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Pseudo-Science and Anti-Intellectualism in the Mainstream.


kkantor

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While that is unquestionably a true statement, it is also misses the mark as to what is realistically--both technically and commercially--being targeted.

It is my feeling that the goal of audio companies (and therefore, the direction given to their engineers by upper management) is NOT the "duplicating a sound field in a room reaching someone's head." We can argue over whether or not that SHOULD be the goal (you and other think yes; I disagree), but, factually, that is not the target. The target is to make "good-sounding" equipment that presents an enjoyable experience in the home.

I'm sure a few speakers in the past have targeted your goal (Ken's mid-'80's Magic Speaker, Polk's SDA series, the 901, undoubtedly a few others), but the great majority have not had that goal in mind. They've been designed to a more-or-less accepted standard of engineering targets, like ‘flat response’ as measured anechoically or with a gated system, THD below some agreed-to level, dispersion that meets the designer’s personal criteria, etc. The sum of these will result in a “good-sounding” speaker according to the maker, but no one expects the system of which these speakers are a component to truly duplicate sonic reality.

That doesn’t mean that these speakers aren’t “engineered.” They are, obviously, in every sense of the word. Acoustically, mechanically, industrially, electrically, materially, every engineering discipline that’s involved in the creation of any tangible commercial product is required for loudspeakers too.

The dividing line of opinion here is evident in those who think home entertainment systems (specifically, audio entertainment systems—video seems to be off the hook completely, for some arbitrary reason) should “duplicate reality” on one side, and those who simply expect a “good performing system” on the other side.

I’ve defined my expectations before (“convincing reminder” of the real thing). That’s one side. Yours is the other. You’re entitled, and I’m never going to say you’re “wrong,” because there is no “wrong.”

But today’s audio engineers ARE successfully meeting their assigned goals. They’re not “beaten.” You just disagree with those goals. Maybe you feel that since the “goals” have changed from what the 901 or the MGC-1 or the SDA’s tried to do, then that’s an admission of “defeat.” Others would say it’s simply a recognition of commercial realities, that that goal didn’t have wide enough sales appeal to sustain the effort and keep those companies financially viable. Fair enough.

Steve F.

If you aren't Babe Ruth, don't point your bat over the center field wall after you've taken a second strike. If you're not Annie Oakley, don't aim at a playing card 90 feet away and claim that between the time your assistant drops it and it hits the ground you'll put six bullet holes through it. Change the target, pick something more modest. If you are lucky, you might successfully execute a sacrifice bunt. Interesting how the discussion went from technical issues to making money. That's also a change of target.

In one of my now very rare sojourns out into the current world of so called high end consumer audio about 3 years ago I noticed that audiophiles don't bring recordings with them when they are going to listen to equipment being demonstrated or offered. This seems a little surprising since carrying a stack of cds in a holder like I did in my visit to the VTV show is so much easier than carring a stack of vinyl. I also noticed that demonstrators were very reluctant to play other people's recordings. On reflection, this was not surprising since it appears to me that the spectral balance of recordings as I've reported elsewhere varies all over the lot and the number of recordings that will sound "good" on any particular sound system will be relatively limited. This especially now that with removing all adjustments to alter spectral balance from sound systms, a nearly universal phenomenon in high end systems these days, it is not likely that an untried disc will be very flattering to the demonstrator's equipment and there is nothing he could do about it.

"Maybe you feel that since the “goals” have changed from what the 901 or the MGC-1 or the SDA’s tried to do"

Anyone who thinks those speakers sounded even remotely like real acoustical music either doesn't know or is just kidding himself...or may be hearing impaired. Of the three speakers mentioned, the only one I am very familiar with is Bose 901. To get it to sound like "they are here" required a 4 year engineering effort even after I figured out what was wrong with it. Getting it to sound like "you are there" requires an enormous paradigm shift. Either way, loudspeakers are only one aspect of a successful approach whose design to meet specific criteria for accuracy of sound systems with those capabilities is only one of many elements, necessary but not nearly sufficient on its own. There's that old paradigm bugaboo again. Keeps cropping up. What's next year's latest and greatest, a new tweeter deisgn? Digital electronic crossovers with infinite slopes?

"That doesn’t mean that these speakers aren’t “engineered"

Drawing a picture of a wooden box on a piece of paper and deciding what size hole to cut in it before you build it is engineering. What kind of engineering could it be if the design is obsoleted and replaced by the same engineer in anywhere from two years to two weeks after it hits the market?

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What kind of engineering could it be if the design is obsoleted and replaced by the same engineer in anywhere from two years to two weeks after it hits the market?

Assuming that you're taking about the same engineer employed by the same company doing it over and over again, year after year, "profitable."

