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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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In Reply to: Re: So we disagree about how much we agree (or disagree)? posted by andy_c on August 30, 2004 at 20:56:00:
Perhaps the confusion arises over accuracy vs. subjective preference.You said: "I interpreted this second statement as an insistence that the measurement correlate to a subjective outcome without regard to the vailidity of the subjective outcome."
My original post was not intended to suggest that whatever each person likes or doesn't like constitutes more or less accurate. Accurate is accurate is accurate. What I won't accept is that conformance to some arbitrarily-selected set of measurement criteria can be proven to result in subjective accuracy.
(I did question, in a later post by soundmind, the notion that the "better" cable could be the one less liked. It seems bizarre to me to say that I should like listening to a cable because it has been defined to be better via an artificial construct, even though I prefer it less.)
What I was trying to point out in the original post is that we don't know (yet) which deviations from perfect accuracy are audible, nor do we know which mesurable physical characteristics influence sound quality. In other words, what things is the brain most sensitive to?
This is independent of the (subjective) question of better.
Perhaps two examples might make this clearer: (don't worry about arguing with the accuracy of the examples; they're just analogies...)
The human ear/brain is most sensitive in the midrange/low treble. If you have two transducers that exhibit the same magnitude of frequency response error, but one has the error in the bass at 30Hz, and the other centered at 2kHz, which one will sound less accurate?
Amplifiers having the same THD spec often are reported to sound different, and it appears that 0.1% 2nd harmonic distortion is much less objectionable than, say 0.1% 7th harmonic. To a distortion analyzer, the amps are equally flawed, but to the human brain they may be quite different.
What I was trying to articulate (apparently poorly) is the very simple notion that we don't know which deviations from perfection trigger a subjective reaction.
Given that, it's impossible to assign a "goodness" rating to a cable based solely on a set of measurements (which is EXACTLY what the AH article was attempting to do).
Goodness in an audio cable has no meaning except in terms of the "complete path"; in other words, you must include the ear-brain path.
Peter
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Follow Ups
- Yep. - Commuteman 21:31:44 08/30/04 (0)
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