Are audio companies all involved in a huge conspiracy? - Page 25

I thought you were the same member but I see I was confused. The names are slightly different. No, he posts quite regularly and I enjoy reading his posts over there, so I thought I might ask.
Edited by goneten - 10/11/12 at 12:05pm

You might think that, but that's not what Amir wrote. In past posts, he has made clear that his priorities in treating low frequencies are: placement, treatment, equalization; in that order. His post about room correction in this thread merely demonstrates how effective one isolated variable (equalization) is while keeping other variables (placement, treatment) the same. But that's not the same as preaching that equalizers obviate the need for acoustic treatments. More a case of you trying to knock down a straw man that you yourself erected.

Do multiple subs and EQ obviate the need for LF treatments? (ie those frequencies being reproduced by the subwoofers)

Please provide a link to a post where he said that.

You must be unaware of the context of the purported experiment which included comments about room treatments being just a different kind of snake oil, somehow analogous to expensive interconnect cables.

Please start reading this thread starting around post 434 and maybe you'll get the idea...

Asked and answered. ;-)

Straw man? Has not Amir gone to war against another forum member here over alleged scientific skepticism about certain room treatments, including both bass traps and absorption at inflection points? You don't need to construct straw men when he's on the warpath.

yes, maybe.

What I see is a lot of offense taken that Amir 'dares' to question "ethan", tho tbh it is more (I feel) an 'everybody knows' that is being challenged (as they should), it just so happens ethan is a) here, and b) very strongly espouses this particular 'everybody knows'.

So annoyance and offense is directed towards amir for challenging this, using science as a starting point and at least follows with some real woprld examples. Did he do it correctly? Ok, examine the results and methodology, that's fine. In other words, argue the point.

BUT, maybe it is only me that notices it....whilst everyone is getting all uptight and righteous 'how dare he?', almost every.... single... one... of... you thinks eq is a great idea and not only desirable but essential (as do I). In other words, you ALL agree that ethans rigid 'anti dsp' stance is misguided and wrong, and that none of you seem to have found similarly poor results with audessy, those results ethan got being the platform from which he builds his stance.

Why the outrage then on the one hand with Amir, but no-one is capable of being disinterested enough to equally examine ethans stance?

Me? Room treatment AND eq thank you very much. Straight away that means (and so does everyone else who has at least eq in their system) I reject ethans thoughts on this particular topic.

Methinks there is an awful lot more going on here than simply discussing a topic. If you cannot see that personal antipathies reduce the value of these discussions............

They go back. All of this started after Ethan bad-mouthed Amir's forum after Amir didn't stand up for him against other forum members and banned Ethan. Amir has been on a crusade against Ethan since.

Please document Ethan's so-called 'anti dsp' stance with quotes in context and where you got the quotes from.

If you can't, there's always that loose accusation about straw men... ;-)

Has Ethan taken a rigid anti-DSP stance? I hadn't noticed. He's said there are some things that treatments can do and that DSP can't. That's hardly the same thing.
No one is opposed to a substantive debate about the relative merits of different approaches to taming room anomalies. But there's a vendetta being carried out here, and the substance is a mere pretext, as Amir demonstrates by his hypocritical and conflicting remarks. Are you part of the vendetta, Terry? You've done nothing here but enable it.

It is possible. Even more probable if you extend the definition of "EQ" to electronic correction (as in SFM). Here is a page from a presentation on RPG (Ethan's larger competitor):



That is for four subs at 1/4 positions into the room (i.e. ceiling mount). He goes on to cover other optimized positions from Todd Welti's paper which I also cite in my article.

Your room may differ from these simulations. Keith Yate's/JBL's simulation service can deal with that, computing the optimized number and position of subs for arbitrary rooms and construction. Alternatively or in addition you can use SFM which enables use of different subs and accommodates non-ideal rooms.

Don't waste your time with digital room "correction" that must be inserted into the signal path. RealTraps products are all-natural and 100 percent analog! Just like your ears.

Raining a bit today, can't get all done that I need to so I might just waste a bit of time on the net, or not. Time will tell.

Anyway, rather than trawl thru this thread again..oh the agony!..I just decided to go to ethans website.