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"Maybe you feel that since the “goals” have changed from what the 901 or the MGC-1 or the SDA’s tried to do"

Anyone who thinks those speakers sounded even remotely like real acoustical music either doesn't know or is just kidding himself...or may be hearing impaired.

"That doesn’t mean that these speakers aren’t “engineered"

Drawing a picture of a wooden box on a piece of paper and deciding what size hole to cut in it before you build it is engineering. What kind of engineering could it be if the design is obsoleted and replaced by the same engineer in anywhere from two years to two weeks after it hits the market?

I never said or implied that those speakers "sounded like real acoustical music." I simply said that those speakers were designed with your goal of replicating live sound in mind. They were created in agreement with trying to achieve your stated target. Their success or failure in achieving said target is a separate discussion. Please note that distinction: Stated Goal vs. Success of Achievement. Their stated goal is the same as yours. The methods used and the outcomes are not part of this conversation.

The objective science of engineering and the relative merits of engineering that task are two different things. Replace "engineer" with "accountant" or any other specific, formal profession, and your statement becomes a non-sequitur. If a simple balance sheet is begun to be analyzed by Accountant A, but finished by Accountant B, neither the fact that it's simple nor the fact that it was completed a short time later, change the reality that accounting was performed.

Engineering is being performed when a professional engineer analyzes a problem--even a relatively simple one like how much packaging is needed to protect a 30-lb item from a 30" corner drop--and determines a solution.

Again, the existence of the difference (and preference) of certain engineering goals does not, by itself, render the completion of these more "mundane" or "unworthy" engineering tasks (in your view) any less "engineered."

No one is arguing whether or not you or anyone should have a higher expectation of their hi-fi equipment. That's your call. But "engineering" takes place at all levels. Certainly Ken and Speaker Dave perform engineering functions successfully, even if you disagree with what their goals are. There is a distinction between goals and execution.

Steve F.

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I never said or implied that those speakers "sounded like real acoustical music." I simply said that those speakers were designed with your goal of replicating live sound in mind. They were created in agreement with trying to achieve your stated target. Their success or failure in achieving said target is a separate discussion. Please note that distinction: Stated Goal vs. Success of Achievement. Their stated goal is the same as yours. The methods used and the outcomes are not part of this conversation.

The objective science of engineering and the relative merits of engineering that task are two different things. Replace "engineer" with "accountant" or any other specific, formal profession, and your statement becomes a non-sequitur. If a simple balance sheet is begun to be analyzed by Accountant A, but finished by Accountant B, neither the fact that it's simple nor the fact that it was completed a short time later, change the reality that accounting was performed.

Engineering is being performed when a professional engineer analyzes a problem--even a relatively simple one like how much packaging is needed to protect a 30-lb item from a 30" corner drop--and determines a solution.

Again, the existence of the difference (and preference) of certain engineering goals does not, by itself, render the completion of these more "mundane" or "unworthy" engineering tasks (in your view) any less "engineered."

No one is arguing whether or not you or anyone should have a higher expectation of their hi-fi equipment. That's your call. But "engineering" takes place at all levels. Certainly Ken and Speaker Dave perform engineering functions successfully, even if you disagree with what their goals are. There is a distinction between goals and execution.

Steve F.

"No one is arguing whether or not you or anyone should have a higher expectation of their hi-fi equipment."

"hi-fi"

high fidelity.

Fidelity to what exactly?

Even the term has been so perverted as to lose all meaning in its current context.

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"hi-fi"

high fidelity.

Fidelity to what exactly?

Do manufacturers even use that term to describe their products any more?

If they do, they're most likely referring to fidelity to the sound of the speakers at your local movie theater.

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"No one is arguing whether or not you or anyone should have a higher expectation of their hi-fi equipment."

"hi-fi"

high fidelity.

Fidelity to what exactly?

Even the term has been so perverted as to lose all meaning in its current context.

Call it what you will, makes no difference to me.

No one wants to get bogged down in semantics. I hereby defer to whatever term you choose to use to describe systems that process signals from LPs, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, etc., amplify them, and then send those signals to electro-acoustic transducers.

Please, we'd be more interested in your responses to the issues raised about what constitutes 'engineering', 'goals vs. execution,' etc. from my previous post.

Steve F.

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1) There is little doubt that enhanced realism would be marketable.

2) There is little doubt that the current paradigm is at a dead end.

3) There are others aware of this and working with alternative paradigms.

4) That there is better mileage to accrue from having a "secret" in a lay forum than in demonstrating a solution professionally goes to the likelihood of its viability.

5) When Soundminded is elevated to Nobel Laureate, I will be among the first laying claim to having been a long-time forum pal.... :P

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Call it what you will, makes no difference to me.

