In praise of AR3a's

[Zilch]

Just as a point of fact, without regard to which speaker or what their other merits are, there are no multiway loudspeaker systems which do not exhibit very substantial phase interference phenomena in the region of their crossover frequencies.

Indeed, but there's substantially more interference issues in evidence here; Allison himself documents the deleterious effects of the cabinet edge molding and grille in his 1970 paper, the deep notch between 1 and 2 kHz being prominently featured therein....

I'd be perfectly willing to accept response curves that look like a cross between a roller coaster and a buzzsaw blade, so long as someone can actually explain how they produce the sound we're all used to hearing come out of these speakers.

We're still experiencing a disconnect, as that is the subject under investigation and discussion here.

I suspect what you're really asking is how such an outmoded design, so significantly compromised by contemporary objective standards, can sound so good to those among us who like them, and the best I can suggest is "Different strokes." There is an equally committed group of enthusiasts who will swear that West Coast JBL 100s comprise the very essence of audio nirvana with their boomy bass, decidedly forward midrange, and rolled-off highs.

Does this render these explorations "academic," or worse, moot? Certainly not to those of us with any interest in understanding more precisely what it is we DO like and why, how we might improve it, and where we might look for more of the same, or better, even....

I suspect that you have misinterpreted what was happening in the live-vs.-recorded concerts with the AR-3. The Fine Arts Quartet had to be recorded out doors in a mostly anechoic space to avoid “double reverberation” during the playback. In this fashion, the playback from the AR-3s into the audience was exactly the same thing as the music being played by the musicians, and the actual playback was alternated back and forth at intervals between the live performance and the AR-3s.

Aw, JEEZ, Tom; say it ain't SO!

They used anechoic recordings, not what we listen to at home?

A contrivance?

AARRGGHH, we are RUINED!

[genek]

We're still experiencing a disconnect, as that is the subject under investigation and discussion here.

I suspect what you're really asking is how such an outmoded design, so significantly compromised by contemporary objective standards, can sound so good to those among us who like them

I'd really rather not get into inescapably subjective discussions on whether these or any other speakers sound "good" or not. Whether one likes the sound a speaker is producing or thinks it sounds like crap, something is still causing it to sound the way that it does, that something is a phenomenon in the real world and its characteristics should be objectively measurable and explainable. This should be just as true of a foghorn as a hifi speaker.

When I scan this discussion I see measurements, people arguing that the measurements can't be right because they don't fit someone's presconceptions of how "good" speakers should measure, cites of people who say the measurements mean the speakers can't sound the way they do and that people who think they sound like that are being fooled by magic tricks, just about every train of thought except a, this is how they sound, b, this is how they measure, so c,how does the way they measure explain the way they sound?

[genek]

Aw, JEEZ, Tom; say it ain't SO!

They used anechoic recordings, not what we listen to at home?

A contrivance?

Well, the live musicians on the stage were anechoic too, weren't they? I don't get to listen to many of those at home, either.

[tysontom]

Indeed, but there's substantially more interference issues in evidence here; Allison himself documents the deleterious effects of the cabinet edge molding and grille in his 1970 paper, the deep notch between 1 and 2 kHz being prominently featured therein....

I suspect what you're really asking is how such an outmoded design, so significantly compromised by contemporary objective standards, can sound so good to those among us who like them, and the best I can suggest is "Different strokes." There is an equally committed group of enthusiasts who will swear that West Coast JBL 100s comprise the very essence of audio nirvana with their boomy bass, decidedly forward midrange, and rolled-off highs.

Does this render these explorations "academic," or worse, moot? Certainly not to those of us with any interest in understanding more precisely what it is we DO like and why, how we might improve it, and where we might look for more of the same, or better, even....

Aw, JEEZ, Tom; say it ain't SO!

They used anechoic recordings, not what we listen to at home?

A contrivance?

AARRGGHH, we are RUINED!

Allison said many times, and specifically in his AES paper that you frequently reference, that interference and diffraction do not change the total energy radiated by speaker systems, they merely redirect it. You stated the first part about the diffraction and the “deleterious” effects of it; you simply failed to mention the rest of what Allison said. Perhaps you failed to read all of what was stated by Allison or you intentionally ignore the fine details.

