The Objective, Subjective & Dejected Thread

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Hi Allegro,

as far as I remember, 3 Yggdrasil were eventually measured, all with the same very bad results relative to other devices and their price. Measurements are not feelings like hate or love (and BTW some other stuff by Schiit had acceptable measurements).

if it measures better it has to sound better right?
This is a very interesting phrase, and since a while I have been intending to prepare a little “essay” and open a thread dedicated to a fundamental issue resulting in misunderstandings and disagreements among people, (and me no longer willing to be identified as an audiophile), i.a. around the distinction:

  • Euphonic striving (“eu” = better in Greek) → seeking things that sound “better”, more pleasant, e.g. tube devices create audible artefacts making the sound more pleasant, but these artefacts are spike created by harmonic distortion not present in the recorded signal nor in real-life musical performance. Some DACs and many headphones (V-shaped, or on the opposite with lesser treble) create a more pleasant sound, even though not true to the recorded signal and natural performance.
  • High fidelity = fidelity to the recorded signal, no distortion, no artefacts, flat FR… (this can be easily measured for purely electronic devices like DACs and amps).
    Some people are striving for euphonics, other for high-fidelity, and many don’t have these things in mind (sometimes even contradicting themselves without being aware of it).

I hope to be able to write my piece within less than a month.

Now back to the U18t…

Have a nice weekend,
bidn

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If this “essay” is going to be anything like the typical objective vs. subjective arguments then don’t create a new thread for it, just post it in this one.

The biggest problem with hardcore objectivists is their tendency to aggressively push the position that “the one true way” is to go after “high fidelity”, and believe everyone else should think the same way.

The biggest problem with hardcore subjectivists is that they tend to believe all manner of nonsense claims and then literally wind up “hearing things” that either aren’t there or, at least, aren’t there for the reasons they’ve been told they are.

And far too many in both camps are guilty of spending far too much time and angst worrying about what other people are doing with their own money. This is aspect is quite pathetic. It’s like they can’t be happy without either a) the affirmation of others that they’ve “bought something laudable” or b) they can’t be happy without pissing on someones parade.

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now I’m torturing my mind trying to figure out the mechanics of this

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To be clear, ASR’s fairly standard objectivist position is that they seek high fidelity/transparency, by which they mean that the music reproduction equipment doesn’t alter what’s present in the recording. It’s not about sounding “good” it’s about sounding “accurate”. They evaluate this on the basis of certain measurements that can be used to understand the equipment’s behavior quantitatively. In the objectivist camp there is general agreement that there is such a thing as “good enough”, but people disagree on where to draw that line. In practice that line will depend on a lot of factors, including the individual listener and their listening environment, so rather than making a hard judgement on what’s good enough and what isn’t, some people just look at the numbers and go for what measures best within their given budget.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but where the whole objectivist/subjectivist argument always goes off the rails for me is in the two sides’ unwillingness to come together. In the past I’ve used the analogy of western vs complementary and alternative medicine, and I still think it’s a good one. There’s certainly a lot of quackery in the latter camp, but there’s likely also some stuff that really does work, yet western medicine dismisses it all out of hand simply on the basis of its origin. In reality, there’s a lot that western medicine doesn’t understand, and a lot that it actually practices contrary to what its own evidence recommends. I’d much rather see the two sides come together and see people applying the scientific method to understanding whether and how specific traditional medicinal practices work.

Bringing it back to audio, some subjectivists argue that well trained listeners are able to distinguish certain effects of the reproduction chain which current measurements do not capture. The objectivists tend to reply “that’s nonsense!” and the subjectivists dig in and say “you only care about measurements!”, when the most productive outcome would actually be to come together and say “let’s figure out how we might measure this to either understand it or definitely prove that it’s placebo”.

EDIT - One other thing that gets my goat is handwavy, pseudo-scientific explanations for stuff. A good example of this is the trope of “tubes add mostly 2nd harmonic distortion, which is euphonic”. I think ASR’s measurements of tube equipment have done a good job of showing that a good number of tube amplifiers just add a ton of distortion across the board, sometimes not even dominated by 2nd harmonic. This sort of thing is a big part of why I personally have trouble paying a ton of money for source gear. I’ve yet to find someone give a convincing explanation of what exactly they did to make their $1000 DAC sound categorically better than the $100 one that’s currently plugged into my system.

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New Orleans
Bourbon St.
Mardi Gras

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You beat me to that one!

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Well, unfortunately that’s mainly an objectivist standpoint. Subjectivists will never consider anything other than their own personal experiences. They don’t care or attempt science-oriented methods, and won’t consider the fully understood ways to work around human biases (e.g., double blind testing). The placebo effect is real and is medically useful – one recent study in the news claimed the value comes from doctors showing that they care. Care involves empathy and directly leads to positive emotions from patients. Plus, sugar pills are cheaper than real drugs and have fewer negative side effects.

Living one’s life based on positive emotional experience actually plays a role in everyone’s choices and logic. Some people are better able to split apart cause-effect relationships than others. Some people lack either the ability or interest in considering underlying mechanics.