No one wants to get bogged down in semantics. I hereby defer to whatever term you choose to use to describe systems that process signals from LPs, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, etc., amplify them, and then send those signals to electro-acoustic transducers.

Please, we'd be more interested in your responses to the issues raised about what constitutes 'engineering', 'goals vs. execution,' etc. from my previous post.

Steve F.

The best strategy for achieving a goal is to shoot in whatever direction you want to, place the target where the bullet lands, and then you can claim that's where you were aiming all along. It is remarkable how many people will believe it.

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The problem has beaten the engineers completely. Those that tried are clueless to solve it, they've barely made a dent in it. They don't have a prayer the way they are going about it. Rather than give up, admit defeat, and go into some line of work that they could possibly be productive at (do people still take shoes to be repaired?) they have found a different goal where there is no defined problem to solve.

Well, I can’t decide whether I should hang myself or shoot myself, I’m so despondent about just finding out that I’ve wasted my career. On the other hand I can consider the source, someone who feels the ultimate loudspeaker to date is a Bose 901 with a number of added on tweeters.

The argument seems to be that no progress has been made on achieving realism but I don’t buy that. Besides being a student of the history of audio I have been in the thick of it for the last 30 years. I think I have seen plenty of progress in loudspeakers in all areas; drivers, cabinet design, crossover design, design software and measurement tools. We are capable of designing products that perform in every way better than they did 40 years ago.

Sure, that doesn’t mean that we have achieved the ultimate goal of Y. A. T. or T. A. H., fool everybody realism, but the evolution in loudspeaker performance (and amplifier and recording system) has certainly pushed us towards that goal. Well designed speakers today have flatter and smoother response, lower distortion and more even dispersion than their predecessors. Yes, even if we waved a magic wand and achieved perfection in these regards, we might not have perfect realism. The loudspeaker is one link in a chain and a perfect loudspeaker doesn’t guarantee a perfect reproduction system.

Adjusting the dispersion of a speaker to mimic that of a violin isn’t really the answer. While you might get close to realism for that instrument in that room you don’t have a universal solution. A system needs to recreate the soundfield of all types of instruments. Some may be diffuse and bidirectional, like a violin. Others are highly directional such as brass instruments. If wide dispersion makes our room a bit more like the concert hall, what do we do when we need to replicate a human voice in a deader space. I believe more channels in a deader environment are closer to a universal answer. Based on the recording you can choose between dry sound from any direction or diffuse sound from all directions.

Regarding engineering goals, I think most designers are shooting for an ideal of realism, but of course products at modest prices will have modest aspirations. Commercial realities are everpresent. More customers prioritize size or appearance of a speaker higher than absolute fidelity. Still, nobody sets out to buy “low fidelity”. They want it all in some proportion.

It would be fun to design a product saying ”all I’m going to worry about is the ultimate fidelity of this speaker” but usually we are thinking how it needs to be competitive in its price class, attractive, manufacturable, marketable, have a story to tell. This is no different than any other industry. How many cars are designed purely for quickest lap times on a road course? Even a very serious performance car needs to be drivable in traffic, manageable by the less skilled driver, durable for the long run, etc.

If your modified 901s are the ultimate answer, then I look forward to seeing them in the marketplace.

David

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Well, I can’t decide whether I should hang myself or shoot myself, I’m so despondent about just finding out that I’ve wasted my career.

I know quite a few engineers who would rather be working to put people on Mars instead of designing satellite systems that enable people who live off the grid to download porn off the internet. None of them have offed themselves so far.

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Well, I can’t decide whether I should hang myself or shoot myself, I’m so despondent about just finding out that I’ve wasted my career. On the other hand I can consider the source, someone who feels the ultimate loudspeaker to date is a Bose 901 with a number of added on tweeters.

The argument seems to be that no progress has been made on achieving realism but I don’t buy that. Besides being a student of the history of audio I have been in the thick of it for the last 30 years. I think I have seen plenty of progress in loudspeakers in all areas; drivers, cabinet design, crossover design, design software and measurement tools. We are capable of designing products that perform in every way better than they did 40 years ago.

Sure, that doesn’t mean that we have achieved the ultimate goal of Y. A. T. or T. A. H., fool everybody realism, but the evolution in loudspeaker performance (and amplifier and recording system) has certainly pushed us towards that goal. Well designed speakers today have flatter and smoother response, lower distortion and more even dispersion than their predecessors. Yes, even if we waved a magic wand and achieved perfection in these regards, we might not have perfect realism. The loudspeaker is one link in a chain and a perfect loudspeaker doesn’t guarantee a perfect reproduction system.

