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Re: the fog of war

illustrated by the posts below.

Is not the dichotomy a fairly simple one?

The subjectivists say that measurements do not fully capture the performance of an audio system, especially because music is a transient phenomenon and most measurements are steady-state. Thus, there can be little things happening for very brief periods that are perceptible, but not measureable. They also say that an audio system is a system whose invididual components -- source, amp, speaker, connecting wires -- interact with each other in (usually) subtle, but unpredictable and idiosyncratic ways. Thus, a system may or may not be the sum of its parts. What they say is that the output of the system is the music playback, and the careful listener is the final arbiter of the quality of that; a measurement of one performance paramater can't possibly capture the whole thing. DBT's may be good in theory, but, isolating the device under test from the entire system in which it is functioning (which, necessarily, must include the acoustics of the room) is no small thing.

Secondly, the premise of DBT is that a difference between the two devices under test must be readily apparent; test subjects are given a limited amount of time to be exposed to each. Yet, we know that the richest artistic experiences that people have -- from literature, music and the visual arts -- come from those works which are not totally accessible at first perception. If they were immediately and totally accessible, then no one would be interested in seeing yet another performance of "Hamlet", reading the 23rd Psalm yet another time, viewing Michaelangelo's "David" in person rather than through photographs, hearing yet another performance of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto, or even, playing yet another time, the record of BB King performing live in Cook County Jail in 1970. If these experiences were totally accessible on first exposure, subsequent exposure would be just a bore, and few would be interested.

Who can seriously argue with that?

The "objectivists" point to the psychological phenomenon sometimes called the placebo effect, pointing out that it is a very well-documented phenomenon that people's perceptions can be conditioned by well-managed expectations. We are all well-familiar with the documented experiments in which "bright" students were identified to teachers who validated those identifications by giving them high grades, while giving "slow" students low grades. Yet these identifications of "bright" and "slow" students were totally random. The teachers' perception of the students was preconditioned.
So, the objectivists' concern is that a person who just bought a $1,000 power cord is going to say it sounds different and better, just because he would feel stupid at having spent a $1,000 for nothing if he heard otherwise. They seek to minimize this psychological phenomenon by relying on objective data (measurements) and DBTs -- hoping thereby to have a higher confidence level that a sonic difference that correlates with a measured difference or is validated by a DBT is, in fact, a real difference and not a difference in perception.

The objectivists also point out that many well-documented studies show that people perceive reproduced sound that has a high level of 2nd order harmonic distortion as being "richer" or "fuller" and therefore more satisfying. While they know enough not to argue matters of taste (some people like catsup on their hot dogs; others like mustard; others like both), the idea of deliberately changing the reproduced sound from the original recording strikes them as a dangerous attempt to stand on a slippery slope with no known bottom. "High fidelity" being reduced to sound that most people like. I think there's general agreement that Bose Corporation "voices" their products with just that goal (make a sound that the public identifies as "hi-fi") in mind -- and their market success is irrefutable evidence of the commercial effectiveness of that strategy.

I don't think you can argue with those points either.

Thus, we have the stage set for endless -- and irreconcilable -- debate, an example of which is below.

It seems to me that the wise audiophile holds all of this in his/her brain at one time -- the fact that measurements don't capture everything, the fact that his brain could be fooling itself into thinking that his new toy sounds better, the fact that he can be attracted to the sound of something that draw attention to itself in some way -- and then just sits back and, in a mentally quiet state, listens to the music.

I believe , but I certainly don't know, that, over time, this will yield sonic satisfaction.

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