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In Defense of Audiophiles, Bose, Pass, Toole and Science

I don’t know why I look at Audio Science Reviews equipment reviews, they usually make me bang my head against my desk. The claims they make of being scientific is pretty half-baked. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate measurements, and the time it takes to conduct them, along with insights into the causes, but judging all electronics based on 40+ year old measurements which have not really become closer to explaining human perception and enjoyment, they claim to be objective scientists. They are not. Let me tell you some of the people who are:

  1. Bose
  2. Harman
  3. Nelson Pass
  4. Floyd Toole


This may look like a weird list, but here is what all these have in common: They strive to link together human perception and enjoyment of a product to measurements. Each have taken a decidedly different, but very successful approach. They’ve each asked the question differently. I don’t always agree with the resulting products, but I can’t deny that their approach is market based and scientific.


Floyd Toole’s writing on room tuning, frequency response and EQ combines exact measurements with human perception, and as big a scientist as he is he remains skeptical of measurements, and with good reasons.


The process Nelson Pass uses is exactly right. His hypothesis is that a certain type of distortion, along with other important qualities, are what make for a great sounding amp, and lets face it, the process, and his effectiveness cannot be denied as not being scientific or financially successful. Far more scientific than designing or buying an amp based on THD% at 1 watt alone.


Bose is also very very scientific, but they come at the problem differently. Their question is: What is the least expensive to manufacture product we can make given what most consumers actually want to hear?" Does it work? They have 8,000 employees and approximately $4B in sales per Forbes:


https://www.forbes.com/companies/bose/#1926b3a81c46


Honestly, I don’t know how your average Bose product would measure, but you don’t get to these numbers without science. Assuming they measure poorly, doesn’t that mean measurements are all wrong?


The work Harman has done in getting listening panels together, and trying out different prototypes while adhering to previous science is also noteworthy. Most notably and recently with their testing of speaker dispersion which has resulted in the tweeter wave guides in the latest Revel speakers. They move science forward with each experiment, and then put that out into their products.


Regardless of the camp you fall into, crusty old measurements, perception measurements or individual iconoclast, we also must account for person to person variability. It’s been shown for instance that most people have poor sensitivity to phase shifts in speakers (like me), but if you are THAT person who has severe sensitivity to it, then all those studies don’t mean a thing.


My point is, let’s not define science as being purely in the domain of an oscilloscope. Science is defined by those who push the boundaries forward, and add to our understanding of human perception as well as electron behavior through a semi-conductor and air pressure in a room. If it’s frozen in 40 year old measurements, it’s not science, it's the worship of a dead icon.


Best,


E

erik_squires

Showing 6 responses by cd318

cd318
2,636 posts
 
Out of the 4 different approaches towards the use of science as a tool, which it has long been for everyone but the complete charlatan, I’d say Floyd Toole’s (Harman) approach is the closest towards finding an objective truth.

Anyone doubting that could do worse than to read his book Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms. Well worth the price of a few joke hi-fi magazines.

Bose, on the other hand is the closest towards giving the average non-audiophile listener what sounds good to them. I’ve never heard a poor Bose product, nor an outstanding one either, but that’s not what they’re about. Amar Bose, a professor at MIT, knew enough about listener preferences and marketing to build a hugely successful company. Nuff said.

Nelson Pass I don’t know much about, he’s still fairly unknown in the UK, except he seems to come across as a genial maverick. Besides, don’t we already know that most amplifiers sound virtually the same?

Let’s be straight about the importance of sound, everyone from Alan Shaw, Alon Wolf, Andrew Jones, Billy Woodman, John DeVore, Laurence Dickie, Peter Comeau, Peter Thomas, Sean Casey etc use science, they always did - right from the very beginning.

Let’s not kid ourselves about testing methods either, any loudspeaker, at any cost, that measures well in 2020 is virtually guaranteed to sound good.

Any loudspeaker, at any cost, that doesn’t, isn’t guaranteeing anything other than wallowing forever lost in the audio’s circle of confusion.

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html?m=1
cd318
2,636 posts
 
stibi,

"I have a Bose SoundTouch 30 in my second living room and it is not less enjoyable for everyday use (of course not for a serious listening), than my main 200K+ system."


What is this? Extreme high praise or an act of the highest audiophile heresy?

No worries, just joking, we know what you mean. Some of their systems might lack ultimate bandwidth, dynamics and scale, but they are sure nice to relax to at the end of a long day.  
cd318
2,636 posts
 
whoopycat,

I'm sorry but I don't see any correlation between studying random seasonal basketball stats and studying precise electrical measurements.

None whatsoever.
cd318
2,636 posts
 
erik_squires,

"..unless you have previously worked to establish those were desirable."


Could not agree more, but isn’t that what Toole, Olive and co have been doing at Harman for the past 30 years or so?

Furthermore as some have mentioned here before, isn’t it high time the consumers were given all the data available to later make of it what they will?

ps whoopycat,

I checked out the stats table but it may as well have been written in another language. LeBron was the only recognisable name.
cd318
2,636 posts
 
whoopycat,

I understand the emergence of sporting stats. Modern day football (soccer) is now riddled with terms like assists, blocks, tackles etc which were not deemed necessary some 20/30 years ago.

I still believe there’s only a dubious relationship between sporting stats and sporting success, (as it is with any other form of social science). One that you can only attempt to establish if you highlight the ones which add credence to your argument whilst ignoring the ones that don’t. Sport is a one off event with many, many variables. You’d need a computer like the one Douglas Adams wrote about in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
["You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the
infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest
operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design."]


However, loudspeaker testing and analysis has come a very long way with the advent of computer software and can be deemed a true science. Nowadays everyone uses this software and testing is as rigourous as its ever been. They know what to look for: eg

• On-axis frequency response
• Impulse response
• Cumulative spectral decay
• Polar response
• Step response
• Impedance
• Efficiency/Sensitivity
• Distortion
• Dynamics

https://audioxpress.com/article/testing-loudspeakers-which-measurements-matter-part-1

https://audioxpress.com/article/testing-loudspeakers-which-measurements-matter-part-2

Heck, there’s even at least one website devoted to this kind of thing.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php

The true test is whether the loudspeakers are actually getting better. By and large, I’d say they were. But I acknowledge there will always remain a subjective element.

Some will always prefer cassette tape to CD, a 1960 Ferrari to one from 2020, a Technics turntable from 1970 to one from now etc. That’s human nature.

Fair enough, but let’s not kid ourselves about which ones measure better.
cd318
2,636 posts
 
larryrs,

"Which one of these is the one that made me choose the speakers in my living room system?

"• On-axis frequency response
• Impulse response
• Cumulative spectral decay
• Polar response
• Step response
• Impedance
• Efficiency/Sensitivity
• Distortion
• Dynamics"

Or maybe it was some combination of those. If that’s the case perhaps someone could share how they are weighted and what the metric is (was) for establishing that."


Only you might know which one made you choose your speakers.

I think they all matter, even if I’m not exactly sure what step response is without googling it first.

Different designers will weigh these factors differently, and that’s why speakers don’t sound the same, but why wouldn’t anyone want to buy a loudspeaker with exemplary measurements?

They’re not the final word by any means but they might be a great starting point.

You know I think it’s a bit like stats for cars. As far as I’m concerned most of them already have acceptable 0-60 times, but what I want to see is long term reliability and cabin noise data (also battery range for all-electrics).

These matter more to me than acceleration and top speed, but they all matter.
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