Adjusting the dispersion of a speaker to mimic that of a violin isn’t really the answer. While you might get close to realism for that instrument in that room you don’t have a universal solution. A system needs to recreate the soundfield of all types of instruments. Some may be diffuse and bidirectional, like a violin. Others are highly directional such as brass instruments. If wide dispersion makes our room a bit more like the concert hall, what do we do when we need to replicate a human voice in a deader space. I believe more channels in a deader environment are closer to a universal answer. Based on the recording you can choose between dry sound from any direction or diffuse sound from all directions.

Regarding engineering goals, I think most designers are shooting for an ideal of realism, but of course products at modest prices will have modest aspirations. Commercial realities are everpresent. More customers prioritize size or appearance of a speaker higher than absolute fidelity. Still, nobody sets out to buy “low fidelity”. They want it all in some proportion.

It would be fun to design a product saying ”all I’m going to worry about is the ultimate fidelity of this speaker” but usually we are thinking how it needs to be competitive in its price class, attractive, manufacturable, marketable, have a story to tell. This is no different than any other industry. How many cars are designed purely for quickest lap times on a road course? Even a very serious performance car needs to be drivable in traffic, manageable by the less skilled driver, durable for the long run, etc.

If your modified 901s are the ultimate answer, then I look forward to seeing them in the marketplace.

David

I feel genuinely sorry for people who spend their lives doing what they have to do to earn a living rather than what they want to do. It must make many days go very slowly. At least as a hobby I'm not constrained by the tyranny of meeting deadlines, achieving sales metrics, satisfying people who insist that walnut does not compliment their furniture the way rosewood does and therefore their wives wouldn't allow it no matter what it did.

I've had the better part of a lifetime and enough experience with both music and recordings to reflect on the fact that sound from a recording is not music, it is at best a facsimile of music just the way a photo of the grand canyon even if it was 360 degrees in all directions, three dimensional, and exactly the right color and sharpness would not be a visit to the Grand Canyon. We can't always have the real thing and so we must settle for a facsimile at other times or do without. I've also heard enough real music to know a good facsimile from a poor one. The best I can buy on the market at any price strike me as poor in the T-A-H mode, and virtually without merit in the Y-A-T mode.

I didn't just take a pair of Bose 901s and add some tweeters to it. That would have taken all of about an hour or two. I started with a mathematical model of what I needed and worked to get the system to perform to the model, that's what took four years. I started with a Bose 901 because it was available and was the closest thing I could find that conformed to the model. If it hadn't been available, I'd have had to have started from scratch to build a system whose necessary characteristics 901 already incorporated. It's the same reason most people don't start to build a speaker system by reinventing MDF or glue. You try to use as much of what already exists as you can. That's one engineering principle I was taught on my first job. Even so, it takes days, weeks, even months to tweak the sound of each recording to get it to a point where it is a convincing T-A-H, it's not a simple trick.

"Some may be diffuse and bidirectional, like a violin. Others are highly directional such as brass instruments."

Just look at the way they are constructed and how they are held when they are played. They might as well be multidirectional. If someone ever raises a trumpet up, points it at you, and blows through it even from 40 or 50 feet away you'll know exactly what I mean.

The really tough questions do not begin with the word "how" they begin with the word "why." Figuring out how to do something is usually the easiest part. Figuring out why you'd do it or why something is what it is is much harder. Why do most concert pianitsts insist on performing on a $90,000 Steinway D, often a particular one when a $65,000 Baldwin SD-10 will produce as much sound over the same range? Why would someone pay $10,000,000 for the Guanari del Gesu ex Kochanski at auction when there are much cheaper violins to be had. It can't be just for its 1741 pedigree and even a billionaire can find better things to do with $10,000,000. Why would someone spend $100 million to build a concert hall and tweak it for 50 years when a high school gymnasium like structure could be built at one tenth the price and hold as many customers? Why does Leo Beranek call Boston Symphony Hall the best room to listen to music in in the United States and one of the two or three best in the world? Why is it desirable to duplicate these sounds? Are they actually better or merely different than the sound we can create from machines. This enters an entirely different realm of thought that goes to the heart of what music, sound, and hearing are about. These questions don't have simple answers the way the how questons do. I've been thinking about them for 36 years and all I have are guesses so far.

While I wouldn't mind making money from my discoveries and inventions, I didn't expend the effort in the pursuit of money. On the other hand, I'm not about to give them away freely and see others profit from them if I won't also.

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While that is unquestionably a true statement, it is also misses the mark as to what is realistically--both technically and commercially--being targeted."

Steve,

Thanks for the shout out!