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Something that has concerned me about the strict objectivist position is that they may not know what to measure, and that as new measurements become available, somehow they ought to be applied. Further, if the chain includes a listener, they need to be measuring or accounting for the human also.

Just because something may measure differently does not mean that it makes any audible difference, for example, weight of electronic (non-mechanical - not a turntable platter) equipment. (I’m being obvious here, but if they figure out how to measure something with variable height of cable supports - well you get the idea).

One thing the subjectivists have not measured for is the placebo effect.

And unlike paid reviewers, I can measure my bank accounts and estimate how much I need certain equipment.

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I’m picturing that scene from one of the Hannibal movies where he eats Ray Liottas brain while still alive…

Also in regards to ASR, or anyone who measures things…they all use different gear, and even if it’s the same product, it can and usually does have variance in the measurements of the exact same piece of gear… @Torq and @Resolve have run into this with the EARS system. So how can someone with only one piece of equipment with no verification by the exact same piece of equipment say it is accurate and scientific in measurement? Especially without a peer review of the same? At the end of the day these measurements are being done by hobbyists, as good as they are/ or aren’t, they are still not scientific…Just because you have “scientific” tools does not make you a scientist doing scientific things…just a person doing measurements and then putting their biases into how they interpret the thing…everyone has biases, starting as small as your favorite color, to as large as a preference in religion or picking a mate…or as simple as I like Sennheiser over HiFiman…

“People are people, and I still love them…especially the women!” ~ Slug from Atmosphere

At the end of the day, who cares what other people think, do you and be happy with that, and don’t tread on me with your biases…keep them to yourself :wink: I’ll do my best to do the same =) or at least acknowledge them :wink:

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I suppose it is possible that a better, or different, understanding of physics may result in new things that can be measured and that might even be relevant.

This will still leave a problem, however, and that is how to translate what is measured into what is perceived or “heard”.

Measurements, no matter how fancy, accurate, repeatable or how many times they’ve been replicated across multiple testers/setups can only tell you what the gear is doing. And we can extend that to understand what that effect should be on a “standard” ear (which is only ever going to be an approximation for any given listen as everyone’s ears and hearing response is different … even between their own two ears.

But lets assume we can measure everything that needs to be measured, with 100% reliability and precision (no Heisenberg concerns), all the way up to when the nerve impulses reach the brain.

At that point, it is ALL subjective.

The brain does a lot of processing … more than most would imagine and a lot in ways that would shock the uninitiated. It throws away so much information when there is a lot going on that it is surprising. And it can zero in, and emphasize, on very specific things when necessary.

A simple, non-audio example, is when you look at a mountain range with the naked eye, take a picture of it, and then find that the big central peak looks much smaller, relatively speaking, in the picture. This isn’t down to different optics … it’s down to the brain focusing on elements of interest and magnifying your perception of them.

There’s plenty we do understand about the psychoacoustic world … and probably some things that our knowledge is incomplete on. But we don’t have translatable measurements for how person a) experiences one set of stimuli vs. another for an exhaustive set of variables.

For the most part none of this matters anyway, except when people want to fight about it. If people would just buy what they want, use it how they want, and leave other’s to do the same these arguments (which are invariably unpersuasive from either side) would die out.

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Such a great post @Torq the brain does so much to everything we perceive…

For instance at times if tracks are too “messy” especially up top “I” get nothing but Charlie Browns mom going “whahwhahwhah” at me even with high end gear! This is a problem for “me” and certain headphones can kick it off more frequently than others looks at Empyrean in anguish while thinking “why won’t you let me love you” lol

We all snowflakes…so unique and amazing…now go pick out your individual snow flake in a blizzard :wink: lol

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I will say this, also, I prefer to listen to music using gear that I think is pretty (or at least interesting).

Not because it has any bearing on the sound.

Simply because it makes the entire process more enjoyable.

Just like spinning vinyl. It’s technically not on the same plane, performance wise, as even basic Redbook audio, but I still enjoy it more.

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Speaking from lots of experience and an awful historical record, professional scientists are wildly political and biased. Many high-profile research projects start from a desired outcome and then look for ways to justify the pre-existing viewpoint. There is also a lot bias in what is not reported or studied (i.e., uncomfortable topics such as race, sex, and gender, clear findings that answer a question and lead to no more funding, viewpoints that go against an ideology).

When one looks at the efforts funded by Big Science (e.g., grants from NIH, NIMH, the UN, etc.) there’s not much chance of reaching an ‘undesirable’ outcome. Many, many honest scientists have been smeared for going against the club and had the careers ruined or their work ignored. This even affected the development of totally non-political plate tectonics science (aka “continental drift”) a hundred years ago.

Recent academic biases are bent largely toward the left political wing, but 100 years ago the ‘progressives’ of the time were overt racists. The 75 year period following Charles Darwin and the development of evolution led to a lot of eugenics (human breeding/superiority) research, the justification for might-makes-right for empires, ‘Robber Baron’ capitalism, survival of the fittest politics, and ultimately Nazism. It started with grains of truth and ended with millions of deaths and an extreme backlash against whatever facts were originally present. Now, all of these topics are absolutely toxic in academia!

