What is standard?
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsIn Australia, the moon is upside down. At least to my eyes.
In the United States, the moon is upside down. At least to an Australian’s eyes.
Our view of things becomes our standard.
If I immerse myself to the point of accepting surround sound as normal, then stereo feels pale and lacking. The same is true for monophonic vs. stereo, headphones vs. speakers, live vs. recorded.
Our standards are neither fixed nor fact. They vary from situation to situation.
And our standards change over time and circumstance.
So when you’re setting your standards it’s helpful to remember just how fragile they are.
I cannot tell you how many times that which was once thought to be set in stone has changed.
Standards are a movable myth.
Like the inclusion of a pre-amp, where none was deemed necessary before? 🙂
My ‘standard’ was the Celestion Ditton 66’s that I had for 38 years, & they sounded at their very best when they were being driven by a ‘D’ class amp (Onkyo A-9755) with 2 big(ish) transformers, in the last 8 years before I sold them.
Now I have to adjust to a new standard & it takes time because the old standard was imprinted into my ROM since I was 16yo.
**With regard to yesterday’s post**
Dave Grohl from ‘The Foo Fighters’ was describing a recording studio, somewhere in America, that has a separate chamber below, the same size as the recording studio above, with a 6″ air gap in the floor all the way around the edge (360 deg) that allowed for greater bass & reverb during the recording process.
Paul,
Did you mean, “Standards are a non-movable myth?
One of the things that can come out of a system that embraces both 7.1 and 2 channel, if done right, the listener has a very tough time differentiating what mode is being played. I know I have had friends over who have listened to 2 channel content and swear they thought it was in 7.1, with content heard in the sound-stage as far back as 8~9 o’clock and 3~4 o’clock positions.
If it sounds lifelike and room filling from another room, it has the most important quality standard. Not sure how many channels it needs for that. Mono setups can do it, multi channel setups can fail.
So standards imo are not only temporary, but also a matter of perspective.
All I know, my wife has higher standards than I do.
I’ll happily saunter through life without any particular standards because you never know what’s going to happen next. Covid seems to find a lot of people going to the corner shop for a pint of milk in their pyjamas. Paul does like to classify and organise things and give them names. I still can’t remember the difference between a Gain Cell and an Analog Cell, with AirGap coming up. Another little blue box? I’m willing to be happily surprised by what’s around the corner.
Today’s post in a few words : put into perspective (everything in life).
The most common mistake we all make when we’re young (25 or so) is to think that our opinion on all kinds of things in life will never change for the rest of our life.
In reality however most people have a completely different opinion on most things when they are 45.
So, today’s takeaway : relativize everything.
Even (especially ?) the little stories PaulMcGowan writes…. 🙂
jb4 I completely agree! I can’t tell you how often my view has changed on a number of topics. My new Administrator, “wife” is a licensed Mental Health Counselor and has made me aware of so many feelings that I can’t count them all. I’m a 2 channel man and my brother is a 7.1 channel man. Two different sound but have the same goal, quality sound that appeals to our ears. I like them both. Keep listening all 🙂
A standard is a yardstick, a reference by which to measure and compare other things. There are three basic systems in common use. Each has three basic units, length, mass, and time. There’s the CGS centimeter, gram, second system, the MKS meter, kilogram, second system, and the FPS foot, pound, second imperial system. A horsepower is the rate of work done by lifting 550 pounds one foot in one second. It is equal to 745.7 watts. The first two are metric systems used over most of the world. The second system was used almost exclusively in the US until the 1970s when someone got the bright idea that the US should also use the metric system. That led to utter confusion since we use both systems and parts in the imperial system are not interchangeable with metric parts.
Standards can be very useful, somewhat useful, or useless. The RIAA curve is useless because although it sets a standard for cutting phonograph records and playing them through complimentary equalizations, there are other equalizations in the recording playback chain that give different results of tonality for different recordings using the same RIAA curve. Same for NAB magnetic tape and 75 microsecond FM radio equalizations. Analog color television in the US had colors all over the place from one channel to another until a standard VIR signal was broadcast along with the video signal was added telling the TV set how to automatically adjust the color. The Europeans jokingly called the American system we called NTSC for National Television Standards Committee “Never the same color.” That can happen when you are first.
