darrenyeats wrote: > Wait. Everyone accepts current loudspeakers have various audible > compromises.
True. darrenyeats wrote: > Of course, designing and building speakers is a scientific and > engineering discipline [...] Correct. darrenyeats wrote: > [...] but human perception and opinion is at its very heart. No. I'd rather say that (assumed) imperfections of human audio perception might be played on to adjust compromises one has to make while designing audio equipment in a way that minimizes their audible consequences. This does not imply by any means that one could'nt tell (at least in principle) by well understood scientific criteria if some component is better at faithfully reproducing (recording, storing, transmitting) audio than another. darrenyeats wrote: > > Everyone would say the same about audio tape engineering before digital > came along. These spheres do NOT automatically exclude one another. If > people can hear a difference, then the kind of difference they do/don't > like is very relevant to audio gear, given that its purpose is human > enjoyment, and it will inform and direct the science and engineering. > > What you mean to say is, that audibility limits have been achieved with > certain types of audio equipment, or that you believe this to be the > case, or that current scientific evidence indicates this. That's a very > different matter IMO. Thanks for trying to interpret my post, but I was perfectly meaning what I was writing (quite literally). To extend my original post I'd like to point out that whenever someone claims that a component or tweak (e.g. 'magical cable lifters') provides an objective audible improvement (i.e. comprehensible and meaningful to others) he has 'the burden of proof ' by equally comprehensible and meaningful (i.e. scientific) means. If he can't or does not want to provide such proof he is of course free to state this claim as a belief or personal opinion, but it then just does not qualify as an objective, provable fact. You can exchange opinions and personal impressions (about whatever topic) endlessly with only little to no progress. We do have high quality (affordable) audio reproduction equipment today (that is better than years or decades ago) thanks to factual, i.e. comprehensible and measurable progress based on science and engineering. I do admit that there is a very interesting scientific discipline of human audio perception. While current science seems to have a quite good understanding on how humans (and other animals) hear, the different processes involved are complex. Also scientific analysis mostly relies - by very definition - on empirical research and as such isn't as 'seizable' as for example the sampling theorem. So I (as well as most of the other 'audophile sceptics' I assume) would be happy to discuss the _relevance_ of construction compromises (e.g. jitter) or deliberate (mostly well thought-trough) design decisions (e.g. red book sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz) for human audio perception. But even with these topics rational argumentation is necessary; if you cannot (yet and/or fully) explain an audible effect systematically, blind testing is an approved method to scrutinize/validate such a claimed effect. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ superbonham's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22540 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=102330 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
