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Post by antigua on Jul 7, 2017 15:12:11 GMT -5
All this to say, your blind sound tests are simply not effective. "your blind sound tests"? I haven't made any yet. They risk proving nothing, or a falsehoods. The trouble is that if I have 2 pickups that are close to one another, I might be able to play a certain way to show you that when you do ABC, they don't sound that different. But when you do XYZ, you can see one performs better at X, the other performs better at Y, and so on. That's not misinformation: it affirms a particular output for given input conditions ABC, to say nothing of input conditions XYZ. The risk would be in claiming that the result of condition ABC will necessarily be the same (or not) as XYZ, thereby claiming more than you can prove. You can make the case that they should or should not result in a similar output, but you don't have direct evidence that it's so. For example, let's say I record tests where I strum some open chords, and nothing sounds different, you might say I would have heard a difference had I played further up the neck, and that might be true, because that would have excited harmonics of a higher frequency, where the differences are possibly more prominent. We can't test every combination of notes and pick attacks, so we'd just have to infer whatever we can infer with the information we have on hand. People who only ever play open chords might be satisfied with the results as is.
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Post by antigua on Jul 7, 2017 15:30:47 GMT -5
I guess its the first time I read this by someone : it is listening + playing, AT THE SAME TIME! When I flipped 81/85 the other way around, I could very much hear the difference. Tell me to blind test this by giving my guitar to another person and I might fail all of the tests. The end result may be the same or similar. But the player (driver) gains confidence by knowing that he/she has the right tools which can boost his/her performance. When you change pickups, or guitars, you are consciously aware that your "inputs", the way you pluck the strings, no longer results in the same audible output. You might realize that you have to put more "pick" into it to get the same amount of harmonic high end back out. The audience might not realize anything has changed, while you realize you've having to now pick more aggressively to get the same result, but it's quite possibly because you're consciously attempting to achieve the same result that the audience doesn't perceive a difference. Regardless of the tools you're presented with, your inclination is going to be to make it sound the way you would like it to sound. I think we got an oxymoron here : ppl spend pages after pages on the electric characteristics of guitar pups, just to conclude that in the end not much or all of this matters. Heck, we live in the digital era, any signal can be easily converted real time into almost anything. What I mean, if someone wants to keep on being an "analog" diehard desperado (which we gotta admit is dealing with 1920's technology), he better stick to it in every detail, and leave the opposition's basic narrative (blind tests, etc) aside. Ok English is not my native tang, I might have failed giving the exact meaning here, what I write describes best the "wood matters" vs "doesn't matter" classic holy war, but this can be easily transcribed into more modern parallels as well (electricity, digital, modelling, synths etc ...). Listening tests and electrical analysis answer two different questions. The former is the "what?", the latter is the "why?".
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 18:08:16 GMT -5
But if your Swedish virtuoso cannot hear the difference when he does not know whether it is A or B, then it is not a difference that matters. If he can hear it without knowing if A or B, then it does not matter whether you can measure with test equipment or not, because it is none the less real. I can't tell if I agree with your first part, so I'll drill down. Some people (especially the ones who make a living at this) are very passionate about these things to the point that they may, in a critical listening environment choose A over B. Then, in 90% of their daily tasks, the difference between A & B are totally masked. It seems like in your world, it would be okay to swap A for B, even covertly, because it wouldn't matter. Whereas from my perspective, the artist looks down, and seeing that A is in place, plays the gig or session with a peace of mind that they're using their "favorite" choice of something. Whatever frees the artist from inhibitions. As for the second part of the quote, you do what you describe there, you are fooling yourself and anyone else you can convince. It is like that silver wire. A six percent increase in conductivity in a pickup where the resistance of the coil is of secondary importance and not only can you hear the difference (a possibility, but unproven), but it is an improvement, something worth spending quite a bit of money to obtain. I do not think so, not without significant double blind tests. Respectfully that's just nonsense. I don't have a history of fooling myself. You're suggesting that by knowing which pickup was which, and therefore consciously focusing on certain things, such as harmonics under gain, or Marshall instead of Mesa, germanium fuzzes, etc. and therefore fleshing out certain differences between two similar sounding