Kevin,
Hearing is what this hobby is based on by the consumer.We hope that the manf. does all the testing required to bring a good product to market.
I can not believe that a company that sells equip dismisses hearing as valid.Do you think or believe when someone buys your product he measures it or inserts it in
his/her system and listens to the results?
I have never heard from an audiophile,Did you measure that new blah blah?No,They say,Did you HEAR that new CDP etc.
So measure away and when you have want you want do you listen to it or just sell it from the measurements you are happy with?
I am not being cute here or funny or critical here.I feel this is a legitimate question.As far as Eathan is concerned he has a rep on other circles which is not good.Why can't offer his opinions just as opinions without being insulting or demeaning.
rollo
I think that measurements are a very good tool to get at what we are hearing without introducing an amazingly complex variable called the human brain. There is no way around it that hearing impressions are difficult to engineer with. Engineering has to do with manipulating physical things, using known physical properties to obtain a given result. Outside of Earl Gedees (who has been chased off by audiophiles) I know of nobody doing really good metrics to tie physical measurements to subjective experience. Even then the only thing you can correlate is based upon groups of listeners. Anything else is too vague to design around.
I certainly listen to the equipment that I design. I do "reality" checks against my pre-conceived notions to try and remove my personal bias. There is only so much you can do though. Its not like I can listen to my product for thousands of hours and then figure out exactly what needs to be changed to improve it. What we hear is terribly difficult to translate into physical properties that we can manipulate at the physical level.
In terms of Ethan, he will have to speak for himself but I find that his "disrespectful" responses usually are because he refuses to believe something that can not be proven with physical testing methods or objective measurements and compared with what we know about human hearing. I find that a reasonable position but there are many who do not. There is no way to have a meaningful conversation with people who fundamentally differ on how to discern the truth.
kevin,
Ok you have a good point.However I will say again the consumer[most of them] use their ears.Even if the component measures well it still must sound good to sell.When someone modifies a component with different caps,they substitute caps because they sound different.That difference will determine if the cap stays or goes.Now why does the cap sound different? Can this be measured and what would you measure?I know from personal experience that a Mundorf Supreme oil in paper sounds different than a V cap in the same circuit.Could you shed some light on this for me?
Thanks man
rollo
I wish some of you guys would go to manufacturers web sites such as AVX, Kyocera, Wima, Roederstein, ELNA, Nichicon etc.etc and take a look at the manufacturers specs. Then go take a look at the latest audiophile caps for specs and then come back and tell us what you have found.
When I was manufacturing, word of mouth didn't cut it, and after some initial experimentation, neither did capacitor of the month. If I didn't see the spec's I was looking for, then the part was not for my consideration.
d.b.
