Poor understanding of science is not needed

Discussion in 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' started by Ardacer, Jan 19, 2018.

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  1. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    Hm, I partly agree. Look guys. The air particles (or any matter, for that matter :D) are defined by their spacetime position and momentum. It's impossible to measure both to perfect precision. Universe won't allow it, but these properties are linked. You can sort-of see this behavior in the fact that the impulse response and frequency response / spectrum are calculable from each other, and in the behavior in CSD - get a higher resolution in time domain, you screw up the frequency domain, and vice versa. There are many more examples.

    If one presumes the people measuring stuff know what they are doing, can explain everything, and the gear is sufficiently powerful and calibrated, that's it. Such measurements, in known conditions, do not lie. Not susceptible to placebo. At all. It's as close to truth as possible to get.

    Now, why I like SBAF most, is the fact that you constantly try to improve your skills, and understand that these measurements, esp. headphones, do not necessarily equal good experience. It's much more complex.

    But,

    if you can't measure it, you can't hear it.

    It's, if the experiment is properly set up, gear is calibrated, folks are smart, the simple truth - for now.
    There is, of course, a tiny possibility that there is a totally undiscovered theory of physics which can describe subjective experience that contradicts proper measurements, but, it's much more probably snake oil / placebo.

    Trust your ears - because you are the one listening. Every one of us is a different system with different sonic properties, and "measures" differently. We're all different. But if a dac resolves down to -100 dB clean, that means, at the 100 dB fundamental signal, you get 1 dB of junk, and, in such and such conditions, that's it. No changing the color of the cable is gonna help.

    Cables are a good example too.
    They can, and will screw things up sometimes. And there is a very well understood physics of why. On the other hand, cables are the best example of blatant snake oil bullshit.

    So be weary, ask someone with experience.


    Edit: the point of the Heisenberg principle up above was to say that measurement systems and physics are generally well understood, and it works, in fields much, much more sophisticated to that of speaker measurements, so one should not question the science. One should always though, question the human.

    AND THAT'S WHY SBAF AND INNERFIDELITY MEASUREMENTS ARE OK. and jude has a waaaaay to go.
    Also, SBAF standardization of measurements is, well, crucial to success when more people are in. Tyll is the only guy doing it on his blog with his gear. There's much to know and learn before one can extract useful data out of measurements. It's not VERY hard, but it's not like you can just glance over the graph and say something smart.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2018
  2. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    I think we’re all smart enough here to know that Science with a capital “S” as an impartial constant of the universe that us humans can just consult for the uncontested right answer is a myth. Science is a human endeavor and subject to human perspective. It is very easy to set up an experiment in a way that makes compelling but ultimately invalid results. It’s also easy to take valid results and present them in a way that supports a predetermined conclusion.

    A part of me wants to give Jude the benefit of the doubt and say that his conclusions are the result of his lack of experience, his lack of competence in the area of taking and interpreting and presenting measurements. However, the ways in which he repeatedly asserts the superiority and authenticity of his results over Tyll’s and Marv’s (and the larger DIY community in general) tells me that his main motive is in presenting evidence that supports his predetermined conclusions, conclusions designed to sell more headphones by sponsors and thus make Jude more money. His incompetence merely allows us to more easily see through his smokescreen, it’s not a main driver of the results. Hell, in a way it’s good he’s so inexperienced because imagine how dangerous someone with that big of a megaphone in the headphone community could be if he were bent on presenting measurements that only made his sponsors products look good AND he really knew what he was doing. At least now we (and by we I mean people who know far more about measurements than I do) can point at his gross errors and use that to refute the arguments that his measurements are more valid than others, or potentially even valid at all.
     
  3. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    Good analysis, absolutely agreed upon.

    Also I wasn't trying to question anyone's intelligence, just a friendly reminder that a machine does not receive cash for shilling. Yet.
     
  4. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    This is a bit of an oversimplification. Hearing is a complex psycho-acoustic enterprise that takes place as much in the brain as in the ears.

