I believe that science will get there sooner or later, but if we are just scraping the tip as to what we can measure in audio, imagine how much more we have to go before we understand how (and why) our brain interprets things the way it does.
Even when we get the Elon-Phones that inject the music directly into our brains, we will still probably disagree on what it sounds like in our heads 
Nice discussion with nice sidebar by @SenyorC. Heâs right that the objective measurements cease to exist when you put them on your head and listen to music.
But Iâm not really happy with your alternate way of posing the subjectivist opinion in such a way that the objectivist has a harder time attacking. Specifically with you example of detail. I think that the subjectivist should be more explicit.
âWhen I listen to Adderlyâs Mercy Mercy Mercy with headphone A, I can detect four distinct tables in front of the stage, and ice clinks in the glass on the left table while the center right is scraping a fork on the plateâ
âWhen I listen with headphone B, I hear the noises, but I canât really place them - itâs like there is a barrier - like a tablecloth between me and the pre-stage. The cymbals are muffled also.â
That still poses the discussion from the listener, but points to specific items. Much of the time I canât tell what the subjectivist is talking about because they assume that I know what they mean by detail. The objectivist is correct in pointing out the linguistic limitations.
Note in the above example, all is trumped by the informationalist who declares, âLive at the Club was promoted as a live album, but what you are hearing is really a tour de force of studio production simulating a club. There were no tables.â
Yes, thatâs along the lines of what Iâm thinking. The examples of 2) and 3) are more of a proposed format of experience-expressing sentences thatâs different from how we typically report them, in an effort to not confuse those descriptions with the kind that actually do refer to acoustic facts about the headphone. Your example is much better for actually communicating information, and also does the same thing.
I think the biggest problem with both subjectivism and objectivism is when members of both clans make absolute pronouncements about whether something is good or bad, without explaining why. And if theyâre one of those gurus that have a following (cough⊠Resolve⊠cough), their sheep mindlessly bleat that the item is good or bad because their fearsome leader said so. (Just kidding about Resolve).
IMO, it should work something like thisâŠ
An objectivist, a subjectivist and a music lover walk into a bar. The objectivist says âThat jukebox is crap because the SINAD is too lowâ. The subjectivist says âThat jukebox is crap because the sound is too V-shaped for meâ. The music love says âI have no idea what either of you said, but this jukebox is awesome because the music groovesâ. They then proceeded to argue for the rest of the evening over several drinks.
All three stated an opinion, and explained the context of their opinion (not as eloquently as @pennstacâs example but good enough for my example). Theyâll likely never persuade each other theyâre right and the others are wrong, but at least theyâve explained their point of view.
This is a massive issue, and something we need to fix in general. Iâve crudely called this âaudio simpingâ, and it comes from stuff being expressed from positions of authority, whether right or wrong. There are channels out there that spew pure madness⊠like absolute ass-on-head nonsense, but do so in ways that seem authoritative, and they gain a following from that. Learning about stuff - growing oneâs perspective - maybe it takes too much effort, but this is one of the things that makes teaching people to fish a bit of an uphill battle.
I could not agree more with this! When I first truly and wholeheartedly got into the hobby I fell for this trap. Wonât name the reviewer but I learned âalmostâ the hard way. People really need to research the reviewer but also formulate their own perspective on things. Too many do not do that or get swayed too easily. Oh and find a common ground too. Know what genre they like and so on to base a consensus.
Sadly this is definitely not limited to this hobby as it happens with all hobbies.
Lastly, we all owe it to ourselves to stop pointing fingers and instead realize we all control our own wallets and decision making. Thank a reviewer (creditable hopefully) and then you are free to give your own subjective opinion to actually contribute in a positive way.
Great topic and conversation today, gents. In regards to such, didnât Floyd Toole state something along the lines of: âNo matter what measurements tell us, a loudspeaker isnât good until it sounds good.â Sure, he was talking about speakers, but I think the same applies to headphones.