1- As a class of engineering problem, nothing has proven more daunting than matters involving biology. Current science is lacking good theoretical models and definitions of even the simplest processes of life, and the functioning of complex organs and organisms remains very mysterious. Thus, it has proven easier to split the atom or land of the moon, than to cure the common cold, accelerate the healing of a paper cut or delay male pattern baldness.

2- When cognition and psychology are additionally considered, human progress has been slow, and not for want of trying. Thus, I think that "high fidelity" and sound reproduction actually present very daunting scientific and engineering challenges. (They bring up fundamental questions in philosophy, too.) I assert that it is intellectually naive to suggest that these issues are at all easier to deal with than purely physical or biophysical ones. Perhaps they are unimportant. Perhaps, even, they have not attracted the best and brightest. Never-the-less, they are really tough fields to tackle from an engineering point of view.

3- The rate of progress in any field of endeavor is only occasionally defined by the towering genius, or the average intellect of practitioners. Urgency and reward, prevailing political and belief systems, the human and capital resources directed at the effort, the clarity of goals, the ability to apply experimental methods, modalities of communication, competition and coordination, the existence of competing challenges, all come into play.

4- There is some very good work going on in the field of sound production and reproduction around the world. Some of it is ambitious and sophisticated. To judge the landscape from internet boards and magazine articles is, again, intellectually naive.

5- The original thesis that discussed what AR dubbed the "Magic Speaker," was titled, "A Pyschoacoustically Optimized Loudspeaker." It was completed in 1977. (Not all undergrad EE theses at MIT are selected for archiving and publication, but this one was, a matter that came to affect the status of the IP.) The work at AR was done a few years later. If any one wants my pair of MGC-1's and can bring a truck to my Berkeley storage locker....

6, 7- I genuinely feel sorry for people who genuinely feel sorry for people, but do nothing about it. That seems rather more tragic than working for an honest living.

-k

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If any one wants my pair of MGC-1's and can bring a truck to my Berkeley storage locker....

If only you'd said that a couple of years ago when I was still living up there I'd have rented a truck just for the occasion...

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Soundminded quote from post#39: "Even so, it takes days, weeks, even months to tweak the sound of each recording to get it to a point where it is a convincing T-A-H, it's not a simple trick."

You've writen about your painstaking method of fine tuning your 'system' a few times before. The time it takes to eek out every nuance of the music from your system. Days, weeks....etc. Even for a SINGLE piece of music. YIKES!

Now I feel I must re-adjust your ever-so minute segment of the audiophile market by a few more orders of magnitude smaller than before!

Soundminded quote from post#39: "While I wouldn't mind making money from my discoveries and inventions, I didn't expend the effort in the pursuit of money. On the other hand, I'm not about to give them away freely and see others profit from them if I won't also."

If I remember some basic patent law learned many years ago: when you publish your ideas in print, they can't be patentable afterward by someone else because they are already in the public domain. Isn't that right MF? Don't feel sorry for speakerdave. Do something about it. PUBLISH!

Richard Heyser is an icon in the realm of audio because he published his ideas about time domain testing. I don't know if he got rich on it either. Your opportunity awaits you - as long as you're still alive.

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If I remember some basic patent law learned many years ago: when you publish your ideas in print, they can't be patentable afterward by someone else because they are already in the public domain.

Richard Heyser is an icon in the realm of audio because he published his ideas about time domain testing. I don't know if he got rich on it either.

All that does is prevent someone else from being able to patent an idea and take action against others who use it. Anyone can use and potentially make money from an idea in the public domain.

If I had an idea for some revolutionary technical advance that I knew I'd never be able to develop, I'd patent it and offer a free license to anyone who wanted to manufacture it as long as they named it after me. Profit would be great, but if I couldn't make it happen, iconic fame would be better than nothing.

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Soundminded quote from post#39: "Even so, it takes days, weeks, even months to tweak the sound of each recording to get it to a point where it is a convincing T-A-H, it's not a simple trick."

You've writen about your painstaking method of fine tuning your 'system' a few times before. The time it takes to eek out every nuance of the music from your system. Days, weeks....etc. Even for a SINGLE piece of music. YIKES!

Now I feel I must re-adjust your ever-so minute segment of the audiophile market by a few more orders of magnitude smaller than before!

Soundminded quote from post#39: "While I wouldn't mind making money from my discoveries and inventions, I didn't expend the effort in the pursuit of money. On the other hand, I'm not about to give them away freely and see others profit from them if I won't also."

If I remember some basic patent law learned many years ago: when you publish your ideas in print, they can't be patentable afterward by someone else because they are already in the public domain. Isn't that right MF? Don't feel sorry for speakerdave. Do something about it. PUBLISH!

Richard Heyser is an icon in the realm of audio because he published his ideas about time domain testing. I don't know if he got rich on it either. Your opportunity awaits you - as long as you're still alive.