You are right that these old designs are considered outmoded… but by a dwindling fraction of what remains of the original audio community. But tell us what is new today is loudspeaker technology? The reality, of course, is that since the late 1980s and early 1990s, there has been little progress in the design of loudspeakers – few, if any breakthroughs in technology have occurred. Oh sure, there have been baby-steps of refinement, such as crossover networks and more reliable drivers, but most of the pioneering work was done long ago. New, simplified and inexpensive objective-measurement devices are now in the hands of the inexperienced audio "experts" such as, perhaps, yourself. Unfortunately, audio has been left behind in the world of advancing technology, the really creative designers left the audio world long ago, leaving only tweaks and know-it-alls. The remaining hi-fi community has moved on to video and computer science; the people are simply not interested in it as before. Perhaps 1/10th of 1% of what is left of audio consists of less-skilled individuals trying to re-invent the wheel with “new” consumer loudspeakers. Roy Allison once said that casually putting a microphone in front of a loudspeaker yields a "response curve" that is almost certain to have low correlation with the actual sound of the system. Thus there has arisen an unwarranted but understandable mystique about loudspeaker system design and performance evaluation.

>“They used anechoic recordings, not what we listen to at home?”

Zilch, I suspect you don’t grasp the details of this type of recording.

--Tom Tyson

[soundminded]

"I'd really rather not get into inescapably subjective discussions on whether these or any other speakers sound "good" or not."

To someone who loves the sound of real music, good and accurate are synonymous. Why is it important to them or anyone? Because at its best, the sound of live musical instruments and voices are beautiful to listen to. I'm sorry to say that most people have probably never heard this kind of sound in their lives, and if they have, only rarely. It doesn't take any special intellectual knowledge or anylitical skills to enjoy it immensely just the way it doesn't take any special knowledge or anylitical skills about wine to enjoy Chateau Lafitte Rothchild from a great vintage immensely, as much as any wine critic. Understanding is not required. I'm not talking about screaming, screeching voices, voices going through puberty, untrained vanilla voices, amplified musical instruments, nor am I talking about vapid little ditties sung off key. These constitute most of what is marketed as music. If that was all there was, the effort to produce excellent sound reproducing equipment would not be worth a candle, at least not to me and probably to most people who enjoy this kind of sound.

Musical instruments of the caliber I'm talking about are the rare exception and because of their sound, they command enormous prices, not because of their pedigree. I'm not talking about Elvis's guitar, I'm talking about for example a Steinway D concert grand piano (the preferred choice of over 90% of performing pianists.) It costs $90,000, consists of 12,000 parts, and takes a year to make. Violins made during a brief span by a handful of makers in Cremona Italy centuries ago command almost any price the seller asks for them when they come up for auction, not just because of who made them but because of their sound. I had the good fortune to be familiar with one I heard frequently in the violinist's home, in my own home, and in Concert venues including Carnegie Hall. That small box that sits under his chin and is held with one hand with no amplification can and did fill the 900,000 cubic foot room with its power and purity of sound right down to the farthest seat in the highest balcony. Up close, it is equally remarkable and can sound as loud as a trumpet. It's a sound you don't easily forget. People who know this kind of sound also know when the Two Buck Chuck of audio equipment is being passed off as a Chateau Lafitte Rothchild, they recognize the difference instantly.

Why not face the inescapable fact that the reason audio equipment manufacturers have not ever offered products with the capability to reproduce this sound is because they can't. The problem has beaten them, they cannot solve it. They don't even understand it. Instead what they sell it an endless babble of technojargon and Two Buck Chuck in endless variations at endlessly escalating prices. On a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 represents anyone with normal hearing being able to tell they are listening to a recording and not a live performance instantly, and 100 representing even experienced concertgoers rarely being able to tell they are not hearing a live performance, the state of the art is where it has always been, 0.

[Mexicomike]

So all of these AR speakers actually suck and our ears are wrong. Might be a good argument when we quit listening to sound with our ears and instead just look at instrument readings to "hear" things.

You guys are too much!

[soundminded]

So all of these AR speakers actually suck and our ears are wrong. Might be a good argument when we quit listening to sound with our ears and instead just look at instrument readings to "hear" things.

You guys are too much!

The signifigance of the live versus recorded demonstrations was that in a few highly contrived highly controlled instances, that rating went above 0. When it came to playing commercially made recordings, it reverted back to 0 just like all the others. AR speakers do not sound like live music. Their particular flaws are as obvious to critical ears as anyone elses, many find them less objectionable but they undeniably exist. Victor Campos of KLH once said what speaker you like depends on what form of distortion bothers you least.

It is also a fact that Floyd Toole could not have duplicated those demonstrations in a way that would have convinced anyone if his life depended on it. His expertise was in marketing research, not acoustics.

