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Albert got it right

Paul's Posts — 22 July 2012

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Albert got it right

“Everything that can be counted doesn’t necessarily count.  Everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”  Albert Einstein must have had high-end audio and measuring in mind when he spoke those words oh so many years ago – but probably not since high-end audio didn’t exist.  :)

However, it sure does apply today when we think about how our systems sound and how we can try and measure and categorize those findings into neat little boxes and then maneuver them around to suit or listening fancies – sometimes to no avail.

Fact is when it comes to quantifying what it is you listen for in music and how that presents itself in your system through various cables and pieces of kit, listening is the only valid measurement tool we have.  Sure we can come close to figuring out what makes some aspects sound the way they do, but not all – and I imagine we may never get it all measured and cataloged.

The end goal is to enjoy your music in remarkable fashion every time you sit and listen.

Measuring those areas that make it remarkable are an interesting exercise for many but for the majority of us, just listening and enjoying our systems is pleasure and satisfaction enough.

I wonder what kind of system Albert, a consumate music lover, might have enjoyed?

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About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(7) Readers Comments

  1. socal77

    July 22, 2012 at 6:32 am

    I believe, when it comes to high-end audio, Einstein would have said, “It is relative.”

    Einstein also had low regard for “measurement” versus listening;
    “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

    He also preferred a minimalist approach (and apparently live music):
    “A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”

  2. hahax

    July 22, 2012 at 7:17 am

    I suspect Einstein believed everything in the physical world was measureable or atleast explainable. After all he spent most of his life searching for a unified field theory to explain ‘everything’. And I don’t believe he ever really could accept the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. He didn’t believe that God would create a universe that way. And look at his approach to extending our understanding of physics. He took what was ‘known’ and then imagined what had to be for that to exist and then extended it to what what also had to be based on a model created in the logical mind since the mind had to be part of the universe a necessasarily logical God had to create. It’s interesting that there was an ethical component to the universe.

  3. Soundminded

    July 22, 2012 at 11:36 am

    Had Albert Einstein found the problem of recording and playing music mechanically the way it is heard live an interesting problem I think he’d have had as little regard for the prevailing conventional wisdom as he did in those problems that did matter to him. He’d have looked at it with a fresh set of eyes and not been constrained by what others had said or done. Instead he’d have worked until he’d gotten far greater insight into the true nature of sound and hearing, until he understood it well enough to create much better than we have even today. As a revolutionary scienfic intellectual like Galileo, Pasteur and so many others, new ideas that see beyond “the box” from a perspective where four lines can connect the nine dots, unconventional thinking that flies in the face of what others hold true is not merely a challenge to their authority and power but the better and more different the new theory, the greater the threat. In Galileo’s time that was called heresy and he was shown the instruments of torture for what he’d written until he recanted. How can something so universally accepted be so wrong? That the earth is not flat. That it’s not the center of the universe. That germs cause disease. That time, space, matter, and energy are not what they appear to our senses to be? That you can’t recreate the sound of live music with a recording, an amplifier, some wires, and two speaker systems? Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” But isn’t what this industry has done, built endless variants of exactly the same sound system since 1958 and expected it to work when it’s clear that it doesn’t?

    Here are some more of his quotes;

    “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”

    “It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.”

    Here’s where you can find more of his wit, wisdom, and insights;

    http://www.einstein-quotes.com/index.html

  4. Terry Franklin

    July 22, 2012 at 3:22 pm

    Conventional wisdom? Einstein could not get his head around quantum mechanics. Einstein did not have a fresh set of eyes when he viewed quantum mechanics. He threw up his hand and stated that “God did not play dice with the universe.” I believe that Werner Heisenberg won that war of words.

    And as far as measurement, I think that E equals em-sea-squared is pretty precise.

    Bottom line: Einstein got some things right and missed the boat on others.

    • Soundminded

      July 22, 2012 at 5:39 pm

      Iv’e watched these quantum physicists for about 50 years from the time of early cyclotrons and bevatrons to linear accelerators and now their newest most expensive toy, the superconducting super collider or large hadron collider under the ground on the border of Switzerland and France. It’s interesting how they conduct their experiments. They smash subatomic particles together and watch what flies off, some of it lasting for only billionths of a second. I’ve likened it to trying to understand how planes can fly by arranging a mid-air collision between two of them and watching what falls off. Don’t be too impressed. Last November they told us they’d seen neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. If true, they admitted it would not only blow Einstein’s theory of relativity out of the water but their own “standard model” as well. The next month they claimed to have first evidence of the Higgs Boson “god particle” that proves their model. It’s so incredibly massive that up to now they couldn’t find it. I don’t know what to believe. I’m barely able to grasp string theory and now they’ve replaced it with “membrane theory.” I watched a program about “multiverses” and couldn’t tell if I was watching Nova or Star Trek. As far as I can tell there isn’t one shred of evidence supporting anything they postulated that was presented as only slightly less certain than factual.

      Whatever they tell you, just remember that putting a name on something doesn’t explain it. Not only can they not tell you why like charged electrical particles repel and unlike charges attract, they can’t tell you why magnets exist only as dipoles but electical fields can be sourced from monopoles even though the equations describing them are practically mirror images of each other. And when it comes to what gravity is and why it exists at all they are clueless. For all of these things they have hundreds of equations that will tell you what happens and to what degree it will happen but no insight whatsoever as to why. I watch and gawk along with everyone else at their expensive antics. Who knows, maybe someday they’ll discover something. Meanwhile they’ve discounted what they said about neutrinos last November and Einstein can rest easy in his grave…for the time being at least.

  5. acuvox

    July 23, 2012 at 10:05 am

    Einstein grew up in a quiet part of the world listening to acoustic music. So did I, and isolation from loudspeakers and motors between birth and puberty causes hearing to develop fully. This is because spatiality is perceived in echoes and wavelets that are more than 60dB or more down, and natural spatial hearing uses the pinnae as directional phase encoders. The background masking noise of the post-industrial world and the time distortions of cone, dome and horn resonances, cabinet edge diffraction, high order crossovers, bass system impedance peaks and variations in off-axis response in all speakers detract from the accuracy of reproduction and become a permanent neural program.

    I am working now designing speakers for conservatory graduate acoustic musicians. A very high percentage of the hundreds I have talked to agree that mixing and panning are distortion of space, and unreal. The entire “Stereo” paradigm is false, that louder sound coming from one speaker is the same as a sound originating off-axis. Audio designers need to spend more time LISTENING TO ACOUSTIC MUSIC than to speakers to condition their ears properly – and this pattern really needs to be maintained from birth.

    If you are looking for measurements that correlate to quality of sound, perfect phase-coherent step response at all angles is a good place to start. The next criterion is to match the polar radiation pattern of the original source. Unfortunately, this means that a violin speaker can’t reproduce a piano, and vice versa.

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