pickups, that I'm fooling everyone? I would suggest the exact opposite. By recording one player, or worse a mechanical picker, into one type of rig, regardless of how full frequency it is, would be fooling everyone that the two pickups aren't as different as they really are. I could line up the last 5 prototype revisions of that Swede's pickups, and I'm pretty sure YOU wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But HE could, and he could tell me exactly what was different about each one, because each one went to the plus or minus side of what eventually became the favorite. And by the way, we DID do blind tests with the silver wire pickups, and everyone picked out the differences. Have you ever played them, or conducted your own A/B tests with silver wire? No one from that era tried to convince anyone they were worth the additional cost. But we weren't pretending something was there that wasn't there either.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 19:05:07 GMT -5
I guess its the first time I read this by someone : it is listening + playing, AT THE SAME TIME! When I flipped 81/85 the other way around, I could very much hear the difference. Tell me to blind test this by giving my guitar to another person and I might fail all of the tests. The end result may be the same or similar. But the player (driver) gains confidence by knowing that he/she has the right tools which can boost his/her performance. When you change pickups, or guitars, you are consciously aware that your "inputs", the way you pluck the strings, no longer results in the same audible output. You might realize that you have to put more "pick" into it to get the same amount of harmonic high end back out. The audience might not realize anything has changed, while you realize you've having to now pick more aggressively to get the same result, but it's quite possibly because you're consciously attempting to achieve the same result that the audience doesn't perceive a difference. Regardless of the tools you're presented with, your inclination is going to be to make it sound the way you would like it to sound. Yes. Exactly to both. That's what I'm saying about the confidence factor even when playing a live outdoor gig where things hardly matter as much. Also when I said "your blind sound clips" I only meant the concept you were suggesting, that by listening to blind audio of two similar pickups that it wouldn't prove out just how different they are. Same thing with the graphs. I did a Sweetwater training where I showed a resonance plot of a 59 overlaid against the same 59 with a ceramic magnet. Those were "nearly identical" looking of course. But as far as how different those two pickups sound, a 59 with ceramic magnet would be considered "very different" by most guitarist than the Alnico one, even double blind, with homogenized strumming. But across 10 different amps, different musical styles, the differences could be magnified even further. The way I've said it in the past is, give Picasso one paint brush and he'll paint a Picasso. Give him 10 paint brushes and he might use them all before the painting is finished. The painting might not have looked any different, but his user experience is radically different.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 19:26:53 GMT -5
I guess what's depressing about what I see here is that when one is enthusiastic about the science of something, generally speaking the inquisitive mind is focused on digging deeper and deeper to find out what makes things unique and different. Instead, it seems the focus (for some of you) is to figure out why an expensive pickup is not materially different from a cheap Asian made high volume factory pickup. Or why silver wire can't possibly make a difference, rather than why it did. Discovery seems traded for cynicism. When I read comments like "wire gauge doesn't matter", I internalize that as confirmation bias, while ironically that is one of the most common accusations here. #allwiresmatter
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 7, 2017 21:39:20 GMT -5
Sounds like much ado about nothing very little.
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Post by antigua on Jul 7, 2017 21:54:25 GMT -5
Frank, we're at the same impasse we've arrived at several times already. I say "there should be no difference based on the physics", then you say "you're not accounting for comb filtering / group delay", and I say "demonstrate this or go into more detail" and then you say "I'd violate my NDA, I have to feed my family...", rinse and repeat.
As far as the motivations behind what it done here, I consider that irrelevant. I'm only interested in the data that comes out of these efforts, irrespective of why someone made the effort.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 0:38:33 GMT -5
Actually it's nothing like any of those things. It's limited to two things, having nothing to do with comb filtering or group delay.
1. Whether or not making clean sound clips of two different pickups is representative of their differences
2. Whether or not you could wind two pickups with different wire gauges in such a way as to fool the player into perceiving them as the same exact pickup. (i.e. wire gauge doesn't matter)
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Post by antigua on Jul 8, 2017 0:53:23 GMT -5
I'm getting a little exhausted fielding the constructive criticism from people who don't actually want to contribute to practical testing and data gathering.