The way I see it, both measurements and actual listening enjoyment are critical to headphone design and the end result being considered a success. I.e, the objective and subjective sides are both important. The issues lie in the way proponents of each side present their stance, which I think Resolve outlined well. If we focused more on explaining why and how we arrived at our conclusions and less time focusing on winning the argument, weâd all probably be less combative, more open to listening & learning and better off in the long run. We also should probably stop caring so much about validating our decisions. Like whatever headphone or earphone that you like, and donât let anyone convince you that you donât. Just donât go around telling everyone what you like is what they should like and that theyâre wrong if they donât.
I already know what tonality I like in a headphone, so I use measurements to weed out the headphones that stray too far off that target; then I listen to everything available thatâs close enough to said target, ultimately letting my ears decide what stays or goes. Thereâs no replacement for listening with your own ears!
Just my $0.02 - your mileage may vary.
Interesting discussion. It may well be that feelings about audio gear do not rate near as high in angst producing effect as do current events. One example would be impending world de-dollarization for absolute catastrophic consequences (for the USA obviously); could go on and on, so in that context petty arguments about which headphone is better than the other really donât make much sense IMHO. Truth is itâs all good⊠Audio is such a subjective pursuit anyway; overall the quality of audio components is so good it benefits all with great choices.
I personally donât agree with the idea for the following reason.
1- (Dr Olive mentionned it in your stream) we can put somebody to sing in front of us and measure. So we have a ultimate baseline to compare to. It is not like wine where everyone can make it to his taste.
2- (and I say this while having a susvara. And firmly believe the « technicalities » exist) as long as there is no double blind test like the one you intend to do with the panda vs d8000pro. It is hard to absolutly verify that the « subjective » experience of detail that one may have can be relived in a blind test.
So to I think objectivism, is a tool to verify and confirm a an experience. If no data can detected yet, then be blind testing it should be just as absolute, when the methodology is right.
And I have faith that your experiment will convince many specialists (like dr olive) to start looking again for data to show those « subjective » experiences, once confirmed.
That is not to say that someone is not within his right to like an unrealistic sound wave if he finds is it enjoyable. I personally enjoy more base for exemple. And I am looking for the industry to find a way to confirm the notion of bass dynamics (contrast).
I think I mostly agree - personally, I couldnât care less about measurements and donât even bother looking at them for the most part. The only measuring tools I care about are my ears and my brain. I would never say that people who depend on them are âwrongâ, though.
But when I talk about how something sounds, I just about always put in â⊠to meâ or âit was my experienceâ. Unless the comparison is extreme (Susvara vs Apple earbuds!), I wouldnât say âthis is better than thatâ - better to whom?? I donât expect everybodyâs ears and brain to work the same - I would say, âI like this better than that because to meâŠâ. Nobody can make a valid argument against thatâŠ
Yeah even if we are more likely to hear things more similarly than different (because we all have physical ears), the brain is a weird element to all of this.
I will say though, the benefit of measurements isnât to depend solely on them to give us information about headphones, but rather it gives us important data thatâs at least predictive of certain things, like the tonal balance in given conditions. Eventually the hope is that this data can be predictive of more than just that, and this is where we need further research.
I heard this one before! But it was:
âAn objectivist, a subjectivist and a music lover walk into a leather bar.â
What a great post, even a mini-essay at that. Did you study philosophy of cognitive science?
I agree largely with your post, but I do not share your optimism about the âscienceâ part eventually pushing the pure âqualiaâ part out.
But I definitely agree with you that that is probably the right way forward 
Yeah I think itâs less about pushing pure qualia out - because I donât think thatâs even happened to a full extent with dualism (which is about more than just qualia of course). More so that weâll start getting better explanations for these things. Our current evaluations are typically limited to target adherence/deviation, which doesnât do enough to predict or even ground the potential qualitative aspect to these experiences. At best weâve got âpreferredâ. It does some work there but not entirely. But all it takes is getting those explanations off the ground for us to be able to bridge that gap, at least conceptually.
Like, we donât have to perfectly explain the qualia to know whatâs likely responsible for it, as we can do in other areas.
I donât know, man. I donât think this will help at all. ANY review is the reviewerâs own opinions and experiences. The reader should already assume these qualifiers without the need to express them. It wonât hurt to be this explicit but I donât think it will satisfy an objectivist.
