4 ms·

I really suggest you get more into the NRC/Harman research about the subject. Individual preference does exist, but on average it doesn't. Same way that some pe

I really suggest you get more into the NRC/Harman research about the subject. Individual preference does exist, but on average it doesn't. Same way that some people prefer more or less salt in their dishes, but you quickly converge towards a unique proportion when averaging those tastes obtained via rigorous blind testing (very important). Said convergence happens for tonality: people do prefer neutrality as in lack of linear and nonlinear distortion (thus relatively constant directivity in order to get said neutrality when the reflected and direct sound sums). Where there's still some considerable variation is the amount of directivity: some people prefer it wide to get stronger late reflections that give a sense of envelopment and others prefer it narrow to remove more of the room from the global sound, to hear more of the recording (like headphones).

ssl-3 1mo ago
If the research shows that there is only one optimal way to paint a portrait, or to construct a pizza, then: It is my inclination to reject it. I do not want this kind of homogenization in my world and it is my motivation to destroy it.
- wartywhoa23 1mo ago
  Consider this: most successful artists who worked outside of what is recognized as the academic classical style - impressionists, surrealists etc - were first trained very well in that reference academic style. When you know the reference, you are free to break the rules. Otherwise you're just fumbling and drifting around. Humans are given two brain hemispheres for a reason.
  - ssl-3 1mo ago
    You raise interesting points and you present them well. They have interesting parallels. One of the things I often try to impress upon others during $day_job is that it is important to always know and appreciate (and seek to find, and perhaps enhance) the very best way to do a thing. It's not that we can't cheat. It's not even that cheating isn't sometimes adequate or permissible -- or, sometimes, necessary. Sometimes the most-proper way to achieve a thing within the confines of the constraints is to very deliberately cheat in a defensible fashion. Like a Wilkinson combiner/splitter when used in the bidirectional RF space: It cheats. (It also works within its limitations and has great value in some applications. It's not universal at all.) In some cases, cheating even requires review by an engineer to approve a particular method in a particular application. But when we don't seek to know the best, most-right way to do a thing then we can't even recognize when we're cheating. When cheating and gettin'-'er-done is typical, fast-and-loose becomes the norm instead of the exception, and that's just doing ourselves (and the job, and the company, and the client) an unwarranted disservice. And that does ultimately is just fumbling and drifting around, just as you succinctly suggest. But standards aren't the be-all, end-all rule. At least when safety isn't a concern: They should be flexible to preference when preferences exist, and that preference extends beyond salt appropriation. I once made an accidental purchase after a long day at work where I bought feta instead of the ricotta that I intended to buy. My family was predictably hungry when I got home and realized the depth of my mistake. So I built that lasagna anyway with the "wrong" cheese in the intermediate layers, and it turned out so excellent that I will never make lasagna any other way again. It's really lovely, and it was entirely the result of fumbling. Or: Chicago, vs NYC, vs Detroit. These guys will never agree on what the best pizza consists of, but most of us can find an example of a pie in any of those regional styles that is lovely and satisfying to us. It's very easy for me to accept variability in the norms of foods, and of painting styles, and of audio system implementations. I can't define a perfect guitar, or a perfect piano. These are all things that I think deeply involve emotional (perhaps even irrational) personal choice. There can be more than one way, and it's OK. We don't all appreciate the same tastes, sights, and sounds. The variability is a feature, not a bug. But meanwhile: It's very difficult for me to accept variability in, say, electrical systems. There can be an established and objective best, safest, most-defensible way. And the method behind the walls is not the kind of thing that usually elicits an emotional response from the beholder while they plug in a lamp in their new place, so the best way can win.
    - wartywhoa23 1mo ago
