Can the fullness and timbre of Jennifer Warnes voice in the recording of "Famous Blue Raincoat" be measured using test equipment. How about the fullness and tembre of the Tenor Sax on the recording? How about the fullness and timbre of Warnes’ voice on "Lights of Lousianne"? Can it be measured using test equipment? Do all power amplifiers, with basically identically the same specs all sound the same? Not to my ears.... What will the test equipment measure? Can it measure fullness and timbre?
The invention of measurements and perception
This is going to be pretty airy-fairy. Sorry.
Let’s talk about how measurements get invented, and how this limits us.
One of the great works of engineering, science, and data is finding signals in the noise. What matters? Why? How much?
My background is in computer science, and a little in electrical engineering. So the question of what to measure to make systems (audio and computer) "better" is always on my mind.
What’s often missing in measurements is "pleasure" or "satisfaction."
I believe in math. I believe in statistics, but I also understand the limitations. That is, we can measure an attribute, like "interrupts per second" or "inflamatory markers" or Total Harmonic Distortion plus noise (THD+N)
However, measuring them, and understanding outcome and desirability are VERY different. Those companies who can do this excel at creating business value. For instance, like it or not, Bose and Harman excel (in their own ways) at finding this out. What some one will pay for, vs. how low a distortion figure is measured is VERY different.
What is my point?
Specs are good, I like specs, I like measurements, and they keep makers from cheating (more or less) but there must be a link between measurements and listener preferences before we can attribute desirability, listener preference, or economic viability.
What is that link? That link is you. That link is you listening in a chair, free of ideas like price, reviews or buzz. That link is you listening for no one but yourself and buying what you want to listen to the most.
E
Let’s talk about how measurements get invented, and how this limits us.
One of the great works of engineering, science, and data is finding signals in the noise. What matters? Why? How much?
My background is in computer science, and a little in electrical engineering. So the question of what to measure to make systems (audio and computer) "better" is always on my mind.
What’s often missing in measurements is "pleasure" or "satisfaction."
I believe in math. I believe in statistics, but I also understand the limitations. That is, we can measure an attribute, like "interrupts per second" or "inflamatory markers" or Total Harmonic Distortion plus noise (THD+N)
However, measuring them, and understanding outcome and desirability are VERY different. Those companies who can do this excel at creating business value. For instance, like it or not, Bose and Harman excel (in their own ways) at finding this out. What some one will pay for, vs. how low a distortion figure is measured is VERY different.
What is my point?
Specs are good, I like specs, I like measurements, and they keep makers from cheating (more or less) but there must be a link between measurements and listener preferences before we can attribute desirability, listener preference, or economic viability.
What is that link? That link is you. That link is you listening in a chair, free of ideas like price, reviews or buzz. That link is you listening for no one but yourself and buying what you want to listen to the most.
E
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- 174 posts total
I'd like to move this a little more forward: @spatialking wrote: I can tell you the reason we have jitter problems, besides the fact that the basic CD clocks are not all the accurate, Clocks are much better now than they were before at the same price range. Maybe this is why DAC's got magically better? is the sample clock is encoded in the data stream. The clock is not a I think maybe this is the transmission method, not the data. I think the issue is who is in charge though. I2S and USB allow the DAC to be in charge of the clock. |
Here’s a blast from the past : Sonic Frontiers may have been the only one’s I know of to expose I2S outside of a CD player: https://www.stereophile.com/content/sonic-frontiers-transport-3-cd-transport-processor-3-da-processo... |
- 174 posts total