Re: Why You Need More Than Just "Trusting Your Ears"
Great posts :congrats:
Great posts :congrats:
Why You Need More Than Just "Trusting Your Ears"
- Thread starter nicoff
- Start date
while clever and 'cute' it's simply not true. ANYTHING that can be heard can in fact be measured, whereas not everything that can be measured can be heard.
Example........ I'm 67 years young, can I hear a 20k hz test tone, hell no but it can be measured !
stereogeek
Member
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2018
- Messages
- 472
Many speakers ( which will go un-named ) have a fairly flat frequency response, time correct, etc. Many of these speakers, to me, sound boring and lack the life to reproduce music in a lively manner. Their measurements look great but do nothing for me. You can try all you want to get flat response but how does it sound with music? This is where the ears rule.
Mike Lavigne
Member
i'm not anti-anything, i'm pro result. my system and room development path does include some use of measurements, and scientific acoustic design from time to time. my room was originally designed from a clean sheet of paper by an acoustician (2004). my original room was mostly diffusion with all cabinet grade hardwood surfaces, and some substantial bass traps (with acoustic fabric) in the front corners, some in the rear, and the whole drop ceiling.
i then lived with the actual room for 6 years, as a result of some listening perceptions, had a few measurements done by the Genesis Loudspeaker designer (a friend Gary Koh), and then made some changes in the bass traps and room boundaries (2010-2011). later, after i had upgraded my speakers, the speaker designer for my Evolution Acoustics MM7's Kevin Malmgren, took 2 days to set-up the speakers usings measurements (2014), but found a 10db suckout at 30hz (my speakers descend to -3db at 7hz), and suggested how to solve it. a year later i did what he suggested and did solve it.
OTOH by far the largest improvement in my system performance was from hearing another room with my same gear, realizing where i needed to get to, then taking 6 months of room tuning purely by ear (Feb-July 2015). then when i solved my suckout issue, i had to readjust my bass towers (since my set-up was all wrong with the suckout gone), and i did it purely by ear over a 6 week period. there are -4- 1000 watt bass amps each with 4 adjustments (August-October 2015).
my room tuning (the final part of room tuning) was not something possible with measurements. music is dynamic, and changes every millisecond. your ears are a far superior tool to identify something real from something not real. but you have to get to the point where you are in the ballpark of room synergy.....which could involve measurements.
that was 5 years ago and my room sounds amazing and i have not touched anything acoustically or speaker adjusting since.
at the end of the process most of my bass traps were eliminated except the ones in the rear, i still had plenty of hardwood diffusion, but i had added more diffusive elements, and had covered lots of strategic reflection points with fabric. so not absorptive, but knocked down surface reflections. a combination of surface treatments. placing those took months and months.....all by ear.
so yes, measurements have their purpose, scientific acoustic design has it's purpose, but predicting what might happen acoustically is simply too complicated to be reliable. like predicting the weather. you need boots on the ground and a fully operational and motivated human to take the last essential steps to music reproduction magic!!!
but know it takes years and a ton of work to really dial in a serious room and system, not for the feint of heart.
again, i'm not anti-anything, i'm pro-results.
btw; in the long term i absolutely trust my ears, but it's not that simple. the story of my room, is also the story of my growth as a listener. it took my trial and error process over the years to finally in 2014-2015, 10 years after move-in, understand what my sonic reference was, and then take those final fine-tuning steps to attain room synergy.
and now, if i'm listening critically for some system or gear decision, what i totally trust my ears is, over an extended multi-day period, to find the truth. but i have a secret weapon, a room that i've grown to understand. it delivers musical truth....according to my personal expectations.
i then lived with the actual room for 6 years, as a result of some listening perceptions, had a few measurements done by the Genesis Loudspeaker designer (a friend Gary Koh), and then made some changes in the bass traps and room boundaries (2010-2011). later, after i had upgraded my speakers, the speaker designer for my Evolution Acoustics MM7's Kevin Malmgren, took 2 days to set-up the speakers usings measurements (2014), but found a 10db suckout at 30hz (my speakers descend to -3db at 7hz), and suggested how to solve it. a year later i did what he suggested and did solve it.
