[An ongoing exploration of the audiophile scene.]
Nelson Pass concedes the audio objectivist debate in the objectivist's own terms. "The amplification problem is solved," he says in September 2017 Stereophile Interview. But then he precedes in terms very much as in this blogsite I have argued against the hard form of audio objectivism. He says nobody needs the amplifiers he has produced, or even the circuit designs he has patented. People can get along fine with other amplifiers and designs. He describes his job, instead, as an entertainer. Some people are entertained by his work and his works, and he works to serve them. I am one of those.
That's pretty much what I've said against Aczel and Toole, who claim exactly that audio is mere engineering which serves art. Audio itself is art, which partly serves music, but also party serves other things.
Now, for sure mass manufactured products are engineered products. But there is plenty of art in a manufacturing concern. And if run well, the product is art, this is well known to all now.
A lot of audio, though, is more personal, much more personal than opening a box and plugging one thing in.
I haven't scratch built anything major since 1982, when I built a tube type preamp with separate power supply. It sounded great, and bested an Audible Illusions around 1986. But I lost the massive power supply on my move to Texas, and haven't used it since, as well largely preferring solid state equipment.
I might tinker, such as the modifications I made to the Aragon tape selector circuit which I use in my living room analog racks. Selections are now unloaded and totally isolated, except for ground.
And there is the ever evolving programming of my DSP's. I strongly prefer total manual control to automagic EQ. But that itself is another decision.
Every decision is a form of participation. Even going to an audio specialist, who plays two things, and asks which you like better...that decision is a substantial participation.
Though, if all you do is make a purchase decision, and have specialists take care of everything else...then it's not very much DIY. But that's pretty rare among the proletariat.
Most audiophiles are very involved, it's at least a part time preoccupation, not even counting the seriously listening to music part. I make no pretense that I am not a gearhead, not interested in the vast details...or that I don't collect too much, the latter perhaps being the greater crime.
Some seem to become manufacturers of major equipment on some scale. Sadly one of my best audiophile friends got massive hearing loss during the metalwork involved in the production of his own Leach amplifier. And then he hated the sound of the amplifier.
By far most people are surprised by the degree that we imagine, rather than perceive, reality.
People may be scientists, designers, and even engineers, and not get this.
I get it. I can freely "hear" something to be better. Hearing is never the same twice, and it's only partly related to the information at our ears anyway. So, a typical sighted audiophile test, which I myself have done a lot (but generally avoid, I prefer to do no upfront auditory testing, "long term" testing only, and that has not been the source of any of my numerous errors) means nothing.
I won't say it's impossible that there is this unknown X factor, which makes amplifiers sound different, not related to the things we know like frequency response into speaker load and IM and absence of voltage or current limiting. Possibly there is some "simplicity" "charm" or whatever. But very dedicated testers have done serious tests for 50 years, a nothing has been confirmed. All other claims have been debunked.
A friend--the one who took his Sony 3200F to audiophile meetings to show up the big boys, was convince he had the trick. Just listening for himself, and with some luck, he had found the answers. Get a 3200F! He couldn't explain why it sounded better. His mantra to this day remains that measurements don't matter. (It seemed strange to me, though, that he says measurements don't matter, and yet by some chance he chose a good measuring amplifier. Seemed unfair somehow.)
Most people in most of these gathering seemed to agree his amplifier sounded best. By his account, all of them who seriously listened believed the 3200F better. Of course virtually all of these tests were sighted, none were level matched (he had an argument against that...it cannot be done because there is more than one frequency to match), so as a proof that the amplifier problem has not been solved, they are inadequate in all ways.
I wouldn't think that I or anyone could have such luck, so much better than everyone else, that I could ever stumble upon The One Answer like that. Instead, I think his entire enterprise was a repudiation of amplifier differences, rather than the proof of one person's excellent luck and taste. The amplifier problem was solved in 1968, if not before. The Sony had modern specifications, such as 0.1% THD and virtually flat frequency response. Far from proving that measurements don't matter, his experience is more evidence that once measurements get good enough, people can easily be swayed one way or the other, merely by one's presence, or tendency to adjust the volume slightly higher for one's preferred amplifier. People including oneself.
It is known that we are NOT very good detectors of harmonic distortion, and in particular of the kind most audio circuits produce. It may take 1% or more to hear it on music. In short term tests, meanwhile, we are far more sensitive to small differences in frequency response, 0.1dB is roughly equivalent to 0.1%. In fact, in large part, we may be hearing the harmonic distortion by the effect it has on frequency production. Bass distortion is often heard as louder bass. But, the same nonlinearities which produce THD also produce IM, which we are reasonable sensitive too, it's just harder to define a single measurement for.
