Re: audio culture nonsense?

Sonnova <sonnova@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 15:46:59 -0800, Steven Sullivan wrote
> (in article <fludlj01un2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>):

> > Harry Lavo <hlavo@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> "Steven Sullivan" <ssully@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
> >> news:flqu8u0fl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >>> ---MIKE--- <twinmountain@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > 
> >>> snip<
> > 
> >>> So,let's recap: upon auditioning this amplifier,
> >>> 
> >>> Michael Fremer got addicted and fell in love.
> >>> Max Dudious believed in magic.
> >>> Arnie Goodman became joyful.
> >>> 
> >>> and Audio Adviser promises us we'll hear music we never heard
before, even 
> >>> from our
> >>> most beloved CDs.
> >>> 
> >>> Clearly this amp stands out from other amps in terms of
sound...right?
> >>> 
> >>> Except, no actual evidence was provided for actual sonic difference
from 
> >>> another amp.
> >>> 
> >>> Imagine if I took the time to read the copy for all of them.
> >>> 
> > 
> >> Have you ever owned high-powered monoblocks?
> > 
> > Certainly not.
> > 
> >> Have you ever even heard a high-end system with them in a favorable 
> >> environment, using other equipment you respect?
> > 
> > Yes.
> > 
> > Are Fremer et al indulging in hyperbole?  Quite possibly. 
> > Is this common in audiophile reviews? 

> I don't know if I'd call it hyperbole but some of these "differences"
between 
> components are quite subtle. Many are so tiny that it takes someone who
has 
> trained themselves to listen for them to hear them, and even more so, it

> takes a type of personality who CARES about those tiny differences. An 
> analogy is oenology. :->

Let's talk about 'subtle' audible differences. If real, and measurable,
one would expect the 
measurements to show 'borderline' differences, relative to audible
thresholds. If so, then by 
every tenet of psychosensory testing, a double-blind test series on a
*trained* listener is 
the way to validate that this difference is indeed audible.  'Subtle'
differences are where 
chance of false positive is greatest.

> Go to a formal wine tasting. Listen as the oenologist at the front of
the 
> room tells you about the vanilla, coffee, chocolate and raspberry
overtones 
> of the vintage you are tasting. Huh? All I taste is wine.

"Formal" wine tasting is often done blind....as are 'formal' orchestral
auditions. The idea 
being to evaluation of one sensory input being 'contaminated' by possibly
misleading 
information gained via another.

> Human error is always possible. But what do you say when a magazine
p***** a 
> single unit around to several reviewers, all of which live in different
parts 
> of the country and who do not necessarily know each other and who do not

> communicate, but when the evaluations are in, they all have almost the
same 
> things to say about the piece?

In a scientific protocol, you'd be required to show that the reviewers
COULD NOT have
read any other reviews of the same gear.  And you'd be required to use the
same
scoring terminology so there would be no ambiguity about what 'almost the
same things' means.

That's because, indeed, human error is always possible.  

And you've left out a better indicator of difference -- where the
're****ts' actually correlate 
with a *bench test* result.  Instruments don't care what other reviewers
have said, nor how 
much the gear costs or what its 'rep' is or how it looks.

___
-S 
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy, 
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason