[Bob Reynolds]

Dan and/or Frank,

Do you think it's possible to construct an ABX switching device that does not have the faults that Frank pointed out?

If so, would it be in a manufacturer's best interest to show the technoflakes that audible differences do exist by publishing valid ABX comparisons?

[avahifi]

The simplist method is to just run the preliminary tests in mono, driving one channel of each amplifer, with mono source material, a preamp that has exactly the same gain on each channel, and a matched set of speakers side by side in a large dead room.  Switch back and forth with the balance control after randomizing the preamp to amplifier and amplifier to speaker connections.

This can be eye and ear opening.

Of course more less rigours stereo testing can be done as a followup.

Frank Van Alstine

[Dan Banquer]

Dan and/or Frank,

Do you think it's possible to construct an ABX switching device that does not have the faults that Frank pointed out?

If so, would it be in a manufacturer's best interest to show the technoflakes that audible differences do exist by publishing valid ABX comparisons?

It certainly is possible to construct an ABX unit meeting those requirements.
The general public, including 99.99% of the audio purchasing public, are not interested in DBT's or ABX testing. The great bulk of consumers are predominantly interested in marketing, price point, ease of use, and packaging. In short, who the heck cares about ABX or DBT when you are buying an appliance.
Sorry to be rather cynical, but that's the way I see it.
             d.b.

[woodsyi]

See what you get when you take Cogito, ergo sum to the nth degree?  If a caveman was dropped in for a perfectly set up test, you will get a result that may be "objective," but where does that get me?  I am who I am because I waste time at work reading boards like this and other publications to form opinions.  I get swayed by the winds of popularity and elegant looks.  I want to be objective but I like something more than others before ever listening to them.  Even to try something means I have exercised my subjective decision  on which ones to audition.  I try to do my best to be objective but in the end, I agree with this quote from Klaus,

3.  There is no listener memory.  What you heard can stay maybe 10 seconds with you.  Other than the usual factors of SPL matching,  sitting positions,  etc.,  it is impossible to say with absolute certainty as to what differences you really heard after 10 seconds.  Of course you have an idea,  and that brings me to my mantra,  which I repeat over and over to my customers:   LISTEN WITH YOUR GUT FEELING and with your HAIR ON YOUR NECK.  Who gives a crap about a foot in depth here or a note there.  It's all about "this is right"

I cannot help that I have preformed ideas that predisposes me to like or not like something before I try.  But in the end, I only keep what I is right to my gut.  Given enough time, my gut will tell me the truth, which probably does not have universal validity.  It will, however, mean everything to me.  I will say that I am of the opinion, Sentio, ego sum.

[Rob Babcock]

One problem is that people confuse ABX w/ DBT.  You can arrange a DBT using an ABX, but certainly you don't need an ABX to do DBT.  The ABX box is flawed, that's plain to see.  But anyone who doubts DBT is a fool, or worse.

[warnerwh]

Frank: It would seem that using speakers that are in two different parts of the room could skew the results. The room and everything in it would quite literally need to be perfectly symmetrical in every way.

Besides that commonly one ear doesn't have the same sensitivity as the other and that one side of your head would pick up the most information from the speaker nearest the ear.

I personally think that someone swapping out the amp or preamp or whatever is being judged by someone else is the only way to go.

My opinion of course could be different if I'd ever done it myself. Judging by all the controversy I would think eliminating every variable possible would be necessary.  My preamp happens to have a balance. Later tonight I'll see what happens moving the sound from one channel to the other.

[Scotty]

warnerwh,  When you do a test like this it is easy to hear the difference in the DUT.
If there is any doubt you swap the speaker leads and hear the same difference from the other speaker. Frank is after big fish although this type of test will also strain gnats if necessary. Mono is the way to go. This type of signal will also tell you how good a disappearing act your speaker can do. Good speakers, when listened to singly, will tend to disappear with only a mono source,[ie,they will sound like a hole in space that music is emanating from rather than sound coming from box you can point at].
I am specifically refering to direct radiating monopole designs that do not rely on a reflected rear wave to help them disappear. Listening to a single loudspeaker with a mono source is the acid test for this loudspeaker criteria.
Scotty

[dado5]

Peter Aczel is among the worst of a breed.

IMO Objectivists (with a capitol O, meaning published ones) are just Rousseauean market haters using conventional science to justify their contempt of choice.  Like all consumer goods, the quality of audio gear is judged solely by the experience of the user. The reality is that quality is completely subjective. As with all market haters, Objectivists cannot accept this. They assert that their definition of quality (close adherence to conventional engineering parameters) is universal. This rejection of the subjective nature of quality is the root of a misunderstanding of economic exchange. In turn, it is this faulty intellectual bedrock that leads them to publish - to ‘educate’, ‘inform’ or otherwise preach to the benighted masses that they are in danger of making unwise purchases. It also allows them to call a product they disapprove of a rip-off,   its producer a charlatan and its consumer a dupe  without fear of offending honest businessmen and satisfied customers. No matter how much it is veneered with ‘science’ or ‘consumer interest’ their goal is to limit choice pure and simple.

[nathanm]

People's choices are hardly limited by the existence of such magazines!  The amount of audio gear available is staggering!  If flowery claims and colorfully written reviews are your thing you've got it.  There is plenty of room for the type of folks who'd simply wish to cut through some of the bullshit out there.  It's true that the quality is judged by the user, but I don't see audio reproduction on the same terms as painting, music, sculpture, wine tasting etc.  The outside box might look artistic but the insides are more of a tool and thus a good candidate for the objectivist approach and testing.

The important thing is to be honest about what we're talking about.  Are we focusing on just audio?  Then subjective values have to be eliminated.  Are we focusing on the entire experience of owning a piece of equipment?  That's fine; then we can bring in all the aesthetic values, usability issues, customer service and whatnot.  I doubt that the objectivist feels there are absolute right and wrongs about what you should or shouldn't buy.  But I'd rather have the knowledge that hey, this gear over here which looks rad doesn't necessarily perform better than this schlubbo device over here...it's useful to have the input of the stubborn scientist type.  I don't think they're all a bunch of cranks trying to ruin people's fun.  Just Dan Banquer is.  Thanks to his tireless preaching all I do for fun now is sit on my couch with a blindfold on and my ABX box (which I chose from three competing ABX boxes in a rigorous 4-day long DBT test), listening to 30 second loops from Mapleshade CDs over and over again for hours!  He's reduced my existence to pure torture! 

[chadh]

Woosyi's post, I believe, is an eloquent reminder of the absolute unassailbility of the "subjectivist" viewpoint.  One's response to a particular component's performance, a particular car, a particular wine or a particular person is what it is, whether it can be replicated by another, explained by another, explained to another or verified by another.  If you like the listening experience provided using amplifier A over that using amplifier B then your preference for amplifier A is established.

But it's clear that those participating in this hobby yearn to do more than simply listen to music on the most enjoyable system they can find.  The very fact that people risk the wrath of employers by visiting these boards through the day suggests that people also wish to share their experiences, and to learn from others' experiences.  The fact that people read audio magazines, and think even fleetingly about reviewers' comments, reflects a desire to communicate with others what we all experience.  And this creates a problem:

How do I present real information about my wholly subjective listening experience in a way that will be meaningful to anybody who listens to or reads my comments?

I think one valid approach is to restrict one's self to comments that are truly verifiable:  comments about things that can be measured, about effects that can be reproduced.  To the extent that this facilitates an ongoing dialogue that is meaningful, I think such efforts are commendable.   And I think the wholesale rejection of "objectivist" efforts along these lines by the so-called subjectivists does them a disservice.  This approach is potentially insightful, as long as we know precisely into what it gives us insight.

