CD playback from Blu-Ray player

[Serial_Apologist]

Whoa, RFG ! I wouldn't expect to have to leap to the defence of empiricists under attack from a member of the medical profession, one in which the whole panoply of therapeutic interventions have been arrived at by empirical studies of different kinds, many approved for use through large scale testing under double-blind conditions (really dodgy methodology, that -- lacking psychological insight according to some). Your alien analogy is interesting, their puzzled reaction to the spectacle unfolding before them mirroring my own bemusement when inadvertently tuning to an NFL game on late-nite TV, but it seems to me that their scattergun methodology lacks focus.

As you say - & you are far better qualified than me to make such an assertion -- neuroscience is in its infancy, and the way that the brain interprets sensory information is opaquely buried in that cranial iceberg, the large and mysterious mass below the surface, but one can't get away from the fact that for all of human existence our senses have served us well in that they have revealed truth about the world and the larger cosmos, so the brain's mysterious rendering of sensation has objective value. If seeing is believing, then hearing should receive equal validation as an objective truth, perceptible to the majority of humanity. If you were presented with a patient who was hallucinating and hearing hidden voices, you would rightly regard these as pathologies, not as some manifestation of his or her own "subjective" truth, or that the sufferer was possessed by demons.

Can we take it then, that the brain resembles a black box, receiving sensory input and mysteriously transmuting these impulses into revealed truth about the world ? This is not to say that all brains are identical, & that there won't be a myriad divergences of perception in that truth, but that broadly speaking, the vast majority of humanity, if confronted by a growling grizzly at twenty paces, will immediately perceive danger. Compared to the as-yet-imperfectly-understood mechanism by which the cerebral cortex achieves this feat, the process of transferring audio signals from amplifiers to loudspeakers seems trivial. Assuming the amp has been designed to match any real-world speaker, it's a bit of wire, right ? Oh, and I don't imagine any empiricist worth his or her salt would rule out new discoveries revolutionising our understanding of audio transmission -- esoteric cables harnessing dark energy to lead us into audio nirvana, perhaps ?

Surely it is more useful to consider that historical advances in the technological field are what have advanced brain power, and in what is a collective, representational, rather than individual sense. Otherwise wouldn't one would have to conclude that one was right is believing that the sun goes round the earth, rather than the other way around? The arena of perception is the salient issue in the case of subjective assessment... one might think this so in the example of the person confronted with immediate danger - after all, knowledge of earth's movements relative to the sun etc are not matters of everyday survival unless you are launching satellites or yourself an astronaut - and yet, even in including in matters of "aesthetic judgement" questions over audio fidelity we have to face what is intrinsic to such acts of judgement as being in part mediated by factors extrinsic to what is objectively verifiable by measurement, and so on.

[Pianoman]

Well I'm afraid 'audiophiles' make themselves fair game for this in many cases - anybody who talks about 'cable lifters' making 'night and day' differences, or the infamous Peter Belt 'improvements' is going to be ridiculed. And fwiw the network switch debate I mentioned has become rather heated and is still going on...

[richardfinegold]

Whoa, RFG ! I wouldn't expect to have to leap to the defence of empiricists under attack from a member of the medical profession, one in which the whole panoply of therapeutic interventions have been arrived at by empirical studies of different kinds, many approved for use through large scale testing under double-blind conditions (really dodgy methodology, that -- lacking psychological insight according to some). Your alien analogy is interesting, their puzzled reaction to the spectacle unfolding before them mirroring my own bemusement when inadvertently tuning to an NFL game on late-nite TV, but it seems to me that their scattergun methodology lacks focus.

