein 88]

You only have the composite recording to play with, not the individual microphone feeds or the instruments as separate objects to manipulate. Unless the producers "signed off" the recording using the same 'embellishment' (in reality a mild guitar fuzzbox?) on their playback system then you are just trying to play amateur 'producer' without even having access to the raw material.

What you will certainly do is destroy stereo imaging. Maybe that is the goal indirectly, but if so there are easier, cheaper, better ways to do it.

Mastering engineers get a two channel track to master. So we aren't playing amateur producers, we are amateur mastering guys. And considering some of the work of most of the current music I'll take the amateur even up against the paid destroyer of music. With some acknowledgement those guys are in business and have a climate and client to please. They aren't the sole reason for music being bad most of the time.

 

[DonH56]

Imaging is not that hard to measure but is very time-consuming and you need all the test equipment to do it.

I often find my problems when dealing with subjective topics are (among others):

1. Making the measurement is hard and takes equipment (and time) I do not have.
2. Correlating the measurement to what we hear is sometimes a challenge.
3. Making measurements on actual program material is (much) more challenging, especially things like measurements over time.
4. I rarely have papers on what to me is common (if not common-sense) knowledge and if I did they might not understand them even if they read them.
5. Whatever I present technically, theory or measurements, is too often rejected out of hand since they can hear the difference.

The latter applies to objectivists as well; something heard may be readily measurable once we acknowledge it is real, valid data. Whilst I have usually been on the objectivist side of things (*), at times someone has heard something that research has shown to be valid despite my initial skepticism.

FWIWFM - Don

(*) Not always true; in HS/college and now and then afterwards I have been firmly in the subjective camp. In my early college years I worked for several stores, had audiophile friends to meet with, and was convinced I could hear the germ on the gnat on the speaker wire telling me if it was pure copper, silver-plated, or pure silver.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Seems the thread is moving toward the inadequacies of a given method of reproduction ... stereo (which,by the way, doesn't mean 2-channel) versus MCh...
The OP was about the real differences between gear or so I thought and at this juncture I am still not clear what are the positions on the concepts.

Lets's conduct a thought experiment here: I will take an extrme example:

1. On one side an old school original Krell KSA-80 .. Brutal, can drive a short circuit to glorious fire and sparks without breaking a sweat.
2. On the other an old school Spectral DMA-80

Both measure extremely well. Flat to the MHz region and with distortion level that would confuse any audio analysis instruments.
We use a pair of linear and full range speaker, say a pair of Revel Salon2. We know these are accurate and one of the better speakers out there.
We make sure that everything is level-matched to 0.5 dB at 500 Hz. We listen at an average of 80 dB to both ..
Would they sound the same?

I doubt they would.

Having been an owner of DMA-80's and one who didn't like Krell KSA sound back in the day, I would like to actually try that experiment or alternatively the old series connected amp experiment. The best I could determine the DMA-80's sound like a piece of wire. Has no sound of its own within its power capabilities. Would the Krell do that as well if I did a proper comparison now?

I've been tempted to get one of the Quant Asylum units to record speaker level outputs of multiple amps. Or get off my can and build an attenuator box so I could use one of the ADC's I already have. That way I could record various amps on speakers and send it around for others to hear.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I'll bet you that for every 'impulse' that emanates from a place in the 'soundstage', high correlation between the two channels for that particular impulse (delayed, phase shifted as appropriate for the position in the soundstage) as they emerge from the speakers will give you good imaging - because that is how it is supposed to work. Only a linear, neutral system is capable of this. As soon as you start messing around with compression, doppler distortion, vinyl/valve-style fuzz distortion, etc. you are losing this fine correlation and therefore losing the imaging.

If what I describe doesn't work, then we don't even know how stereo works, nor how to build a stereo system! Neither of which I believe to be true.

Edit: I'll add this, too: Saying that we don't know how to measure 'imaging' implies that some people are better at building systems that 'image' than others and they even have special techniques for it that we mortals don't understand. It's like saying we don't know how to measure 'musicality' or 'vividness' or other audiophile descriptions, and attributing those things to skilled, sensitive engineers, artists and craftsmen who know the correct PCB layout for maximum vividness, etc. Those people don't exist! All of this stuff is in the recording or, if you want to look at it the other way round, in the mind of the listener. The only requirement to maximise all of it is to keep the reproduction neutral.