First page, did not even get into any reports or other articles.

That not a rigid anti stance? ok then, I freely admit I did not spend much time writing my response, I perhaps did not spend as much time as normal making sure I had dotted the i's and crossed the t's. I accept that I could have worded it poorly, and apologies if I did so (esp to ethan if I misrepresented you).

[Wow, just noticed these too on the front page, veery nice!

[URL=http://javascript:DisplayImage('cust_kelly.jpg','551','411','RealTraps')]http://javascript:DisplayImage('cust_kelly.jpg','551','411','RealTraps')[/URL] ]

Hmm, that did not work. Anyway, those panels look wonderful

How about this then, for all of you who use eq in the bass

JUST SAY NO TO ROOM EQ
Trying to use an equalizer to fix room acoustics problems does not work very well. Every location in a room has a different response, so no single EQ curve can help everywhere. Even if your goal is to correct the response only where you sit, it's impossible to counter nulls. If you have a 25 dB dip at 60 Hz, adding that much boost with EQ will increase low frequency distortion in the loudspeakers. And at other places where 60 Hz is too loud, EQ makes the problem worse. EQ can reduce peaks a little, but it does not reduce the extended decay time that accompanies most peaks. Our Audyssey Report article explains why EQ is not a suitable substitute for bass traps and other treatment.

The title is a bit of a giveaway, but I agree mostly with the other bolded part (ie the word substitute. That implies that treatment can do things that perhaps eq cannot. However, it pushes in one direction, treatment first. I'd tend to eq first and always, you can go a lot further with eq than treatment (I feel), but for ultimate results you'd need both) More applicable perhaps to HT than straight stereo, I'm with jin (was it?) on this one. For me it is stereo so only for my seat thanks very much. Go get your own stereo for the other seats

Quick poll...which path would be your FIRST expense? Quality eq and multiple subs, or treatment? Which WAS the first direction you took??

Reduce peaks a little?? WTF? Who here agrees with that?




Turns out I did misrepresent ethan (my 'rigid anti dsp stance'), a bit more digging found the following

To be clear, I am not opposed to the use of EQ to reduce the one or two lowest modal peaks in a room. That certainly could not be construed by the 'rigid anti' label. So my sloppiness in that post has come back to bite me on the bum.

In any case, I hope we can actually get back to the question that has been raised regarding the way we look at time and ringing. My gut feel IS that even with my eq some frequencies still ring, so I am (for now) with ethan and not amir on this question. I am more with amir and not ethan on the value of eq. The technical aspects of this question are what I am interested in, not this back and forth bickering that seems to have it's roots back in time and maybe other places.

The fighting seems to be constantly between the same small group of protagonists. That's fine, we all love a good stoush but equally it is very refreshing when someone not involved in that (eg markus lately) can disspassionately contribute.

How DO we look at time in the bass? How do we reconcile the two mutually exclusive ways of looking at time resolution vs frequency resolution? What does that mean in practical terms?

Indeed it has. Someone owes someone an apology.
Good. Get back there and stay there, Terry.

already done

I accept that I could have worded it poorly, and apologies if I did so (esp to ethan if I misrepresented you).

PRIOR to finding out mind, it's not as if I grudgingly had to admit it. Hmm, I can imagine how it would go if the shoe was on a few other feet around here.

yes your lordship, sorry if I spoke out of turn your royal highness.

Presume that means you have nothing or are unable to contribute to the question then?

Cool, keep on carping then.

Mostly the latter. I'm learning here. It saddens me that I have to wade through a lot of slander to do so.

Sorry if I seemed harsh a moment ago, Terry. But with all due respect, I think you've been a bit naive about the nature of this thread.

****, blow me down.

I accept it totally. (I did not expect this response, so yeah maybe the last was out of character. Thanks)

Yeah, you can think what you want about me, that's cool. And, let's be honest, all we have to judge is what is written which does not necessarily reflect a person truly. And it goes without saying that I have a different view about the nature of this thread than you seem to.