Anyway, most modern amplifiers don't vary much in frequency response into most loads. You have to go to tubes, generally, to get something significantly different from a $300 receiver. Or something very culty.
[Electrostatic speakers, and sometimes speakers with very complex crossovers, can show significant differences with many amplifiers. That is why the David Clark Amplifier Challenge specifically excluded electrostatic speakers, and not because they often shut down amplifiers...that would merely invalidate a particular trial.]
While to be absolutely careful about it and avoid false positives, matching frequency response, for virtually all solid state amplifiers, into voice coil speakers, is probably not necessary to make it impossible to pass either ABX or prove a consistent preference. Matching just at 1kHz is sufficient in most cases, and it was often done that way in many ABX demonstrations. It generally comes close enough for most people, in a double blind test, to find what they thought was an easy difference into a difference very hard to hear at all, so hard one has to be careful instead of wild about making judgements based on fleeting thoughts.
I'm a proponent of the idea that blind AB Preference Testing is better than ABX, and similar statistics can be applied to determine if the preference has been statistically verified, or could be chance.
One of the problems, however, is that many audiophiles will see the raw numbers as some kind of confirmation of their earlier views, despite having virtually no statistical significance. And the second is (as I found in the very first double blind test I performed in 1983) the subject may argue that their preference changed...in such a way as to make nearly all of their "identifications" consistent.
So ABX is a kind of way of forcing the situation to prevent these kinds of false arguments. But if you don't fear these false arguments, preference testing is faster and requires only a relaxed judgement, the same as for actual listening.
Most of what people hear sighted is based on "thinking" of some kind. People have to think of the words to describe what they are hearing. And this thinking more freely ranges into the negative depending on endless other considerations (technically know as biases) when things are free to be criticized. Like those complicated amplifers from Connecticut, for people opposed to complexity and what you might call the Eastern outlook, which I recall from my youth as the starched shirts, the greater formality, than I was used to in California.
BTW, a new Threshold has arisen, with new headquarters in Texas, not far from where I live.
This reminds me of how I myself was prone to criticize the tin ears of audio engineers, when I was a college student, just hearing the ways of subjectivist audio. I picked up my first copy of Stereophile in 1975 and quickly became an avid reader of that and The Absolute Sound.
Anti-establishment, having arisen in the wake of the Vietnam War, touched everything. It had become the natural outlook on everything. So of course those engineers were wrong about feedback. No Feedback is better. You can hear it yourself, when the equipment doesn't blow up when the feedback is removed...
Usually a lot louder too...
Some people, all of my audiophile friends, and all the audiophiles I know socially, are subjectivist in the sense of still having this outlook, that the audio engineering directorate doesn't get it, you have to go offstream to the likes of John Curl (a strong anti-ABX subjectivist who personally knows we still haven't solved the amplifier problem, which might surprise some because his products have been objectively excellent as well, so a perfect example of a good engineer who is also a strong subjectivist) to get your best amplification (most of the amplifiers I own today are Curl amplifiers, which keep working and are never bad sounding, not because Curl has special lock on what makes amplifiers sound good).
But I no longer see it as just the Engineering directorate, it's the more credible group of audiophiles as well, those who have seriously considered the issue, done well designed blind tests on themselves, and/or understand the nature and consequences of perception. And audio scientists and so on.
I should perhaps disclose also that I myself R an engineer now too, as a member of two engineering societies involved in Audio.
Without double blind (and level matched) testing your findings are worthless, and without statistical verification they are just one useless data point. Most audio tests are at the worthless level.
Worthless tests are fine, as an amusement. But it goes wrong, when people come to feel inadequate. Then it's audio nervosa.
The creed of audiophiles should be much like that of radio amateurs. An audiophile should try to bring greater pleasure into the lives of other audiophiles.
That's tricky. I don't think it means, necessarily, that we should lie. Mostly less verbosity, and occasional avoidance of telling the whole truth, as perceived perhaps, and there's great justification in that.
But I think generally it doesn't involve black vs white comparisons. It doesn't involve forcing others into one's own agendas, perspectives, or even practices. It involves listening to others and trying to appreciate things from their perspective, what they are reaching for, and the ingenuity of their solutions so far.
Anyway people learn best when they want to learn, when they are at the point of sincerely wanting to know something enough that they ask. Before that point, advice is merely poor salesmanship or street fighting.
