by Michael

A Hybrid Review Approach…

… mixing the subjective and objective…

Essentially it uses a subjective analysis of objective aspects of the sound of a component.

Even more essentially, the listener gives it the old ‘college try’ and guestimates how good a component is in several pre-determined and STANDARDIZED categories.

See, if the categories are well-chosen and are standardized, and a number from 1 to 10, say, is assigned, then components can be compared.

Anyway, in the most recent Spintricity article:

Towards a Hybrid Subjective Objective Review Process

… we attempt to come up with some categories that we, at least, use here [tho in the past we have not been so disciplined as to assign a number to score a component’s performance in each category]

The idea is to create a list that we can print out and then enter or circle a number of something so that the review process can be raised up out of the muck and mire.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Reviewers / Reviews / Spintricity 0 comments
 by Michael

Warning: Reading Show Reports May Be Hazardous to Your (Hi-Fi System's) Health

As I casually read what various reviewers wrote about the sound they heard at the show a few things become obvious. This is not about the sound in our rooms, about which I have read one positive and one not so positive (about the small room – but I did not hear the system after a major cable change was made – so do not know if the reporter was right or not)

1. A lot of reviewers just can’t hear. They string together a lot of good sounding ‘audiophile words’ and hope in this way to gain some advertising. This would be shocking if it wasn’t so sad.

2. Some just mention the positive things about the sound, never the negative [same ole same ole – but only a few people/mags are this honest anymore].

3. Some lie, sometimes describing sound more or less accurately, and sometimes just negative and/or positive things in order to achieve some political or economic goal they must have in mind.

As for comments on forums, take a room at random and make it the Best of Show. As far as I can see it is completely random – aka noise. Aka no information provided.

There is not any room so horrible sounding that someone, somewhere won’t post that it is the best of show.

I used to think this was akin to ‘there is no man so ugly that some woman somewhere won’t think he is handsome’.

But this has more to do with the beholder being really confused, than it does with seeing the inner beauty of someone/something. And it has to do with people being manipulated into thinking something different happened [good or bad sound] from what REALLY happened.

Of course, this cacophony of misinformation, lies, political maneuvering, sloth, etc. just mirrors that of the current state of affairs everywhere circa 2009. The difference lately has been that so called ‘trusted sources’ do not have loyalty to the traditional reporter’s ‘creed’ to tell the truth.

That, while representing yourself as being ‘independent’, but instead telling a self-serving point of view that makes you money is AOK.

The 1984 part of this is that people have been programmed to accept this as being acceptable behavior for a ‘news organization’.

The upshot of all this incompetence and deception is that it is really hard to get any real information about the sound at a show, or, to expand our focus, any component. Even if you listen to it, if the person setting it up did not have the correct associated components, you still didn’t hear it [most systems seem to be either the random Audiogon click to buy approach or some dealer putting components together because it is good ‘politics’]. It is hard to get an idea of how something really sounds [think how poorly Wilson has been represented all these years – how many people hate their speakers. This is why].

Because of all this, Spintricity is just presenting things like specs, people, how-tos and why-tos, and ads. Because of the rampant unethical behavior of the press, we can’t even think about doing reviews ourselves, of equipment or rooms at shows, without tarnishing our magazine with the stink of the current zines. [Even though we are darned good at it with having probably the most significant and wide-ranging experience with uber high-end audio of any reviewers/reporters/audiohpiles. And our personal preferences are also 1) known to us [so we can at least try to listen around them] and 2) fairly mainstream]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Show Reports / Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

Imaging, Soundstaging, Reality and Enjoyment

[Neli thinks I write too many pieces on the industry, so here is one on sound]

I was surfing and ran across an article on imaging and soundstaging at Romy’s site

Now, Romy is too opaque for me in that thread, but I am pretty sure I disagree with what he is saying 🙂

Lot’s of people are confused about soundstaging – and it is indeed popular to tarnish it as being faux and imaging as being required to be in some nebulous constraints of size and specificity.

Let’s define these two, shall we? At least for the duration of this post, and I hope these are more or less in line with what you think of them as. So we will define:

—————————

Soundstaging: as the location on a virtual 3D stage of where a sound is coming from, usually on the side of the room where the speakers are

Imaging: as the spacial and textural definition of the musician and or sound – their outlines, their weight, etc.

—————————

So imaging has to do with perceived image specificity and soundstaging as its location in 3D space.

I think I will ignore imaging in this post and talk about the much maligned soundstage.

I, personally, love the soundstage. Even though it is probably 5th or 6th on my list – it is still very important to me.

The only thing I can think of why people disparage soundstaging so much is, as pointed out on Romy’s thread, is that it is popular to do so [though not for monetary gain, as implied there, and which requires a very cynical view of the industry to imagine – though, yes, there are many unscrupulous types in retail out there, I just don’t think they are this smart :-)].

It obviously occurs in acoustic reality. But what really interests me [and I think upsets the detractors] is the liberties that sound engineers take with the positions of sounds in the 3D space.

On a good system [the precise quality and make up of which we can debate and agonize over some other time] you can hear the sound engineer move things around, fade them in and out, and change them in other ways that have nothing to do with unamplified/unprocessed sound.

I think of sound engineers as the ‘forgotten musician’. They add all this stuff to the music – and yet they do not get the big bucks. Nobody knows their name. And many people – audiophiles anyway – think the music would be better off without them.

I don’t think so.

Obviously I am talking about bands like Radiohead and Pink Floyd, and not Led Zeppelin or classical music. But if you listen to your casual pop rock country and crossover songs – in the background, there is a lot of stuff going on that is very entertaining. To me anyway.

And that is why I like soundstaging. I enjoy all the background stuff and the way it appears and disappears and moves around [in, out, left, right, up, down] and [rarely] changes phase and pitch and texture.

On a car radio, or iPhone, all this stuff is merged into The Song. But on a quality high-end audio system – this stuff expands into a wondrous playful menage of delightful sounds, which just feeds back into greatly enhancing the overall song.

For me.

And hopefully for you too. The more things one enjoys in this life, the less room there is for things we do not enjoy. 🙂

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy 0 comments