To me, there are no taboo questions. (and whilst I am at it, a thread evolves and takes on a character of it's own. It can't really be controlled unless someone is anal about it so I personally don't put much stock in the idea that due to the title 'huge conspiracy'...which somehow morphed into that being equivalent to 'snake oil' at one stage...that that disbars room treatment question from coming under the same scrutiny as any other).

Particularly when room treatment is being put forward as a better alternative than any other. If it is fair to analyze dsp (say) fopr where iut might not do a full job, equally it is fair to look at room treatment in the same way.

I too, like you, am here to learn. This latest question about 'time and ringing' just happened to coincide with what we did only a few days ago. Perhaps that is why it is 'hot' in my mind. *We* concluded that, due to the normal concept of ringing as usually shown by WFs, it might be good to target specific frequencies that (under those graph conditions) show excess ringing.

A question about the validity of that way of viewing things has arisen, and that it targets one of these 'unexamined everyone knows' it is of even more intellectual curiosity!

Under those circumstances, I for one would love to have an emotion free investigation into the area. Perhaps even you might agree with me it would move along better if for once we could get rid of the constant sniping and innuendo, and just examine the science of it?

For starters, have you looked at your own waterfalls and moved back and forth with a 'new' emphasis on the time resolution? Just this morning have been doing it, I am trying to find out just what it is I am still not grasping. The end view, as always, a way to improve what is going on. We are all here for that?

Amir, I asked 'over there' about your time graphs, shown by toole etc. How are these generated? Are they at the LP? (we might have 'been done' there, maybe not here ) As I said, I am not convinced that anything has changed in time with those graphs. The peaks and valleys still exactly coincide in the before and after. The magnitudes do not however, just as we would expect because we did change magnitudes.

A bit like my car brakes. I have not changed them in the slightest, but it sure as hell takes less time to stop from 60 mph that it does from 100.

BTW, damn you!

With this post you made it 'impossible' to give you 'the comeback' I thought of after I first responded. You know, a bit like George on Seinfeld when he later realised a great comeback he did not think of at the time

Anyways, I was gonna ask you (in a very monty pythonesque way)

"And how should I stay there master? Cower?"

(and by posting this I very sneakily got around the 'impossible' restriction above. Neat eh?)

Ethan, whilst we are at it, can you address the question I asked a few pages ago? I see you even linked to it very recently. http://www.ethanwiner.com/believe.html

Do you really think all these things are totally explained by comb filtering? Just out of curiosity, I'll run a few sweeps (in the bass, under 200 hz say) because from memory I do NOT get any such great variations as you seem to in the bass by moving your mic by as little as four inches. What is the setup you measured?

Re the huge variations in the upper range by moving the mic. I'd hazard that was with one mic only yet both channels driven? Well of course, under those circumstance naturally you'd see those variations up there. Do you mean to say that your ears hears the huge variations your mic supposedly uncovered? (who here thinks their sound changes so drastically every time they get up and change the cd???) If your ears do not hear it as the mic seems to, then how can it be an explanation of why people hear differences? Could it simply be an artifact from poor measuring technique?

I mean, WHY would you run both channels at once 'up there'? Run left and right individually, then move the mic and compare.

Dollars to peanuts there will be very little change.

You can't have it both ways, a measurement that we all agree does not correlate with our everyday listening experience whilst simultaneously explaining how people (falsely) hear differences which are not actually there.

A big "+1" to that link Markus. I was going to post the link as well, but you beat me to it.

For those not familiar with its contents, it shows how to use REW to determine the regions of minimum-phase behavior in an objective way, by computing the excess group delay.

Can anyone voice a good reason for Amir to explicitly write "Ethan's largest competitor" when discussing the technical arguments at hand? Posting a reference graph from them, product examples, calling them by name... sure. No problem. Even pointimg out their highly respected position in the field would seem natural. But explicitly pointing out their direct competition to Ethan? At the very least it is distasteful and illustrates the personal subtext of his arguments. As counterpoint, can anyone find an example of anyone highlighting one of Amir's direct competitors by name? Sanjay, I don't think it matters much what Amirs past posts prove, or what pictures of his showroom proves. He had a point to make, and if it happens to damage a business in the process... I suppose one might say the same about calling cable manufacturers snake oil salesmen and such. There might be a good point there if such labeling came from a dealer with written history of his espousing of such cables and business that regularly places them in customers hands.