Having said that, I appreciate there are some real concerns about utilising such a methodology.  First, it requires an ongoing investigation into whether the "results", the "hard facts" produced by the supposedly verifiable experiments and testing procedures, are indeed objective and verifiable.  Without this, the results have no credibility and therefore are not useful contributions to the dialogue.

This leads to the deeper concern of whether there is ANYTHING that can truly and objectively be ascertained that is in any way pertinent to appreciating the performance of a piece of equipment.

And finally, this methodology would seem to require a great deal of restraint not to muddy the objective waters with subjective inferences made from one's observations. 

It seems to me that the so-called objectivists field objections to their efforts on all of these issues.

So, does it make sense for me to be an objectivist or a subjectivist?  I wish to be neither.  I certainly would like to be aware of insights generated by controlled experimentation and rigorous testing, but I don't want the extent of my audio conversation to be limited to arguments over experimental methodology.  The only thing I could imagine that would be nearly as bad is to find myself floating in a sea of ambiguity, grasping at the millions of adjectives floating at the surface and knowing that none of them makes sense to me in the same way it made sense to its author.  To read that one person finds his system to produce music with lots of "air", little "grain", great "neutrality" and with real "musicality" tells me only one thing for sure:  he likes it.  Anything beyond that is guesswork.  I may as well be reading about druids or something...

Chad

[woodsyi]

Chad,

Very good post.  Ultimately I am a subjectivist but that doesn't mean I don't consider the so called objective findings.  There is an audiophile paradigm in place where we can discuss about gears without having to redefine every word -- it just happens to be bipolar.    I don't think you can reduce either camp into the other nor should we.  We just have to read each review or comment while keeping in mind where it's coming from.  Philosophically, I don't believe there can be a truly objective test because a subject is required to interpret the data.  But within the margin of uncertainty principle, I value objective findings. 

[Bob Reynolds]

Peter Aczel is among the worst of a breed.

IMO Objectivists (with a capitol O, meaning published ones) are just Rousseauean market haters using conventional science to justify their contempt of choice.  Like all consumer goods, the quality of audio gear is judged solely by the experience of the user. The reality is that quality is completely subjective. As with all market haters, Objectivists cannot accept this. They assert that their definition of quality (close adherence to conventional engineering parameters) is universal. This rejection of the subjective nature of quality is the root of a misunderstanding of economic exchange. In turn, it is this faulty intellectual bedrock that leads them to publish - to ‘educate’, ‘inform’ or otherwise preach to the benighted masses that they are in danger of making unwise purchases. It also allows them to call a product they disapprove of a rip-off,   its producer a charlatan and its consumer a dupe  without fear of offending honest businessmen and satisfied customers. No matter how much it is veneered with ‘science’ or ‘consumer interest’ their goal is to limit choice pure and simple.

I don't understand how quality can be completely subjective. Aren't quantitative measures like Mean Time Between Failure related to quality?

It seems to me that with objective measures it is much more difficult to be subjective in labeling a product a rip-off. The measures speak for themselves.

Or rather than limiting choice, they are providing consumers with knowledge so that they can make an informed choice. Information is just a tool. What you do with it is up to you.

[Bob Reynolds]

If you like the listening experience provided using amplifier A over that using amplifier B then your preference for amplifier A is established.

The problem many of us face is that we do not have access to amplifier A and amplifier B to determine a preference. If there is a sizeable price difference between the two, I would like some objective measure that the more expensive product is worth it.

It is in this regard that I view the objectivists as consumer advocates.

[dado5]

I don't understand how quality can be completely subjective. Aren't quantitative measures like Mean Time Between Failure related to quality?

It is important to differentiate quality as an economic concept vs. the use of the term in manufacturing process.
In manufacturing,  basically, quality refers to the goal of  unit to unit product homogeneity.  It is always in the best interest of a producer to ensure all the products he makes are equally capable of satisfying the consumer. It’s the consumer however, who establishes what it takes to satisfy him in the first place.  This is the subjective nature of quality.