[Mexicomike]

THe whole thing can be carried to the extreme that since a speaker is NOT a violin, it cannot sound like a violin any more than a violin can sound like a guitar. It's all about illusion but accuracy and illusion are diametrically opposed anyway so where does that leave the whole subject? It's still about what we hear, not what we measure.

Why would anyone think that a system designed by a computer is somehow more "accurate" than one designed by someone who just listens? The end result is the same - someone is LISTENING to the speaker. None of the individual components in a loudspeaker seem to be any more capable than they were 40 years ago. Some are less capable - foam surround woofers, for example fall apart while old cloth surround woofers are still doing fine; AR tweeters are still claimed to have better dispersion than anything made today. So where's the beef? Seems that it's all on paper or in the imagination.

[Zilch]

Allison said many times, and specifically in his AES paper that you frequently reference, that interference and diffraction do not change the total energy radiated by speaker systems, they merely redirect it. You stated the first part about the diffraction and the “deleterious” effects of it; you simply failed to mention the rest of what Allison said. Perhaps you failed to read all of what was stated by Allison or you intentionally ignore the fine details.

It's integral to Allison's (and Villchur's, presumably) premise that we listen in a reverberant field that integrates these response anomalies. It's clear we "hear through" much of that, as Toole suggests, but whether anyone accepts Allison's max dispersion/total energy viewpoint or not, it's also clear that these anomalies are undesireable, and designing to mitigate them cannot but improve the result.

There's little credibility mileage to accrue from denying the validity of improvements in loudspeaker science achieved over the intervening 40 years, or in dubbing me personally as ignorant and/or incompetent.

I'm certain there's a Gramophone Society somewhere that's plenty good fun, too....

So all of these AR speakers actually suck and our ears are wrong. Might be a good argument when we quit listening to sound with our ears and instead just look at instrument readings to "hear" things.

The ears are notoriously inaccurate measurement instruments. How is it that for every speaker claimed to be best by one group of listeners, there's another group asserting it quite sucks, and something else is obviously better? That we all hear differently? Not hardly. Examined in detail and under controlled conditions, user preferences are remarkably similar, and those preferences are ascertainable, and well correlated with objective measurements. That's the bottom line of Toole's (and others') work.

Here, from the 1958 Shorter reference Pete B cited above:

While the degree of realism achieved in sound reproduction can only be judged aurally, even subjective assessments can be misleading unless carried out under controlled conditions and with clearly defined terms of reference....

[genek]

To someone who loves the sound of real music, good and accurate are synonymous.

The problem with continuing to return to this line of discussion is twofold:

First, with the possible exception of Zilch, you're preaching to the choir. Nobody else here needs to be lectured about how AR speakers are "good." Some of us don't even care whether they're "accurate," because we simply like the way they sound better than anything else we've listened to.

The bigger part of the problem is that injecting subjectivity into a discussion that has diverged from the original post about someone who just declared how much he liked his speakers to one about measurements and their relation to listening is that you're confuzzling the subjective with the objective. Whether one subjectively likes a speaker or not, or whether one is even talking about speakers or about air horns or church bells, it should, at least in theory, be possible to objectively analyze and characterize the output of anything that produces sound to explain why it sounds the way it does, just as it should, at least in theory, be possible to objectively subject a sample of Chateau Lafite Rothschild to a battery of tests to analyze and characterize it and explain why it tastes different from a sample of Two Buck Chuck even if the person doing the analysis doesn't like the taste of either. The effort to do exactly that with wine has been the objective of enology and chemistry researchers for decades (it rated high enough on the scientific fascination scale to warrant an entire episode of "Nova" a few years back), and to date that objective has not been achieved. The question in my mind as a total audio neophyte whose only role in this process is to spend money on things that I like (and I suspect that Mexicomike is in this corner with me) is, do any of you folks throwing these dueling measurements and audio experts at each other really know WTF you are talking about, or is the output of a hifi speaker just so much sonic Chateau Lafite Rothschild?

[Zilch]

AR tweeters are still claimed to have better dispersion than anything made today. So where's the beef? Seems that it's all on paper or in the imagination.

Myth.

I can easily best it with a $6 waveguide today, with uniform power response and none of AR3a's response anomalies :

http://www.jblpro.com/catalog/support/getf...&docid=1078

[Pete B]

I find it hard to believe that this is being debated here, as the fundamental research was done so many years ago.