As you say - & you are far better qualified than me to make such an assertion -- neuroscience is in its infancy, and the way that the brain interprets sensory information is opaquely buried in that cranial iceberg, the large and mysterious mass below the surface, but one can't get away from the fact that for all of human existence our senses have served us well in that they have revealed truth about the world and the larger cosmos, so the brain's mysterious rendering of sensation has objective value. If seeing is believing, then hearing should receive equal validation as an objective truth, perceptible to the majority of humanity. If you were presented with a patient who was hallucinating and hearing hidden voices, you would rightly regard these as pathologies, not as some manifestation of his or her own "subjective" truth, or that the sufferer was possessed by demons.

Can we take it then, that the brain resembles a black box, receiving sensory input and mysteriously transmuting these impulses into revealed truth about the world ? This is not to say that all brains are identical, & that there won't be a myriad divergences of perception in that truth, but that broadly speaking, the vast majority of humanity, if confronted by a growling grizzly at twenty paces, will immediately perceive danger. Compared to the as-yet-imperfectly-understood mechanism by which the cerebral cortex achieves this feat, the process of transferring audio signals from amplifiers to loudspeakers seems trivial. Assuming the amp has been designed to match any real-world speaker, it's a bit of wire, right ? Oh, and I don't imagine any empiricist worth his or her salt would rule out new discoveries revolutionising our understanding of audio transmission -- esoteric cables harnessing dark energy to lead us into audio nirvana, perhaps ?

I think we in the same room here. You say that in the Alien Analogy I provided is unrealistic because of the "scattershot methodology". Whose to say that a few centuries from now that our present measurement techniques won't look as scattered? Have you read Aristotle recently? One of the greatest minds of all times thought that the function of the heart was to keep blood warm.
You state that vision has an objective truth. One of my sons is color blind. His objective truth differs significantly from mine. The way that grasshoppers perceive visual stimuli is vastly different from the manner in which most humans perceive visual stimuli.
Perception of vision is routinely altered by cataract surgery, retinal disease...Imagine what Monet might have produced had he been able to get his cataracts extracted. People with cochlear implants probably are hearing in ways that are different from most of us.
Dogs hear differently than we do. What about synasthesia? Did Scriabin, for example, hear the same way that I do?

It is impossible for empiricists in audio to dismiss that there are yet to be discovered factors that influence the end result of an audio product. They simply refuse to concede that there is anything left to discover regarding audio. Perhaps Aristotle thought
he had it all down and if he was in control of research funding allocation in Ancient Macedonia would have shut down Bio-Medical Research. Perhaps not. Back to Audio, there are some of us that find pleasure in products that may not measure significantly different from another product. Remember when Apple and others began pioneering mp3 files? They discarded 93% of all information in the file because their measurements showed that the missing data was beyond the capacity of humans to perceive. Except that a very large number of humans have decided "F--- that". There are some people who can't tell the difference between an mp3 and an uncompressed file, but I imagine that most of the people on this forum would not be happy if forced to listen to all of their music in a compressed format

[jayne lee wilson]

Well I'm afraid 'audiophiles' make themselves fair game for this in many cases - anybody who talks about 'cable lifters' making 'night and day' differences, or the infamous Peter Belt 'improvements' is going to be ridiculed. And fwiw the network switch debate I mentioned has become rather heated and is still going on...

Easy targets yet again -
The Sceptics are always crashing in the same car....

[Pianoman]

Why not ? The 'audiophiles' trot out the same, what shall we call them, 'hobbyist testimonies' telling us of imagined 'improvements'...

[JasonPalmer]

Interesting thread, I would never spend big money on a high fi system unless I won the lottery.

My cheapie old CD player does enough for me https://www.reevoo.com/p/panasonic-sc-hc27db

Never used the iPod function or radio function.

[jayne lee wilson]

Why not ? The 'audiophiles' trot out the same, what shall we call them, 'hobbyist testimonies' telling us of imagined 'improvements'...

This audiophile doesn't, or thousands of others....
But we find great joy in our systems, so carefully assembled over so many years, as in our beloved music...

[Pianoman]

Interesting thread, I would never spend big money on a high fi system unless I won the lottery.

