Sweeping statements
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsHere’s a subject I am perhaps more guilty of than most. The practice of making a sweeping statement about how everything is one way or the other. This is wrong and this is right. This matters and that does not. This guy’s a liar, and this one always tells the truth.
The problem with this line of communication is two-fold: nothing is always one way or the other and we cannot know everything.
I find myself making sweeping statements in an effort to emphasize a point important to me. DSD always sounds better than PCM. And you know what? In the examples I have experienced, that happens to be true. Unequivocally true. Thus it must be universally true—only, it isn’t.
This is how divides happen. When all you have ever experienced suggests one conclusion, then it must be the same for everyone else—which is true only in the case where others have experienced exactly what you have.
If our goal is to effectively communicate then perhaps it’s best to include the caveat “in my experience”. That’s a hard one to get wrong.
I’ll do my best to be better at that.
Paul,
Short response; yup.
Long response; the truth is that intelligent readers (listeners) will understand that you make your sweeping statement for exactly the reason you have stated…’this is how it is’, ie. to emphasize the point that you are making.
I have never met you personally, however from listening to you & reading what you have to say via the internet it is obvious to me that you are not a man of such absolutes; that there is always time & cause for listening (extensively) before speaking.
Thank you for explaining the obvious; now I’ll go & listen to some music 😉
“That restaurant is too crowded, nobody goes there anymore” – Yogi Berra
When I read a post, depending on its content, I generally assume it’s in the writers opinion (IMO, not always IMHO). The most useful and valid opinions would be garnered from within the writers own sphere of experience.
Whilst the reader may apply such caveats, misunderstandings and upset may occur when it is apparent the writer, making an absolute statement, does not appreciate the same.
Which is basically what is said in today’s post. Paul frequently makes absolute statements but equally tells us that we should always be open minded.
The non PC comment.
Many of these discussions would never take place if more women were involved in Hi-Fi because they do know everything and are never wrong. Ouch!
Rich,
WTF?
Sshhhhhh!
It came to mind, I felt compelled to say!
Rich,
lol…so did I 🙂
Can’t imagine why more women aren’t involved in Hifi with such open minds in evidence. I also couldn’t resist commenting. Come on guys put down your clubs and avoid such silly sweeping statements.
Maybe you were being ironic? My bad if so.
kcleveland123,
Rich & I were being facetious, sarcastic, mildly obtuse.
We were not seriously wielding our clubs; just joking around 😉 🙂
Oh well, there is another woman here. Guys and their toys ignoring science. Dragging your knuckles on the ground, I see…
sclaningham,
Ooog?
The callouses on my knuckles offer great protection 😉
In my experience, the quality of the recording is much more important than whether it’s PCM or DSD. I have many Redbook CDs that sound more musical than some of my SACDs. You need a top-drawer transport and DAC, however.
hrboucher,
I could not agree with you more.
Absolutely agree. 16/44 seems to be coming into its own of late with plenty of support here. There is more musical information buried deep within than has previously met the ears.
I became very aware of how good 16/44 could be about 7 or 8 years ago when I first heard the dCS Vivaldi stack playing a top rate CD (engineered by Linn). I just didn’t have $100,000 or the real estate. There are now servers and streamers around for under $5,000 that are so well optimised for streaming compared to the old computer/usb or CD source that sound quality is much improved without breaking the bank.
In my case, I became aware of how good Redbook CDs could sound when I acquired an Audio Note DAC. Adding one of their transports has made it even better.
I sometimes call it out, when Paul gets ahead of himself, but I take the view that he’s trying to sell products and if he didn’t wax lyrical about his latest machine there’d be something wrong with him:
“Dear faithful customers. I’ve made this new SACD transport. I think it’s sort of OK. Give it a try but don’t expect too much.”
I don’t think so. I’d much rather Paul’s normal “This is likely the best transport between Moses and the end of time”.
So far as DSD is concerned, like all things audio, it’s a matter of perception, and I’m with @hrboucher, very happy with quality 16/44 recordings. I bought a DSD DAC in 2015, tried it, sold it and and went back to PCM-only.
I find Paul’s enthusiasm endearing, even if some of what he says is a bit fanciful, and I assume it is driven by passion for what he does. Either that or he needs the money, which I doubt.
I am still searching for acoustic magnifying glasses allowing me to notice the giant leap in sound quality claimed by high res PCM formats and DSD. Even using the finest headphones available there was no jaw dropping leap. Probably DSD is the finest technology for recording but for mixing tracks conversion to PCM seems mandatory. For playback DSD doesn’t require sophisticated digital filters – a cost saving side effect. Maybe somebody could recommend here some of these acoustic magnifying glasses?! Please!