OTOH by far the largest improvement in my system performance was from hearing another room with my same gear, realizing where i needed to get to, then taking 6 months of room tuning purely by ear (Feb-July 2015). then when i solved my suckout issue, i had to readjust my bass towers (since my set-up was all wrong with the suckout gone), and i did it purely by ear over a 6 week period. there are -4- 1000 watt bass amps each with 4 adjustments (August-October 2015).
my room tuning (the final part of room tuning) was not something possible with measurements. music is dynamic, and changes every millisecond. your ears are a far superior tool to identify something real from something not real. but you have to get to the point where you are in the ballpark of room synergy.....which could involve measurements.
that was 5 years ago and my room sounds amazing and i have not touched anything acoustically or speaker adjusting since.
at the end of the process most of my bass traps were eliminated except the ones in the rear, i still had plenty of hardwood diffusion, but i had added more diffusive elements, and had covered lots of strategic reflection points with fabric. so not absorptive, but knocked down surface reflections. a combination of surface treatments. placing those took months and months.....all by ear.
so yes, measurements have their purpose, scientific acoustic design has it's purpose, but predicting what might happen acoustically is simply too complicated to be reliable. like predicting the weather. you need boots on the ground and a fully operational and motivated human to take the last essential steps to music reproduction magic!!!
but know it takes years and a ton of work to really dial in a serious room and system, not for the feint of heart.
again, i'm not anti-anything, i'm pro-results.
btw; in the long term i absolutely trust my ears, but it's not that simple. the story of my room, is also the story of my growth as a listener. it took my trial and error process over the years to finally in 2014-2015, 10 years after move-in, understand what my sonic reference was, and then take those final fine-tuning steps to attain room synergy.
and now, if i'm listening critically for some system or gear decision, what i totally trust my ears is, over an extended multi-day period, to find the truth. but i have a secret weapon, a room that i've grown to understand. it delivers musical truth....according to my personal expectations.
Mike Lavigne
Member
my local friend has a set of lasers; two that clamp 'flat' onto the tweeter and another rotates on top of the speaker. my room is absolutely symmetrical to a 1/4 inch. we measured the center line, and then first leveled the -4- 7 foot tall speaker towers, then exactly set the depth and alignment with the lasers.
with all the energy in my room and all my driver surface (lots going on), the affect of the laser alignment was considerable in terms of coherence and musical focus. and this was a free upgrade.....there for the taking.
my 4 towers are set equa-distant from my ears, so i have coherent wave launch for optimal musical impact. my speakers are time and phase aligned and use a first order crossover.
Mike Lavigne
Member
here is an example of room/system development i did last week using my ears only over a period of a week or so. i tried this change based on observations of what might be an opportunity for improvement i had been thinking about. it did take a few days to sort out the wheat from the chaff on the change and fine tune it. but for almost zero dollars i got a significant lift in musical involvement. when your room is reliably telling you everything, then it is easier to try things and determine whether it's good or just different. you do have to read to the second page of posts to get to the end result.
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Kingrex
Active member
I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. He was explaining to me how his perception of music is partly this big sphere of music in front of him. For the most part the music is sort of in a large circle. It stretches to the sides, up and down with depth. For the most part the sound is in a big spherical space. As we have worked to improve his overall performance, what he notices is the edges of this sphere become more pronounced in what he can here in them.
How are you going to measure what he is perceiving as greater fill in, in his perception of a sphere of the music from the listening chair with a tool??? You may say you believe you can measure everything. But how do you calibrate and direct the microphones to focus on what his brain is interpreting as spacial planes of sound perception. How can you even know what he is perceiving. His 2 biological microphones and processing center are calculating the interaction of sound waves in the room. And we don't even know how a brain does that. I don't even know he can verbally explain what he is perceiving.
