I also like food analogy - imagine that you order famous Korean dish known for it salty and sour taste, but you cover it with sugar to your taste. Is it still original dish?
When I offer green tea to my friends they put two teaspoons of sugar into it. It is perfectly OK, but it isn't a green tea IMHO. You listen to clarinet, that produces only odd harmonics, thru amplifier that adds even harmonics (warm sound). Do you still listen to clarinet or your syropy version of it? You can do whatever you want - it is free country, but words "faithful reproduction" still mean something in both audio and food.
Pleasurably better, not measurably better
I have created a new phrase: pleasurably better.
I am giving it to the world. Too many technophiles are concerned with measurably better, but rarely talk about what sounds better. What gives us more pleasure. The two may lie at opposite ends of the spectrum.
I use and respect measurements all the time, but I will never let any one of them dictate to me what I actually like listening to.
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@ghdprentice You got at the heart of it, first, when you said, "The problem is the measurement problem is so oversimplified… it does not come close to characterizing sound as heard." In early psychology, there is the idea of "minima sensibilia," roughly the threshold at which some phenomenon can be sensed. If we had that for audio measurements, it would help -- somewhat. I'm convinced that there is much we hear that no one knows how to measure for, yet. Skeptics will say this is just "subjective bias" but that catchall move just ends inquiry, cold. There's more at work, I'd expect. |
Yep, I learned decades ago that if someone is happy with the sound of two tin cans and some string, there is little chance of convincing them that your system is any better.
I think you’re right. Bass heavy low resolution high distortion systems probably outsell audiophile systems by a factor of 100 to 1. If not more. ’No highs no lows’ never bothered with accuracy but Amar Bose himself was left swimming in a sea of cash as a result of his careful crowd pleasing algorithms.
Accurate playback is not only extremely difficult to deliver, it’s not even on most people’s radar. |
Really good anology, I like it! And certainly no well mannered person would ever attack another for discussing the ph of a wine or the saltiness of the soup or the sweetness of the pie. :-) |
Love it. There's simply no argument against it save for trolling and insults and it brings us all back to the point of this hobby: it's what we, ourselves, enjoy. Remove dogmatic objectivism from the equation and you're left with personal preferences, self enjoyment and the (happily) loss of peer pressure from those too tightly wound. All the best, |
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