Over the last 10 years or so, there was a widely reported ‘replication crisis’ in the social sciences. Many high-profile, landmark findings could not be replicated by others (e.g., 25% to 50% were actually correct). Contemporary researchers spend their days trying to figure what was right and what went wrong. One only needs to read social psychology or sociology journals to understand there are 50 different ways to interpret any data set. But, Team Science pushed one view mercilessly for a generation or more.

Sociology and cultural studies have had several embarrassing events following the publication of a fake/sarcastic article by Alan Sokol (i.e. claiming that physical reality is just a social construction). This (overtly ideological) subculture has not changed at all – several journals just accepted a bunch of fake satirical reports in the last couple years. And it was the fakers/satirists who got in trouble…

In recent years some very middle-of-the road researchers have been smeared for stating that the global warming hypothesis is overstated and/or the official data samples have been manipulated. They actually believe in global warming themselves, just not the magnitude of human impact. And they get called ‘denialists’ for offering a sincere critique. Professional science is a brutal, brutal culture. [But, the first person to call another a “Nazi” has plainly lost the argument.]

Science is faddish.
Science is deeply political.
Science routinely overturns itself, but is religiously dogmatic until the revolution occurs.

Hobbyists like Amir at ASR and AtomicBob are every bit as neutral and competent as the average research professional.

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Imho I think it all boils down to too many people seeing things as either black or white. It’s not often that simple, and as others have already said sometimes people just won’t compromise or listen to the other side of an argument without resorting to shouting and being argumentative. Theres a certain amount of fanboyism in all hobbies and the audio community has it’s fair share. Theres always somebody willing to crap on someone who’s just starting out with a modest setup. Though thankfully it doesn’t happen here. Though on certain forums its rife. This saddens me as we should be welcoming everyone into the audio community.

I think that theres room for both subjective and objective viewpoints in audio though not to the extreme on either side.

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While measuring THD + N of amps and DACs is interesting I think it is important to consider that your speakers or headphones introduce distortion that is on the order of 0.5% or higher, and it will vary with frequency. Use vinyl instead of digital files and you introduce another set of variables.

Basing buying decisions solely on how well an amp or DAC measure when the distortion of your transducers will always be higher is ill advised in my opinion. Buy what pleases your ears and don’t obsess about measurements too much.

I was into this hobby back when Harry Pearson started Absolute Sound. The goal within my budget was to gain as much enjoyment from records as possible, and I put a premium on systems that would throw a wide, deep and layered sound stage and gave the illusion that musicians were playing live in my living room.

I have to admit I was never completely content with the sound of digital until Yggdrasil came along. The Yggy gives me very enjoyable sound quality, which this hobby is supposed to be all about. Even Marv at SBAF mentioned Yggdrasil A2 changed his mind about digital.

I am all for less extreme viewpoints in this hobby and more time discussing how to put together systems at different price points, both speaker and headphone based, that provide maximum musical enjoyment.

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My approach to this subject comes from the Audio / Visual Teacher I had in High School in 1972. He was highly experienced in the then state-of-the-art in AV Technology. He pointed out the same distortion measurements as @allegro where the speaker’s own distortion overwhelms any of the previous components in the chain.

Mr. Hoosier’s philosophy was to minimize distortion in all the components prior to the speakers and to otherwise not sweat the details. That philosophy has stood me in good stead over the years.

Mark Gosdin

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It’s funny, but I received this article in my email, thought it was appropriate for this chain, it also echos my feelings to some degree:

But like all things do your own research/come to your own conclusions. =)

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Hi Torq,

I completely agree with you, I find both of those camps too closed-minded and often fanatic.
I too am not interested in the objectivist vs subjectivist divide, and above I am all against closed-mindedness, intolerance to other viewpoints.
I am interested in bringing other dimensions which I thought would fit with your forum, i.e. making people aware:

  • that the audiophile perspective is often used in the sense of enjoyment instead of realism (hifi), relating these to headphones
  • that they should be careful about many reviews and sites, re. business of paid or other sponsored (through adds or free, donated items) reviews and announcements, I appreciate so much the different take your forum has.
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I agree with what you say re. transducers. But re. electronic equipment, all parameters can be measured by standardized and controlled tests.
Concretely:

  • on one hand I see most of the numerous tests performed at rtings.com on transducers (headphones in this case) as not really meaningful
  • on the other hand I find the tests done by Armin (at ASR) on electronic equipment not only legitimate but also invaluable, a much needed blessing.
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generic, I agree with you re. the kinds of human sciences you mention,
but I fear you are over-generalising when extending these things to electronics.
In electronics, things can be consistently measured, quantified, related by mathematical and logical (in wired logic) formula, there are no changes nor paradigm shifts and things just work.

Actually for me most of electronics is not even science (contrary to what the objectivists say), but merely technics, i.e. engineering work of applying established scientific electrical and semi-conductor formulas and results for solving problems like designing and building new equipments.

Also re,. Amir of ASR, he is not hobbist but studied electronics and worked in the industry until retiring.

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