Carl

Why are the adjustments so critical? As I've said, IMO the first obligation of a high fidelity sound system is to accurately reproduce the musical timbre of each instrument. There's a lot to it, far more than the usual simplistic notion of frequency response suggests. Among the many interrelated factors is that the FR must be flat for the entire chain going right back to the microphone. Since no two recordings are alike in this respect, each one must be dealt with as a separate entity. I've said that the accuracy of sound is a matter of memory, of recollection of what the original sounds like. You can't hear both the reproduction and the original at the same time even in rapid ABX testing. Here's just some typical problems. A rise of only one db or so in the 4 to 7 khz range will make a grand piano sound like a harpsichord. It will make a magnificent sweet lush sounding violin sound hard and bright. A 1 db rise at 16khz will make a violin sound shrill, a 1db falloff will make it sound muffled. A 1db rise in the mid bass will make the second and third octave piano notes sound thick and heavy, a 1 db fall will make them sound weak and lacking power. A 1 db rise at 1khz will give a piano note a puckery sound around middle C. These all relate to notes within their respective ranges so these errors are not evident all the time. The adjustments don't happen all at once. A few minutes, say 5 or 10 each time and hopefully over time the system slowly but surely approaches the correct sound. With all those controls, you adjust one slightly and it often seems like suddenly all of the others are now out of adjustment.

That was for the T-A-H type system. The Y-A-T type system introduces an entirely new order of magnitude of difficulties and variables. The acoustic transform must not only conform to the specific characteristics of how the recording was made, it must be adjusted to the requirements of the type of music. For example, the synthesis of the acoustics of a cathedral is murder for listening to an opera. In this regard there is no right or wrong, there is only more or less preferable. The data and critical evaluations I have for various concert halls shows that many of them have their own serious problems too. You become appreciative of the problems acousticians have where their adjustments require physical changes rather than just knob twirling. Each time the system changes, so do all the optimal adjustments of the parameters which is why they must be recorded so that you can repeat them even if it is only a starting point for the next effort. I recently made a change to the design of the DSP signal processor to solve one problem and I went from about 75 recordings I had parameters for to 3 right now.

Here's an example of how I see the state of the art right now. Build a six sided box large enogh for a man to sit or stand in with a door having a round hole cut it it. Now let him play a musical instrument inside with the sound coming out of the hole. Have someone playing the same instrument standing outside the box. In any real room they will never sound alike. Only in an anechoic chamber will they be the same. An anechic chamber may be an excellent place to make certaint types of acoustic measurements but it could hardly be a worse place to listen to anything. The human brain is not evolved to hear sound in such a place. It expects to hear reflections of sound which give it clues to compute the nature of the source of the sound and the mutual environment the source and listener are in. This was probably an evolutionary step to survive by letting you know whether you should run toward the source because it may be prey or away from it because it may be a predator. Anyway, the above illustrates the problem for the T-A-H case, there being no box you could build with just a hole cut in the door that will make the two sounds seem alike. Now take the box outside and listen to it there. Then walk into Carnegie Hall and sit down while the same instrument is being played on the stage. That's illustrates where the Y-A-T problem sits today. There is no combination of such boxes that can make the two sound alike.

Can this all be sorted out and understood? Not by studying the work of Walace Sabine even in combinatoin with ray analysis. It won't tell you what you need to know. It just is not a sufficient model.

BTW, my patent only revealed enough to tell the patent office how to build an example of one of my inventions. It did not reveal the details of the underlying rationale behind it, only generalities. The mathematical model which is the real invention remains secret. If that were published and put in the public domain, anyone would be free to use it. I would be giving away my intellectual property to the world. My new patent attorney told me he couldn't figure out how to get around my original and now expired patent. I've already solved that problem but what good would it do? Large corporations just infringe on it and dare you to sue them. They have deep pockets to keep you tied up in court for years and bankrupt you before there is a judgement.

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All that does is prevent someone else from being able to patent an idea and take action against others who use it. Anyone can use and potentially make money from an idea in the public domain.

If I had an idea for some revolutionary technical advance that I knew I'd never be able to develop, I'd patent it and offer a free license to anyone who wanted to manufacture it as long as they named it after me. Profit would be great, but if I couldn't make it happen, iconic fame would be better than nothing.

Well certainly others could use a published idea to make money, but not exclusively.

The point here is soundminded is hoarding what he feels is his intellectual property. Based on his last bad patent experience, I highly doubt he will patent his magic formula either. My impression is it will probably go to his grave with him. Now wouldn't that be a shame - that is, if it's indeed worthwhile. But we may never know.

