Faith-Based Electronics (IMO Addendum)

[Steve Conner]

Oh, noooooooo!
What have I done, what have I done?

Even Mike admits that science is faith-based to some extent! ;-)

I think of it like this: The human brain is a machine for finding patterns in things. Science is a formalisation of this. If you want to be a scientist, you have to believe that finding patterns in a formal way is the right thing to do. You may even believe that the "Theory Of Everything" will be found in the form of a pattern. But you can't prove that this search for patterns is the right line of enquiry, except inductively: "It worked up until now! We made GPS, cruise missiles and iPods!"

[salvarsan]

But science is faith-based. See Hume's discussion of the problem of induction, for instance.

Horseshit (my apologies to the horses).
Science does not require belief to be true.
Would you keel over dead because I, in a fit of picque, refuse to belief in your vaccinations?

If you don't dig up antique philosophy that gives a bad name to solipsism, I won't call you on it.

Instead, refer to Korzybski and the equivocational fallacies rife in use of "to be" tenses.

With a nod to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, yes, there are axiomatically unprovable foundations within Science.
One may call them articles of faith, but they do not make the entirety of Science into a faith-based religion. A faith-based endeavor requires articles of faith, but that alone is not sufficient.

A clearer and just statement would be to say that "Science contains elements of faith".

Similarly, one may possess an asshole without being one -- possession is necessary, but insufficient because other requirements do pertain.

So quit trolling, Steve.

un-Locke'd and ex-Hume'd
The ex-Immoderator

[salvarsan]

The early Telarc recordings were not made with the original 37.5 KHz sampling system, but rather with a modified system using 50 KHz sampling, allowing the filters to be relaxed. The purpose of the filters is not to remove the Nyquist frequency, but rather to remove content above the Nyquist frequency which otherwise folds into the wanted pass band causing a form of unwanted distortion. Dithering the A/D converter removes imperfections, systematic errors in the least significant bits, at the expensive of increasing the noise somewhat. I do not know what you mean by "sneakily boost low level signals".

John Curl expounded at length about it some 30 years ago. There are several reasons to do it, but one of them is to game the distortion measurements.

I do not remember how awful it made flute stops sound;

There was an early digitally mastered Prelude a L'Apres Midi D'un Faune co-released with an analog version. The flute stop >click!< was unnatural, much the same as a lot of drumming in 80's pop music got a mixture of de-essing on the attack and noise-ducking on the release. It was obviously done on the microphone side before digitization.

I am confused: who was calling science a faith-based endeavor?

Read the forum title.

"Faith-based electronics?"
Try blisteringly hot sphinctritude.

[Mike Sulzer]

John Curl expounded at length about it some 30 years ago. There are several reasons to do it, but one of them is to game the distortion measurements.

Less than ten years ago he was still writing things like this:

Of course, BUT I am not concerned about noise. I am concerned about distortion. Dithering will hide distortion in noise, but it will not remove it, unless it is averaged over several cycles of the same waveform. This makes it difficult to measure as harmonic or IM distortion, BUT it is still the same nonlinearity that is present.

SY, I agree that dither can do good things, but it does not make a changing signal more accurate at low levels. Analog does.

He is wrong. Of course dithering can lower distortion. it is not a way of gaming distortion measurements. This is the kind of thing that is proven through analysis. Continuing to argue about it without such analysis over a period of decades is ridiculous.

If you fail to see why that is true, then you are not taking into account Korzybski's statement about the indirectness of human perception.

[rjb]

I am confused: who was calling science a faith-based endeavor?

Read the forum title.
"Faith-based electronics?"

Did you read the entire title?
Did you read the OP?
Did you check out the referenced closed thread http://music-electronics-forum.com/t29518/ ?
Did you read Jonathon Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and think he was really advocating cannibalism?
I find it hard to believe that a person of your obvious intelligence really thinks I am calling any science a faith-based endeavor.

Try blisteringly hot sphinctritude.

Who's trolling now?