Hah! Thanks, Steven. Much appreciated. Yeah, it’s passion for me. I do admit to writing an excited post just as soon as I leave the listening room when I am all pumped up. The experience of hearing something new – unveiling hidden treasures – is just so damned addictive it’s like a drug. As soon as the engineers have something new to try or a product’s ready for testing I get all fired up.
We are often locked into a position because we are subjective in nature. It is hard to be objective from a subjective position. That applies to many aspects of life, we make assumptions and can’t see the forest for the trees. Clear your mind and look from a different perspective. Good for you Paul to realize your built in bias.
You can sweep the floor, but sweeping statements are not good. (No rug to hide the stuff you missed under 😉 )
Interesting in that what may initially be termed ‘rampant enthusiasm’, can quickly be twisted to over the ‘top hyperboles’.
Reminds me of a book, are we kinda pre-wired (no pun) to assume sweeping statements? : “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a 2007 book by author and former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events—and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively.”
Well Paul we all have our faults, none of us is perfect. Even I have my faults and one day I might discover what one of them is. And sometimes we love people not in spite of their faults but because of them. Now take you for example. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever met to a leprechaun. You’re full of blarney and looking for that pot of gold at the end of the audio rainbow. I love the way you contradict yourself. You do tend to make bold sweeping statements with great authority and then sometime later you say the opposite with equal conviction. It makes me laugh especially since as you know I don’t take anything about audio seriously.
So what are a few examples? Servo woofers good. But your current speaker design took servo out and it wasn’t to make it a cheap speaker. Solid state good, tubes bad. Now tubes must be in the input stage of your amplifiers. The AN IRS killer was a quasi line source speaker because a line source is the best, the FR30 isn’t a. Less is more. Adding a preamplifier can improve the sound. The IRS V is one of the best speakers in the world. At some frequencies it had 100 percent harmonic distortion and no slam. The rule is to divide the room into thirds and I’m one of the best setup guys in the business. I needed Arnie to help me position the IRS in music room one and we had to take the absorber off the wall. The Hypex amplifier is great. The Hypex amplifier isn’t nearly good enough, it never got out of the car. But you say things you believe at the time you say it and sometimes they are memorable. “Canned music.” Priceless. Now who in politics do we know who seems to contradict himself according to some people? Yet while some hate him, others love him. Nevermind politics.
In science there are only two kinds of theories, those that have been disproved and those that haven’t been disproved yet. The more I learn the less I know. Here’s a little joke about what they teach physics students about one of Newton’s laws. Freshman year F equals ma. Sophomore year F is approximately equal to ma. Junior year F is not equal to ma (that’s when they’re really getting deep into relativity) and senior year when they realize these guys and gals are going to have to go out and earn a living in the practical world soon, F equals ma again. Not only do the theories in physics get wilder and wilder and the terminology they use get weirder and weirder, I no longer even understand what they’re talking about most of the time. And they make sweeping generalizations with such assurance which also get swept away by evidence they find. They have so much contradictory evidence they don’t know what to believe anymore. Some of them are turning to religion. I tell ya, physicists are all crazy people. They’re like modern day priests of their own religion and like all other priests on their pedestals I just love knocking them off them and defrocking them. The higher the pedestal the more compelling and irresistable the urge. In audio it’s so easy I hardly bother anymore.
I agree that some (!) physicists are modern day priests. The latest innovation of priests was the concept of monotheism replacing all former gods and goddesses. Same approach made by physicists trying to replace all forces (phenomenons) by a single universal force and creating a theory of everything. The problem is that diversity and complexity seems to be a dominant aspect of evolution?! And in trying to prove a theory of everything physicists invent new “things” as dark matter, dark energy, black holes and all kind of new particles. 😉 Most funny and strange that the goal of getting things simplified and using all kind of abstraction leads to an increasing number of “strange things”. There are evens quarks labeled “strange”.
Sweeping statements result when someone is convinced completely of something and it has become a fact for him or her. Nothing wrong in saying it out loud. That someone else disagrees with it just shows that the latter’s experience is different and he too can say it out loud. For a third person listening to both gives him or her the opportunity to think about it and find out for himself or herself. This again is going to be subjective. It is best to speak out then go the PC route and speak out of both sides of the mouth. That’s best left to the politicians who’s job is to please everyone. It’s a lot better to know what one really thinks than to wonder what that person said ( PC talk ). Most of the people are not politicians and should not act like one. It just leads to confusion. PC has nothing to do with politeness or being courteous. Regards.
