Yogi
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2002
- Messages
- 1,741
The worst thing an audio engineer can do is to assume that he or she knows much about the nature of human hearing. After all, the engineer who designed our hearing knows a few things we never will.Perceptive.
alluding to spiritual/religious entities. or anything non-scientific for that matter.That would make all 'amplifier' articles bogus. I have yet to read an article that discusses theory and experiments inside out (like a doctoral thesis, hell even those have certain subjective terms in them) without any reference to non-scientific subjective phenomenon. So I don't know what would make a valid article.
We found that a 3-millibel variation in the frequency response curve can change a listener's perception of the unit. This could explain the audible improvements often associated with wide bandwidth in audio equipment. A loss of frequency response in terms of decibels at 100kHz will mean, in most cases, a drop in frequency response of several millibels at 10kHz - a perceptible change. Many of the colorations (sonic variations) heard in audio equipment will correlate with frequency response variations. It is somewhat surprising that one can consistently hear such small differences between electronic components when the listening is done with speakers that vary in response by several decibels.
Indeed, our ears are quite sensitive to level differences and when those correspond to significantly altered FR's, then yes, it can be audible. However, given that our hearing is most sensitive in the 1-4 kHz range and that it takes a level difference of about 0.2 dB or 200 millibels, and that's using test tones with headphones, then it is with a very skeptical eye that I look at his claim of 3 millibels or 0.003dB as being detectable. My skeptical eye begins to roll when this claim is further taken to be audible at around 10 kHz.
I don't deny preferences gentlemen. And while many may look at tubes as providing a warm, encompassing, romantic sound, my read on this is we're dealing with some FR abberations coupled with some audible harmonic distortion with maybe a little tiny bit of microphonics tossed in. The former is what you'll read in TAS or other audio publication. The latter is what's happening. Magic it ain't.
My IQ just dropped four points.
Richard, so it must be zero now JK.
Do you have any scientific evidence that a person could drop IQ by reading something? If not would you call me a gauche for pointing out a factual error that's not corroborated by careful research in IQ testing? (sorry Chu I took your words but they do sound kind of nice) How can you make such un substantiated claims without any hard scientific evidence. What gives Richard.
Also when the author says that in listening tests they had verified that a 3mb difference is audible, I take his word for it assuming that he did do some testing to claim that, just as many of us here just believe the results of DBT without having verified it ourselves. For example I have never seen any DBT article do any kind of statistical hypothesis testing or presented any statistical data and yet many of us here live and die by them. So in every article there has to be trust beyond a certain level.It's important to note when an article makes claims that are in line with previous observations, and when it makes claims that are so drastically different form previous observations. The first tends to strengthen the validity of that particular observation, adding its corroboration to the group... the latter deserves skepticism and further testing to explain the vast differences in observation.
Not that new things aren't seen or heard, but to just accept revolutionary results without any serious attempt at confirmation is naieve.