[Fred.]

On Nov 3, 7:51 pm, wrote:
There is an audio blog I read that describes efforts to anchor audio
production and reproduction in reality. A recent thread in this group
related to what reality reference is used in audio production and how it
might relate to the final product, which in turn has an obvious effect on
reproduction for our various loudspeaker and listening contexts.

This the blog author refers to as "the circle of confusion" and points to
the lack of a reference for both production and reproduction of audio by
which music can be recorded and played back in any listening context.
For the production side it is a pig in a poke and grows instantly far
worse when unknown sources are used in listening contexts.

This is why the "subjective" listening approach is next to worthless as
used in the various hifi mags. We just can not account for all the
factors that make an auditory difference without universal references for
the recordings used and loudspeakers, not to mention the loudspeaker /
room interactions in which subjective impressions were formed. It adds
only one more level to "the circle of confusion" for the reader.

How to break the "circle" and produce an universal industry reference?

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/

The last and next to last entries, as blog format goes, discuss the
problem and proposed solution.

Earlier entries are related in discussing how objective reproducible
loudspeaker and speaker room interaction can be addressed in blind
listening using trained listeners in controlled listening contexts to
establish a basis for "preference" in the listeners.

The audio industry is now in a place to get beyond subjective listening
and to discover what is really relevant using listening alone and to do so
on a repeated basis for loudspeakers and rooms.

This entire discussion reminds of, when year's ago, I attended a
lecture by Noam Chomsky. At the end of the lecture a student asked,
"What is a phoneme?". Dr. Chomsky replied: "It's a construct like an
electron. It only makes sense in the context of a theory." The
student asked: "What theory?". Dr. Chomsky smiled and said: "There
isn't any yet."

We are talking about a process which involves at least 3 subjects:
the artist who is trying to convey something with the performance, the
recording engineer who is trying to convey something about the
performance, and the listener who is trying to apprehend something
from the performance. Since we are often at a loss for words when we
try to detail what any of these somethings are, it is unsurprising
that we have no workable measure of the the effectiveness with which
they are transferred in the process of reproduction.

I think those who are talking about reality in this context are not
conveying meaning, they are simply waving their hands. There may be
an objective reality to be abstracted from all our subjective
realities, but we are a long way from a universal theory of what it
might be.

Fred.