I am not saying a tool could not be made. My understanding of a tool is that as a mechanical piece of equipment it can only analyze date based upon its software and hardware. Tools are limited by the ability of the maker. Tools have no conscience. Without conscience, tools lack the capability to perceive music the way a humans ears, body and brain do. They lack the ability to tell you, I don't understand what you are asking me to do. Since I don't believe one person has the ability to understand how another persons brain perceives the world, I can not therefore accept a person can build a tool to measures another persons "perceptions" of sound. Therefore, tools can not measure everything. They can only measure what the manufacturer told it to measure. And even then, all tools have a tolerance of accuracy.
To me tools provide very limited date. They tell you if at your chair you have peaks and dips in pressure and bandwidth. Nothing else. We don't know how to program them to measure other attributes of sound perception. That does not mean that one day when humans have mastered the connection of hardware to our brains and software to interface with the brain that we might not be able to do as such. But at this point in time, we are far away from tools being able to measure everything we hear.
How are you going to measure what he is perceiving as greater fill in, in his perception of a sphere of the music from the listening chair with a tool??? You may say you believe you can measure everything. But how do you calibrate and direct the microphones to focus on what his brain is interpreting as spacial planes of sound perception. How can you even know what he is perceiving. His 2 biological microphones and processing center are calculating the interaction of sound waves in the room. And we don't even know how a brain does that. I don't even know he can verbally explain what he is perceiving.
I am not saying a tool could not be made. My understanding of a tool is that as a mechanical piece of equipment it can only analyze date based upon its software and hardware. Tools are limited by the ability of the maker. Tools have no conscience. Without conscience, tools lack the capability to perceive music the way a humans ears, body and brain do. They lack the ability to tell you, I don't understand what you are asking me to do. Since I don't believe one person has the ability to understand how another persons brain perceives the world, I can not therefore accept a person can build a tool to measures another persons "perceptions" of sound. Therefore, tools can not measure everything. They can only measure what the manufacturer told it to measure. And even then, all tools have a tolerance of accuracy.
To me tools provide very limited date. They tell you if at your chair you have peaks and dips in pressure and bandwidth. Nothing else. We don't know how to program them to measure other attributes of sound perception. That does not mean that one day when humans have mastered the connection of hardware to our brains and software to interface with the brain that we might not be able to do as such. But at this point in time, we are far away from tools being able to measure everything we hear.
TheGemState
New member
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2018
- Messages
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AJ Soundfield
Well-known member
Humans can't hear into the GHz, detect 0.001% THD etc, etc., easily measured. So beware of "sayings" of posterior origin.
Of course there is no limit to what audiophiles can "hear" (including of course, GHz signals, etc, etc.). Just ask 'em. YMMV.
Btw, it's not a binary choice. Except for those incapable of measuring.
cheers,
AJ
p.s. it's also why I've heard innumerable "audiophile" systems with terrible bass, glaringly out of phase, asymmetry, etc, etc.
Kingrex
Active member
While I agree we can not "hear" high frequency airborn waves, are you sure we can not "sense" them. I have heard people say, when relaxing in a RF shielded room, there is a sense of calm you get that is not felt outside the room.
There is also a lot of documentation (not peer reviewed medical) that those living near cell towers and high voltage power lines have higher rates of cancer. I can't hear it, but my body might be "sensing" it.
And it is not just audiophile. There is a industry around plug in devices to shunt EMF and RF noise pollution in your home. There is even clothing to protect you. So Audiophiles, take solace in knowing we are not the only crazy ones out there.
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Rex
There is also a lot of documentation (not peer reviewed medical) that those living near cell towers and high voltage power lines have higher rates of cancer. I can't hear it, but my body might be "sensing" it.