My cheapie old CD player does enough for me https://www.reevoo.com/p/panasonic-sc-hc27db

Never used the iPod function or radio function.

Yes and I think that goes for a majority (though i've no figures) but 'hi-end' audio seems increasingly a niche market, and manufacturers seem to know it, with things like headphones, streamers, all-in-ones etc. being more prevalent these days than big boxes.

[Maclintick]

I think we in the same room here. You say that in the Alien Analogy I provided is unrealistic because of the "scattershot methodology". Whose to say that a few centuries from now that our present measurement techniques won't look as scattered?

They almost certainly will, & apologies to any extra-terrestrial observers whose abilities it was not my intention to impugn, but I would have expected finer interpretative skills from highly advanced beings, as your aliens would undoubtedly be.

You state that vision has an objective truth. One of my sons is color blind. His objective truth differs significantly from mine. The way that grasshoppers perceive visual stimuli is vastly different from the manner in which most humans perceive visual stimuli.
Perception of vision is routinely altered by cataract surgery, retinal disease...Imagine what Monet might have produced had he been able to get his cataracts extracted. People with cochlear implants probably are hearing in ways that are different from most of us.
Dogs hear differently than we do. What about synasthesia? Did Scriabin, for example, hear the same way that I do?

Donning my subjectivist hat, I covered myself here by lamely repeating the truism that not all brains are identical, and that this leads to divergent real-world perceptions. In the scientific sphere the methodology of repeated experiments and peer-review is intended to eliminate subjective bias as far as possible in order to arrive at objective truth, or rather a contingent 'best guess', as was Newton's gravitational theory which held sway for over 200 years before Einstein's General Relativity. In the artistic sphere the opposite is true, of course, where individuality is celebrated and artists create singular visions of their personal truth.

It is impossible for empiricists in audio to dismiss that there are yet to be discovered factors that influence the end result of an audio product. They simply refuse to concede that there is anything left to discover regarding audio.

I don't accept that audio empiricists are so narrow-minded. Esoteric cabling is a contentious area, but when it comes to the active components in the audio chain, amplifiers, speakers, DACs, CD players etc, I think it's reasonable to infer that most modern kit given serious consideration in the hi-fi mags has been well-designed with excellent technical spec in terms of THD etc, and that choices can only be made through subjective listening. This leaves plenty of room for some genius to arrive at new insights which lead us closer to audio nirvana.

[mikealdren]

I'll reiterate my point about being able to hear differences. As a violinist, I'm well used to hearing differences in 'sound colour', for me it's what distinguishes good HiFi systems.

Having been to a HiFI news event at Ascot just before lockdown, I concluded that, despite the enormous price tags, few of the systems sounded very good to me. Lots of bass, yes, very loud, yes but 'popular music' doesn't really need accurate reproduction in the way 'classical music' does. As to the improved cables, replacements for mains power supplies, black boxes sitting between components etc. Well they were all on display but there were NO demos to show how much difference they really made. And before others reply, yes I do know that hotel rooms are not ideal for demos but they do represent many domestic settings reasonably well.

As a long time reader of HiFi news (well over 50 years) I have seen quite a few questionable trends along with some good reviewing, the challenge is reading between the lines and telling the difference. Remember Quadraphonic? Well we now have realistic surround sound but much of the pseudo-science of the 70s seemed like rubbish, even at the time.

As to measuring things, well electronics have improved enormously but I can still hear differences between (for example) amplifiers and DACs that are not always shown in the measurements. I like RFG's brain analogy. I notice that the reviews don't often refer to the measurements anymore in the way that they used to reference things like THD but have a separate lab report. No doubt designers measure everything to get their excellent results but nobody seems to have straightforward measurements that distinguish good systems from less good.

[Dave2002]

Assuming the amp has been designed to match any real-world speaker, it's a bit of wire, right ?