Nelson Pass concedes the audio objectivist debate in the objectivist's own terms. "The amplification problem is solved," he says in September 2017 Stereophile Interview. But then he precedes in terms very much as in this blogsite I have argued against the hard form of audio objectivism. He says nobody needs the amplifiers he has produced, or even the circuit designs he has patented. People can get along fine with other amplifiers and designs. He describes his job, instead, as an entertainer. Some people are entertained by his work and his works, and he works to serve them. I am one of those.
That's pretty much what I've said against Aczel and Toole, who claim exactly that audio is mere engineering which serves art. Audio itself is art, which partly serves music, but also party serves other things.
Now, for sure mass manufactured products are engineered products. But there is plenty of art in a manufacturing concern. And if run well, the product is art, this is well known to all now.
A lot of audio, though, is more personal, much more personal than opening a box and plugging one thing in.
I haven't scratch built anything major since 1982, when I built a tube type preamp with separate power supply. It sounded great, and bested an Audible Illusions around 1986. But I lost the massive power supply on my move to Texas, and haven't used it since, as well largely preferring solid state equipment.
I might tinker, such as the modifications I made to the Aragon tape selector circuit which I use in my living room analog racks. Selections are now unloaded and totally isolated, except for ground.
And there is the ever evolving programming of my DSP's. I strongly prefer total manual control to automagic EQ. But that itself is another decision.
Every decision is a form of participation. Even going to an audio specialist, who plays two things, and asks which you like better...that decision is a substantial participation.
Though, if all you do is make a purchase decision, and have specialists take care of everything else...then it's not very much DIY. But that's pretty rare among the proletariat.
Most audiophiles are very involved, it's at least a part time preoccupation, not even counting the seriously listening to music part. I make no pretense that I am not a gearhead, not interested in the vast details...or that I don't collect too much, the latter perhaps being the greater crime.
Some seem to become manufacturers of major equipment on some scale. Sadly one of my best audiophile friends got massive hearing loss during the metalwork involved in the production of his own Leach amplifier. And then he hated the sound of the amplifier.
By far most people are surprised by the degree that we imagine, rather than perceive, reality.
People may be scientists, designers, and even engineers, and not get this.
I get it. I can freely "hear" something to be better. Hearing is never the same twice, and it's only partly related to the information at our ears anyway. So, a typical sighted audiophile test, which I myself have done a lot (but generally avoid, I prefer to do no upfront auditory testing, "long term" testing only, and that has not been the source of any of my numerous errors) means nothing.
I won't say it's impossible that there is this unknown X factor, which makes amplifiers sound different, not related to the things we know like frequency response into speaker load and IM and absence of voltage or current limiting. Possibly there is some "simplicity" "charm" or whatever. But very dedicated testers have done serious tests for 50 years, a nothing has been confirmed. All other claims have been debunked.
A friend--the one who took his Sony 3200F to audiophile meetings to show up the big boys, was convince he had the trick. Just listening for himself, and with some luck, he had found the answers. Get a 3200F! He couldn't explain why it sounded better. His mantra to this day remains that measurements don't matter. (It seemed strange to me, though, that he says measurements don't matter, and yet by some chance he chose a good measuring amplifier. Seemed unfair somehow.)
Most people in most of these gathering seemed to agree his amplifier sounded best. By his account, all of them who seriously listened believed the 3200F better. Of course virtually all of these tests were sighted, none were level matched (he had an argument against that...it cannot be done because there is more than one frequency to match), so as a proof that the amplifier problem has not been solved, they are inadequate in all ways.
I wouldn't think that I or anyone could have such luck, so much better than everyone else, that I could ever stumble upon The One Answer like that. Instead, I think his entire enterprise was a repudiation of amplifier differences, rather than the proof of one person's excellent luck and taste. The amplifier problem was solved in 1968, if not before. The Sony had modern specifications, such as 0.1% THD and virtually flat frequency response. Far from proving that measurements don't matter, his experience is more evidence that once measurements get good enough, people can easily be swayed one way or the other, merely by one's presence, or tendency to adjust the volume slightly higher for one's preferred amplifier. People including oneself.
It is known that we are NOT very good detectors of harmonic distortion, and in particular of the kind most audio circuits produce. It may take 1% or more to hear it on music. In short term tests, meanwhile, we are far more sensitive to small differences in frequency response, 0.1dB is roughly equivalent to 0.1%. In fact, in large part, we may be hearing the harmonic distortion by the effect it has on frequency production. Bass distortion is often heard as louder bass. But, the same nonlinearities which produce THD also produce IM, which we are reasonable sensitive too, it's just harder to define a single measurement for.
