Oh, brother! Bring out the crying towels! It’s cryin time again. 😢 At least perhaps most the anti tweakers and defenders of the sacred Laws of Science can be corralled in one place, at least temporarily. |
analogluvr
@geoffkait I know, it’s crazy! You ask someone for scientific proof and they start crying that you are rude! Glad you understand.
There’s your problem! There isn’t any scientific proof for most anything you wish to name. No wonder you’re frustrated. Feel better now?
Have a nice weekend,
your friend and humble scribe.
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costco_emoji wrote,
“I’ve mulled this fine line of snake oil over a good bit and I’m pretty clear where I stand. For a long time now we’ve been able to measure the performance of audio gear with resolution WAY beyond what any human ear can distinguish.”
That is illogical, Captain. We actually can not (rpt not) measure soundstage height or any other dimension, the sound characteristics of the recording venue, sweetness, warmth, presence, wetness, bass tautness, transparency, glare, things of that nature. As I read your manifesto, the ability to measure anything is pretty much your whole premise. Better luck next time.
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gdhal
This post is worth repeating:
And, I suspect everyone knows which member this restricted area is most appropriate for. 🤣
>>>>The sky is falling! The sky is falling! 🐥 Don’t be scared, little fella.
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👨🚀
gdhal
@kdude66
No. Not you. Close though, if you get my drift 😃
>>>>>Please don’t hurt em, Hammer. 🕺🏻
Sorry, 2channel, I couldn’t resist. But I do agree with you 100%. |
lloydc
There are quite a few trolls and other fools here whose posts I immediately skip. You learn who they are pretty quickly. I don’t know why they bother, much less how they find the time and energy. On the other hand, they are fair game for uncensored responses. I assume some here merely deploy a sense of humor with impunity. If someone defends a Macina Dynamica product, are they joking?
>>>>Calm down, lloyd. You’re getting yourself all exercised. Also, please spell Machina Dynamica correctly. Carry on with your ranting and raving.
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Your post almost made sense that time, grasshopper. 🦗 One assumes you’re still posting drunk. 🍺
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Me wrong? I’m sure you must be mistaken. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
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jon_5912
geoffkait: We actually can not (rpt not) measure soundstage height
We also do not know what the soundstage height is on the recording so there is no way to determine what the correct height is. That means we also don’t know whether one component is more or less accurate when it sounds different in this area.
>>>>Actually we do know what the soundstage should be. The soundstage dimensions of the recording (if recorded live) is the dimensions of the recording venue. What with reverberant decay, echo and other acoustic characteristics captured on the recording. That’s why folks are able to recognize the sound of a particular hall or other venue. This sound of the hall is more apparent on well-recorded material and on high resolution system, obviously.
After doing a ton of reading and listening over about 20 years I’ve decided that these types of differences are most likely distortions that will improve perceived performance in one area and degrade it in another. I don’t have the patience or the budget to blow through a lot of time and tens of thousands of dollars trying to find the perfect amount of various types of distortions to suit my taste. While I agree that everything can’t be measured, when people start talking a lot about something as nebulous as soundstage height I tend to lose interest.
>>>>Sorry to have to be the one to disabuse you of your conclusions, especially in view of your 20 years of reading and listening. Soundstage is one of those things, you either hear it or you don’t. Better luck in the next 20 years. 😀
I hate to pile on but in addition to having an unbearable personality, kait is probably high end audio message boards’ most recognizable charlatan. I say if for the benefit of anyone who’s new to the hobby and isn’t familiar with the teleportation tweak, etc.
>>>>>Whoa! What? Wow, the superlatives keep on coming! Thanks for the mention! 🤡
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gdhal
jon_5912 - I hate to pile on but in addition to having an unbearable personality, kait is probably high end audio message boards’ most recognizable charlatan. I say if for the benefit of anyone who’s new to the hobby and isn’t familiar with the teleportation tweak, etc.
+1
some synonyms, in no particular order:
delusional, fictitious, parasitic, liar, voodoo, sarcastic
>>>>Earth to gdhal - Are you looking in the mirror, spaceman? 👨🚀
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jon_5912, Here’s what you said in your first post, just for the record, no pun intended,
“We cannot measure soundstage height. We also do not know what the soundstage height is on the recording so there is no way to determine what the correct height is. That means we also don’t know whether one component is more or less accurate when it sounds different in this area.
After doing a ton of reading and listening over about 20 years I’ve decided that these types of differences are most likely distortions that will improve perceived performance in one area and degrade it in another.”