      Thanks for an elaborate answer! Being both a technician and a musician, I couldn't agree more. The technician in me strives to have as flat, transparent and precise audio reproduction system as possible, with the single purpose: to make what the musician in me does translatable to every other audio system out there, which may very well be quite imperfect, but still intimately known and adapted to by its listener - and thus reproduce my music without surprising the listener in a bad way. (Funny enough, after many years of chasing that ideal, I'm much closer to it with balanced armature IEMs than with a pair of professional studio monitors at 100x the price!) An analogy in graphics would be a display with neutral color reproduction that has as perfect black as possible and white as bright as it's sane to have. It's a never ending quest of course, and it's the creator's one, not spectator's. Which is basically "give me pure silence and transparency so that I know precisely how much sound and color to add". How much is added is a dogma for one and total freedom for another, and that's a completely different story. From a spectator's point of view, everything becomes much more subjective and roots more in psychology than anything else. I always remember that interview of a vinyl mastering engineer for the Kompakt label, who said that the art of an audioengineer is that of persuasion. "This sounds awesome, trust me :) And then, the reconstructive abilities of one's perception also mean a lot. There's a wonderful passage from the Hesse's Steppenwolf, where the protagonist listens to a gramophone record, noisy and bandlimited, of an orchestra playing a piece, deeper and deeper until he manages to hear the original sound and intent of it through the veil of the record's imperfections.
- BoingBoomTschak 1mo ago
  Sound reproduction (science) isn't sound production (art).
  - ssl-3 1mo ago
    If I don't like the way the sound is reproduced (perception), then I'm going to change it until I do enjoy it (art). I shall season the food on my plate however I please, counselor. :)
    - BoingBoomTschak 1mo ago
      Of course you can, but it doesn't change the fact that's there's a general preference. Also, I'm pretty sure that even in your case, the changes you want to make are material dependent and neutrality would be more to your taste if you don't want to turn knobs with each album switch. Now enough seriousness, if you're amongst the people who still do so, I'll look at you the same way I look at American tourists putting ketchup over all their dishes or people going to an art gallery with tinted glasses =)
      - ssl-3 1mo ago
        > Of course you can, but it doesn't change the fact that's there's a general preference. You haven't established that there is a general preference, though. And meanwhile: Audio systems of every variety still usually come with some manner of tone controls for people to use. And when people make adjustments, they aren't seeking to find alignment with someone else's published idea of a good time. Most people wouldn't know what a frequency response chart is even if someone rolled it up and hit them on their head with it. They aren't targeting things that they have no knowledge of. > Also, I'm pretty sure that even in your case, the changes you want to make are material dependent and neutrality would be more to your taste if you don't want to turn knobs with each album switch. Nope. I usually set my own listening systems to my preference and then leave them alone, although the more-proper stereo does have what I call a Ministry button that I engage when listening to Ministry. So yeah, anyway. Standards. I did once put together some Python code to implement an ISO 226 equal loudness contour that worked with a hardware DSP and recomputed the curve based on the real-time position of a physical volume control. Maybe Fletcher and Munson did have it right for what they were doing back in the 1930s, but that didn't make their work applicable to what I was doing in 2025. It was a fun exercise that taught me quite a lot, and which ultimately turned out to be a mistake. > Now enough seriousness, if you're amongst the people who still do so, I'll look at you the same way I look at American tourists putting ketchup over all their dishes or people going to an art gallery with tinted glasses =) Oh, yeah. Ketchup on ham sandwiches, and on eggs. Ketchup on cantaloupe. Ketchup in tomato soup. Ketchup on popcorn, and in my coffee. I garnish my martinis with ketchup. When I drove by a Heinz ketchup factory last weekend in my giant American car, I was overcome by emotion and had to pull over. The juxtaposition was just too majestic and beautiful to behold, with the ketchup plant on one side of the road and the fertilizer distributor on the other; like the whole circle of life, all in one place. I sobbed softly for several minutes before I regained sufficient composure to continue.