    What you can measure is dependent on what you know how to look for, within the data that you can record. Ever critiqued headphones based on the clarity and specificity of the staging? That's a reproducible phenomenon that survives blind testing, whether you know how to asses it with a measuring rig or not. Measurement is more than just recording sound, it's how you transform and process the data that you gather. There's still plenty of stuff we can consistently hear without being able to plot on a graph after carrying out automated measurements. Yet.

    It's oddly limited. Often, the best we can practically hope for is using measurements to work out exactly why something sounds bad- rarely can it predict accurately when something will sound good. Go figure.
     
  5. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    It is an oversimplification with a lot of assumptions, yep. Everything here totally true.

    Respectfully, have to disagree here. :)
    We can, using similar methods, "hear" two black holes merging half the universe away, see particles so short lived it's on the verge of reason, so... yeah...

    I'd argue this is because of the fact that
    1) every human is different, acoustically as well. every head, ears, canals, brains.
    2) every livingroom is different
    3) some measurements are in fact limited (in a practical sense). e.g., 10k+ measurements on headphones tell mostly nothing.
    4) subjective experience of good does not necessarily equal mathematical perfection

    2) can be kind-of bypassed, 1) and 3) can't. 4), thank God it's so, otherwise I'd never have a gf. :D
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2018
  6. dmckean44

    dmckean44 In a Sherwood S6040CP relationship

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    Then you would have a John Atkinson at Stereophile situation.
     
  7. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    I feel measurements themselves do not necessarily lie. The problems are in applying the correct measurement for a particular parameter in question, understanding the measurement, and performing the measurement correctly and under the "right conditions".

    A badly performed measurement can lie. And more often than not, the interpretation and conclusions from a measurement (or set of measurements) can lie.

    (Note I'm not even going into cherry picking and part to part variation here).
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2018
  8. Dotard

    Dotard Acquaintance

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    I'm sure we have all the technology *potential* today to measure whatever it is we need to measure from an "audible to a human" perspective. The question is not whether this technology is possible with today's knowhow, but rather:

    a) has the human capital investment been put into this endeavor to understand what to measure?
    and
    b) has the human capital investment been put in to develop the tools to measure what we know we need to measure with this knowledge?

    IMO The answer to both questions is no. Measurements for headphones are a relatively new field, that haven't really been available to customers to evaluate products until recently. When did Tyll start building his headphone measurement database? Looking at the whois data, innerfidelity was first registered in December 2010. That's less than 10 years of Tyll trying to figure things out, and learning along the way.

    Before that if any measurements were done it was within black box operations at headphone companies. Consumers generally had to trust that companies knew what they were doing and that things like driver matching were accurate just becuase a company said so. This was the situation as recently as 2009. More than anything, these grass roots measurement efforts have exposed that assumption as being folly.

    A decent off the shelf measurement rig was recently released in 2017 (EARS), a mere couple months ago. This is the first of it's kind reasonably commerically available affordable tool that people can use to measure their headphones using a simulated ear canal.

    Things are very very very early in terms of what we know about headphone measurements and how much they tell us. Perhaps we need a multi-dimensional dynamic clamping force simulation that dynamically adjusts clamping force while doing frequency sweeps with a dynamic HRTF that adjusts itself on the fly to the clamping pressure + dynamically generated SPL? Do we have the potential to develop such a tool? Sure, if we invest the human capital into building it and decide it is worth building. Has such a thing been invented yet? Nope.

    At the end of the day, the soul of the grassroots measurements movement has been to push our collective knowledge forward, inform customers, hold companies selling their products to task, and drive the publicly available research concerning this topic, often on a shoe string budget with an atmosphere of collaboration and mutual respect.
     
  9. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    Agreed, Ultrabike.
    Agreed, Dotard.

