Last post broke down the optimization process into three main steps:

1. Recognizing that a system needs improvement and that it cannot be improved without some radical changes
2. Choosing what those changes should be
3. Evaluating the resultant system for sound quality improvements (or lack thereof )

Hopefully after some thought we might be able to apply some of the techniques from Simulated Annealing algorithms to our dilema here.

Looking more deeply at step 1.

*** Some people are happy with what they have and no matter what other system they hear, they are able to always convince themselves that their system is ‘better’. These people should not be reading this 🙂

*** Some people read the trade magazines are the online forums and hear about how just absolutely wonderful something is and this gives them an urge to upgrade. There is nothing that they can hear that is wrong with their system, but that ephemeral ‘better component’ haunts them – making them wonder if their system may not be so good after all.

How to debunk what they are reading so that they don’t feel like they need to upgrade all the time?

How to learn to differentiate between needing a system upgrade and just reviewer-inspired equipment lust?

How to stop this imagining all the time as they listen to each song about how the song would sound probably so much better if their system just had X, Y and or Z?

*** Romy [if I understand him correctly :-)], at the GoodSoundClub, thinks that a person should always have a clear idea of exactly how they want to improve their system, what property of the sound that they want more of and what they want less of, before they start upgrading.

How does one know how they want to improve their system?

How does one differentiate between infatuation with a different sound a natural preference for a particular sound?

How does one know beforehand whether a particular sound will help one grow in their depth of mucisal appreication, and what is just sugar coating that will take one into on a detour?

How does one know what sound one really, really, really wants?

*** Some people hear a system and they like something about it a lot in comparison with their system – perhaps the bass is better controlled, or more powerful, or the pacing is much more natural and engaging. Sometimes every aspect of this other system they have heard is appealing (in which case they should attempt to replace theirs with an exact copy of this other one, if they can afford it. Done, Finito.). But sometimes the other system sound also has aspects that are not as appealing.

Should they inquire further and see about upgrading their own system to get some of these positive attributes they are hearing?

They only heard this sound for a few minutes, maybe hours – what will it be like to live with? Will they learn to hate it?

How to get the good things from this other system into their own?

Which components in that other system are what is making this aspect of the sound that they are liking so much?

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Well these are all hard questions.

I know that other hobbies are also so inflicted. Electric guitarists buy and sell amps and guitars like there is no tomorrow (they call it having GAS – Gear Aquisition Syndrome). Looking for that particular ‘sound’ that will both be ‘theirs’ and also be appealing to their audience. We don’t usually have much of an audience – though the ones that we do have, especially the non-audiophiles – should be listened to closely to see if we are anywhere in the ballpark of having a system that sounds enjoyable in a natural sense. Even the finest wine tastes good to a neophyte – so should our finest hifi systems sound good to the non-audiophile.

More next time on some ways to help think about maybe finding an approach that might work for some of the questions above…

For myself, the main question is and will always be:

How does one know what sound one really, really, really wants?

Or needs.

To summarize the previous, somewhat rambling, post:

There exists an optimization technique called Simulated Annealing, based on certain techniques of metallurgy, which can be applied (often unqittingly) to optimizing a High-Fidelity Audio System.

This optimization technique has a large number of problems it has been applied to, but in general it is a practical technique and every application is customized for the problem at hand.

Using this technique should get one to a better system faster than just the brute force technique of trying everything.

The optimzation process in our case consists of three steps:

1. Recognizing that a system needs improvement and that it cannot be improved without some radical changes
2. Choosing what those changes should be
3. Evaluating the resultant system for sound quality improvements (or lack thereof :-))

Gettng to step one often entails an emotional rejection of the current system, causing confusion resulting in step two being flubbed, and ending up with a system that fails at step 3 (or whose improvment is not as significant as desired). Rinse and repeat.

A quick definition from WikiPedia.com

“The name and inspiration come from annealing in metallurgy, a technique involving heating and controlled cooling of a material to increase the size of its crystals and reduce their defects. The heat causes the atoms to become unstuck from their initial positions (a local minimum of the internal energy) and wander randomly through states of higher energy; the slow cooling gives them more chances of finding configurations with lower internal energy than the initial one.”

