2. misc-audio
  3. 179344-140760

My take on subjective vs. objective

I’ve been thinking about these words lately and feel there is a disconnect with how these words are being used in audio forums and how I would normally use them. I think of subjective statements as statements of value judgement while objective statements are statements of material fact, whether true or false. "The cat is on the mat." That’s an objective statement. "It is good and proper for the cat to be on the mat." That’s a subjective statement. So if an audiophile declares that one cable sounds better than another, that is on its surface a subjective statement - a statement about a preference. But there is an objective statement hidden in it, and that is that the cables do indeed sound different, as measured objectively by the listener’s senses, presumably by their hearing alone. The argument comes in as to whether they can still perceive that difference if they don’t have any other information to work with other than their hearing. Can the ears alone distinguish the sound or is the sound perceived to be different only when other senses are involved? This argument is purely an objective one about what can actually be perceived by the ears alone or what requires other senses to be working in conjunction with the ears in order for the difference to be perceived.

So the people that get labeled "objectivist" are the ones who want to know what can be heard when other sensory data is not available. The ones labeled "subjectivist" are the ones that want to know what they can perceive as sounding different when they are fully informed about what kind of equipment they are listening to. These are both objectivist. One should be called hearing exclusive objectivist while the other is called fully sensory informed objectivist.

A similar situation in the visual would be to compare lengths of things by eye. If a person looks at a piece of dowel sitting on a table, and then looks at another piece of dowel nearby and declares that one dowel is longer than the other, that’s a perceptual measurement they have made by eye - an objective measurement. They could also subjectively declare one length to be better looking than the other. They could then put the dowels side by side to give the eyes a more direct perspective. It may be noticed that they seem identical in length when right next to each other, so they then measure them with a gage that repeatedly and consistently reveals that one dowel will fit into a slot a bit easier than the other, so that indicates that one is slightly longer than the other. But maybe it’s not the one that the observer thought was the longer one. Maybe one dowel weighs more than the other, so this gave the observer a sense that the heavier one must be longer. It’s still all objectivity here. All objectivity requires perception. Tools give us different ways to assist our perceptions and perhaps draw logical conclusions. If the person insists that the heavier one is longer visually even though it fits in the slot easier, they are making an objective statement that it looks longer, not that it actually is longer.

asctim
cdc
1,657 posts
 

So what's the point?

asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
4,252 posts
 

....maybe enjoy what you have until you don't and decide to change Something.

Mostly subjective with a twist of the objective towards an objective.

Same old....just different frosting....

Thanks y'all for clearing the air on all that... ;)

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,152 posts
 

@nonoise, Thank you. I hope you feel the same about your system.

@asctim , I'm afraid you have lost me. I am after all, a very simple minded person. 

@cd318 , that sounds logical.

asctim OP
428 posts
 

So I see I am not persuasive in my attempt to shift the use of words. People can use "subjective" and "objective" as they see fit. Ultimately words are defined by how people use them, not by how someone like myself feels they should be used. So yes, I see that people use the word "subjective" to mean something determined by direct individual perception without any robust testing controls. The senses can be blended together in a completely uncontrolled manner and whatever perception comes to a person is said to be that person’s subjective perception. It becomes objective, or at least more objective, when some kind of control has been placed that forces a person to discriminate without any kind of knowledge about what they are listening to other than the sound that reaches their ears.

So what do you call it when a person passes a double blind test and prefers one sound over the other? We just call that preference and say that preference is not subjective? That means that subjectivity only involves uncontrolled perceptual issues of external fact, not preference, which seems a bit bizarre to me but I could get used to it.

asctim OP
428 posts
 

@mceljo

I remember reading that Paul Klipsch hired people he called "golden ears" to test his speakers on. These people were typically not audiophiles or musicians or recording engineers, just people who demonstrated an unusual ability to hear things that others couldn’t. Of course they scored great on standardized hearing tests, but they also could do things like properly equalize an intentionally imbalanced signal very quickly with a high degree of accuracy by ear, or detect distortion at unusually low levels.

I like your "open to bias" interpretation of "subjective." It’s hard to be biased about certain facts that are plain to almost everyone, like the number of drivers on a speaker. One of the useful things about science is that it can take something that is open to bias and make it plain through alternate methods of observation. When a person claims they can hear the difference between two devices but only when they know what they are listening to from visual and other sensory input, it’s difficult to prove them wrong. You can trick them by switching components when they don’t know but for whatever reason even when you let them know they’ve been tricked it fails to be compelling evidence to them because when they’ve checked and are sure about what they’re listening to the perception comes back to them. It can be very hard to overcome perceptions, which is why it takes some considerable training to learn to safely fly a small airplane on gyroscopic instruments when there’s zero visibility out the windows. Proprioception doesn’t match what the little gages and dials are showing my eyes.

More to discover