>>>>I was attacking your statement that “we don’t know what the correct height of the soundstage is.” We obviously DO know in many or most cases since we DO know WHERE the recordings were made. Frankly, I’m becoming less and less interested in your “findings” over the last 20 years. If success was based on how much reading we did we’d all be geniuses.
jon_5912 also opined,
“When delusional reviewers and charlatans talk about a particular component having a lot of soundstage height, depth, etc. they don’t typically relate it to how big the recording space actually was, how the recording was made. When components are compared and one is said to have greater soundstage depth and no mention is made of what the depth of the actual soundstage was, there’s no reason to think the component with the greater depth is the more accurate one.”
>>>>>Whatever.
Note to self: What’s this, old stalkers’ week?
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Look away, people, look away! This oft happens when a stalker drinks too much coffee. ☕️
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Just one thing. Soundstage height should not be taken all by itself, but as one dimension of the 3 dimensional space of the recording venue. What we should be striving for is a more and more accurate portrayal of that 3 dimensional space, as the system is improved - an “expanding sphere” of the soundstage, as it were. A sphere with dimensions of width, depth and height. Dealing with the 4th dimension is beyond scope. It wasn’t that long ago that audiophiles were exclaiming, “Whoa! The sound is coming from outside the speakers!”
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clearthink
geoffkai"Just one thing. Soundstage height should not be taken all by itself, but as one dimension of the 3 dimensional space of the recording venue."
This is a completely incomplete response but it is what would be expected from someone not practicing the pursuit of Tru-Fi in they're Music Reproduction System which is the only proven way of actually obtaining in the specific listening room the actual realistic characteristics of music this is obtained by working with properties and understanding the properties of each component within the Music Reproduction System and how those properties interact to form the whole that is the sound that we perceive. Understanding Tru-Fi and the more recently discovered ICSS factor are what is necessary for anyone assembling, adjusting or optimizing a Music Reproduction System if they hope to achieve any success other than that which can be obtained by random trial and error.
>>>The name is geoffkait. Furthermore, I have no idea what your post is supposed to mean. Do I need a decoder ring? I am not advocating trial and error at all. Actually the opposite. What are you selling?
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kosst_amojan
Michael, I’m pretty sure I responded to that stupid statement of Geoff’s, as well as citing examples of how it’s synthesized. It seems to me we must have figured out how to measure those spacial attributes if we’re creating devices and techniques that simulate them. My recording/production engineer friend has all kinds of tricks up his sleeve for adding depth, height, and width to mixes.
>>>>Sorry, we don’t want that synthetic crapolla. We don’t want artificial soundstage and we don’t want your synthetic noise reduction and we don’t want your dynamic range compression. We know how to go about getting the real thing, which is buried in the recording, so we don’t need any recording/production engineer’s tricks, but thanks anyway. We don’t want added depth, height or width. We don’t want anything added. Have the decency to stay out of the high end.
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kosst_amojan
Clearthink, there is NO argument in opposition to what I’m saying except from those who’re simply uninformed. The post by mmeysarosh two posts prior to your last further makes my point. Maybe I didn’t iterate it eloquently enough to start or something. I don’t see Michael really disagreeing. A few others clearly see my point.
>>>>Actually, mmeysarosh wasn’t making your point at all. What he said, among other things, is you have to deal with the acoustics of a room - one room at a time. As I have oft said with respect to speaker set up, trial and error by listening a little, moving a little does not work the best. The best way to optimize the sound - especially SOUNDSTAGE - is by obtaining correct speaker placement with a Test CD that has a speaker set-up track, like the XLO Test CD. This method ensures ideal speaker placement for *the given room* - at that point in time - and will ensure the best soundstage for that particular room for however it’s configured AT THAT TIME. NOTE - This method requires using your ears. You don’t measure anything.
But whatever soundstage is achievable at that point in time CAN BE IMPROVED by further improvements to room acoustics, using better electronics, better cables, better topology, contact enhancers, fuses, the whole nine yards. There is NO END to how good the soundstage (relative to the original recording venue space) can get it requires a lot of effort. I never promised you a rose garden. 🌹 🌹 🌹Having heard a great many advanced systems I think I can say without fear of contradiction many people believe they have conquered Everest or almost conquered it but in reality they have not yet reached Base Camp, which is only half way up the mountain. 🏔
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kosst_amojan
The statement Geoff made about spacial cue not being measurable is patently false and we do measure it and replicate it through all manner of trickery at the recording and play back ends.
@costco_emoji - What the ding ding are you talking about? First of all, I did not make any such statement. I did not say spatial cue could not be measured. There is much more to “soundstage” than some spatial cues. Period. It’s not nice to shove words down someone’s throat.