It was so long ago that I learned about the importance of a smooth on axis response, I'm not going to call it the

"direct field", that I don't remember exactly when it was. It was certainly before I got to college, probably explained

to me by my older brother. Then it was required reading when I studied loudspeaker design under Professor Wadesworth

at WPI. An old paper covering the subject from the November 1958 issue of the Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical

Engineers is:

"A Survey Of Performance Criteria and Design Considerations for High-Quality Monitoring Loudspeakers"

By D. E. L. Shorter

It is also reprinted in the green Anthology issue of the AES.

The paper has many excellent references going even further back.

I believe that the understanding of the importance of smooth on axis response was a key requirement

in the development of such legendary designs as the LS3/5a, many KEFs, B&Ws, Spendors, and others. And it is

one thing that made those British designs sound so good. I expect that Toole, Small and others who have been

critical of AR and Allison speakers are probably advocates of this requirement.

I'll also point out that there is a body of ongoing research to further support this point of view which is why I

am surprised that it is being debated here. Well, not surprised anymore - it is religion for some.

And let me add that the advances in basic home loudspeaker design are, low diffraction cabinets, close driver

spacing, crossover designs that sum to flat on axis SPL with good polar response, numerous improvements in

driver motor design, and highly optimized vented designs as a result of research and computer simulation.

New designs that adhere to these advances do not have on-axis response curves that change significantly

with small changes in microphone position. Horizontal patterns are usually very well behaved for systems

with vertically aligned drivers. This is supported by numerous test curves for the better systems tested in

Audio and Stereophile.

I'll offer the PSB Stratus Gold as just one modern example.

[Pete B]

Myth.

I can easily best it with a $6 waveguide today, with uniform power response and none of AR3a's response anomalies :

Someone should send an AR-3a tweeter to Zaph for testing so that it can be

compared to all the modern designs that he has already tested. I am particularly interested

in the distortion measurements.

I have to wonder why they were never able to make it more robust - there were far

better designs in the commercial market offering good design examples. It was certainly

not cost effective replacing all those blown tweeters, LOL!

[Mexicomike]

"do any of you folks throwing these dueling measurements and audio experts at each other really know WTF you are talking about, or is the output of a hifi speaker just so much sonic Chateau Lafite Rothschild?"

Could not possibly have said it better myself!

"I can easily best it with a $6 waveguide today, with uniform power response and none of AR3a's response anomalies"

Again, can't argue the measurements personally because the only thing I ever measured on a speaker driver was with a multimeter set to read ohms. But I never listened to any speakers specs, I just LISTENED to speakers...a LOT of speakers over a lot of years. I trust my ears to tell me what I am hearing a lot more than I trust somebody's measurements to tell me what I SHOULD be hearing.

[Zilch]

Again, can't argue the measurements personally because the only thing I ever measured on a speaker driver was with a multimeter set to read ohms. But I never listened to any speakers specs, I just LISTENED to speakers...a LOT of speakers over a lot of years. I trust my ears to tell me what I am hearing a lot more than I trust somebody's measurements to tell me what I SHOULD be hearing.

Nobody's telling you anything but the facts, or their view of them, at least; whether that has relevance to you or not is for you alone to decide.

By the same token, none of this is advanced by perpetuating such mythology as may be associated with our preferences; we're trying to get at the objective truth here, and there's clearly value in that, on many levels....

The question in my mind as a total audio neophyte whose only role in this process is to spend money on things that I like (and I suspect that Mexicomike is in this corner with me) is, do any of you folks throwing these dueling measurements and audio experts at each other really know WTF you are talking about, or is the output of a hifi speaker just so much sonic Chateau Lafite Rothschild?

What Zaph said; find out for yourself by doing it yourself....

[onplane]

I can easily best it with a $6 waveguide today, with uniform power response and none of AR3a's response anomalies :

Yes, but not everyone agrees that constant directivity waveguides work all that well in two channel systems. Here is a one quote:

The off axis frequency response is not flat, consequently neither is the system power response.

Researchers such as Toole [11] report that although this type of response lacks accuracy people prefer it (over CD Waveguides) because the wide dispersion in the upper midrange gives an ‘open' or ‘airy' quality , the power suck out at 3kHz also tends to favour the subjectively more realistic production of orchestral music (an effect noted by Shorter).

In the case of monitoring for instance a flat power and off axis frequency response is preferred because these give better freedom from room effects and better stereo image [12], in the case of surround sound where we remove the rooms actual space by creating a virtual one with the surround channels, exciting the room reverberant field to give spaciousness is not necessary, and the main front left and right speakers can be specialised for image and accuracy -

this is where constant directivity waveguides come in.