Chill, dude.
-rb

[rjb]

Science does not require belief to be true.
Would you keel over dead because I, in a fit of picque, refuse to belief in your vaccinations?

Please have patience with me, but I don't understand your argument.

Would I keel over dead because you, in a fit of picque, refuse to believe in my vaccinations? Probably not.
Would I keel over dead because you, in a fit of picque, refuse to believe in my St. Christopher's medal or my mojo bag? Probably not.

Are you saying, then, that there is no difference between science, religion, and superstition?
Please, sir, stop trolling.

-rb

[rjb]

Reply Take 2

Read the forum title.

"Faith-based electronics?"
Try blisteringly hot sphinctritude.

In the context of this thread, "faith-based electronics" refers to my intentionally preposterous assertion that digital recordings are inferior because they cannot capture chi. If anyone deserved to be outraged, it would be acupuncturists and feng shui masters; where do I get off fabricating facts about chi?

-rb

Ps: Thank you for the band name suggestion, but I still think Faith-Based Electronics has a nicer "ring" than Blisteringly Hot Sphinctritude.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

No, you weren't saying you like the sound of vinyl, you were saying it reproduces the sound of the original recording better, and that you can hear what you interpret as what the guitar really sounded like, etc. I said you are hearing a processed version that was intended for vinyl. It sounds different from the CD version because you are likely hearing two different master tapes (for newer recordings). The vinyl does not offer a more accurate reproduction of the original. It has its own sound, which it imparts on the original. You might like that sound, but it's like running all your music though a signal processor. And you might like that too. So just get a dual 30 band EQ and compressor. Then you can make your CD sound like vinyl.

So I wasn't talking about what you like, I was talking about which medium offers better fidelity.

Well, you WERE talking about what I like.... reread your post if you don't believe me, but I digress.

I was citing a set of examples. I am perfectly aware that examples to the contrary could be found. Anyone who has a good idea of what a guitar sounds like through a guitar amp when it is in the room with you could testify that for a significant number of recordings, the vinyl sounds better. I'm still learning about this, and I am seeing the ideas that in some digital compression things like reverb get discarded quickly, as well as the slight fret buzz on the release of notes. These small details can be very important. That is very obvious on the vinyl recordings as it would be if the guitar player is in the room with you, but drops off on the CD.

In my first post I also noted that Zappa managed to avoid these problems completely with his CD adventures. Amazingly, his records and CDs sound almost identical, besides the obvious giveaways like the pop & crackle and flutter of the vinyl. So, I haven't been arguing vinyl's superiority... just that certain things are being overlooked in today's market. When I got a vinyl copy of Joe's Garage I expected the flange on Watermelon in Easter Hay to be far more lush as I would have expected based on other vinyl pieces I'd acquired around the same time, and was astounded to find they were more or less identical.

In regards to the more philosophical debate, science becomes faith-based when people claim things to be scientifically provable that in fact AREN'T scientifically provable. They've turned science into something quite unscientific. It isn't a problem with science, but rather with rhetoric. The weight behind being able to say something is "scientifically proven" is easily abused and we see this all over, ranging from infomercials to profound metaphysical statements. Science needs to be sober and detached, or else it contradicts itself. The only remedy is to persistently remind ourselves exactly what science is, lest we feel scientific certainty for something we don't deserve. I have a distinct memory of throwing a book at a wall because of this type of arrogance. Spinoza, you have made an enemy..........

[Possum]