The idea is that a little ‘shake up’ is required to get your system out of a ‘rut’ and in so doing achieve a better sound.

Systems reach a point where they have been optimized as much as possible. Given a budget and these set of comonents: the system has got the right cables and the right speaker positioning and the amp seems to mate fairly well with the speakers andit has been pushed and coaxed. each piece has been coddled just about as much as really makes sense.

So, to get a better sound, one would have to ‘heat up’ i.e. do some serious changing to, the system.

To get the very best sound possible we would still have to try every possible component in combination with every other possible component. But if applied correctly – the simulated annealing optimization approach will get us to a ‘better’ system a lot faster.

OK, so all this is believable, and most of it is probably provable.

The problen arrises in the two human elements:

1. The human has to decide how to ‘shake up the system’ i.e. which components to replace.
2. The human has to judge whether the resulting sound of the new system is ‘better’ or not.

[There is also a ‘0th’ element: the human has to decide that the system is optmizied about as much as possible yet Needs Improvement].

We’ll look at problem #1 first. This is probably the real key psychosis-inducing gut-wrenching ‘WTF did I do that for’ kind of problem.

For one, when the typcial audiophile is finally ready to ‘heat up’ their system, to do some ch-ch-ch-change-essss, they are well past the point of calm cool logic… they are Fed Up. One is emotional. One has finally been torn loose from a loyalty to such-and-such a component that one had every reason to believe was the bees-knees.

Why did one ‘believe’ it was the bees-knees [what does that MEAN?] in the first place? We’ll get to that in a moment.

But it is this emotional storm, which no doubt provides one the support to get rid of some cherished components – which is often is so strong that, in keeping with the metallurgy analogy – one often just melts the whole system down like 3-Mile Island and liquifies the darn thing – and starts all over. Pack ’em up. Move ’em out.

But what does one get next to replace these out-of-favor components?

In this emotional state one often loses confidence. Turning to reviews on the net and in the trade mags, actually listening to salespeople and what they recommend.

Yep. This is where the trouble really starts.

Why? Because the Human Element #2, Judging whether the sound is better or not – is often forgotten during this stage and only applied AFTER the new components are bought.

You know that POS you have loved and posted about and raved about and now detest? It MAY not be so bad. It depends on WHAT YOU LIKE your sound to sound like. Maybe it is not being well-supported by the other components.

You know that person / reviewer / dealer / netizen who is recommending you spend gazillion dollahs on component X? What does THEIR system sound like? If it sucks, why won’t your system suck if you buy what they are recommending?

Look at what else they have in their system. Does it suck? Why trust a person who has sucky things in their system? Maybe they have sucky taste in sound, too.

Look at their buying and selling habits. Are they thrashing, tossing things out left and right all the time? Then why trust what they say about component X when you just know they are going to be selling it in a few weeks, at which time they can tell you all about how it sucks this and sucks that. [Maybe it sucks and maybe it doesn’t – they can’t tell because their optimization algorithm is broken and they are not getting to really ‘hear’ the piece in question – often because the associated components that they bought last week were not designed to work with component X because they had no freaking idea they were going to buy component X last week – so they did not make a nice home for it so it just puked all over everything… :-)].

[A lot of ‘sucks’ in this post, sorry]

The answer to Human Element #1, what to throw out and what to keep?

Well, one approach is taken by our dealer-agnostic component-flavor breakdowns in the Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy. If one knows what kind of sound you want to move towards, then this will help choose the kind of amp, preamp, CD player, and speakers to get.

How does one determine the sound that they like without trying each and every component – a pricey and lengthy proposition? [Although it has its pleasures, it is however both very addicting and immensely frustrating].

How does one improve the Human Element #2 part of the system optimizing algorithm, judging the sound they hear by comparing it against the sound they would like?

One way is to go to shows.

Another is to listen to all kinds of systems in the geographic areas you visit and inhabit, including systems that are way too expensive, as well as those that are very inexpensive.

[More in our next post .. This is getting long.]