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Post by ms on Jul 8, 2017 6:58:11 GMT -5
But if your Swedish virtuoso cannot hear the difference when he does not know whether it is A or B, then it is not a difference that matters. If he can hear it without knowing if A or B, then it does not matter whether you can measure with test equipment or not, because it is none the less real. I can't tell if I agree with your first part, so I'll drill down. Some people (especially the ones who make a living at this) are very passionate about these things to the point that they may, in a critical listening environment choose A over B. Then, in 90% of their daily tasks, the difference between A & B are totally masked. It seems like in your world, it would be okay to swap A for B, even covertly, because it wouldn't matter. Whereas from my perspective, the artist looks down, and seeing that A is in place, plays the gig or session with a peace of mind that they're using their "favorite" choice of something. Whatever frees the artist from inhibitions. As for the second part of the quote, you do what you describe there, you are fooling yourself and anyone else you can convince. It is like that silver wire. A six percent increase in conductivity in a pickup where the resistance of the coil is of secondary importance and not only can you hear the difference (a possibility, but unproven), but it is an improvement, something worth spending quite a bit of money to obtain. I do not think so, not without significant double blind tests. Respectfully that's just nonsense. I don't have a history of fooling myself. You're suggesting that by knowing which pickup was which, and therefore consciously focusing on certain things, such as harmonics under gain, or Marshall instead of Mesa, germanium fuzzes, etc. and therefore fleshing out certain differences between two similar sounding pickups, that I'm fooling everyone? I would suggest the exact opposite. By recording one player, or worse a mechanical picker, into one type of rig, regardless of how full frequency it is, would be fooling everyone that the two pickups aren't as different as they really are. I could line up the last 5 prototype revisions of that Swede's pickups, and I'm pretty sure YOU wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But HE could, and he could tell me exactly what was different about each one, because each one went to the plus or minus side of what eventually became the favorite. And by the way, we DID do blind tests with the silver wire pickups, and everyone picked out the differences. Have you ever played them, or conducted your own A/B tests with silver wire? No one from that era tried to convince anyone they were worth the additional cost. But we weren't pretending something was there that wasn't there either. Below a certain level of differences people do not reliably hear them, but still think they do, whether the differences exist or not. That is a fact. The cues people use in making a "decision" are many and subtle. Based on what you write, I do not think that you understand that, and thus it seems very unlikely that you would carry out a valid double blind test.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 8, 2017 8:03:17 GMT -5
I guess what's depressing about what I see here is that when one is enthusiastic about the science of something, generally speaking the inquisitive mind is focused on digging deeper and deeper to find out what makes things unique and different. Instead, it seems the focus (for some of you) is to figure out why an expensive pickup is not materially different from a cheap Asian made high volume factory pickup. Or why silver wire can't possibly make a difference, rather than why it did. Discovery seems traded for cynicism. When I read comments like "wire gauge doesn't matter", I internalize that as confirmation bias, while ironically that is one of the most common accusations here. #allwiresmatter It's not unusual for individual scientists to have an agenda. They can be heavily invested in their beliefs but they know that at the end of the day, they must defer to the objective reality of facts obtained by systematically objective experiments and observation. A certain amount of interpretation is required on the cutting edge of science but the program is designed to subsume it by demanding a demonstration of both internal consistency and coherence with external reality. In this way, it allows the ego, competitiveness, or blind enthusiasm of individuals to function positively towards an objective truth. Sometimes non-scientists can't see why certain things don't interest a scientist. I will explain two of these. One is the necessity of the elimination of multiplicity. Some people get very excited about strange things (don't we all?) - like flying saucers. So they wonder, why don't scientists spend more time investigating them? It's because scientists are practical folk, interested in successful proofs. If there is a phenomena of weird lights in the sky, they will scratch their heads a bit, think about the existing body of atmospheric science and so on. They don't start by wondering if the lights come from an alternate dimension or another galaxy. That is because they are using Ockham's razor, often paraphrased, "the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation". In fact, the original version translates more like, "don't expand the number of explanations beyond necessity". This does not dictate the endpoint of the investigation, but the start. The motivation for Ockham's razor is that there are effectively infinite explanations which would consume the scientists resources until they run out of time and die before achieving anything. But the inventiveness and creativity of the human mind produces many such ideas. Sometimes creative ideas are knowingly or unknowingly tools of profit, as people crave new ideas and find them exciting. Sometimes people seize on ideas because they are insecure or afraid, rather than just looking for excitement. Those are a valuable part of culture and human experience but they are not helpful in achieving valid experimental results. Since people are imaginative and sometimes are not keen observers, the scientist wonders if the simplest explanation is that people see the lights of an airplane, or Venus near the horizon, or any number of other things that can create the impression of a flying saucer. Not an interdimensional creature or something like that. They wonder how, if it is really a spacecraft, it could have overcome the vast distances of space and found us, and so on. They observe that no spacecraft has been captured and examined. In this way, they are opinionated. But they are not precluding anyone else from attempting to prove the existence of flying saucers. They are simply making a personal