I'm not sure why it should matter. Speaking for myself only, I'm interested in the views and factual information put forth by people who are actually interested in the technical aspects of audio as an end in itself. That disqualifies a lot of people, and they end up on my ignore list. Also, that perspective doesn't preclude people who sell stuff, because some people might be selling things, and yet their posts clearly reveal that they are searching for the truth of a matter, wherever that search may lead.

Unfortunately, there are people who are selling stuff that are not only intellectually dishonest, but are actively engaged in the perfection of intellectual dishonesty itself as a kind of art form, and as a means to practice their sales technique for products that may not have any audible benefit whatsoever. That's ignore list fodder. The fact that such nonsense is actually dignified with a response only encourages them to post more. Last I checked, the specific individual, in one week, posted 7x the number of posts in this forum than they did in a forum of their own creation.

It is not a conspiracy, it is just the reality of the market.

I used to work for home depot in the paint section. We had a whole line if paints. I repeat it is paint, you know that lame stuff to color walls. How much could really go into a gallon of paint?

Just like speakers there the components to go into it really are not that expensive. In fact a chunk of the costs actually comes from not the paint but the stupid paint chips and swatch fold outs they give people for free. So they end up needing to charge alot more for a gallon of paint just to cover that. So that points out one thing any product has a bunch of overhead you don't think about going into the price.

Now there were 3 basic types of customers we dealt with. 1 the bottom 10% just come in and say I want the cheapest, you can try to tell them that's a bad idea but they wont have it, so a market exists for them. We made like $7 per gallon water called paint and sold it to them. Then in the middle were most customers, they would want reasons, make compromises and try to find the paint that fit them best, be it easier to use, or thicker or a little cheaper without being too bad etc. These are the type of people that come to AVS etc.. Finally we had the people who just came in and said give me the best you have and to them we sold Martha Stewart paint.

So in speakers you got the same thing, some people just say give me the best you have, and someone is going to fill that niche, these people do not know that Martha Stewart paint is really no better than Behr paint they just want the best that's all, in fact they want to tell people they bought the best. When some rich guy brings people over to his house, he doesn't want to say I have a good value but great sounding system he wants to say my sound system cost more than your pathetic life is worth. Now don't be naive and think that everyone lumps in the same category, they do not. In each of my 3 categories their are many personalities. Some people really believe that things that cost more are always better even if they cannot afford it. These people are not capable of understanding some people will rip them off. Other people are risk adverse, they know the product might not be better but they don't want to take the risk that it is better, they think that paying more is sort of like insurance.

The people who make products are aware of these trends and various companies seek to make money off of all the different types of buyers. Now the other thing you need to know is that when you make a product more expensive it reduces the total number of people who can buy it. Once that happens then you start to see an effect where you realize up to a certain point, of cost cutting you just cannot sell any more of a product. So you might as well keep the product at the highest price where you do not lose more sales. These are called price points. Take an item that is $10, and drop it to 9, you notice you dont sell any more, drop it to 6 and you sell more but not enough, you were actually making more money at the price of 10, now drop it to 5, BOOM sales quadruple. So the point is there are only a hand full of people in the USA that will drop $51,000 on a speaker set, and most of those people would still buy it at 100,000, so you just sell it for $100000.

Another thing is sometimes especially for people in the top income brackets, there are other considerations. Like maybe they just need a speaker set that is a certain color or style that matches their room and for these people if it happens to be 100k, they will still buy it if it is right. I am heavily involved in the art world and see people make decisions like this almost every week. Some people have alot of money and they just want things right, even though right is not only quantified in the quality of sound. Heck even I am like that, I could of picked a ton of speakers but I am limited to those that have the wood color that meets WAF, but of course I cannot afford any of the nice stuff.

Which ear do you EQ for?

As already stated, the filters are lower res. But you don't have to limit yourself to 4 positions just because you only have 4 seats. You can do all 8 possible positions, 2 per seat, mic could be, for example at the position of each ear of someone in each seat. More measurements is better, gives fuzzy clustering more to...well... cluster, fuzzily.