DIY Waveguides

Many of us on this board listen to music primarily on two channel systems. The ultimate in directivity, of course, is high quality headphones, but there is a fundamental problem here. Many recordings sound equally well on loudspeakers and headphones. At the same time, many studio recordings (ie. jazz trios, quartets etc) sound dead and lifeless on headphones. Those same recordings, once loudspeakers excite the reverberant field, just come "alive". Now, I am NOT the first to make this observation, nor will I be the last.

Anyhow, just thought I'd share what other folks are saying about CD waveguides.

Regards,

Jerry

[Mexicomike]

"On the other hand, none of this is advanced by perpetuating mythology associated with our preferences; we're trying to get at the objective truth here, and there's clearly value in that, on many levels...."

OK, I won't disagree with you on that at all. The problem is how can there be "objective truth" when it's totally about a subjective experience? You and I could sit in the same concert hall, sitting side by side, and disagree on the sound we are hearing, just as we could sit in a hifi shop in 1970 and disagree about what we are hearing from an AR3A vs a Bose 901. Yes, a microphone could measure that tweeter "A" reproduces a bandwidth of say, 10khz to 20khz within 2db while tweeter B does it within 5 db. Certainly on paper, tweeter A looks superior. But that doesn't mean it sounds better or more accurate when integrated into a speaker system or even standing alone.

So maybe it is all personal preference but that IS how we hear - it's not a subject that can be measured in any way that correlates to reality other than within the narrow confines of hearing tests and the concept of "average hearing curves" which is just that, an average that probably doesn't really correspond to any individual's actual hearing.

Subjectively....there is published data on how all those multiple drivers in an AR LST interfere with each other. Seems logical to me - all those sound waves bouncing around and, since each tweeter is in a slightly different location, the tweeting has to be "out of phase" or whatever at various freqs. But still, I have never heard a well recorded jazz quartet or blues group sound more realistic on any other speaker. So perhaps it's simply one of those things of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

[Pete B]

So maybe it is all personal preference but that IS how we hear - it's not a subject that can be measured in any way that correlates to reality other than within the narrow confines of hearing tests and the concept of "average hearing curves" which is just that, an average that probably doesn't really correspond to any individual's actual hearing.

Controlled studies have been done, read the literature. Most internet wannabe experts don't bother

to do the basic research. Rather, they rehash what they read in marketing literature.

Yes, listener preferences are well understood at least regarding frequency response smoothness.

[Pete B]

"do any of you folks throwing these dueling measurements and audio experts at each other really know WTF you are talking about, ..."

Yes! Read the literature!

[Pete B]

Music ... lighten up people ... enjoy: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741

[Zilch]

Yes, but not everyone agrees that constant directivity waveguides work all that well in two channel systems.

We apparently read that citation differently; Elliott is clearly an advocate.

Here's what Shorter actually said (1958):

If a progressive decline in response with increasing frequency is followed by an increase, giving the type of characteristic illustrated in curve [a] of Fig. 1, the upper frequency range will be heard to stand out in unnatural relief, even though the response may nowhere rise above the mid-band level. It should be noted that this form of frequency characteristic modifies the spectrum of the reproduced sound in a way not experienced when listening to natural sounds.

The above remarks naturally apply to some extent to the sound radiated in all directions and it seems to be a safe rule that the ear, in integrating the characteristics for the various angles of radiation, will take in the most well-defined -- which in practice means the worst -- features of each. Unfortunately, the off-axis frequency characteristics of wide-range multi-radiator loudspeakers are particularly likely to be of the humped or shelving type shown in curves [a] and , even though the axial characteristic may be flat.

With respect to Toole's statement, I have just shown that wider dispersion than AR3a is easily achieved with modern technology, and without its "warts." The proposition that in improving imaging and soundstage resolution, constant directivity sacrifices spaciousness and ambience like headphones, as speculated by others here, clearly has no basis in fact. If AR3a is set forth as a standard for comparison, constant directivity does it better....

[soundminded]

The problem with continuing to return to this line of discussion is twofold:

First, with the possible exception of Zilch, you're preaching to the choir. Nobody else here needs to be lectured about how AR speakers are "good." Some of us don't even care whether they're "accurate," because we simply like the way they sound better than anything else we've listened to.

