MeloManiac Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 "Maybe, if it is good enough for me..." Not your regular talk about loudspeakers and especially crossovers. Be prepared for the mental blow you'll get from second one in this video and onwards. Michael Fremer talks to Siegfried Linkwitz from his sickbed. Siegfried died some days/weeks later. RIP. More about the crossovers here: http://www.linkwitzlab.com/crossovers.htm There is a funny moment when Fremer stands corrected at 18:27: "Your (listening) room has no treatment at all." Linkwitz: "No, that's not true. There are bookshelves in backwall, which are diffusing energy. There is the chimney, on one side there are the CDs, again a diffusing element. I do not want to lose energy." He then continues about the importance of the windows in his room. And then there is the section about the importance of listening/hearing: what the eye sees ( a nice curve or line in the graph), doesn't necessarily sound nice. And the uselessness of double blind testing: Linkwitz (and Fremer) agree: Our 'hearing brain' works instantly, if not, in neo-darwinistic terms, man would have been eaten too often by tigers and would not have survived to modern times. In short: trust your ears, and if it is good enough for you... enjoy the music! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glens Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 The part about double-blind testing comes in at 16:05, but the context starts at 14:14. I couldn't find the part about our "hearing brain working instantly". The interviewer brought up the tigers, not Mr. Linkwitz, and the interviewer made the comment about how if we had to double-blind-test everything the tiger would have got us (before we could finish determining via double-blind-testing where the tiger was). Really, that's an asinine argument one would expect to be made by a person who imagines they can hear things and wouldn't dare deign to a double-blind test which could back up their claims if they could be backed up. Mr. Linkwitz said he preferred long-term testing for his development purposes, but that's all he said (he didn't poo-poo double-blind testing in and of itself). So we have one person who is "vocally" anti-double-blind (the interviewer), who listens for review-for-hire purposes, and the other person who is talking about product development; and the first person attempted but failed to get an anti-double-blind endorsement by bringing up the subject at a point in the discussion where it didn't even pertain! (The subject was on-axis frequency response as opposed to in-room sound power and localization.) That aspect of the interview really chapped my ***, but I'm going to quit now before I really get off on a rant about it. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed the video. Mr. Linkwitz and I emailed back and forth a few times about something ~20 years ago, and I've long been a fan of both him and some of his contributions to mankind's betterment. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeloManiac Posted March 31, 2019 Author Share Posted March 31, 2019 I thought he said 'long term listening' but I'm no native speaker of English and sometimes I found it really hard to understand, even with the messed up auto subtitling on... Other than that, I agree with your argumentation. It is Fremer who raises the topic of double-blind testing, and Mr. Linkwitz is such a kind person he doesn't take on M. Fremer for it. 1 hour ago, glens said: I couldn't find the part about our "hearing brain working instantly". That's just my non-tech brain trying to paraphrase a complex subject matter, and perhaps jumping to conclusions. It is a fact that we do hear instantly if a record is well mastered and mixed. We don't need a double blind test to detect that.... Both of them do seem to agree on the fact that 'perfect visual graphs' do not always sound great. The hearing brain is a totally different circuit, independent of the visual brain. What is esthetically attratictive visually (a nice curve), doesn't garantee the best sound quality. That 's what my non-tech brain understood from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kink56 Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 Yes, I have discovered that those with a "nice curve" often do not sound so pleasing. I also value long term listening evaluation. I do not put much stock in "double blind testing". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glens Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 7 hours ago, LeftEyeShooter said: It is Fremer who raises the topic of double-blind testing, and Mr. Linkwitz is such a kind person he doesn't take on M. Fremer for it. That's a very good way of stating what happened. I don't feel that measurements and graphs should be the driving force in making speaker decisions, but they certainly are quite valuable for tracking and correlating results when tuning things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MenloBob Posted April 2, 2019 Share Posted April 2, 2019 Linkwitz was a real pioneer in this industry and an inspiration for DIYers. Such a loss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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