And it is not just audiophile. There is a industry around plug in devices to shunt EMF and RF noise pollution in your home. There is even clothing to protect you. So Audiophiles, take solace in knowing we are not the only crazy ones out there.
Wireless Radiation-proof Apparel
GreenWave Dirty Electricity Filters and Meters - Greenwave Filters
Rex
AJ Soundfield
Well-known member
Correct. No human can hear GHz frequencies. But we can easily measure them. So the "saying" as Nicoff posited, is correct. As to "sensing", cancer etc, that's another matter.
The fact of the matter is, stereo, the "thing" audiophiles hear, is the invention of engineers, who knew exactly how to measure and thus create it.
What audiophiles always conflate, is measurements of the soundfield aka sound waves and what is happening inside heads. those are not the same thing. Soundwaves, especially stereophony, are very much measurable to the "we" descending from Blumlein et al.
Measurements inside heads is still in it's infancy, but "we" know something there also, hence FMRIs for various stimuli, etc, including sound.
Again, listening/hearing and measuring are not binary choices. Not since Blumlein. YMMV.
cheers,
AJ
Kingrex
Active member
You have a good point AJ. Tools can measure things we can not hear. Designers could not make an amp without tools. They have to measure the circuit. Same for speaker builders. They use tools to measure cabinets, crossovers and room frequency response. Tools are a valuable asset. Don't get me wrong. I like tools. That is one of the reasons I ordered an RF meter last night that goes to 8 GHz. It can not detect AT&T 5G at 16 to 22GHz. But it can detect TMobile 5G at 2GH and At&T 4G at 5GHz. Plus Wifi and other lower band noise. I use tools every day. I just wont say tools at this time can measure everything we hear. Mostly because I don't think we don't have the knowledge to build and program them yet.
And to your argument. True we can not hear the RF itself or .001% THD. But we can hear the affect it has on playback. Hence, as you say, audiophile have glaring out of phase, asymmetry and terrible bass. So even though we can't hear everything a tool measures, we are hearing the affect of inaudible inputs on the audio circuit. If we could not hear the "noise" or the affect on the circuit, we would not care about the "noise", measurable or not.
I am asking because I do not know. Do you believe there is a tool designed to analyze the perception of the expansion of the sound stage one hears. Available to audiophile and used by any room speaker setup specialist. Are there any devices utilized by professionals in the field to measure a small increase or decrease in what people perceive as sound stage and how it changes in the upper, lower or depth front to back. If so would you share what it is. I am curious. I would ultimately expect such a tool to have a display more complex than a waterfall plot or simple pressure/hertz bands. I would expect it to display a 3 dimensional bubble expressing energy and frequency. Or at least that to me would be a simple visual interpretation of what we perceive as sound stage.
Maybe you think there is a better way to display the values. Like I said, I don't know. That is just how I would envision a graphic.
Rex
And to your argument. True we can not hear the RF itself or .001% THD. But we can hear the affect it has on playback. Hence, as you say, audiophile have glaring out of phase, asymmetry and terrible bass. So even though we can't hear everything a tool measures, we are hearing the affect of inaudible inputs on the audio circuit. If we could not hear the "noise" or the affect on the circuit, we would not care about the "noise", measurable or not.
I am asking because I do not know. Do you believe there is a tool designed to analyze the perception of the expansion of the sound stage one hears. Available to audiophile and used by any room speaker setup specialist. Are there any devices utilized by professionals in the field to measure a small increase or decrease in what people perceive as sound stage and how it changes in the upper, lower or depth front to back. If so would you share what it is. I am curious. I would ultimately expect such a tool to have a display more complex than a waterfall plot or simple pressure/hertz bands. I would expect it to display a 3 dimensional bubble expressing energy and frequency. Or at least that to me would be a simple visual interpretation of what we perceive as sound stage.
Maybe you think there is a better way to display the values. Like I said, I don't know. That is just how I would envision a graphic.