More less, though not everyone agrees. However you are missing the step from the source to the amp, which if analogue you might equally argue is "just another bit of wire". There are definitely differences between such cables. If the amp works directly on digital data, then the digital data has to be converted to analogue somewhere [unless you are driving a completely digital speaker - which is unlikely] so in that case the DAC will have an effect. Plus there are probably a few other components in amps which are similar to pieces of wire, but taken altogether may colour the sound.

Here I assume that when refer to a "bit of wire" you are thinking of an idealised device, with a completely perfect flat frequency transfer characteristic - so you are pulling a linguistic and discoursive trick out of the bag which you may not have noticed.

[Maclintick]

Here I assume that when refer to a "bit of wire" you are thinking of an idealised device, with a completely perfect flat frequency transfer characteristic - so you are pulling a linguistic and discoursive trick out of the bag which you may not have noticed.

No, not an idealised device, since these of course do not exist, but a cable of negligible resistance over the distances likely to be encountered in even the largest living-rooms. Then again, braided solid silver interconnects with conductivity 5% greater than equivalent copper will give superior transfer over short distances, but somehow one never sees such advertised in even the most esoteric audiophile blurbs. I wonder why ?

[richardfinegold]

I'll reiterate my point about being able to hear differences. As a violinist, I'm well used to hearing differences in 'sound colour', for me it's what distinguishes good HiFi systems.

Having been to a HiFI news event at Ascot just before lockdown, I concluded that, despite the enormous price tags, few of the systems sounded very good to me. Lots of bass, yes, very loud, yes but 'popular music' doesn't really need accurate reproduction in the way 'classical music' does. As to the improved cables, replacements for mains power supplies, black boxes sitting between components etc. Well they were all on display but there were NO demos to show how much difference they really made. And before others reply, yes I do know that hotel rooms are not ideal for demos but they do represent many domestic settings reasonably well.

As a long time reader of HiFi news (well over 50 years) I have seen quite a few questionable trends along with some good reviewing, the challenge is reading between the lines and telling the difference. Remember Quadraphonic? Well we now have realistic surround sound but much of the pseudo-science of the 70s seemed like rubbish, even at the time.

As to measuring things, well electronics have improved enormously but I can still hear differences between (for example) amplifiers and DACs that are not always shown in the measurements. I like RFG's brain analogy. I notice that the reviews don't often refer to the measurements anymore in the way that they used to reference things like THD but have a separate lab report. No doubt designers measure everything to get their excellent results but nobody seems to have straightforward measurements that distinguish good systems from less good.

Great music deserves quality replay so that it can be appreciated in all of its sublties

[jayne lee wilson]

No, not an idealised device, since these of course do not exist, but a cable of negligible resistance over the distances likely to be encountered in even the largest living-rooms. Then again, braided solid silver interconnects with conductivity 5% greater than equivalent copper will give superior transfer over short distances, but somehow one never sees such advertised in even the most esoteric audiophile blurbs. I wonder why ?

Braided Silver Cables? Maybe something from the (long-established) Kimber range is what you seek...?

https://www.russandrews.com/analogue-interconnects/

(ps.... I chose the XLR Carbon Interconnects last time out....... very happy with them linking SACD Player to Preamp.....still giving me beautiful Bruckner four years on)

[Maclintick]

Braided Silver Cables? Maybe something from the (long-established) Kimber range is what you seek...?

https://www.russandrews.com/analogue-interconnects/

(ps.... I chose the XLR Carbon Interconnects last time out....... very happy with them linking SACD Player to Preamp.....still giving me beautiful Bruckner four years on)

Thanks, JLW. Cables with braided silver such as Kimber's are intertwined with copper, which gives a marginal improvement in conductivity over 100% copper speaker wires, but which I estimate would provide an imperceptible improvement in sound to my ageing lugholes. If I were to contemplate replacing any of the interconnections in my hi-fi ( old-terminology -- not high-end or audiophile by current standards) it would be from turntable to amp, which currently has vintage 1990s nickel RCA to the phono stage. All other connectivity in my system is digital of one kind or another.