Soundminded: PUBLISH, PUBLISH, PUBLISH If what you have is indeed groundbreaking, you will be remembered as others have. At least I would rather remember you as having contributed something other than knocks on the extant state of audio engineering.

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Well certainly others could use a published idea to make money, but not exclusively.

The point here is soundminded is hoarding what he feels is his intellectual property. Based on his last bad patent experience, I highly doubt he will patent his magic formula either. My impression is it will probably go to his grave with him. Now wouldn't that be a shame - that is, if it's indeed worthwhile. But we may never know.

Soundminded: PUBLISH, PUBLISH, PUBLISH If what you have is indeed groundbreaking, you will be remembered as others have. At least I would rather remember you as having contributed something other than knocks on the extant state of audio engineering.

"his magic formula "

It is not a magic formula, it is a straightforward physical and mathematical analysis. There is nothing tricky or peculiar about it. My first patent attorney was also a mechanical engineer. My more recent one is also a physicist. Neither had the slightest doubt about the theory or the way it was applied. I gave a lot of thought to the question of why I was able to solve this problem before I'd ever even heard the word paradigm. The real nature of a paradigm is not just the way you go about solving a problem, it's about the way you look at it and define it. When you see it from a different perspective, what seemed impossible to understand from the usual point of view suddenly becomes understandable, even obvious. That is why I rushed to obtain a patent when I did even though the technology to exploit it wasn't quite there yet. I was certain others would see it too before long. I am still amazed they haven't. In a way it's kind of amusing watching them bash their collective heads against the same brick wall, each time expecting it to fall over. If they only knew that the wall is only six inches high it might occur to them to step over it instead. :P

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Well certainly others could use a published idea to make money, but not exclusively.

The point here is soundminded is hoarding what he feels is his intellectual property. Based on his last bad patent experience, I highly doubt he will patent his magic formula either. My impression is it will probably go to his grave with him. Now wouldn't that be a shame - that is, if it's indeed worthwhile. But we may never know.

Soundminded: PUBLISH, PUBLISH, PUBLISH If what you have is indeed groundbreaking, you will be remembered as others have. At least I would rather remember you as having contributed something other than knocks on the extant state of audio engineering.

I too wish you would publish your work, if just to expand the knowledge of the art.

As I have opined previously, I find it doubtful that a significant commercial market exists for a system that replicates the y-a-t or t-a-h realism of a live musical event, but that opinion is not germane to my desire to see the field of audio research benefit from the knowledge of your work.

"Taking it to your grave," as it were, makes little sense. You're not profiting from it financially now; if you publish, you may or may not profit from it financially in the future, but you would certainly "profit" from a personal gratification standpoint if other entities confirm and laud your efforts.

That alone would be enough for most. For me, certainly.

Steve F.

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I feel genuinely sorry for people who spend their lives doing what they have to do to earn a living rather than what they want to do. It must make many days go very slowly. At least as a hobby I'm not constrained by the tyranny of meeting deadlines, achieving sales metrics, satisfying people who insist that walnut does not compliment their furniture the way rosewood does and therefore their wives wouldn't allow it no matter what it did.

I certainly hope it isn't me that you are feeling sorry for. I've always enjoyed my chosen path. Like most people I know in the industry, I was attracted by a love of music and technology to this facinating profession. Much more interesting than designing electric toasters.

I've also been greatly impressed with many of the people I have been fortunate to work with: Don Keele, Laurie Fincham, Peter Walker, Mike Albinson, Peter Baxandall, Dick Small, Sydney Corderman. I would stand them up against intellects in any other field. Who are you to insult any of them?

I didn't just take a pair of Bose 901s and add some tweeters to it. That would have taken all of about an hour or two. I started with a mathematical model of what I needed and worked to get the system to perform to the model, that's what took four years. I started with a Bose 901 because it was available and was the closest thing I could find that conformed to the model. If it hadn't been available, I'd have had to have started from scratch to build a system whose necessary characteristics 901 already incorporated. It's the same reason most people don't start to build a speaker system by reinventing MDF or glue. You try to use as much of what already exists as you can. That's one engineering principle I was taught on my first job. Even so, it takes days, weeks, even months to tweak the sound of each recording to get it to a point where it is a convincing T-A-H, it's not a simple trick.

I appologize. Its not just a pair of Bose 901s with added tweeters, its Bose 901s, added tweeters and a carefully adjusted equalizer! With all this railing against the incompetence of industry engineers I didn't think the solution we were overlooking could be so mundane.

"Some may be diffuse and bidirectional, like a violin. Others are highly directional such as brass instruments."

Just look at the way they are constructed and how they are held when they are played. They might as well be multidirectional. If someone ever raises a trumpet up, points it at you, and blows through it even from 40 or 50 feet away you'll know exactly what I mean.