Rex
brad225
Well-known member
I totally agree with your view.
With reliable measurements from his listening position you can only hope to have an acceptable sweep as you said. Once you achieve that its all up to our ear function and brain interpretation of what we are hearing, to decide if it is correct for each of us.
I think the chance that many of us all hear the same thing is slim.
I would relate it to vision. If you take 6 people into a paint store and have them look at 30 shades of blue. Then ask them which is a true blue, it is very unlikely they will pick the same color. Every color has a measurement to create it but it comes to what the brain and personal preference tells us.
When I have had meetings of our local audio group in our home, I ask what people would change if it was their system. I say, it is just curiosity as I am happy with the sound. I'm never offended if someone obviously doesn't like what I like. It's just a different shade of blue.
- Thread Author
- #54
Your audiophile friend does not need a swarm of subwoofers. One sub or two (max) and DSP filters should fix his issue.
AJ Soundfield
Well-known member
No. We can't hear either of those easily measured things on playback. The only way one could hear an effect of GHz frequencies is for it to modulate down into the audio band, which is not the same thing. You most certainly won't hear any effect of 0.001% THD. Its a meaningless perceptual metric.
Yes. A spatial interferometer, binaural room impulse responses, etc. can measure changes in spatial aspects of stereophony (itself created in a studio via electronic manipulations)...if that is what was heard/outside head in soundfield. As I linked earlier (and hopefully you read), a measurement of the wine would have been erroneous, for what differences were tasted. The correct measurement there was used, an FMRI.
Rex, this really isn't that complex for 99% of end users. With select tracks/signals, my ears will tell me quicker than a measurement if there are phase, asymmetry, etc issues. In the real world, the loudspeaker dominates > 500Hz or so. Pick the speaker you like, position them to taste and that should take care of it. Below 500hz, the room dominates. Specifically, the speaker/room modal coupling. That's really where measurements become more efficient than "ears" at surgically mitigating issues.
cheers,
AJ
MPW
Member
Exactly
Kingrex
Active member
Not sure what the wine marketing had to do with the topic. The wiki link to Blumlein is hugh. Anything to look at in particular.
The link to BRS is very intriguing. How do you get to evaluate a speaker while never having it at your house. That would be a godsend for audiophile.
I can see the science of acoustics has progressed. I guess since you make speakers its a passion of yours to know this information. So in your opinion, do you feel we can measure everything we hear. And in a meaningful way, we can use tools to set a fundamental baseline of optimum speaker placement and room treatments. Is that what your saying?
And once the baseline is set, are you of the belief that using ears is only walking away from optimum to meet subjective likes?
The link to BRS is very intriguing. How do you get to evaluate a speaker while never having it at your house. That would be a godsend for audiophile.
I can see the science of acoustics has progressed. I guess since you make speakers its a passion of yours to know this information. So in your opinion, do you feel we can measure everything we hear. And in a meaningful way, we can use tools to set a fundamental baseline of optimum speaker placement and room treatments. Is that what your saying?
And once the baseline is set, are you of the belief that using ears is only walking away from optimum to meet subjective likes?
AJ Soundfield
Well-known member
If read, it unambiguously shows the correct measurements, that audiophiles believe are "missed" because they don't show up in external measurements (the wrong place), such as wines, widgets, the soundfield, etc, etc, etc.
There's lots of things that can be measured. Choose wisely.
The very first sentence, includes (his many inventions) "Stereophonic sound". The "spheres", etc, etc, etc, etc. thing you alluded to earlier.
Externally, physical soundwaves, etc, yes. Stereo isn't magic. Internally, no. FMRIs etc are just the beginning. Much to learn there.
Eh?? I'm saying the average end user/Audiophile should really only "need" to measure for one purpose, < 500hz aka the room/speaker. I build active (amplified) speakers, but have never once measured THD. It helps to know why.
AJ Soundfield
Well-known member
Sorry double post
