Passing Judgement on Audio Quality

We normally judge the quality of food primarily by the taste.

We judge art like paintings by looking at them to form our opinion.

We judge optical quality such as clarity of lenses of various sorts usually by looking through them even though we can read resolution tests.

Then why the heck would we judge any sort of audio equipment buy just looking at various printed specifications rather than by using our ears to actually listen to them?

There’s no way printed numbers are ever going to tell what something is actually going to sound like to you so why even bother trying to make it so?

I understand many can’t actually access equipment before they buy it but it doesn’t really help if others offer advice specially if they haven’t experienced something themselves first hand. Even an educated guess can’t tell the whole story as there are usually too many individual factors involved.

Just a thought.

 

It's not just a thought, it's a part of reality if you ask me. A musician friend of mine used to talk about how identical guitars (same model, same production year) can produce different sound quality and tone and I don't really doubt his ears about these thing (after having played for almost five decades. I've never actually "scientifically" or "tested" his credibility here -- it just makes some sense to me).

By the same token, I can easily envision cases where well regarded gear with superior specs might not sound as pleasing to a listener than something less expensive that doesn't spec out nearly as well. I think the reason for that is just the huge numbers of variables. I don't have any tube gear (well, my phono pre is kind of a tube hybrid) but what I have heard sounds sweet. But tubes introduce distortion, I've read. I've also read that distortion is euphonic and sweet sounding to the ear.

In the same vein, our host has written in the past that during a remastering project he may have to "degrade" the sound of a particular section to make it sound better. I can see that.

I think specs can give you a rough guide and sometimes a good guide. But the final measure and the most important one IMO is the one you do yourself with your own ears.

 

I prefer the term discernment, as in: I discern that my Cornwalls are superior to other speakers in my particular room specifically with my electronics.

 

i use measurements as a comparative tool and check list for electronic compatability and requirements.
an important and necessary step.
this gets you in the ball park (or not) but the outcome isn't decided until the game is played...

 

I understand your point but I don't think food and paintings are analogous to home audio. When I look at a painting, the connection to the artist is direct in that I'm seeing the actual paint and composition they put on the canvas. Same with food; it's the direct product of the chef/cook. Home audio is indirect because a hifi acts as a filter between the musician and the listener. So specs are actually useful to the listener because they are informative as to whether or not a piece of gear is adequate for evaluating recordings, as opposed to just making music sound nice. A better analogy to hifi would be a printing press -- does it reproduce the original painting faithfully, with correct colors and sufficient detail? Can't think of a food analogy, lol.

I'm actually not a specs guy other than for system matching purposes, but I understand why they're important to some audiophiles. Just depends what your priorities are.

 

I played tuba in a high school concert band and it always fascinated me how your emotional connection to playing would affect the sound through an inanimate object. Some things just sound better because they were breathed on in a particular way like voicing electronics. You can produce a baseline with measurements but then the really clever bit has to happen.
The great thing about art is that it really is the pinnacle of human achievement....my contribution notwithstanding.

 

I fully agree with the posters who wisely consult specs to judge if a component is an electrical match to their system because if not it’s a no go from the get go. That should be an initial first step in all cases. Thing is you won’t really know for sure until you hook the thing up and actually listen to it.

I’ve only bought a very few things without listening to them first in my system.
Perhaps the heaviest investment I made that way was in my new amplifier. It was only because I received advice from people who are known to have exceptional taste and extensive experience in auditioning great audio equipment.
The one common factor in this particular case was the total agreement that what impressed them most was without doubt was the Sound Quality with a wide variety of first class speakers that they were able to drive with such exceptional results.
They all thought it was something special. Also it didn’t hurt that if I didn’t find it to my liking they would take it back.
This really was a true win win in my case but it still ultimately came down to my listening to it in my system.

 

I don't find these to be great analogies for audio.

You judge the food by its taste, and the quality of the ingredients, and the ability of the chef to make something tasty. But in the analogy to home audio reproduction, the chefs are the audio engineers and musicians and producers who made the recording. You're not doing the cooking with your home audio gear, it's just a delivery service -- it's there to get the food to you the way the chefs cooked it. Does it deliver the food as cooked? Or does it throw it's own seasoning into the pot? What do you want out of your stereo -- something that delivers what the cooks made, or something that re-seasons it. I understand some people may want and like the latter, but it's not really what "hifi" as in high fidelity used to be about, and it's not necessarily what everyone wants (and it may not be what the chefs want either).