It seems to me that with objective measures it is much more difficult to be subjective in labeling a product a rip-off. The measures speak for themselves.

Only if you personally assign a relatively high value to such measurements in your buying process.  Other folks with different value scales may love a product with poor measurements and if they agree with the asking price, how has anyone been ripped-off?

Or rather than limiting choice, they are providing consumers with knowledge so that they can make an informed choice. Information is just a tool. What you do with it is up to you.

True as far is it goes but the information will only be useful to those with similar value scales. To anyone else it is so much hot air.

The gross misunderstanding of economic exchange that market haters’ labor under is the dangerous part. They view any transaction that does not hold to their value scale as wrong. This wrong in turn must be righted. By education in its most mild form but ultimately by state intervention in the market.  Don’t believe me, ask the market hater (Objectivist, safe food proponent, consumer advocate, - whatever their particular market beef ) what his ‘perfect world’ scenario would  be.  Make no mistake limiting of choice is the goal.

[nathanm]

There is a big difference between advocating your views to consumers vs. lobbying congress.  I will be even more interested to read this magazine now.  I would be very put off indeed if Aczel advocates making pricey cables illegal or something along those lines as dado5 seems to suggest!    If that is indeed the goal of objectivists (which I strongly doubt) then they're doing a lousy job of it.  When you can buy wire that costs anywhere from 10 cents a foot to thousands per foot and every price inbetween I think the notion that the hifi market is limited to be rather absurd.  I don't see the any similarity between "Man, I wish people would wake up so these foo foo products would go away" and "Ooh I'll make those bastards at ACME Hi-Fi answer to the National Truth In High Fidelity Marketing Claims Bureau!"

I would hate to see the guys from Machina Dynamica put out of business for instance, that's a national treasure of humor!

[chadh]

The gross misunderstanding of economic exchange that market haters’ labor under is the dangerous part. They view any transaction that does not hold to their value scale as wrong. This wrong in turn must be righted. By education in its most mild form but ultimately by state intervention in the market.  Don’t believe me, ask the market hater (Objectivist, safe food proponent, consumer advocate, - whatever their particular market beef ) what his ‘perfect world’ scenario would  be.  Make no mistake limiting of choice is the goal.

I'm not sure I get this.

We can certainly have a market with a rich set of alternatives in which objective information is sought by individuals, and even provided by an independent agency.  The effort to provide that objective information is hardly synonymous with an effort to limit choice.  Hence, we have agencies that provide ratings of hotels, and don't believe that this is a big conspiracy to deny anybody the opportunity to stay at a one star establishment; we have rankings of colleges and college programs, without imagining that this denies anyone the chance to attend Po Dunk U.  In fact, by denying the market access to such information you are far more likely to limit choice, as there is significantly reduced incentive to invest in ways that would raise the value of the hotel, the university or (indeed) audio products.  You end up in a world of homogeneous and low quality alternatives (by which I mean alternatives that are ill equipped to satisfy the demands of the consumers).

Information is the friend of the free market.  Those who look to starve consumers of information are the ones most interested in denying them choice.

Chad

[dado5]

NathanM & chad,

I am not suggesting that the market for audio gear is limited. Rather that that this is goal of Objectivists (again with the cap ). 

The perceived problem is that gear is marketed, often for high prices, which is no better, or downright worse, than far less expensive stuff.  Now we all feel this way about some product or another and we may give our opinions on such products if asked. But most of us would not attempt to change other folks buying preferences unsolicited.  This takes a mindset that views the above condition as a social wrong which needs to be corrected.  This is the raison d'etre Objectivists publish. 

Institutions like Audio Critic and Audioholics were not established as services offering product comparisons and recommendations based on tech specs. They were created specifically to set right a perceived wrong in the audio marketplace. Their explicit goal is to steer folks away from gear that they associate with the market problem.  A mission success would be defined as someone who eliminated the problematic gear from their shopping list. This, by definition is limitation of choice.