choice. They often make appeals to enthusiasts to come up with proofs themselves, such as the million dollar prize of James Randi. Behind the experimental results of science is a world view that the only things that are factual, are those that have been verified by scientific methods. It is not a view that those are the only things that matter, or the only things that are true. It only draws a line around what kind of things you should be making a factual claim about. When an enthusiast considers the possibility of proving their beliefs in a scientific way and sees that it is not going well, they will begin to go down a list of what are essentially escape mechanisms - rationalizations. One I will call "the psychic's complaint". This says that scientific methods can't, or shouldn't measure the claim. "Of course there are no pictures of ghosts - ectoplasm doesn't vibrate at earthly frequencies", or "I can't perform my mind reading under controlled circumstances, it displeases the spirits that guide me", etc. Another is "the body of lore" - a collection of stories about things that happened, "Uri Geller bent a spoon with only his mind". These stories are almost without exception anecdotal, unverifiable and exploit some appeal to authority. The purpose of double blind, statistically valid, controlled experiments is not to dictate what people like or dislike, or how they experience things. It is to set a boundary around what should be justifiably claimed as fact. This "new school" of pickup research is a small undertaking, perhaps an unimportant one in the big picture. It is the strong insistence on hard data that distinguishes it from the vast majority of other research that is publicly accessible. I think that the proprietary knowledge on the subject must be extremely hampered by the limitations of manpower and lack of community that can happen in an open online community. But the uniqueness of this opportunity would be significantly watered down if we didn't respond actively to enthusiastic beliefs masquerading as scientific facts. It's about where the lines are drawn. There isn't anything I have expressed here, or on some of the other boards that I have posted related information on, that isn't based on objective data. There is nothing wrong with subjective things, but they have to be tied to objective, scientific data to fit with the program that is happening here.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 8, 2017 8:38:24 GMT -5
Let me pose the question this way: Are you two suggesting that, you could wind two otherwise identical humbuckers, one with 42 single build poly and the other with 43 single build poly, and by targeting the same resonant peak frequency you could make the two pickups sound indistinguishable to one another? Myself, yes. I can't speak for Antigua. But it would have to have the same resonant peak amplitude as well because that influences the tone. I think that by "targeting" you probably mean tweaking the turns count until the two are very close. That should be possible. As was pointed out, and a link to experiments with Strat pickups was provided, the inductance difference with the same number of turns would already be negligible. From other results, there is a strong expectation that with an identical geometry, and very close inductance, the difference in measured characteristics would also be negligible. It follows that the human ear wouldn't have much of a chance of differentiating it, as it can only detect differences of more than about 0.5 dB under the best of circumstances.
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Post by antigua on Jul 8, 2017 13:38:31 GMT -5
The only objective cause I'm aware of that could cause wire gauge to effect the tonal outcome, aside from RLC value shifts, is aperture change due to a larger coil. Experimental evidence and the geometry involved suggests that for a difference of a couple millimeters, you're not going to alter the harmonic makeup much at all, for two reasons, 1) the flux change is strongest at center, and drops off at distance, so by adding coil width, the new "information" you're accumulating is of an increasingly smaller amplitude. 2) the amount of additional harmonic information that can be presented an extra couple milometers would be of a very high frequency, even if you achieve "full" amplitude, and as such, wouldn't contribute very much to the timbre of the output.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 15:16:16 GMT -5
Let me pose the question this way: Are you two suggesting that, you could wind two otherwise identical humbuckers, one with 42 single build poly and the other with 43 single build poly, and by targeting the same resonant peak frequency you could make the two pickups sound indistinguishable to one another? Myself, yes. I can't speak for Antigua. But it would have to have the same resonant peak amplitude as well because that influences the tone. I think that by "targeting" you probably mean tweaking the turns count until the two are very close. That should be possible. As was pointed out, and a link to experiments with Strat pickups was provided, the inductance difference with the same number of turns would already be negligible. From other results, there is a strong expectation that with an identical geometry, and very close inductance, the difference in measured characteristics would also be negligible. It follows that the human ear wouldn't have much of a chance of differentiating it, as it can only detect differences of more than about 0.5 dB under the best of circumstances.I've said this to Andrew before consistently and forgive me if you've already heard me say it as well. We don't play the guitar through linear HiFi amplification. We use copious amounts of gain to compress and/or distort, we push speaker cones (and the air in front of them, and mic diaphragms) into breakup. Our amps are heavily voiced, before, in between, and after all the multiple gain stages. If you make a .1dB shift somewhere at the pickup stage, it is entirely possible that this changes the balance of tones into the gain chain, and the ability for the human ear to hear the change in isolation (whether clean HiFi or clean Fender for example) is not the only measure. It's whether or not the guitar behaves a certain way along the entire ADSR envelope. To me, analyzing pickups with clean sound clips is like analyzing paint brushes without ever dipping them into paint. Or analyzing an automobile without ever taking it on the road. So when a skilled guitar player can consistently tell you "A is different from B" then as far as I'm concerned, its not good science to create a test that doesn't go deep enough to expose what it is that they found. To create a test that shows A and B sound the same, simply means the test wasn't effective.
