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What??? 2x6 is taking offense to something scientific written about audio?

Is this bizarro world I've stepped into?

Yep. I bet he also believes we aren't descended from apes, either.

Man....I'm sitting here eating my breakfast when I come across this thread. First of all, great article....makes me feel much better about my audio choices. Then, 2X6 comes in and stirs the pot, which draws the expected responses. But, PM picks up a large chunk of meat and proceeds to throw it into the shark tank.....now we just sit back and wait.

turbodog-

what did you have for breakfast?? i felt productive this morning, so i made three strips of bacon, two sunny side up eggs, two pieces of buttered toast, and an avocado sprinkled with some salt, cayenne pepper, and some lemon juice. oh, and a glass of OJ.. it was delicious.

i have a tendency to trust more in the scientific data, simply because, by our human nature, we tend to allow our 'personal' views and opinions to effect the thought/decision process. science is more straight forward and specific, dealing with numbers and measured outputs. but, i also feel, whether its the placebo effect or not, that if a person 'likes' or 'believes' that what they are hearing is better than something else, then buy it, and go with it.

the simple truth here is that these are two COMPLETELY different process, to get the same result.. a piece of audio equipment that YOU like and prefer. once again, being very neutral, i can see both sides of the coin.

i think i will just sit and wait also!!

bigjohn

I'm not saying that science is not adequate to test and evaluate the propositions at issue. So it is not a matter that science is weak, but rather your science is weak. "Your white crane kung fu weak!"

Why? Because the tests are with single frequencies. Music is complex, except for Philip Glass.

Placebo effect? How many posters here cooed that the 'scientific' musings set out in Chess's subject essay made them "feel good" about their audio choices?

How many of you BELIEVE (a belief you believe is scientific because after all you know we're descended from apes) that all solid state amps of the same output and THD rating perform indistinguishably when it comes to reproducing symphonic music? Why would you believe such a thing that you have not tested yourself? Oh, you don't trust yourself, you think the placebo effect makes anything less than an impossibly rigorous double blind in a dead anechoic chamber useless. Then go listen to an amp which costs $10,000 which you don't like but thought you would.

I've never listened to true "audiophile" equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars, but despite the "scientific" or logical arguments that there is no or little sound difference between high end and midrange equipment, I'd be perfectly happy even if there were. Within the context of the long history of human existence, most of us (at least in the west) live like kings (certainly true of anyone who owns a set of Axioms! )

Very little, if anything, of what I own (cars, clothes, furniture, A/V equipment, sporting goods) is real "high end" stuff like one would see on Life Styles of the Rich and Famous. To me a debate over the extent to which any of it is just as good as stuff costing 10 times more is silly. Who cares? Most of the stuff I own, and particularly my new HT system, is damn nice, and I'm very grateful to be able to enjoy it. I'm not going to let my enjoyment get dragged down by envy of better stuff, nor by getting defensive about whether more expensive stuff is really better.

Those who are not in the top 1% income bracket should know that they can get a terrific sounding system for a very reasonable price, that Axioms and a lot of the other equipment mentioned here provide good value, and that they can be very happy with what they purchase as long as they don't get caught up in worrying that someone somewhere has stuff that may sound better.

I do think you're both right:
--> The audio world is *far* from 'you get what you pay for'. Assuming that there are very subtle audio things produced or allowed by expensive components is not something we want to make into a habit (and have it taint all of our listening tests), if we can get the same sound from less expensive equipment. Spreading myths such as this (especially if there's evidence to the contrary) is something that does the opposite of help people.

However,
-->I liked how 2x said that isn't not that science is weak, it's that the rather simple science of measuring frequency response simply and with simple equipment could be weak (paraphase). I mean, I'm a total fan of double-blind tests of speakers, but is 'playing simple one-frequency test-tones and measuring it with theory-laden electronics' *necessarily* a complete judge of a speaker?

Frankly, I'll still rely on those frequency response graphs because they're the best available to me. They're the best we've got. But who knows if they're perfect.

I think there's a good middle ground somewhere around here.

edit: Or at least there's an opening into discussing the testing methodology for speakers, amps, and such, and what such tests can and cannot say. I have to plead my ignorance on this.

RD

First...John...I'm heading your way for breakfast!!! Hold the avacado!!

Next...I'm somewhere on the fence here. And it's not a lack of faith in science...but rather the lack of any real science in that article. Hand waving and carte blanche statements about a $15000 amp sounding no better or marginally better than a $500 amp...really doesn't mean much to me. He offered no scientific data/references to back up this claim. He says double blind studies were conducted...etc etc. Where...by who...where are the references??? And...let's just suppose by some miracle ...this was true??... It would only be true the first day out of the box. Electronic components age...and often less than gracefully--higher end components...usually have much higher MBTF rates.

You don't have to convince me with regards to cables -- a few semesters of fields will remind you that at audio frequencies -- changes in impedance are negligible.

Oooh!!! I'm now an enthusiast!!! If only I could get promoted this quickly at work!!!

Raindance,

I, too, believe that scientific tests should be tempered with real-world listening. That's why double-blind tests are so appropriate. They involve listening to actual music, not test tones. They involve using your ears. They involve the concept of repeatability.

If you listen to two dissimilar receivers alternately swapped into a system, and you are never aware which component is currently active, you should be able to reliably hear a difference in the sound if all receivers of similar quality don't sound the same. This is a real-world, ears-only test -- no gadgets other than an SPL meter to level match the receivers are used.

If you are not able to repeatably (beyond a certain margin of error) identify when one receiver is playing vs. the other, then that's evidence in favor of the "receivers sound the same" theory. Of course, to put more weight behind any data, you'd need many people to partake in the test.

So now all you doubters can see that, in science, you still get to use your ears. Science is just a way of doing things that tries to separate out as much bias as possible.