The bigger part of the problem is that injecting subjectivity into a discussion that has diverged from the original post about someone who just declared how much he liked his speakers to one about measurements and their relation to listening is that you're confuzzling the subjective with the objective. Whether one subjectively likes a speaker or not, or whether one is even talking about speakers or about air horns or church bells, it should, at least in theory, be possible to objectively analyze and characterize the output of anything that produces sound to explain why it sounds the way it does, just as it should, at least in theory, be possible to objectively subject a sample of Chateau Lafite Rothschild to a battery of tests to analyze and characterize it and explain why it tastes different from a sample of Two Buck Chuck even if the person doing the analysis doesn't like the taste of either. The effort to do exactly that with wine has been the objective of enology and chemistry researchers for decades (it rated high enough on the scientific fascination scale to warrant an entire episode of "Nova" a few years back), and to date that objective has not been achieved. The question in my mind as a total audio neophyte whose only role in this process is to spend money on things that I like (and I suspect that Mexicomike is in this corner with me) is, do any of you folks throwing these dueling measurements and audio experts at each other really know WTF you are talking about, or is the output of a hifi speaker just so much sonic Chateau Lafite Rothschild?

"Nobody else here needs to be lectured about how AR speakers are "good." "

Did I say they were good? I said that in a handful of highly contrived and controlled demonstrations, they sounded very much like the sounds of musical instruments. Under other circumstances, those more commonly experienced, they do not usually sound like live music, not to my ears anyway. I also said that if they did, then there would have been no point in making AR3a. And if AR3a sounded like real music most of the time, there would have been no reason to develop LST. I am not dismissing the contributions Vilicher and his colleagues made to advancements in hardware but they did not solve the overall larger problem of accurate music reproduction in the home from commercial recordings. There is no doubt of that in my mind and your own words in one of your prior postings said the same thing.

"you're confuzzling the subjective with the objective."

If objective measurements do not correlate with subjective experience, then the measurement method or the very rationale of how and what to measure is flawed. And so it is. This comes from lack of basic understanding about the nature of sound and of listening. The state of the art of analyzing and synthesizing wine is also still in a primitive stage of development. I expect that one day if the world is still around and science progresses, it will be possible to synthesize 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild or any other wine precisely to the satisfacton of those very familiar with it. But that is well beyond the current state of that art too.

Don't sell acoustic memory too short. Many auditory experiences have excellent recall. Even the slightest change in timbre of a voice you are familiar with heard over a telephone allows you to recognize the onset of a cold or sinus condition and hearing a voice you are familiar with that you haven't heard in many years or even decades can bring instant recogniton (and often surprise.) In experimenting with AR9 again recently, I heard the same treble anomoly I'd heard from Snell AII and AIIIi even though I'd only heard it several times at someone's house and at a trade show and the last time was around 22 years ago. It was that dintinctive and memorable. Robert Parker, acknowledged by some as the world's number one wine critic and possibly the greatest critic of anything, claimed around 6 years ago that he could recognize over 100,000 different wines by vintner and vintage just by smelling and tasting them. Sensory sensations and impressions are not necessarily as fleeting in one's memory as some think.

[genek]

What Zaph said; find out for yourself by doing it yourself....

I'm not trying to measure what I hear. For me, it's enough to hear it and to nag those of you who claim you can to back up your claims.

[genek]

If objective measurements do not correlate with subjective experience, then the measurement method or the very rationale of how and what to measure is flawed. And so it is. This comes from lack of basic understanding about the nature of sound and of listening. The state of the art of analyzing and synthesizing wine is also still in a primitive stage of development. I expect that one day if the world is still around and science progresses, it will be possible to synthesize 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild or any other wine precisely to the satisfacton of those very familiar with it. But that is well beyond the current state of that art too.

Yes, the circumstances of each seem quite similar, except that the wine researchers seem more willing to admit that they still haven't got it down right.

[genek]

The problem is how can there be "objective truth" when it's totally about a subjective experience? You and I could sit in the same concert hall, sitting side by side, and disagree on the sound we are hearing, just as we could sit in a hifi shop in 1970 and disagree about what we are hearing from an AR3A vs a Bose 901.

"Objective truth" would be independent of subjective preference. If someone could accurately measure and characterize the performance of the AR-3a and the Bose 901, they could use that information to configure the performance of another speaker system, even one that utilized entirely different technical approaches in the design of its system and components, to exactly duplicate the performance of the 3a and 901. The listeners might still not agree on what sound they were hearing and whether they thought it was "good" or not, but they'd be unable to distinguish the duplicate from the original. IOW, their subjective like or dislike of the performance of the duplicate would be identical to their subjective like or dislike of the performance of the original.