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Post by antigua on Jul 8, 2017 15:39:21 GMT -5
I would like to see a demonstration produced where 0.5dB clean amplitude change is made audible by merely clipping the same signal. I could set up such a demo myself, and it would be very easy, as many DAW's have both built in EQ and gain utilities. As much as I'd like to see this demonstrated, since I'm not the one claiming something exists here to be observed, I don't feel the burden should be upon be to conduct said experiment.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 8, 2017 16:19:42 GMT -5
Myself, yes. I can't speak for Antigua. But it would have to have the same resonant peak amplitude as well because that influences the tone. I think that by "targeting" you probably mean tweaking the turns count until the two are very close. That should be possible. As was pointed out, and a link to experiments with Strat pickups was provided, the inductance difference with the same number of turns would already be negligible. From other results, there is a strong expectation that with an identical geometry, and very close inductance, the difference in measured characteristics would also be negligible. It follows that the human ear wouldn't have much of a chance of differentiating it, as it can only detect differences of more than about 0.5 dB under the best of circumstances.I've said this to Andrew before consistently and forgive me if you've already heard me say it as well. We don't play the guitar through linear HiFi amplification. We use copious amounts of gain to compress and/or distort, we push speaker cones (and the air in front of them, and mic diaphragms) into breakup. Our amps are heavily voiced, before, in between, and after all the multiple gain stages. If you make a .1dB shift somewhere at the pickup stage, it is entirely possible that this changes the balance of tones into the gain chain, and the ability for the human ear to hear the change in isolation (whether clean HiFi or clean Fender for example) is not the only measure. It's whether or not the guitar behaves a certain way along the entire ADSR envelope. To me, analyzing pickups with clean sound clips is like analyzing paint brushes without ever dipping them into paint. Or analyzing an automobile without ever taking it on the road. So when a skilled guitar player can consistently tell you "A is different from B" then as far as I'm concerned, its not good science to create a test that doesn't go deep enough to expose what it is that they found. To create a test that shows A and B sound the same, simply means the test wasn't effective. What you have there concerning the effects of amplification on a signal is essentially an unproven theory. I doubt it. For one thing, a side effect of distortion is compression. So already any amplitude difference is less. Also, the guitar signal is not constant, but follows an ADSR envelope. Thus whatever effects there are, operate over a wide range of amplitudes as well. I can think of no reason why your theory would hold for fractional dB differences. So I reject it. If you want to present some solid evidence, then I will listen. I have changed my mind when presented with it, in the past. Again, what you have said and what you will say, is just rhetorical hand waving unless you back it up with some data. In this post you have presented both an unproven technical theory in the first paragraph, and the results of an anecdotal, uncontrolled experiment as if it proves anything in the second paragraph. You continue to present only pleadings and arguments. The last sentence is called, "begging the question", because the premise is that a certain thing is true, when in fact the truth of it is unknown - which you then try to turn around to prove the premise - like a dog chasing its tail. It is common for "true believers" in something to attack the basis of an experiment that put their beliefs in doubt. But that is not a mature response. A much more intelligent and revealing approach is to undertake an experiment that actually proves what they believe. However, it is possible to address both of your concerns in a listening experiment. In a way, there are too many overlapping claims to do it any other way. A listening test is an end to end test. So it will detect "the weakest link". In this case, if it "fails", i.e. nobody can tell the difference, it proves an "unbroken chain", i.e. no aspect of the signal chain makes any difference between A and B. It is not impossible to design a good test, although it can be expensive to perform properly. I can see that from many of your previous posts, even after having it pointed out to you repeatedly, you don't understand the difference between a casual A/B trial and a proper experiment with safeguards against bias. Because of this, and because you don't present details of the trials, I dismiss them. The Swedish golden ears, for example. I can be almost 100% sure that the identity of the pickups was "leaked" to him in some way. The most troublesome aspect would be that there would be a "golden ears" complaint - that the test subject's ears just weren't good enough. So you have to pay Swedish golden ears to fly to your location and so on and so on. This was the purpose of the Randi $1,000,000 prize. It defeats that argument on the premise that anyone who could actually pass a test would buy a plane ticket and hotel accommodations themselves because they would be a small price to pay for a cool million. To get Swedish guy to fly to the US or somewhere for an experiment that will make him look like a fool, is obviously not possible. Instead, he will ignore the whole thing or, if pressed, mock "those electrical test wizards" or whatever. I don't think that the results of any well controlled guitar listening test is going to sit well with you. Not only is it likely that you are wrong, but from your discourse, I think that you will have trouble grasping the full import. I realize that my prediction is just a bet, as I also await results. But I'm putting my money on what I believe is a safe bet.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 8, 2017 16:36:04 GMT -5