Hi Paul,
I think we are all guilty of these kind of statements sometimes, as you say, in order to emphasize, or even just make, a point. I would point out though, that making a mother sweeping statement: “nothing is always one way or the other’ is also untrue. For example, I would submit that murder is always wrong (or: I=V*R).
While I agree we should all be careful about how and when we speak in absolutes, this does not mean that some absolutes are not true and verified: the current lack of respect, amongst some, for scientific facts which is prevalent in our Internet world currently, and is even driving some of our Governmental policies (“the virus is going to disappear in a few weeks” for an extreme example) is dangerous, and sets us backwards. I would suggest we need to be both open minded to other possibilities, while at the same time respecting the truths/facts which have actually been proven. If we as a culture/society, continue to question things which are already verified truths, we will continue to have terrible problems in our society, and an inability to make informed decisions regarding how to move forward and solve problems.
Bringing this discussion back around to audio, I look at it this way: there is more than one way to skin a cat (IC opamps vs. discrete, for example), but there still is one best way, we may not have found it yet, and verified that way, but as audio reproduction is science/engineering, there is one best way.
Everybody lives in his own echo chamber or filter bubble – sometimes getting in resonance with other bubbles – and his perception is always true – even when he sees a Fata Morgana. The crucial point is always if he is able to detect that his perception is fooled and to notice that there are other truths and a reality. Going into open discussion with others might help!
And, on DSD vs. PCM, I have a story to tell of an experience which has cemented my preference for DSD:
Last fall I heard a concert by the Juilliard String Quartet at the Rialto Theater in Loveland, CO. I sat in the second row, center, with my girlfriend (these tickets were easy to get the week before, it is really upsetting to me that classical performances, by a world class string quartet are so poorly attended as to make it easy to get these tickets). The performance was un-amplified, and the location of our seats within the space were perfect for sound quality. During a small amount of the performance I listened exclusively paying attention to the sound quality (only a little bit, I did shut off my analytical mind to actually enjoy the music for most of the performance). The following day I listened to a handful of different string quartet recordings I have and the one single recording which stood out as the most accurate facsimile of the live sound I had heard the night before was Ray Kimber’s direct DSD recording of the Fry Street Quartet, playing works by Hadyn. This DSD recording has a smooth, and somewhat soft perspective, which was by far closer to the sound of the live instruments than any PCM recording I listened to. Before that I had already decided I prefer DSD playback, but I had little in the way of references as to its “accuracy”. Since this experience, I have noted in DSD-PCM comparisons PCM always seems to have a little extra “push” or “edge”, which is not present in the live sound of acoustic instruments (of course excepting when a player wants to produce such, like when really leaning into the bow at the onset of vibration). Sometimes this additional “push” can be exciting, but as I have been convinced it is not accurate, I have moved away from PCM, and I convert all content to DSD in the computer before playback, by a DAC which keeps DSD single bit and converts it using a discrete DSD conversion stage (Bricasti DAC).
Did you try different filter settings for your high res (?) PCM tracks?
I have tried everything, DSD playback is more accurate than PCM in my experience. Really well recorded at PCM at 24/176.4 and higher rates sometimes appears to alleviate the compromises (depends on the recording), and apodizing oversampling filters in playback can also help, but the best sounding playback I experience from PCM is by oversampling it in the computer to DSD 256 (and using an apodizing filter), and playing back via a really good DAC with a well implemented, discrete, true single bit converter.
Of course this is similar to Ted Smith’s design approach for the DS DAC, with the difference that I prefer to take advantage of the higher processing power of a computer to the oversampling to DSD (vs a FPGA).
I swear that I’ve heard every digital format beat every other format at one time or another. The conclusion I’ve come to is that we are first listening to the differences between analog line stages and then differences between filter designs.
While we are talking about sweeping statements and fundamental physics can I just say that “Quark, Strangeness and Charm” by Hawkwind is the greatest song ever recorded in the entire multiverse.
This is a hobby of strong opinions. I think single-ended class A power amplifiers are the best sounding period. Others would say that they run too hot, burn themselves out, waste vast quantities of power, and are horribly inefficient. Both opinions have merit. I say digital will never outdo analog as turntables, tonearms, cartridges, etc. continue to improve just like digital. Where the line gets crossed is when I say the other guys an idiot. Some guys love Klipschorn Loudspeakers. I think they are a rip-off and anyone who pays $15,000 for a pair is either mentally ill or have never heard quality speakers before. You can’t survive debates in this hobby if you’re thin skinned. And the internet has made things so much worse. Now I can be rude and insult someone without getting punched in the nose.