I agree with this, but there are conditions where Audyssy will essentially do nothing, very little, or something wrong. In a "good room" (whatever that means), it doesn't make much difference, which makes some sense. If you do too few measurements the resulting filters will be wrong. In fact, the test to see if Audyssy is functioning is to do one measurement. The filters it generates will be awful, but obvious, confirming it's functioning. Then you go do as many as practical. More measurements result in better filters, to put it in an over-slimplified statement.

The other thing that causes it to bail out are measurements that would require more than 9dB of filter gain, like trying to fix a null. It bails out of that because there's a very real power amp clipping problem with that much gain, AND you can't EQ a null anyway.

I don't mean to re-state the obvious, but EQ does something entirely different than room treatment, though occasionally the goal may be similar. They each do different things different ways, and can and should be considered for use together. One is not a substitution for the other in either direction. And it's possible to mis-apply both technologies. Even Audyssey acknowledges the need for treatment! Ever see one of their demos in a hotel room? There's treatment in that thar room.

Just a question on DB and ABX testing. What are the arguments against DB and ABX testing? Not all people agree with the testing methodology apparently. Arny, since you probably have the most experience here, what are your thoughts?

The stated arguments against ABX and DBT can all be summarized as follows: ABX and DBT test procedures desensitize listeners to obvious audible differences.

Reality number one is that those obvious audible differences are generally the results of the various kinds of experimental and listener biases that ABX and DBT address.

Reality number two is that doing ABX and DBTs can easily involve more work than many people want to do. In some cases (like speakers and room acoustics) the amount of work required is pretty daunting. For example there is only one known faculty in the world that was specifically designed for doing DBTs of loudspeakers.

It is all about whose ox is gored.

For example imagine virtually every audio site on the web and every audio ragazine were they forced to do DBTs and write in accordance with the results. They would all become a boring litany of articles about equipment that mostly sounds the same.

All that wonderful audio poetry would have to stay in the creative minds of journalists and journalist wanna-bes!
Edited by arnyk - 10/12/12 at 6:12am

I would love to live in that boring world!

It surely would make choosing equipment rationally a whole lot simpler.

However, IME there are a ton of audiophiles who aren't interested in rational decisions. For them audio is a hobby like golf or sailing or boating, where a lot of their pleasure comes from spending the big bucks and obtaining pretty new toys. Not even bragging rights may apply as they may be primarily interested in just pleasuring themselves. I suspect that there are audiophiles who have spent kilobucks on widening the sweet spot in their listening room, despite the fact that they always listen alone. In many cases even the listening may be optional. It is what it is.

To elaborate, opponents claim the stress of a forced decision is a big part of the desensitization problem. However, any time an opinion on a previously unexposed condition is requested, a decision is technically "forced".

Opponents argue that the time it takes to switch reduces the subjects ability to compare. This is actually correct, and surprisingly short gaps between choices do reduce the ability to detect differences quite significantly. Good ABX tests reduce the switching time to as close to zero as possible. An aside, I've done some ABX tests where the choices were actually quickly cross-faded to each other. It's actually quite revealing that way. When there was no difference, the switch transition was inaudible.

Opponents also (falsely) claim that the decision is forced within a short comparison time. In actual practice, the comparison time may be limited only by the patience of the listener. It could be seconds or weeks.

Opponents further claim that any switching equipment included in the system that may be needed to perform the test injects a bias, or masks differences. However, of all the equipment in a given system, the switching equipment has the least measurable influence. In practice, the switching equipment is nothing more than high quality relay or switch contacts, which can often be superior to the contact quality of some RCA connectors.

Opponents refuse to accept the harsh reality of the results of ABX testing, it takes the "fun" out of the hobby. If "fun" is fantasy and fiction, they yes, it does that. For others, the "fun" is knowing the truth.

Trying to be balanced here, but I'm pretty certain I've revealed my personal bias on that last one.

Has it? I don't think so (except by amir but I am seeking multiple opinions).

Let me ask a different way - for LF region only (assume < 150Hz), what can room treatments do that multiple subs and EQ cannot?