ssl-3 1mo ago

If the research shows that there is only one optimal way to paint a portrait, or to construct a pizza, then: It is my inclination to reject it. I do not want this kind of homogenization in my world and it is my motivation to destroy it.

wartywhoa23 1mo ago
Consider this: most successful artists who worked outside of what is recognized as the academic classical style - impressionists, surrealists etc - were first trained very well in that reference academic style. When you know the reference, you are free to break the rules. Otherwise you're just fumbling and drifting around. Humans are given two brain hemispheres for a reason.
- ssl-3 1mo ago
  You raise interesting points and you present them well. They have interesting parallels. One of the things I often try to impress upon others during $day_job is that it is important to always know and appreciate (and seek to find, and perhaps enhance) the very best way to do a thing. It's not that we can't cheat. It's not even that cheating isn't sometimes adequate or permissible -- or, sometimes, necessary. Sometimes the most-proper way to achieve a thing within the confines of the constraints is to very deliberately cheat in a defensible fashion. Like a Wilkinson combiner/splitter when used in the bidirectional RF space: It cheats. (It also works within its limitations and has great value in some applications. It's not universal at all.) In some cases, cheating even requires review by an engineer to approve a particular method in a particular application. But when we don't seek to know the best, most-right way to do a thing then we can't even recognize when we're cheating. When cheating and gettin'-'er-done is typical, fast-and-loose becomes the norm instead of the exception, and that's just doing ourselves (and the job, and the company, and the client) an unwarranted disservice. And that does ultimately is just fumbling and drifting around, just as you succinctly suggest. But standards aren't the be-all, end-all rule. At least when safety isn't a concern: They should be flexible to preference when preferences exist, and that preference extends beyond salt appropriation. I once made an accidental purchase after a long day at work where I bought feta instead of the ricotta that I intended to buy. My family was predictably hungry when I got home and realized the depth of my mistake. So I built that lasagna anyway with the "wrong" cheese in the intermediate layers, and it turned out so excellent that I will never make lasagna any other way again. It's really lovely, and it was entirely the result of fumbling. Or: Chicago, vs NYC, vs Detroit. These guys will never agree on what the best pizza consists of, but most of us can find an example of a pie in any of those regional styles that is lovely and satisfying to us. It's very easy for me to accept variability in the norms of foods, and of painting styles, and of audio system implementations. I can't define a perfect guitar, or a perfect piano. These are all things that I think deeply involve emotional (perhaps even irrational) personal choice. There can be more than one way, and it's OK. We don't all appreciate the same tastes, sights, and sounds. The variability is a feature, not a bug. But meanwhile: It's very difficult for me to accept variability in, say, electrical systems. There can be an established and objective best, safest, most-defensible way. And the method behind the walls is not the kind of thing that usually elicits an emotional response from the beholder while they plug in a lamp in their new place, so the best way can win.
  - wartywhoa23 1mo ago
    Thanks for an elaborate answer! Being both a technician and a musician, I couldn't agree more. The technician in me strives to have as flat, transparent and precise audio reproduction system as possible, with the single purpose: to make what the musician in me does translatable to every other audio system out there, which may very well be quite imperfect, but still intimately known and adapted to by its listener - and thus reproduce my music without surprising the listener in a bad way. (Funny enough, after many years of chasing that ideal, I'm much closer to it with balanced armature IEMs than with a pair of professional studio monitors at 100x the price!) An analogy in graphics would be a display with neutral color reproduction that has as perfect black as possible and white as bright as it's sane to have. It's a never ending quest of course, and it's the creator's one, not spectator's. Which is basically "give me pure silence and transparency so that I know precisely how much sound and color to add". How much is added is a dogma for one and total freedom for another, and that's a completely different story. From a spectator's point of view, everything becomes much more subjective and roots more in psychology than anything else. I always remember that interview of a vinyl mastering engineer for the Kompakt label, who said that the art of an audioengineer is that of persuasion. "This sounds awesome, trust me :) And then, the reconstructive abilities of one's perception also mean a lot. There's a wonderful passage from the Hesse's Steppenwolf, where the protagonist listens to a gramophone record, noisy and bandlimited, of an orchestra playing a piece, deeper and deeper until he manages to hear the original sound and intent of it through the veil of the record's imperfections.
BoingBoomTschak 1mo ago
Sound reproduction (science) isn't sound production (art).
- ssl-3 1mo ago
  If I don't like the way the sound is reproduced (perception), then I'm going to change it until I do enjoy it (art). I shall season the food on my plate however I please, counselor. :)
  - BoingBoomTschak 1mo ago
    Of course you can, but it doesn't change the fact that's there's a general preference. Also, I'm pretty sure that even in your case, the changes you want to make are material dependent and neutrality would be more to your taste if you don't want to turn knobs with each album switch. Now enough seriousness, if you're amongst the people who still do so, I'll look at you the same way I look at American tourists putting ketchup over all their dishes or people going to an art gallery with tinted glasses =)
    - ssl-3 1mo ago
      > Of course you can, but it doesn't change the fact that's there's a general preference. You haven't established that there is a general preference, though. And meanwhile: Audio systems of every variety still usually come with some manner of tone controls for people to use. And when people make adjustments, they aren't seeking to find alignment with someone else's published idea of a good time. Most people wouldn't know what a frequency response chart is even if someone rolled it up and hit them on their head with it. They aren't targeting things that they have no knowledge of. > Also, I'm pretty sure that even in your case, the changes you want to make are material dependent and neutrality would be more to your taste if you don't want to turn knobs with each album switch. Nope. I usually set my own listening systems to my preference and then leave them alone, although the more-proper stereo does have what I call a Ministry button that I engage when listening to Ministry. So yeah, anyway. Standards. I did once put together some Python code to implement an ISO 226 equal loudness contour that worked with a hardware DSP and recomputed the curve based on the real-time position of a physical volume control. Maybe Fletcher and Munson did have it right for what they were doing back in the 1930s, but that didn't make their work applicable to what I was doing in 2025. It was a fun exercise that taught me quite a lot, and which ultimately turned out to be a mistake. > Now enough seriousness, if you're amongst the people who still do so, I'll look at you the same way I look at American tourists putting ketchup over all their dishes or people going to an art gallery with tinted glasses =) Oh, yeah. Ketchup on ham sandwiches, and on eggs. Ketchup on cantaloupe. Ketchup in tomato soup. Ketchup on popcorn, and in my coffee. I garnish my martinis with ketchup. When I drove by a Heinz ketchup factory last weekend in my giant American car, I was overcome by emotion and had to pull over. The juxtaposition was just too majestic and beautiful to behold, with the ketchup plant on one side of the road and the fertilizer distributor on the other; like the whole circle of life, all in one place. I sobbed softly for several minutes before I regained sufficient composure to continue.