Yes, of course, we know exactly how to create devices that will move the perceived image L, R and in between, such as pan pots and balance controls. The effect is measurable from interchannel balances as well as subjectively perceived. No mystery there, because we know how stereo works.

The inadequacy of stereo was @tomelex's point. He did not fully define that inadequacy, so I added my own opinion. As one who has listened at great length to, in my case, discretely recorded Mch from concert hall venues versus 2 channel recordings of same on the same system, it is beyond quite obvious that there is a perceptual difference in the spatial imaging between the two. That is true even if it is a solo performance by a single performer. The performer's L-R location in the frontal sound stage does not change. What changes mainly is the perceived sense of space around the performer by more accurately capturing reflections from the hall, including much more directional information, as well as other subjective attributes, including apparent image depth, resulting from phantom images.

Obviously, we can measure the signals in the added channel count using traditional audio metrics. Clearly, there is more information reproduced into the room by more channels via Mch, although there is no measure I know of that could possibly predictively measure exactly how that resulting image will sound to most people. We do have many good an useful objective measures about maximizing fidelity, minimizing distortion, etc. in all those channels. However, the final spatial image we perceive, its perceived quality or lack thereof, remains a subjective thing, which was my point.

I will leave "musicality" or "vividness" to others with a shrug. They do not factor into my vocabulary or thought process.

 

[DonH56]

The world is full of audiophiles (and other folk) who are incredibly sensitive to things we mere mortals cannot imagine.

 

[Sal1950]

For so many years I sat in the sweet spot, head in a vise, listening intently into the soundstaging. Closely judging the width, depth, and height of each recording and making the qualities displayed by each an important factor in enjoyment of the music. (how often I would return to the best ones) In more recent times the import of these things have taken a much lower position on my R2D4 list. I can just as easily get into my music groove while stretched out on the couch as while seated in the listening chair and today find that a positive thing. Yes the illusion of a good stereo image is a very cool magic trick but ------------
YMMV

 

[tomelex]

Visual association seems to have a profound effect on ‘ soundstage ‘ or where you ‘think’ the sound is emanating from.

You spend some time associating a visual reference with a sound the two can match up in your mind.

yes, visualization is huge. and as far as imaging goes as brought up in an earlier post, it's capability or potential can be measured, its simply channel separation and group delay along with the normal flat frequency and power response yadayada

 

[Palladium]

The world is full of audiophiles (and other folk) who are incredibly sensitive to things we mere mortals cannot imagine.

I'm already seeing stealth subjectivists infiltrating this forum milking the usual good old rhetoric of orbiting teapots.

 

[tomelex]

You only have the composite recording to play with, not the individual microphone feeds or the instruments as separate objects to manipulate. Unless the producers "signed off" the recording using the same 'embellishment' (in reality a mild guitar fuzzbox?) on their playback system then you are just trying to play amateur 'producer' without even having access to the raw material.

What you will certainly do is destroy stereo imaging. Maybe that is the goal indirectly, but if so there are easier, cheaper, better ways to do it.

Lets remember that stereo over two speakers by design has to "destroy" some of the imaging by frequency dependent smearing, unequal inter aural delay of low and high frequencies and all that.

 

[Wombat]

I'm already seeing stealth subjectivists infiltrating this forum milking the usual good old rhetoric of orbiting teapots.

It's Amirm's fault - all of those DAC tests.

 

[Sal1950]

I'm already seeing stealth subjectivists infiltrating this forum milking the usual good old rhetoric of orbiting teapots.

Get a rope!

 

[tomelex]

LOL

 

[watchnerd]

Where do I get my card?

And who / what is the sovereign entity issuing them?

 

[Thomas savage]

I don’t think anybody here would pass a test proving their objective nature , unless the test itself was corrupted by some form of bias.

 

[svart-hvitt]

On a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is the most objective, 1 is the most subjective, where do you stand?

And then I thought this piece, by Nwavguy in 2011, is a good background for discussion:

http://nwavguy.blogspot.no/2011/05/subjective-vs-objective-debate.html?m=1

 

[Blumlein 88]

On a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is the most objective, 1 is the most subjective, where do you stand?

And then I thought this piece, by Nwavguy in 2011, is a good background for discussion:

http://nwavguy.blogspot.no/2011/05/subjective-vs-objective-debate.html?m=1

We're going to do 5 star ratings. 4 for myself I suppose. Of course the real question is how would others rate you. I might end up more of a 3. Everyone loves a pretty face and a heartwarming story of design.