I would like to see a demonstration produced where 0.5dB clean amplitude change is made audible by merely clipping the same signal. I could set up such a demo myself, and it would be very easy, as many DAW's have both built in EQ and gain utilities. As much as I'd like to see this demonstrated, since I'm not the one claiming something exists here to be observed, I don't feel the burden should be upon be to conduct said experiment. You can demonstrate that. But it depends on two things - a very constant amplitude input signal, and a very very extreme non-linearity carefully adjusted to "just clipping". Neither of these conditions really exist in a guitar signal chain, though.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 17:16:47 GMT -5
I can see that from many of your previous posts, even after having it pointed out to you repeatedly, you don't understand the difference between a casual A/B trial and a proper experiment with safeguards against bias. Because of this, and because you don't present details of the trials, I dismiss them. I don't think that the results of any well controlled guitar listening test is going to sit well with you. Not only is it likely that you are wrong, but from your discourse, I think that you will have trouble grasping the full import. I realize that my prediction is just a bet, as I also await results. But I'm putting my money on what I believe is a safe bet. What exactly do you believe I'm likely wrong about? I'll try to make this as simple as possible. One luxury I have when voicing pickups with artists is that everything we do occurs in real time. Like an optometrist I start with broad movements, and eventually hone in on "Which is better, A or B?" The artist is usually settled into riffs and songs they've played hundreds or thousands of times, using their own rig(s) in which they are intimately familiar with. So there is absolutely zero recall time. They are able to play through the changes I'm making. What I am telling you is that by the end, I am making 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve, and that these are noticeable to everyone in the room coming out of the distorted amplifier, and even more noticeable to the artist playing the instrument. If I took the guitar from the artist, and began playing cowboy chords at medium picking velocity through the clean Fender amp, volume on 2, bright switch off, those same A/B changes are not as noticeable, and could perhaps even go ignored. If the clean Fender on 2 was considered the "reference" amplifier it would be easy to reach conclusions such as yours. "Nobody can hear the difference" just like changes made to a car's suspension may be utterly meaningless...until you attempt to take corners at high speeds. This is why you see me take positions such that testing pickups outside of their intended use/environment is sub optimal science. So yes, I'm proving out in real time that 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve are detectable, on more than one occasion, across many different artists, engineers, and sets of ears, golden and non-golden.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 8, 2017 17:31:57 GMT -5
I can see that from many of your previous posts, even after having it pointed out to you repeatedly, you don't understand the difference between a casual A/B trial and a proper experiment with safeguards against bias. Because of this, and because you don't present details of the trials, I dismiss them. I don't think that the results of any well controlled guitar listening test is going to sit well with you. Not only is it likely that you are wrong, but from your discourse, I think that you will have trouble grasping the full import. I realize that my prediction is just a bet, as I also await results. But I'm putting my money on what I believe is a safe bet. What exactly do you believe I'm likely wrong about? I'll try to make this as simple as possible. One luxury I have when voicing pickups with artists is that everything we do occurs in real time. Like an optometrist I start with broad movements, and eventually hone in on "Which is better, A or B?" The artist is usually settled into riffs and songs they've played hundreds or thousands of times, using their own rig(s) in which they are intimately familiar with. So there is absolutely zero recall time. They are able to play through the changes I'm making. What I am telling you is that by the end, I am making 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve, and that these are noticeable to everyone in the room coming out of the distorted amplifier, and even more noticeable to the artist playing the instrument. If I took the guitar from the artist, and began playing cowboy chords at medium picking velocity through the clean Fender amp, volume on 2, bright switch off, those same A/B changes are not as noticeable, and could perhaps even go ignored. If the clean Fender on 2 was considered the "reference" amplifier it would be easy to reach conclusions such as yours. "Nobody can hear the difference" just like changes made to a car's suspension may be utterly meaningless...until you attempt to take corners at high speeds. This is why you see me take positions such that testing pickups outside of their intended use/environment is sub optimal science. So yes, I'm proving out in real time that 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve are detectable, on more than one occasion, across many different artists, engineers, and sets of ears, golden and non-golden. In this case, what is wrong is that you are interfering with the experiment. That reduces it to a demonstration. You're in a dialogue with the subject. You allude to an audience. That's even worse because then there is a 3 way dialogue between you, the subject and the audience in which "leaks" occur. An unbiased test removes all possibility of the subject obtaining information that bypasses the information channel through which they are supposed to be tested. It has been shown that verbal dialogue, body language, and other cues usually "leak" information, and that is why a "double blind" is used, where the experimenter doesn't know anything about the test material and thus cannot communicate it unintentionally. Also, do you communicate the identity of the pickups explicitly when you do your optometrist routine? Like, "now compare that '59 with this Burstbucker", or the like? Are the pickups masked or blacked out so the player can not just look at them and see the difference? Any of these problems would be death to any truth that you could get out of the procedure. "Coaxing" is another issue... do you do that? Comments like, "Did you hear how different that is?", for example. All these things bias subjects and leak information to completely ruin any chance of objective discovery. You are proving nothing. Zero.
