Pseudoscience in audio - Milind N. Kunchur

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

Nothing like a bit of Straw Man - so easily makes the uncomfortable stuff go away ... .

 

The problem isn't conduction - it's noise. In part caused by non-linear resistances, and other imaginary behaviours that allow unwanted electrical activity to occur. Once one has imagined the mechanisms at play, it's quite easy to adjust some area of a system to increase the chance of imagining such noise - and then reverse that change.

I fully agree with the corrected statement above.

47 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Knowledge ≠ magic thinking.

1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Knowledge ≠ magic thinking.

 

Paul, there is no magic ... ever - except, in the music itself; the captured event . There is, only, a level of integrity of the playback chain - and a shortfall of this is easily heard, by those who are sensitive to it, or have it pointed out to them. Removing flaws in a system, any system, is not magic - it's merely, good housekeeping ...

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Paul, there is no magic ... ever - except, in the music itself; the captured event . There is, only, a level of integrity of the playback chain - and a shortfall of this is easily heard, by those who are sensitive to it, or have it pointed out to them. Removing flaws in a system, any system, is not magic - it's merely, good housekeeping ...

You're right! There's no magic in audio equipment, only in music. 

Since this thread is nominally about Kunchur, I checked out what he's currently doing- and found this, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.00084 - The human auditory system and audio.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the usual suspects to point out every instance of "bad science!" in the piece ... .

On 8/16/2023 at 2:32 PM, Butsers said:

Closed Minded people are always asking for numbers.
But you don't listen to numbers now do you.

Well, since all my sources are digital, I do listen to numbers :-)

On 8/26/2023 at 12:29 AM, fas42 said:

Since this thread is nominally about Kunchur, I checked out what he's currently doing- and found this, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.00084 - The human auditory system and audio.

 

I'll leave it as an exercise for the usual suspects to point out every instance of "bad science!" in the piece ... .

I scanned it and noted that most of his graphs/figures are familiar and acceptable.  I am not willing to expend the effort to read it. 

8 hours ago, mocenigo said:

 

Well, since all my sources are digital, I do listen to numbers :-)

Speakers sound waves are not digital. 😊

5 hours ago, STC said:

Speakers sound waves are not digital. 😊

WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!

On 9/1/2023 at 8:31 PM, STC said:

Speakers sound waves are not digital. 😊

But, in @mocenigo's system, the sources from which those sound waves are created are digital. Speakers don't originate the sound we listen to. 🙂

Reality is always a bit more complicated ... the analogue air movements which reach our ears in fact can be seen as digital processes in the way individual air molecules impact the tiny receptors inside our hearing apparatus; and all electrical activity is always analogue; 'digital' circuits work by having very horrible looking analogue waveforms ripple through them - they only succeed in working at all, by having huge margins of error in how they function.

A pretty good example is inside the very computer you're using to read this: the memory it uses is dynamic, which means that every 1 or 0 in it is constantly degrading into oblivion, all the time; the 'digital' state is held by the charge on tiny bits of capacitance, which almost instantly lose that charge. So how the hell does it work?!! By constantly reading the state, and immediately writing it again, over and over and over ... it's like having a battery which dies in the twinkling of an eye, and has to be recharged just as fast, millions of times a second ... crazy stuff!! But ... it's how all the computers out there in the world work ...

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

 

But, in @mocenigo's system, the sources from which those sound waves are created are digital. Speakers don't originate the sound we listen to. 🙂

That’s akin to saying the text on a printed email from a computer is digital. 😉

8 hours ago, STC said:

That’s akin to saying the text on a printed email from a computer is digital. 😉

No, your analogy (pardon the pun) is false. Emails, regardless of whether they are printed or not, are digital because that is how everything is represented internally in a computer. By contrast, the sources referred to in our posts are external to and independent of the computer, and may be either analog or digital (e.g. LP vs CD). 🙂

30 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

No, your analogy (pardon the pun) is false. Emails, regardless of whether they are printed or not, are digital because that is how everything is represented internally in a computer. By contrast, the sources referred to in our posts are external to and independent of the computer, and may be either analog or digital (e.g. LP vs CD). 🙂

I have no idea why we are having disagreement. You don’t hear digital audio. You got a DAC ( Digital to Analogue Converter) which then drives the transducer which is again a mechanical movement. The sound waves generated by the movements of the driver which is the same as a drum vibrates. The source is stored in digital form but it means nothing until it is converted.