I also think it's not true that numbers can't tell you how something will sound. One has to train one's self. But with training and experience you kind of know, say, from looking at a frequency response plot that A) is going to sound warm and mid-bassy; B) is going to sound bright. You're right, it won't tell you the whole story, it's not a substitute for listening, but measurements can tell you plenty about how something is going to sound. Bass distortion figures and certain output levels will tell you how a speaker will sound in the bass when you turn up the volume.

Why look at horsepower specs, or 0 to 60 numbers, or fuel efficiency numbers when considering a car? Because it will tell you something about how the car will drive and what it will be like practically to operate it. You'd still go test drive the car. But the specs also do tell you something meaningful too.

 

Really poor analogies. Food isn't normally measurable. Neither is a statue or painting. But you can empirically measure the heat "hotness" of a pepper chemically, which is more akin to measuring audio.

 

But we don’t normally express opinions about the established highest quality unless everything in the food production chain meets high standards of care, quality, inspection, significant amounts of training and/or apprenticeship and practice (in the case of restaurant chefs), and practice and experimentation in the case of home cooks. Simplifying the end result of meal sourcing, preparation, presentation and consumption misses all of the fundamentally important details that result in the good taste. Many, many people in very many parts of the world expect high technical standards of source quality, production quality, and cleanliness - all highly regulated and highly technical requirements - and tend to choose brands that demonstrably produce good quality at reasonably prices. What we cook up with such ingredients is the end result of an enormous amount of highly developed animal husbandry science, highly developed agricultural science, food production and distribution engineering and supply chain management. To ignore all of what we’ve all considered from time to time when checking Best Before dates, brand quality, care in preparation, and on and on, reducing it to a mere taste test, is a simplistically inadequate description of what we actually do. Don’t put anything in your mouth if you don’t first know the standards applied to produce and prepare it!

But the artists who produce works that are widely appreciated often don’t get to the point where they can produce true artistry (as opposed to interesting craftwork, colorful decorative work, etc.) without long periods of practice, and often some years in art/design school, study of art history, and the endurance of sufficient amounts of criticism to motivate improvement, experimentation and refinement. The development of a definitive technique or set of techniques that help an artist produce his/her vision can often be highly technical and crucial to the formation of such vision and, ultimately, such execution. Simplifying the end result of all that into mere judgement of observation is insulting to both the artists and the amount of time and effort they spent refining their craft, developing into artists, and creating their work. We may not think of all that when we walk into a gallery to view a particular show, but all of it to varying degrees forms the basis for our opinions whether we realize at that moment or not. Artists who’ve arisen from an interesting history of training and apprenticeship and practice have formed the backbone of various global art movements for centuries.

For anyone - anyone - to develop an eye for good quality art, a lot of time is needed to refine the eye. That is to say, enough artwork must be viewed in order to create some perspective and sense of what constitutes quality. That takes time and repetition and a gradual refinement of our sense of quality in order to develop judgement that serves us well.

To produce a lens that, in the hands of a competent photographer, can help capture a well-focussed, sharp, well-composed image that is compelling, an enormous amount of engineering, highly technical expertise, and a long history of successful development of the necessary and crucially fundamental IP in order for someone to declare a lens to be good or great. Suggesting that all it takes is looking through a lens to judge its quality is completely inaccurate and fundamentally denies all of the engineering and technical expertise and optical manufacturing expertise required to bring such quality to market. In the modern age, all lenses from the major makers are sharp, but judging which prime or zoom lens will suit a particular set of creative photographic applications requires a review of their specifications. Picking of a 35mm f1.2 prime pancake and trying to use it to shoot conventional portraits is idiotic. If such a photographer had read the lens specs ahead of time he would have found that out.

Very few people do so. If you also think that it’s wrong to consider technical specifications - particularly those produced by independent technical sources - as a place to begin considerations, then you’re mistaken. It is certainly not the only way to begin component considerations, but it is a highly valid and supportable one.

In a time when fewer audio retailers exist, far too many audiophiles resort to making purchases online without first auditioning the equipment. Does he rely on commercial reviews, YouTube guys trying to pump up their channel numbers and make a bit of money, published specs, or the specs produced by non-commercial independent reviewers? He has to start somewhere! Auditions are best, but when auditions aren’t possible a review of technical specification comparisons is absolutely necessary.

Perhaps a few somewhat incomplete thoughts in some respects, but an interesting thread nonetheless.

 

Specs have a place. If you understand them. For example phono amp SN ratios. At what input, what weighting, etc.?
Many will rate them at 10 mV but you feed it 4 mV. Since S is higher, so is SN, misleading.