You do still have to be on your P's and Q's. Amir's testing of DACs has turned up a few gems at low cost, shown a few moderate cost models to be moderately good, and we don't have a good selection of expensive ones to compare so far. The Exasound is very good though at best marginally better than a Topping, and seems to claim performance beyond what was found. I think you'll find that to be even more the case with things like headphone amps and especially power amps.

The big area is transducers. Headphones and speakers essentially on the playback end. Harman has/is trying to close the circle of confusion in those areas. I think they are only getting the low hanging fruit so far. Of course the abundance of low hanging fruit to be grabbed is telling. Transducers are where the messy rubber meets the dirty road. I think the messiness of that the near chaotic nature of transducer tech and use is so bad people are more interested in DACs because they are consistent in some sense. You can take a good DAC nearly anywhere and it will sound pretty good. Too many times speakers sound terrific in one location and like a sick joke somewhere else. This is where objectivity could pay the most benefits because this is where fidelity is least and by an order of magnitude or more. Sticky wicket though. Seems too complex with too many factors interacting to ever get a really good handle on it. Things have seemed worse until someone systemically attacks an issue however, and subdues it.

 

[Cosmik]

For so many years I sat in the sweet spot, head in a vise, listening intently into the soundstaging. Closely judging the width, depth, and height of each recording and making the qualities displayed by each an important factor in enjoyment of the music. (how often I would return to the best ones) In more recent times the import of these things have taken a much lower position on my R2D4 list. I can just as easily get into my music groove while stretched out on the couch as while seated in the listening chair and today find that a positive thing. Yes the illusion of a good stereo image is a very cool magic trick but ------------
YMMV

Perhaps the criterion is stable imaging versus the alternative. If the imaging is stable then yes, you can listen from where you want and it still sounds fine. But if it isn't stable, and you listen from anywhere near the sweet spot it will drive you mad.

There are two ways to get a stable image from two speakers: neutral stereo, or dual mono.

 

[svart-hvitt]

We're going to do 5 star ratings. 4 for myself I suppose. Of course the real question is how would others rate you. I might end up more of a 3. Everyone loves a pretty face and a heartwarming story of design.

You do still have to be on your P's and Q's. Amir's testing of DACs has turned up a few gems at low cost, shown a few moderate cost models to be moderately good, and we don't have a good selection of expensive ones to compare so far. The Exasound is very good though at best marginally better than a Topping, and seems to claim performance beyond what was found. I think you'll find that to be even more the case with things like headphone amps and especially power amps.

The big area is transducers. Headphones and speakers essentially on the playback end. Harman has/is trying to close the circle of confusion in those areas. I think they are only getting the low hanging fruit so far. Of course the abundance of low hanging fruit to be grabbed is telling. Transducers are where the messy rubber meets the dirty road. I think the messiness of that the near chaotic nature of transducer tech and use is so bad people are more interested in DACs because they are consistent in some sense. You can take a good DAC nearly anywhere and it will sound pretty good. Too many times speakers sound terrific in one location and like a sick joke somewhere else. This is where objectivity could pay the most benefits because this is where fidelity is least and by an order of magnitude or more. Sticky wicket though. Seems too complex with too many factors interacting to ever get a really good handle on it. Things have seemed worse until someone systemically attacks an issue however, and subdues it.

Agree on speakers being the big differentiator. Speakers will never be homogeneous, but tailores to different uses and preferences.

Still, modern speaker solutions like the Kiis and the Genelec 8351 sound much the same in my room; only fatiguing, critical listening told you that dispersion and bass handling were different.

I believe that software will be a valid differentiator as well, with DSP and some filter as part of the mix. Software should become more «intelligent» than it is today.

In the initial phase of product reviews and research, I am a 5 (the most objective) on the 1 to 5 scale. As choices narrow, I think I gravitate towards a 1. This is how I attack problems in «the real world» as well. Being dynamic yet process oriented instead of fixed is practical in my experience.

 

[Wombat]

On a scale from 1 to 5, where 5 is the most objective, 1 is the most subjective, where do you stand?

And then I thought this piece, by Nwavguy in 2011, is a good background for discussion:

http://nwavguy.blogspot.no/2011/05/subjective-vs-objective-debate.html?m=1

Objective analysis and subjective analysis are relevant separately or in conjunction depending on what(or how) is being tested. It is not a matter of generalised individual's, polarised, opinions(scale rated} - more a matter of searching for a common definable truth.

The problem is that too many proffered opinions have no credible basis.