“Are speakers analog or digital devices? Though speakers are regularly connected to digital audio devices, they are inherently analog transducers. Speaker transducers convert analog audio signals (electrical energy) into sound waves (mechanical wave energy). Digital audio must be turned into analog audio in order to drive a speaker.”  - mynewmicrophone.com

6 hours ago, STC said:

I have no idea why we are having disagreement.

Me neither. You chose and continue to choose to take seriously - as evidenced by your resorting to bold type - posts that were made in jest. 🙂

On 9/10/2023 at 7:05 PM, Allan F said:

 

But, in @mocenigo's system, the sources from which those sound waves are created are digital. Speakers don't originate the sound we listen to. 🙂

The speakers convert analog signals to sound. There is no sound in the digital or analog signals.

38 minutes ago, Speedskater said:

The speakers convert analog signals to sound. There is no sound in the digital or analog signals.

I think you arrived a little late for the party. 🙂

10 hours ago, Allan F said:

Me neither. You chose and continue to choose to take seriously - as evidenced by your resorting to bold type - posts that were made in jest. 🙂

Hard to tell the difference. And no bold was intended as the text was just copy pasted. Since you have now clarified the point you were trying to make I will start to ROTFL. 😉

On 11/26/2022 at 8:51 PM, Norton said:

This whole “science” tag is a misnomer.  At best what is being practiced is a technician role not that of a scientist -  using off the shelf measuring equipment to perform a routine set of tests on audio equipment is not exactly pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
 

But where “objective” exercises  really fall down is in the interpretation of the results, which largely seem a subjective exercise to fit a review site’s chosen narrative. 

 

I did a quick search for "AES" on the transcript of the video referenced in the OP to confirm a quote made by Prof Kuncher which he refers to in his Response to the video.

From the ASR Video:

"I and many other people objected .. and pointed out all these problems …..it's sad that the aes published this uh after peer review in the journal so that was a mistake on multiple fronts"

And Prof Kuncher's response in "Pseudoscience in Audio"

"My paper published in JAES2, which he claims is wrong (“I…pointed out all these problems”; “but it is sad that AES published this”) was rigorously reviewed with a fine-tooth comb by 4 independent reviewers plus editors. This was all to ensure that every scientific detail was thoroughly scrutinized. JAES then hosted a Zoom roundtable open to all AES members and guests and also hosted an official online forum in which the paper was discussed. At the end of this scrupulous process, no questions remained unanswered and not a single thing was found wrong with the paper. Long after the paper was published, it has been read carefully be many members of the AES community (including AES officers) who praised the work. It is an unfortunate state of society when followers believe their cult leader rather than the entire professional research community……Pretty much every word that came out of Mr. Majidimehr’s mouth in that video is nonsense—out of a combination of ignorance and the desire for entertaining his followers with shock humor"

The "AES" search also revealed in the comments section, from Mr. Majidimehr:

"AES was terrible. Post publication, as an AES member, I post three responses to the comment section. All three were rejected and I was told to get on a zoom call with the author instead! My head is down with respect to treatment from AES here."

On 9/11/2023 at 2:16 AM, fas42 said:

Reality is always a bit more complicated ... the analogue air movements which reach our ears in fact can be seen as digital processes in the way individual air molecules impact the tiny receptors inside our hearing apparatus;

There are no tiny receptors in the hearing apparatus that are impacted by air molecules. There is a membrane moved by air pressure which is sensed by some bones, and these move the cochlea which is filled by a liquid that hits about 25000 nerve endings. It is the latter that in a sense “digitize” the signal.

On 11/26/2022 at 10:51 AM, Norton said:

This whole “science” tag is a misnomer.  At best what is being practiced is a technician role not that of a scientist -  using off the shelf measuring equipment to perform a routine set of tests on audio equipment is not exactly pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.

ASR is not only Amir’s reviews. There are a lot of discussions which are scientific in nature — despite the fact that most visitors to the site are just interested in SINAD.

14 hours ago, mocenigo said:

 

There are no tiny receptors in the hearing apparatus that are impacted by air molecules. There is a membrane moved by air pressure which is sensed by some bones, and these move the cochlea which is filled by a liquid that hits about 25000 nerve endings. It is the latter that in a sense “digitize” the signal.

Not digital, chemical signal. I won't go into gory details. 

26 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Not digital, chemical signal. I won't go into gory details. 

I know. Quite gory :-)