Specs are a guideline, a starting point. Your perception the other part. How you weight these is an individual choice. Specs mean more to me (by nature as an EE) and by necessity because my ears are not trained and I do not have the chance to listen to lots of different gear.

But using your painting analogy.
If shown on TV would not the specs of the TV have impact on your perception? Resolution, refresh rate, etc.
Along with the tuning/adjustments/source/ambient light conditions:etc.

It is a hifi SYSTEM.

Much like a car:
You know a 3000 lb / 500 HP car will be faster than a 4000 lb / 400 HP. But you must drive it to get the 'feel'. You may like the slower better, for whatever reason. It is better for you, the other may be better for another.

There is no right/wrong, black/white here.
Only in betweens.

 

Thanks, I appreciate what your analysis adds to this discussion.

 

This strikes me as why people went from SS back to tubes, what you describe has really truly been a negative in terms of both food quality and it's affect on our world. Not to derail the thread or torture the analogy further I just thought that sounded a bit off to me. The rest of your points are characteristically excellent.

 

Good analogy. HD TV vs standard when viewing sports. They can be measured and HD specs would indicate it should look better. Quantitative measurements leading to to purchase HD, think you'll like what HD looks like more than standard resolution.

 

Without belaboring the food topic, yes processed food has negatives. But also positives: we can feed more people, if people are wise they can eat better and live longer.

There may be more cancer and diabetes now, but when the average life expectancy was 50 100 years ago (now close to 80) people were dying from something, likely the same things as now, just not documented.

Of course medicine has a lot to do with it, but so does food. Water, sanitary systems.

 

It’s refreshing to read opinions with something to back them up. Thanks for the contributions.

 

I think specs initially took hold at the beginning of the hifi culture (50's & 60's) because it was geeks involved, lol. Engineers , vets who were electronic techs/radio men, etc.
Hobbyists. Much like early computing.

Then it morphed into sales ammo: I have more watts than you or I have lower distortion. For the uninitiated that meant something.
A bigger power number is 'better'.
A lower THD is 'better'.

J Gordon Holt started the shift from objective to subjective. Be even he realized BOTH are part of whole.

 

At one time a small AM radio — in the right environment and circumstances, with the right music — just blew me away.

Spent a lot of money, research, reconfiguring, anxiety, etc., trying to better that. Now, I can’t really hear the difference. But it was fun.

 

Wasn't it apparent during the THD and IM wars in the 70's just adding greater amounts of negative feedback for lower distortion specs did not always benefit the listening experience.
Seems as if no one was interested in publishing the thresholds of audibility of measured distortions.

 

Food is measured all the time. Ingredients are listed, % of sodium, carbs, calories, etc. There is a quantified aspect to food, too. We make judgments on what we'll like often on those measurements.

 

Cant argue with specs, but specs are the basis for many arguments. Everyone interprets sound differently, one mans treasure is another mans trash. I figure if it sounds good, then it sounds good.

 

Maybe I shouldn’t have used the term “Quality” with respect to food in this thread.

I meant to point out that my judgement of food is solely based on the way it tastes to me as the final judgment as to whether I like it or not.
I didn’t think at all about the nutritional values or growth practices in this instance. I won’t eat any foods that I don’t like taste of. For me that is usually the determining factor.

As far as art goes I suppose it comes down to how I personally react to it. There are one or two great paintings that I would love to have the originals of and could stare at forever.

 

Absolutely man. PWK would totally agree with us

 

Many criteria going into buying decisions - cost, availability, how it sounds, other users success / reviews, measurements, aesthetics, size.....

But not all can be top priorities and "weigh" the most in the decision making process. Then again, just because one might be top priority doesn't mean the rest don't matter. Plus, given what piece of gear, the priority of criteria can change.

For me, given the level of equipment I typically target, measurements as the decision making criteria for most gear rarely make the top four or five criteria.

Most gear I own "measures" well in it's class, so it would only be a tiebreaker when comparing because I can't hear 0.001 THD differences at 1k Hz. Plus I've had too many pieces that measure well and sound like crap, and vice versa.

At the end of the day, and after my typically long audition periods I have for gear, my equipment is ultimately judged by my ears. Every time.

 

Maybe we need a “Destructive System Criticism Thread”

We list our systems in detail so the rest of us can tear it apart.

The benefit to the audio industry would be substantial as we probably would then want to dump our systems and buy new ones. Everyone benefits!

Hmm…but wait…..