    My point was to be weary of audio magic doo-doo. It comes in many forms. It can wear a scientific hat. To trust in science and to learn from proper mateirals and sources is the way forward. Just as you both said:

    "I feel measurements themselves do not necessarily lie."

    "I'm sure we have all the technology *potential* today to measure whatever it is we need to measure from an "audible to a human" perspective."


    Those were my main points, because I fear there are still people who think otherwise.

    Everything you said, I'll sign.
     
  10. Friday

    Friday Friend

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    Stuff here has probably been said many times across various threads and forums that this post is likely verging on noise.

    That's a different measurement issue. The limitations of measurements that @Kattefjaes referred to does not concern the sensitivity or range of the measuring equipment, nor are they always caused by anatomical differences. Rather, we may not even know what are the variables to measure to begin with. There is probably a lot more to sound than just loudness and frequency (and other related measurables such as decay), some of them perhaps caused by psychoacoustics which we have no way of reproducing yet.

    TLDR: Yes there are stuff which we can hear but can't measure.
     
  11. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    LOL
    Perfect

    This is exactly what I disagree with. I don't think there is more to it. It's well understood physics, that's all it is. Psycho acoustics are real but can't be measured. It's inherently not a property of a transducer, it's neuroscience. You measure that in a fMRI. That's what I do for my doctoral study.

    But I agree that we should probably drop the subject. :)
     
  12. landroni

    landroni Friend

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    So, to piggy-back on @Kattefjaes, if I can't 'measure' love, I can't feel it? Figure that...

    Human perceptions are an itsy-bitsy more complex than what we can quantify about them.
     
  13. Muse Wanderer

    Muse Wanderer Friend

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    Can you quote the evidence you have appraised to base this hypothesis?

    I would especially like to know how you can assert that a surrogate outcome - "measurements", is equal to the real valid outcome, in this case human auditory perception.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2018
  14. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    What do you think your eardrum, mid ear bones and coclea are? They are a biological transducer, and an interface. Brain is the audio processor, software, and everything else up the chain, all the way to the conscience.

    Microphone, interface, pc is the very same thing. Both systems do the same thing. The difference is in how well the audio information is received, how it's encoded and processed.

    Microphones "hear" better than we do. I hope I don't have to quote that.
    Cohlea - ear/brain interface does something to encode the signal. It's still not perfectly understood.

    But if your ear can pick something up, that your mic can't, something is wrong with your mic.

    Transducers are simple - they transform energy. Electrical information to sound information in this case, then backwards.

    You measure how well a transducer behaves. Your technology can do that better than you. It can't tell you how well you like the specific transducer and how it makes you feel, though.

    I'm truly sorry, but I'm to busy atm to quote everything from proper sources and write a info letter. If more people are interested, I'll do so at some point. But it's not hard to find proper info online. One must just accept the scary truth sometimes.
     
  15. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    Then you maybe need to study harder, or maybe read what I said slightly better; you're arguing with a straw man. When you're doing audio research professionally, there are always phenomena that we can't yet model and measure in an entirely mechanical way, but which we can detect perceptually with a statistically high degree of confidence in controlled condition blind tests.

    It doesn't mean they're not there, just that we're not yet able to account for exactly how they work yet- so we pragmatically use controlled examination of subjective impressions to build up a statistically significant corpus of results.

    Thought experiment. Imagine you're living the the Blumlein era. You can hear and maybe even measure weird frequency voids and hashness that make no sense in some transducers. You know the differences exist- they're audible.

    (A putative passing future nerd would be able to measure and tell you those voids are caused by ringing of frequencies in the time domain- using their unimaginably powerful computation engines - if you knew about in your Blumlein-era lab, your mind would be blown.)

    However, until people are able to calculate cumulative spectral decay characteristics in signals many decades later, you'd be in a tricky spot. At best you'd be able to plot a rough and anomalous FR graph.You'd be throwing away the perceptual insights.

    That would be your loss, because you're being a bad experimentalist. The pragmatic decision to use the best measuring method you have is important. If that happens to be controlled use of subjective impressions, then so be it.

