Subjective vs Objective opinions, post your favourite links / experiences Options

[2Bdecided]

We're an objectivist audio community here. We don't necesarily believe that everything can be measured (psychoacoustic codecs prevent that anyway), but we do believe that subective opinions should be backed up by rigorous tests, intended to remove all possible bias from human subjective judgements and opinions.

I think this is a good thing. I read the following from Dibrom in a recently locked thread:

If we simply let people go around making claims without challenging them, we would be no further than the --r3mix days, and likely much worse even given the larger number of people that participate in these forums.

You seem to focus only on the negative aspect here (I think I know why....) and completely disregard the benefit that has been wrought by this attitude. Yes, some people might get scared off in the process, but overall, this attitude is more helpful than harmful -- much more so in fact. There have been numerous cases were real problems have been even more emphasized and brought to bear through the increased scrutiny these types of situations bring about.

I very much agree with this.

Look at the opposite case: look at most Hi-Fi magazines. They advice people on buying $1000s of equipment (not just choosing between free audio codecs!), yet their advice is usually unscientific. The listening is done sighted, and without any control conditions. Objective measurements are presented as being inferior and/or removed from what people actually hear. Manufactuers claims are repeated verbatim. Opinions are stated as fact, and little is ever questioned.

Most significantly, there is no sense in which the influence of the magazine is used to improve the state of the art. They simply comment, often in a virtually meaningless, marketing driven manner, on products which they decide to review. Rather than helping people to buy better Hi-Fi, and leading the manufactuers to build better Hi-Fi, they do the opposite: People are confused as to what really does sound better, and often buy overpriced junk; while manufactuers spend less time (and money) improving the sound of their equipment, and more time following the latest trend or marketing gimmic. The result is that it's all too easy to spend $20,000 on a Hi-Fi which sounds absolutely bloody awful!

The equivalent here would be to spend weeks encoding your CD collection using a command line and/or encoder that was pretty poor compared to the best that's been acheived, and is available for free. But we don't allow that. We don't let people claim that X is better than Y, when it isn't. We don't let people claim that Z has magical properties. We do testing, and we try to move forward. And that is a good thing.

The latest thread with Xerophase was a good thread IMO. Maybe it took two pages to express something that we should have said to him in one posting - but we were interested, he was interested, and we've got a useful result. We've learned something. By following the rulse of the forum. And by being polite and encouraging him to join in with how we do things here.

There's a lot in the "tone" of how you do something. Whether we accept unsubstantiated claims is not up for debate - we do not. But the manner in which you coax these people into doing things the right way is very important.

We've got to allow people who don't know any better (and sometimes even those of us who do!) to make unsubstantiated claims at first, so that other members can point out that they're unsubstantiated, and suggest a fair way of testing them. This doesn't mean we accept unsubstantiated claims as truth, but it does mean that people sometimes need to be allowed to post them as a starting point for discussion and investigation. "I think X" is an unsubstantiated claim, but it's OK if it leads on to "How can I test if it's true?"

We are an objectivist audio community.

If you have any good objectivist/subjectivist links, links showing the importance of evidence, proof, and blind testing against feelings and opinions, or the opposite side of the argument, feel free to post them.

Cheers,
David.

http://sound.westhost.com/cables-p2.htm

http://skepdic.com/blondlot.html

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

[tom_vienna_at]

Since we are humans, everything is subjective... we just pretend that things are "objective". Just compare what was considered an "objective" view on certain things 10 years ago and what is "objective" today.

And when it comes to audio... please! When human ears are involved, everything said *must* be subjective. Not to talk about individual settings.

And what we should have learned by now: Just because a certain amount of individuals claims the very same thing, it says nothing about the truth or objectivness of the claim. What we know today is just a tiny, tiny part of what we didn't know yesterday. We can't be so self-obsessed to claim that we know an objective truth... we're just working in a certain direction - as a common effort that might be obsolete tomorrow.

[Soap]

Since we are humans, everything is subjective... we just pretend that things are "objective". Just compare what was considered an "objective" view on certain things 10 years ago and what is "objective" today.

There is a difference between evidence and conclusion.
You are talking about "views" which I take to mean "conclusions". Clearly different conclusions can be reached over the course of time as more evidence is gathered - but it would be a misstatement to claim that evidence gathered at one point in time will be later found to be false.

And when it comes to audio... please! When human ears are involved, everything said *must* be subjective.

This is mostly true - but see krabapple's excellent point above mine for why this is largely irrelevant in terms of our discussion of objectivist vs subjectivist audiophiles.

And what we should have learned by now: Just because a certain amount of individuals claims the very same thing, it says nothing about the truth or objectivness of the claim. What we know today is just a tiny, tiny part of what we didn't know yesterday. We can't be so self-obsessed to claim that we know an objective truth... we're just working in a certain direction - as a common effort that might be obsolete tomorrow.

You appear to be implying conclusions which just are not aired by the vast majority of people on HA. HA discussions rarely revolve around "claims" - they revolve around tests and (as objectively as possible) gathered evidence. Saying "99% of people tested were unable to statistically prove they could perceive a difference between encoding A and encoding B" is as close to an objective truth as is possible. This is also a claim which will stand the test of time, your arguments not withstanding. unless you are claiming a future test might show that “hey, I actually DID hear temporal smearing back in 1999!”

I do not see the broad generalizations you appear to be claiming people make here regarding "truth".

This post has been edited by Soap: Oct 22 2008, 18:31