Hi @Martin_Kelly,
I have difficulty understanding your line of argument. How can you write this
in reply to that
and even give the following post a like
after having advised the people in this thread to
???
Just to be clear, I’m asking this as a proud and happy owner of a TT2 + M Scaler combo…
Are you in the “bits are bits” camp or not?
Iv seen some great live artists ruined by awful sound engineers too so it doesn’t always work.
No need to apologize, @Alan. It is a victory for all when the Pre-Socratics get a mention in the discussion.
Yes, indeed: repeated, back-and-forth A/B’s make the comparison more trustworthy, productive of reliable conclusions, etc. I think we can identify many factors of A/B comparisons that contribute or take away from the utility of such comparisons: how resolving the compared systems are; how familiar the listener is with the content being heard; how familiar the listener is with the available differences (not all listeners would be able to differentiate image specificity, tonal balance, microdynamics, yada yada). The one such factor to which I gave the tendency to contribute was the familiarity of the listener with the A in the A/B comparison. Does it contribute as much as quick, repeated A/B’s? No way. I said as much. But it does contribute.
Yes, you’re probably right that repeated A/B’s are “all-decisive.” However, when those are not available, there is nothing “epistemically irresponsible” about relying on lesser methods, such as aural memory. Yes, listener beware, when relying on aural memory only.
My dispute is with the objectivist ■■■■■■■■ on one’s reliance on subjective criteria when better methods are just unavailable or very difficult to implement. In part, because the only truly objectivist methods that are available are worthless. Though very good, repeated A/B’s is still subjective; and we can’t measure everything that makes good sound - what’s the unit of measurement for soundstage depth? This is where some objectivists bite the bullet and claim that soundstage depth is, therefore, not a real criterion in sound quality. My subjective ears tell me otherwise.
Which color is better, blue or green?
Yep, maybe… but the band played on, so you can accept a crap sound from them at home lol… it’s representative
Hasn’t really happened in this thread so far… I think people like @Volker or @hwz (to name but two), who responded to your posts more than once, aren’t “objectivists” at all (as becomes clear when you read their posts in this and other threads)…
And can be used to bring the sound closer to what the listener prefers too. There is no right or wrong here, only what your ears and brain tell you sounds better at that point in time.
A given statistical analysis will provide a measure of confidence for rejecting a null hypothesis for a given model under a set of constraints that the data and experimental design must meet. No more, and no less. It does not “reduce” bad data, “cleanse” data or anything like that. But maybe that was just florid speech.
Your argument boils down to the claim that if the underlying physical mechanism giving rise to a set of observations is not completely understood then one cannot “say anything” or have any scientific confidence in analyzing the observations. That is wrong. To the contrary, the most basic and commonly used statistical tests make no assumption about the underlying mechanism, just about the distribution of the data and way the data were collected. Thus, for example to this forum, it would be easy to demonstrate with statistical rigor using A/B testing that comparing two sets of normally functioning ethernet cables the null hypothesis (that they yield the same perceptual experience) cannot be rejected for a given level of pre-planned statistical significance.
Your comments regarding psychology and neuroscience are not well considered but that is beyond this forum, and well beyond the amount of time I want to devote to this.
With cheers,
A couple of beers normally sorts it all out…
Correct, I used the term “what the artist intended” only because I so often hear it used in combination with bit-perfect, with the reasoning that no changes automatically becomes the closest to the original sound (which is an understandable reasoning but 100% wrong nevertheless).
What? Let’s take care of this quickly: The Galileo affair (heliocentrism); nearly everything that Thomas Aquinas wrote; The Genesis Flood, by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb; Epperson vs. Arkansas; John Templeton; creationists’ abuse of the second law of thermodynamics; intelligent design.
You are completely wrong. For example, the work of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, as mentioned above, was THE precursor for the hard sciences. The first question asked by those first philosophers? “What is the world made of?”
This is why non-scientific inquiry is good for science. It leads to the questions of such inquiry ultimately being accessible to the scientific method. Most scientific hypotheses don’t begin with the identification of the factors of falsifiability, a crucial element of the scientific method. They begin far more informally.
Maybe my reaction has been too strong, but let me give you at least one example:
I ask again, what is the scientific unit of measurement of soundstage depth?
‘Bits ARE bits’. Until they arrive at the DAC.
It’s probably a measure of time differential.
My signature from another forum
I have a pile of stuff that pushes out squiggly waveforms from smaller squiggly waveforms that sometimes come from 1’s and 0’s.
It’s wonderful to behold as long as you don’t let the magic smoke out.
Life is short! Enjoy the music while it plays, when it stops, there might be a chair for you…or maybe not.
I agree, heading over to the What are you drinking now? [Pair with music for double points] thread now!
Don’t drink all the Remy Martin VSOP or (edit oops) Anders will not be happy 
me I’m going to bed. It’s 3:15 am here…and my Nikki Single malt is long gone.
I was talking about “religion” in a completely different sense and historical context. But I bet you knew that anyway. But congrats on having read and understood “nearly everything that Thomas Aquinas wrote”…
There’s absolutely no connection between what I wrote and such questions…
I don’t mind if a discussion gets a little heated now or then, but I can’t stand people who “pretend” to “misunderstand” things! It’s a clever move, though, because they never get moderated that way…
One standard floorboard. Now you know 