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Post by antigua on Jul 8, 2017 18:25:01 GMT -5
So yes, I'm proving out in real time that 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve are detectable, on more than one occasion, across many different artists, engineers, and sets of ears, golden and non-golden. You proved it there, but you didn't prove it here. Data or it didn't happen. Think you hear a difference between 42 and 43 AWG, all other things being equal? Data or it didn't happen.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 18:29:36 GMT -5
Yeah sorry Stratotarts you're just wrong. That's not what's happening at all. Sorry you can't be in the room with us while we're working. These are professionals. It's in our best interest NOT to have small things make a difference because it makes producing the pickup that much more difficult. We're not comparing "all the pickups". I'm referring to one pickup, the Fluence core(s) with whatever magnetic circuit is being used, and the changes are being made to the voicing in real time. There's no "59 vs Burstbucker". We do use shuttle guitars for calibration, and with an artist we will use their favorite guitars and/or pickups as calibration but that's not the part of a voicing session I'm referring to.
Also its not true that compression and distortion mask changes in response curves at the pickup level. Sure it masks full frequency dB changes, but it also magnifies dynamic changes and shifts within the response curve at the pickup level because altering the relationships between frequency bands to one another affects the response of the compression, the harmonic multiples under distortion, etc. It's a chain reaction. Surely you're not suggesting that distortion doesn't add any harmonics to the original signal.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 18:34:29 GMT -5
You proved it there, but you didn't prove it here. Data or it didn't happen. How's that different from calling me a liar? -Better yet, how does your ignorance affect my data? If I told you the mosquitoes in Seattle were carrying malaria but gave you no data, your ignorance would get you...malaria.
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Post by antigua on Jul 8, 2017 18:54:26 GMT -5
You proved it there, but you didn't prove it here. Data or it didn't happen. How's that different from calling me a liar? -Better yet, how does your ignorance affect my data? If I told you the mosquitoes in Seattle were carrying malaria but gave you no data, your ignorance would get you...malaria. What you're arguing is that the ends are more important than the means, but in this forum, the means are the ends. We want to know why. I don't find malaria interesting, but I very well could, if I had an interest in microbiology. Sadly, there isn't enough time to know all there is to know. I don't want you to provide data in order to establish that you're not a "liar", I want you to provide data so that I will have data. It's all about the data.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 8, 2017 19:10:15 GMT -5
Yeah sorry Stratotarts you're just wrong. That's not what's happening at all. Sorry you can't be in the room with us while we're working. These are professionals. It's in our best interest NOT to have small things make a difference because it makes producing the pickup that much more difficult. We're not comparing "all the pickups". I'm referring to one pickup, the Fluence core(s) with whatever magnetic circuit is being used, and the changes are being made to the voicing in real time. There's no "59 vs Burstbucker". We do use shuttle guitars for calibration, and with an artist we will use their favorite guitars and/or pickups as calibration but that's not the part of a voicing session I'm referring to. Also its not true that compression and distortion mask changes in response curves at the pickup level. Sure it masks full frequency dB changes, but it also magnifies dynamic changes and shifts within the response curve at the pickup level because altering the relationships between frequency bands to one another affects the response of the compression, the harmonic multiples under distortion, etc. It's a chain reaction. Surely you're not suggesting that distortion doesn't add any harmonics to the original signal. This "voicing session" is not an experiment. You are not commenting on my arguments about bias here. You're not saying that you made any efforts to eliminate them. So it's safe to assume that you aren't following any controlled experimental procedure. Again, that makes it a demonstration or procedure rather than an experiment. It would be folly to regard any results from it as any kind of proof. With regard to the distortion, I regard it as a futile discussion unless it is conducted in technical terms. It's indisputable and well known that pickup output levels affect tone by altering the harmonic content as the signal passes through a non-linear stage. However, the claim that small differences are magnified to the point that they become audible has no basis in theory. In this case, the magnification factor would be of an order of magnitude or more. You are completely alone in this claim and so it is up to you to prove it.