Anyway, most modern amplifiers don't vary much in frequency response into most loads. You have to go to tubes, generally, to get something significantly different from a $300 receiver. Or something very culty.
[Electrostatic speakers, and sometimes speakers with very complex crossovers, can show significant differences with many amplifiers. That is why the David Clark Amplifier Challenge specifically excluded electrostatic speakers, and not because they often shut down amplifiers...that would merely invalidate a particular trial.]
While to be absolutely careful about it and avoid false positives, matching frequency response, for virtually all solid state amplifiers, into voice coil speakers, is probably not necessary to make it impossible to pass either ABX or prove a consistent preference. Matching just at 1kHz is sufficient in most cases, and it was often done that way in many ABX demonstrations. It generally comes close enough for most people, in a double blind test, to find what they thought was an easy difference into a difference very hard to hear at all, so hard one has to be careful instead of wild about making judgements based on fleeting thoughts.
I'm a proponent of the idea that blind AB Preference Testing is better than ABX, and similar statistics can be applied to determine if the preference has been statistically verified, or could be chance.
One of the problems, however, is that many audiophiles will see the raw numbers as some kind of confirmation of their earlier views, despite having virtually no statistical significance. And the second is (as I found in the very first double blind test I performed in 1983) the subject may argue that their preference changed...in such a way as to make nearly all of their "identifications" consistent.
So ABX is a kind of way of forcing the situation to prevent these kinds of false arguments. But if you don't fear these false arguments, preference testing is faster and requires only a relaxed judgement, the same as for actual listening.
Most of what people hear sighted is based on "thinking" of some kind. People have to think of the words to describe what they are hearing. And this thinking more freely ranges into the negative depending on endless other considerations (technically know as biases) when things are free to be criticized. Like those complicated amplifers from Connecticut, for people opposed to complexity and what you might call the Eastern outlook, which I recall from my youth as the starched shirts, the greater formality, than I was used to in California.
BTW, a new Threshold has arisen, with new headquarters in Texas, not far from where I live.
This reminds me of how I myself was prone to criticize the tin ears of audio engineers, when I was a college student, just hearing the ways of subjectivist audio. I picked up my first copy of Stereophile in 1975 and quickly became an avid reader of that and The Absolute Sound.
Anti-establishment, having arisen in the wake of the Vietnam War, touched everything. It had become the natural outlook on everything. So of course those engineers were wrong about feedback. No Feedback is better. You can hear it yourself, when the equipment doesn't blow up when the feedback is removed...
Usually a lot louder too...
Some people, all of my audiophile friends, and all the audiophiles I know socially, are subjectivist in the sense of still having this outlook, that the audio engineering directorate doesn't get it, you have to go offstream to the likes of John Curl (a strong anti-ABX subjectivist who personally knows we still haven't solved the amplifier problem, which might surprise some because his products have been objectively excellent as well, so a perfect example of a good engineer who is also a strong subjectivist) to get your best amplification (most of the amplifiers I own today are Curl amplifiers, which keep working and are never bad sounding, not because Curl has special lock on what makes amplifiers sound good).
But I no longer see it as just the Engineering directorate, it's the more credible group of audiophiles as well, those who have seriously considered the issue, done well designed blind tests on themselves, and/or understand the nature and consequences of perception. And audio scientists and so on.
I should perhaps disclose also that I myself R an engineer now too, as a member of two engineering societies involved in Audio.
Without double blind (and level matched) testing your findings are worthless, and without statistical verification they are just one useless data point. Most audio tests are at the worthless level.
Worthless tests are fine, as an amusement. But it goes wrong, when people come to feel inadequate. Then it's audio nervosa.
The creed of audiophiles should be much like that of radio amateurs. An audiophile should try to bring greater pleasure into the lives of other audiophiles.
That's tricky. I don't think it means, necessarily, that we should lie. Mostly less verbosity, and occasional avoidance of telling the whole truth, as perceived perhaps, and there's great justification in that.
But I think generally it doesn't involve black vs white comparisons. It doesn't involve forcing others into one's own agendas, perspectives, or even practices. It involves listening to others and trying to appreciate things from their perspective, what they are reaching for, and the ingenuity of their solutions so far.
Anyway people learn best when they want to learn, when they are at the point of sincerely wanting to know something enough that they ask. Before that point, advice is merely poor salesmanship or street fighting.
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