98 percent of the matter in the Universe is believed to be hydrogen. Each element has characteristic spectrum frequencies Astronomers uses the Doppler shift in these frequencies to determine how fast stars and galaxies are moving towards us (blue shift) or away from us (red shift.) Most of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from us and from each other. I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The Andromeda galaxy is going to crash into our Milky Way galaxy, that’s the bad news. The good news is that it won’t happen for another 4 to 5 billion years. Likely no one will be around by then. Too bad, it will be an incredible light show in the sky when it’s much closer.
So the further away these galaxies are the greater the red shift and the faster they are moving away. In fact computations using this method shows that the furthest galaxies we can see are moving away faster than the speed of light. But Einstein said this can’t be. So how do astrophysicits fudge this contradiction? By saying that space itself is expanding. So far that’s their best explanation. What does that mean? They say most of the universe is invisible and so far undetectable to us, as much as 95 percent. It is held together by dark matter and pulled apart by dark energy. What is dark matter you ask them? They don’t know they answer. What is dark energy you ask them? They don’t know that either you answer? Then what do you know you ask them? We’re not sure of anything they answer. That’s why they get the big bucks.
What is “surround sound? Circle the wagons boys, dem injuns will be comin’ over dat hill in ten minutes. What do you mean we only have five wagons? Surround sound is therefore only a marketing term. Real surround sound created by room acoustics is very different and very much better. That’s why audiophiles would like to have it if it worked. But since it doesn’t they settle for stereo sound instead as the lesser of two evils.
@soundmind
In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system in the USA and supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures.
There was a big push in the 70s to convert the US.. to little avail.
Maybe the US is having the last laugh, the rest of the world still orders ‘foot long subs’ and ‘quarter pounders’ in their staunchly metric world.
Metric units are easier to work with, as long as one measures using metric instruments it’s a piece of cake!
I grew up in an all metric system, yet the car fuel consumption is still called mileage, because kilometerage just sounds ridiculous…….
Meanwhile Paul measures his economy in kilowatt hours
Some of the standards in this industry have no real meaning, they do not measure anything that may be useful to the user, therefore, they can perfectly be considered as disrespectful to the consumer.
I’m talking about the FTC regulations from Nov. From 1974, which deals with the power of the amplifiers according to which, this is measured through a resistance:
As if the speakers constitute a resistive load!
As far as I know, this has not changed so far, except for someone with a more enlightened judgment.
In the absence of a seriously concerted regulation, one could avoid deceptions such as that of the manufacturer Behringer, which for one of its amplifiers (specifically the A-500) coldly specifies x watts and nothing else, it does not say if these watts are PMP or RMS or some other measure that tells the user something.
This constitutes a good romance, an abuse of the buyer’s good faith, and is a consequence of not having a regulatory body that establishes a technical order in the specifications that actually serve the user. In the absence of that, more than one manufacturer must feel very comfortable.
Perhaps a subscriber to this forum with more knowledge on this subject can better enlighten us about this, or other regulations that also lack sense.
Perspective. Last night I had my usual Saturday night DJ gig at my local Jazz club. I always play a 2 hour set after my friends Latin band. Pretty much everyone was up dancing and singing along. Then came a sad looking millennial. I could see her coming from a mile away…. judgmental, self righteous and predictably discontent, lol. As she walked up to me she shared her perspective by asking “could you play some dance music”. Bless her heart! Sometimes perspective is narrow and oblivious to ones surroundings.
Rocked it with some new QSC Full range 2-ways and a chest thumping 18″ RCF Subwoofer.
Yes, I’ve had many a similar situation with that age bracket – not all by any means but some.
There often seems to be this attitude that everyone else has to adjust their behavior to suit these people, the individual themselves never consider that they may have to entertain a view outside their programming. I mean, why would she even go into a club playing the sort of music she personally can’t dance to and THEN ask the band to change what they play to suit her?
Kinda like people who move into an apartment in a noisy night club area and then complain, work overtime with lawyers and get everything shut down.
djB-O-B,
In 1976, at the height of the Disco era here in Australia, I was invited to run the dj booth at the local night club, I was 16yo.
So I took all my Bowie, ELO, Elton John, etc. albums…
…I was never invited back.
It’s hilarious now when I think about it.
🙂
Agreed Paul.
My electrician claims that The Standard is God Almighty and Infallible.
(Anything within The Standard is ok no matter what the pigsty it is. Like 251V in the wall socket.)