Let’s look at the state intervention aspect.  Most Objectivists view producers of expensive gear marketed based on claims of superior sound quality as perpetrators of fraud. This may sound shocking, but again this is why they publish in the first place. If this were not the starting point of the Objectivist why would they demand proof of unconventional physical theories or dbx testing to verify the claims producers make? Now given this, how can they not advocate state intervention? Fraud is a crime and as such must be punished and prevented by the state. The fact that few, if any, Objectivists have advocated state intervention show an unwillingness to approach controversy in this area, a failure to think through the implications of their own position or a view that some kinds of fraud are not actually crimes. Taking into account that most of these guys are highly educated, the latter two reasons seem very unlikely.

[chadh]

Dado,

You've got to be joking.  None of these people has yet to advocate for state intervention in this market.  You don't predict that any of them will advocate for state intervention in the market.  But you just know that this is in their hearts?  Maybe Machina Dynamic magic pebbles have endowed you with psychic powers, so now you can see into the socialist souls of oponents of "audio voodoo".

I have no doubt that these Objectivists publish because they feel that there exists overpriced, inferior gear.  In trying to prove their case through these supposedly objective experiments, are they guilty of a faulty assumption that everybody values the same things in audio consumption?  Perhaps.  But they are no more guilty of radical attempts to thwart the operation of the free market than the guy next door who tells everyone who will listen never to buy an American-made car, or the thousands of people who write product reviews on thousads of consumer goods on hundreds of websites every day.  "This toaster sucks - it nearly burnt down my house on the first slice" sounds no more and no less like anti-free market propaganda than "I was unable to verify that these expensive amplifiers sounded any different from the cheap, well engineered ones that I use."

If you find fault with their methods, join what seems to be a rather long queue.  If you think they draw silly conclusions from flawed experiments, you have a lot of friends.  But the socialist plot you describe just strikes me as a melodramatic fantasy.

Chad

[nathanm]

If you visit a website or read a magazine esposing the objectivist angle you are obviously soliciting those views.  Nobody's trying to force this stuff down your throat anymore than the more subjective press is.

And isn't any review etc. supposed to "limit choice" simply because there are so many choices out there?  I don't see this as a negative thing.  Whether it's Stereophile or Audioholics they both have to narrow down what they are and aren't going to review.  And what does it matter what their purposes are, if it's to sell as much botique gear for as much money as possible or to find stuff that's more accesible and affordable? It's fine to have both camps and whatever else in between.  The objectivist aren't going to stand in the way of anyone who wants to spend a jillion dollars on a system, but they might show how silly it is and make fun of such people.  Where's the harm?  Couldn't it be argued that the subjective magazines were established to correct a perceived wrong in the marketplace - that people are buying too much cheap gear and not the fancy high end stuff?  Shouldn't equipment costing extreme amounts of money have their feet held to the fire?

I guess I haven't read anything where the author was pushing the fraud angle, but if so I wouldn't agree with such an approach.  I might be sick of the silly claims and puffery, but these people don't belong in jail by any stretch!  I would much rather have the charlatans exposed, not by lawyers but simply by enthusiants and\or EE type people who just might know what they're talking about.  Better yet, I would rather have the charlatans attacked viciously - with sarcasm!  

With audio you can have all sorts of different people involved.  I really don't grok the whole electricity thing myself.  Usually if someone is explaining something electrical I can't fully grasp it, but since I am in doubt I would feel arrogant to dismiss their argument.  So I'm glad there are the objectivists out there.  They keep your head out of the clouds.  And my own experiences have matched to a large degree with what they have been saying anyway.

Here's an open question to any objectivist out there:  Who in the Hi-Fi industry would you like to see in jail?  Seriously.

[Bob Reynolds]

Dado5,

Very interesting assumptions about the Objectivist's intentions. What are your assumptions about their motivations? What's the payoff for them?

I guess there's no accounting for different perceptions. I read all the back issues of The Audio Critic and completely missed what you are describing.

Thanks for showing me another side.

-- Bob