I attend the Toronto Symphony on a regular basis, and the Cleveland when I can get down to it. I have frequently been struck by the noticeably more directional character of the brass instruments, in spite of being far into the reverberent field. A speaker that relies on matching the directivity of a violin can't match the directivity of a trombone.

I agree with the others, rather than your continuous berating of audio engineers and their achievements, show us what you have achieved that puts them all to shame. Give us an outline of your mathematical construct. Show us pictures and measurements of your novel speaker system.

It is well past time to put up or shut up.

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I certainly hope it isn't me that you are feeling sorry for. I've always enjoyed my chosen path. Like most people I know in the industry, I was attracted by a love of music and technology to this facinating profession. Much more interesting than designing electric toasters.

I've also been greatly impressed with many of the people I have been fortunate to work with: Don Keele, Laurie Fincham, Peter Walker, Mike Albinson, Peter Baxandall, Dick Small, Sydney Corderman. I would stand them up against intellects in any other field. Who are you to insult any of them?

I appologize. Its not just a pair of Bose 901s with added tweeters, its Bose 901s, added tweeters and a carefully adjusted equalizer! With all this railing against the incompetence of industry engineers I didn't think the solution we were overlooking could be so mundane.

I attend the Toronto Symphony on a regular basis, and the Cleveland when I can get down to it. I have frequently been struck by the noticeably more directional character of the brass instruments, in spite of being far into the reverberent field. A speaker that relies on matching the directivity of a violin can't match the directivity of a trombone.

I agree with the others, rather than your continuous berating of audio engineers and their achievements, show us what you have achieved that puts them all to shame. Give us an outline of your mathematical construct. Show us pictures and measurements of your novel speaker system.

It is well past time to put up or shut up.

"I attend the Toronto Symphony on a regular basis, and the Cleveland when I can get down to it. I have frequently been struck by the noticeably more directional character of the brass instruments, in spite of being far into the reverberent field. A speaker that relies on matching the directivity of a violin can't match the directivity of a trombone."

Can you build a machine that can duplicate their sound?

"I agree with the others, rather than your continuous berating of audio engineers and their achievements, show us what you have achieved that puts them all to shame. Give us an outline of your mathematical construct. Show us pictures and measurements of your novel speaker system."

Even if everything I have posted about my own efforts was pure fiction, that does not negate the validity of my criticism of other people's efforts. I'm hardly surprised at the rancor of those who resent someone pointing out that the attributes of their efforts don't in any way reflect the price asked for them. Nor the fact that no matter how many products they produce, they seem to continue to spew an endless stream of new ones at inevitably higher prices that are no better than the products they replace.

"It is well past time to put up or shut up."

Considering that I do not offer the market any product that makes, infers, or implies any claims, I'd say that the onus of that proof is on those who do. So far they haven't because they can't.

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If nobody has any other views to express about the topic rather than each other's personal motivations and credibility, it may be time to close this one.

It has never been my intent to impugn SM's credibility, intellect, or motivations, and I sincerely hope that none of my comments have been interpreted as such. I, for one, have long been fascinated by his 'system.' I'd love to learn more about it, and I think the audio community--both professional and hobbyist-- would benefit from learning about it also.

As I said previously, there doesn't appear to be anything to 'lose,' so to speak, by publishing it. Non-publication means no financial gain for SM; publication means possible financial gain and possible public acclaim. In any event, it does not appear that publication would result in a worse position for SM than his current one.

So I ask again.

Steve F.

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It has never been my intent to impugn SM's credibility, intellect, or motivations, and I sincerely hope that none of my comments have been interpreted as such. I, for one, have long been fascinated by his 'system.' I'd love to learn more about it, and I think the audio community--both professional and hobbyist-- would benefit from learning about it also.

As I said previously, there doesn't appear to be anything to 'lose,' so to speak, by publishing it. Non-publication means no financial gain for SM; publication means possible financial gain and possible public acclaim. In any event, it does not appear that publication would result in a worse position for SM than his current one.

So I ask again.

Steve F.

Since it has been stated here that a patent was applied for, then at least some aspect of the idea is already published into the public record. A citation of the patent number would be sufficient, and would have no financial ramifications, either way. If the patent was not granted, or was subsequently invalidated, then the application is also still in the public record.

No matter how small a subset of an idea any particular patent is, by definition, it must be novel, non-obvious and must teach practicable techniques. So, it would illuminate much while automatically being protected. That is, after all, a big reason why people go to the expense and trouble of filing a patent in the first place. In fact, where the patent to be infringed by somebody who read it, damages would be higher than if it were unwittingly infringed.

-k

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