The soundstage in all of its glory, it’s dimesionality, it’s transparency, it’s gestalt, details, it’s ...realism, etc., is right there on the recording. All that’s required is to dig it out of the grooves by hook or crook. That’s why audiophiles go to extremes, you know, tweaks and isolation, chicken bones if they would help, to extract the soundstage and *all the information* that’s “hidden” there. We don’t want you guys replicating anything. Didn’t you understand my previous comment. Stay out of the high end! We don’t want you replicating anything, faking the soundstage, removing tape hiss or compressing dynamics.
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kosst_amojan
@geoffkait
Yeah, you did. Anybody can go back and look.
>>>>>Prove it. Talk is cheap.
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To a certain extent I think he’s right. It’s a little bit like when the inmates take over the asylum, as it were.
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kosst_amojan
I’d say if your desire is learning, there are better resources. Mr. Carlson’s Lab on YouTube. Diyaudio.com. Passdiy.com. The Burning Amp lectures. Just to name a few. Reading people discussing the finer points of gain device characteristics is a much more fascinating endeavor than reading amatures rattling on about exotic fuses.
>>>>It appears there are a great many folks who are extremely “circuit-focused” and who refuse to even consider there’s anything else to this hobby other than measurements and circuits of gain devices. That group, as manifested over on DIYAudio (and elsewhere), comprises some of THE most closed-minded and dismissive people I’ve ever seen. Any topic or concept that’s more than 1 Sigma away from the group and the moderator there is quickly attacked and deep six’d. The Blowtorch thread over on DIYAudio, where John Curl holds forth (at least John himself is not nearly so hyper focused) is up to what, 3 million posts? Including his disciples, the ones with glistening eyes. 😳 That’s 3 Million posts, people, not views. Can you say Hyper focused? He-loo!
Knowledge can be defined as what’s left after you subtract everything you forgot from school. The education system has been broken for like forever anyway,
have a nice day 😃
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I figured that would get a hair trigger personal attack from costco_emoji. Ouch! Very ouch!
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Word for the day. Apocryphal. Whoa!
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What’s the matter now, pumpkin? 😛
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almarg
“... Which serves to illustrate, IMO, that when it comes to many of the more controversial things in audio the truth is usually a good deal more nuanced than viewpoints that tend to be expressed by those at or near both extremes of the belief spectrum, and usually lies somewhere in between.”
>>>Oh, my, what’s this, a compromise! An olive branch? Why would anyone call these things controversial? Except for an extremely small percentage, the results of these“controversial” tweaks are all positive. Calling them controversial appears to be nothing more than a ploy or wishful thinking on the part of long term deniers - the most vociferous most of whom never even tried the device under scrutiny. Give me a break! Are they trying perhaps to justify all the backslapping and cutting & pasting of their wild “scientific” theories they’ve been circulating for years trying to get some traction? Do the math.
No controversial audiophile tweak has ever been proven to be a hoax or a fraud. - old audiophile axiom
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gdhal
geoffkait - “No controversial audiophile tweak has ever been proven to be a hoax or a fraud. - old audiophile axiom.”
@geoffkait
Nor has the impossible ever been proven to be the possible. An old opportunistic axiom. 🤑
Whoa! Are you high? That’s illogical to the extreme.
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from voodoo. That’s what applies here, obviously.
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kosst_amojan
@geoffkait
Please, Geoff, enlighten the unwashed masses here as to what this "sufficiently advanced technology" is that appears to us as voodoo.
Oh, I dunno, costco, but I suspect in your case it could be just about anything that looks at you a little cross-eyed. 🙄
Pop quiz. Multiple choice. Oh boy, oh boy!
Which of the following are not woo?
a. Green Pen
b. Mpingo disc
c. Silver Rainbow Foil
d. Tice Clock
e. Intelligent Chip
f. Demagnetizing CDs
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costco_emoji,
Thanks for expressing your feelings and opinions. Good luck with all that.
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When is a force not a force? When it’s a voltage. Electromotive force is not (rpt not) a force, as fate would have it. Otherwise, Volts would have units of pounds or kilos or grams or whatever. It’s not the voltage that throws you across the room. It’s the amps, baby,!
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whart
The trick, to me (given that I am somewhat challenged in the math/physics/hard sciences department), is to translate the science into something that is readily understandable by those untutored in the relevant fields. I know that can lead to oversimplification but my experience working with witnesses as a lawyer is that the judge (and jury) needs to understand it.
>>>>I think you just put your finger on it. According to what I’ve been seeing on audio forums for nigh on twenty five years there’s a huge communication barrier between science minded individuals and the rest the general population, including English majors, Econ. Majors, History majors, what have you. It just doesn’t compute. Even drawing a picture doesn’t work. That’s what Richard Feynman tried to do, somewhat unsuccessfully. Does that seem too harsh?
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Shakespeare, kick in the rear. Now, that’s funny!
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