Really when it comes down to it, there aren't any recordings that sound like what really happened in the studio. Every recording is an engineer's idea of what the record is supposed to sound like. One of my celeb customers had a long talk with Eddie Kramer who told him nothing you hear in a recording is real. There is a great video done on Electric Ladyland with Kramer showing what he did with the raw recorded sounds from Jimi's guitar etc. and man did he ever do magic with stuff that sounded like crap in its raw form. One raw track of Hendrix's guitar sounded like it was played thru a transistor Crate amp, real raw and buzzy, Kramer made it sound great. The Beano album is just as unreal as anything, and no you can't nail that tone without a real vintage Marshall JTM45 and accompanying speakers. I got interested in building a copy amp and after listening to every clone out there concluded that none of them sound like the old ones, the new ones just sound bad to me. For one thing good KT66's being made now stink compared the ones common at the time, the new ones sound harsh and flat. Bad news is NOS original KT66's are extremely rare and high priced. If you compare the Beano album studio tone with the live recordings Mayall did with Clapton at live gigs during the same time you'll hear more treble in the guitar signal than the engineered version, and for sure his little tape recorder had a voice mic because that what they came with so even those recordings aren't accurate. Yeah vinyl sounds warmer, tube hifi gear and speakers in those days sounded big and warm, CD versions off master tapes sound a little cold to me in comparison. Those albums were engineered to be played on vinyl and tube amps not on digital gear. I miss that technology sometimes, at least I got my old amps that the boutique stuff can't quite get right. Anyway, I bailed on the idea of making a JTM clone, none of them even get close to this sound, PAF's are a huge part, the old guitar is a big part:
betts toler les paul through a 1965 jtm 45 - YouTube

[Steve Conner]

I have one original GEC KT66, but unfortunately one tube does not a JTM45 make and I'm too mean to try acquiring another one.

I think John Curl talks as much crap as Salvarsan thinks I talk.

If the Beano album was unreal, surely what you need to nail that tone is technique like Clapton's, a studio and a good engineer?

Someone suggested adding a correction term to Maxwell's equations, as a ridiculous unscientific thing to do. Not a very good example IMO, as Maxwell's equations themselves were the result of Maxwell adding a correction term (the "displacement current") to an existing bunch of equations, because he believed that electricity ought to travel through thin air in the form of a wave.

This was a matter of faith as it couldn't be tested experimentally at the time, and I'm pretty sure he would have been mocked by his contemporaries, but of course he was proved correct later, or we wouldn't be discussing it now.

[Mike Sulzer]

Someone suggested adding a correction term to Maxwell's equations, as a ridiculous unscientific thing to do. Not a very good example IMO, as Maxwell's equations themselves were the result of Maxwell adding a correction term (the "displacement current") to an existing bunch of equations, because he believed that electricity ought to travel through thin air in the form of a wave.

No, that was not it at all. It was about how easily that could be determined to be wrong now, since there would be a conflict with, among other things, special relativity. It was about sharpening the sword and chasing induction into the corner where it has little importance.

[Joe Gwinn]

... as Maxwell's equations themselves were the result of Maxwell adding a correction term (the "displacement current") to an existing bunch of equations, because he believed that electricity ought to travel through thin air in the form of a wave.

The accounts I've read over the years say that Maxwell added the displacement current for reasons of mathematical beauty, specifically symmetry. Mathematical beauty may seem an odd concept, but Einstein was very much of the same mind.

It didn't hurt that when Maxwell included the then hypothetical displacement current, the solutions to his equations yielded radiation traveling at the known speed of light, computed only from the then known values for the dielectric constant and magnetic permeability of vacuum. Mere coincidence?

[Mike Sulzer]

The accounts I've read over the years say that Maxwell added the displacement current for reasons of mathematical beauty, specifically symmetry. Mathematical beauty may seem an odd concept, but Einstein was very much of the same mind.

It didn't hurt that when Maxwell included the then hypothetical displacement current, the solutions to his equations yielded radiation traveling at the known speed of light, computed only from the then known values for the dielectric constant and magnetic permeability of vacuum. Mere coincidence?

That's right, no coincidence at all. Based on symmetry alone, magnetic monopoles are essential as well. But they lack that all important connection with reality. Symmetry and reality together are simply unbeatable!

[kg]

wow, this is quite a thread.

certainly are a lot of people sure of themselves in here!

lol

[Steve Conner]

Maybe the thread's chi got polluted by bad vibes, I don't know.

I've seen new-agers proclaim that Einstein was a mystic, and his famous equation identifying matter with energy actually proves that "Everything is vibrations, man!" That's maybe a little too faith-based for me, though.