    It is common in the science and engineering of sound to use human perception as an important measuring tool. That doesn't stop people from wanting to model what's happening though- quite the opposite. Psycho-acoustics is fascinating, and who doesn't love a rubber pinna?

    Anyway, if you try to be a "hard objectivist" here, taking the view that nothing you can't see on a graph is real, you're going to have a bad time. There's a bit of a motto in operation in these parts:

    "Too objective for subjectivists; too subjective for objectivsts"

    We're lazy pragmatists; if you try to ignore this and go in hard, someone will break a bar stool over your head sooner or later- I don't want to see that, you seem like a good guy :)
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2018
  16. Muse Wanderer

    Muse Wanderer Friend

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    I studied neuroanatomy and neurophysiology including the complex NOT well understood way that auditory perception is perceived. However you have not provided an answer to my question. at all.

    You have asserted a fact, that is only a hypothesis without citing any evidence. Your claims are baseless at this point. I will await the studies you will quote that prove that measurements are equivalent to human auditory perception.

    I will appraise those studies, assess whether there are any confounding factors, systematic bias and chance bias in order to arrive to an informed opinion.

    Simply stating that your assertions are facts is fallacious at the very least.
     
  17. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    Well thanks Kattefjaes. You all seem cool too. I will not change my oppinions but I'm not trying to force them on anyone. I'm not a hard objectivist, very far from that. It can clearly be seen from my posts. Also, I already asked once that we drop the subject, and I'll do it again now.

    But some things are simply not true, and when people yank my chain, I respond. Politely, and non aggresively, and try to explain my view.


    Too objective for subjectivists; too subjective for objectivsts


    This is exactly why I'm here - honestly.


    Also what?

    I have never once said that measurements equal human perception. That would be very wrong.
    I also studied neuroanatomy and am writing a doctorate in neuriscience. Hello collegue.

    Perhaps we misunderstood each other somehow.

    Bad words and accusations started flying here, and for no good reason.
    Please, lets drop this now.
     
  18. Muse Wanderer

    Muse Wanderer Friend

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    Well "if you cannot measure it, you cannot hear it" assertion cannot be put out there without properly validated evidence. This evidence need to stand up to scrutiny and be replicable.

    You should know that the scientific method is key to arrive to any conclusion. 'Measurements' cannot be extrapolated to the general population in any way or form. These are only surrogate markers prone to bias and of variable reliability and validity. Measurements certainly cannot account to the known and unknown aspects of human hearing. These are tools that can help us arrive to an answer combined with, in this case, qualitative listening.

    Anecdotal evidence, animal studies and small human studies would only provide a foundation for the hypothesis and cannot in any way answer such questions.

    There are studies one can perform that would control the variable of human auditory perception (i.e not using animal models that are less reliable and valid). A properly powered, randomised controlled trial would hopefully control any known or unknown confounding factors. Excellent methodology would reduce systematic error and statistical analysis would let us know of errors due to chance.

    Needless to say, such high quality studies would be very expensive and as far as I know are not performed in audio fidelity industries unlike say multinational pharmaceutical companies that are much more tightly regulated for obvious reasons.
     
  19. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    I'm out of this.
    If anyone wishes to speak about the subject with me for any reason, pm.
     
  20. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    Just wanted to give myself (and some folks here perhaps) some closure.

    This stupid title should not hurt me so much, I know, but it does for some reason. I don't think I'll be returning to post here any longer. No hard feelings really, but apparently we're not cut out for each other.
    I know my insights won't be missed.

    Otherwise it has been a nice experience, though a short one. Wish you all the best and success in matters both personal, audio and business.

    I think I chose the appropriate subforum. :)

    Godspeed.


    Edit: to anyone reading this now, for context, my custom title has been set to "poor understanding of science".
    I was saddened/disappointed. Now I'm apparently deaf, but happy. :D
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2018
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