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Post by JohnH on Jul 8, 2017 19:30:59 GMT -5
OK so I think I'm the mod on this sub-forum, and this discussion is getting a little sour for GN2.
I think we all respect each other. These threads are about trying to apply an analytical method to assessing pickups based on data. Experiences and results which cant be supported by data (could be for valid reasons)may be interesting but they probably cant be used here. Hence the frustrations that are evident, but unnecessary IMO.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 19:32:07 GMT -5
I don't know if you're understanding me correctly. Do you think I mean changing the overall output level of the pickup signal by .1dB? I'm referring to raising or lowering a frequency center (not necessarily at or even near the peak) by 0.2dB.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 19:48:35 GMT -5
OK so I think I'm the mod on this sub-forum, and this discussion is getting a little sour for GN2. I think we all respect each other. These threads are about trying to apply an analytical method to assessing pickups based on data. Experiences and results which cant be supported by data (could be for valid reasons)may be interesting but they probably cant be used here. Hence the frustrations that are evident, but unnecessary IMO. Bottom line, I can respect that. The fact is, I've been fortunate enough to have done things, and been a part of an impossibly rare mix of R&D projects, seen all of the results first hand, and then when I tell these guys the results they disregard it because I don't give them the keys to someone else's well earned data library. It's weird. You've got a review here of an Duncan Custom SH-5 that basically says it could have also been made with a modified wind of 42AWG or 44AWG and nobody would be able to tell the difference. Yet...none of them have ever made a Duncan Custom type of pickup, made these hypothetical coil equivalents out of other wire gauges, and then listened to the results. But have I done that? Maybe, you'll never know because I'm bound contractually on some of the things I've seen and done. On other subjects, as they relate to things that have already been put into the public domain, and/or are obvious to those skilled in the art, I'm free to repeat myself. If I can't get my point across without being unfair to an entity who has paid for R&D, then I guess I just won't get my point across.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2017 10:41:45 GMT -5
From the SD forum and also the jemsite, the contributions of Frankfalbo are numerous and helpful. Heck the guy is a top-notch pro, being in this business for so many years, it is a pleasure and a blessing having him here.
Let's not dive into personal scientific narcissistic vanity. I know its tempting and attractive, but its so empty and negative overall. I studied comp science, I used to read (or write) papers with so many math symbols, outsiders usually stopped at the first 4 lines, but I don't expect my music experience to be a race for intelligence or smth like that.
Someone called the swede as the "subject", lol, I wouldn't dare call him a subject, especially when he might have been the reason I almost quit guitar in 1983 after I listened to "no parole from rock'n'roll".
Ppl cheer up. This is music, this is not 5th generation unmanned warplanes physics. Science is great, as long as the "subject" is the humanity.
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Post by stratotarts on Jul 9, 2017 10:53:50 GMT -5
From the SD forum and also the jemsite, the contributions of Frankfalbo are numerous and helpful. Heck the guy is a top-notch pro, being in this business for so many years, it is a pleasure and a blessing having him here. Let's not dive into personal scientific narcissistic vanity. I know its tempting and attractive, but its so empty and negative overall. I studied comp science, I used to read (or write) papers with so many math symbols, outsiders usually stopped at the first 4 lines, but I don't expect my music experience to be a race for intelligence or smth like that. Someone called the swede as the "subject", lol, I wouldn't dare call him a subject, especially when he might have been the reason I almost quit guitar in 1983 after I listened to "no parole from rock'n'roll". Ppl cheer up. This is music, this is not 5th generation unmanned warplanes physics. Science is great, as long as the "subject" is the humanity. This is a very judgmental post. Personally, I welcome everyone's input here. I have seen some members contribute fairly lightweight commentary, technically speaking, and I didn't feel it detracted from the discussion at all. In fact, I welcome those because they add outside perspective. But if someone comes in with a lot of pointed criticism (some of it bordering on invective), the least they can do is back it up with some facts. That's all we're asking for. Otherwise the contributions are just vexatious and self serving.
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 9, 2017 12:12:18 GMT -5
Personally, I welcome everyone's input here. I have seen some members contribute fairly lightweight commentary, technically speaking, and I didn't feel it detracted from the discussion at all. In fact, I welcome those because they add outside perspective. I almost feel as if you were referring to me. If so, thank you. If not, I apologize for now appearing to be somewhat egotistical. As to the rest of what's been said since John's post, I find some of it to be rather ironic. So much so, that I think repeating the core of what he said is appropriate. JohnH: "These threads are about trying to apply an analytical method to assessing pickups based on data."
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