Off topic: I thought we agreed above that headphones canât have detail they can only have clarity, which reveals the detail present in the recording. Seriously asking because your Audiophile Terms Tier List video did not include âclarityâ.
Iâve read objectivists post that they donât believe in anything that canât be proven with blind listening tests. This prompts me to ask myself two questions:
A blind DAC test is relatively straightforward but how do I do a blind headphone test? How can I not know which of two headphones I am wearing? Even if the headphones are the same model there might be perceptible differences in feel.
Considering we all have expectation bias, doesnât it work in both directions? In other words if an objectivist expects two headphones to sound the same, arenât they biased to perceive them so even if they can somehow ABX them in ideal blind conditions?
Frankly I think the whole objectivist/subjectivist debate is like so many other arguments currently raging on the Internet. Itâs not a black/white issue. The only people who are demonstrably wrong are the extremists on either side. Each of us must find our own individual happy medium.
From the objectivists I talk to on a regular basis, this seems to be the root cause of the problem. As many have noted, even objectivists will at some point need to acknowledge the significance of the subjective experience, whether itâs biased from their point of view of âmeasuring wellâ or not. And so if subjective statements about detail (or any other subjective qualia aspect to the sound) remain firmly within the bounds of âdescriptions of experiencesâ, then we can look at various acoustic properties to say âmaybe this is confers that experienceâ and so on. Rather than trying to find âdetailâ in a given headphone.
And you might say this is overly simple and doesnât really change anything (and it doesnât really), but rather just pass the buck farther down the line - but Iâd argue thatâs all thatâs really necessary given that this debate entails two different paths to analyzing the same thing. Itâs a subtle semantic shift if anything, but I think that could go a certain distance to improving the dialogue.
Well isnât that just like an objectivist to be so pedantic? 
But we havenât, though. The âHard Problemâ of consciousness is as much a problem today as it was 150 years ago for the simple reason that the asymmetric subjective conscious awareness that forms the basis of all of our experience is fundamentally incompatible with a coherent metaphysical naturalism. Daniel Dennett is one of the comparatively few philosophical reductionists who understands this which I think is why he clings so fanatically to absurd elminativist positions where consciousness is denied outright or dismissed as an illusion. Consciousness is the only thing I (or anyone else) is 100% certain of, and it is the one thing that makes it possible for me to investigate or contemplate anything else. I do not have any way of knowing with the same certainty that the material universe exists in the way that it is presented to my senses. It seems to me therefore that consciousness is the first thing we should be seeking to understand and that trying to explain it away as some sort of epiphenomenon or as an emergent property of material processes is putting the cart before the horse.
Yup, and thatâs what I expressed in the more recent post. The problem of dualism hasnât exactly gone away so much as itâs âeasedâ, or lessened over time. For the same reason, there are inevitably going to be those impasses in conversation that stem from the uniquely private nature of conscious experience. Thereâs no way around that.
But with that said, the dominant view of this stuff is some form of externalism (whether you allow room for a private layer to experience or not), and that mental content is representational content of external, non-mental things. Thatâs sort of the view Iâd hold of audio objective to audio subjective as well.
If not for endless pandemic distractionsâŠIâd have finished my write-up of the available methods for integrating âobjectiveâ (electrical) and âsubjectiveâ (human) data. Thereâs a ton more to be done about âsubjectiveâ data using off-the-shelf data collection tools and methods. DrumrollâŠthe answer is known as psychological perception science.
Contra @Resolve, perception research long ago dropped dualism and ran with collecting data as possible and integrating sources as possible. They more or less accept that reality is a slightly uncertain impressionistic version of realism and triangulated as possible. Humans are and will likely forever be stuck on semi-independent descriptive âlevels,â as a complete machine (consciousness) can never fully grasp its component processes.
Backstory: Circa 1900 William James at Harvard starting applying then-newish scientific methods to classical philosophy. Key precursors included Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton (Wiki link on psychometrics). Galton came up with the idea of measuring everything possible. And so quantiative social science was born.