Debunking Audio "Truths" - Dr. Floyd Toole

Chill! And read this:
Do we really need standards (aka, rules) for speaker performance? I'm sure Dr. Toole would say that we do, since that's what his life's work boils down to - establishing measurement metrics for determining sound quality.

And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly wouldn't be if it was just agreed to in general terms and the industry was left go on it's merry way as it had been before these measurement ideals were introduced.
But what has been happening, as is often the case with questionable ideas, people hear something in these ideas that appeals to them and they latch onto them. That appeal is always something that they like to hear - how they personally want it to be, and not typically for purely technical reasons.

The simple truth is that there are people (quite a lot, actually) who want to see everything controlled and regulated and rules set up that must be followed. And the idea of extending control (standards) into an area that previously had none is just the next cause for them to eagerly get behind.
You know such people. You may be one. We've been indulging such people for far too long, now.

My view is that standards are ultimately destructive. On their face they seem like a way to improve a situation by taking away the variability you'd have without them, but in doing so they put real limits on growth and innovation. They take away the character and individuality we have when controls are not in place, and make everything the same.
And when everything is the same, there are no real points of comparison. Take away the bad and can we really judge good? Take away the unique and can we truly judge art?

Art, you say! How does anything that is so science based (speakers) have anything to do with art?!? Well, whether you like it or not, listening to music for enjoyment is very much like studying a painting or sculpture, or any other variety of art. Unless, that is, you are only listening to judge the precision of the medium, like examining a painting to measure the different shades of green that were used, or the type of canvas it was painted on.
Art appreciation is a subjective act, as is listening to music. You can't do it "wrong".

Is there a standard for art? If you look at what passes for modern art and compare that to what was happening 400 years ago, you'll quickly see there couldn't possibly be one.
And while I'm certainly not a fan of most modern art, I appreciate the fact that it can exist because the artist was unencumbered from imposed standards and was free to produce it. And its existence gives me a point of comparison and makes me appreciate the art I do love even more.

But would it exist at all if everyone felt the same way as I do? The answer is obviously no, so that suggests that there are people who like (or even love) something that I find repugnant! How could that be?
Again, it's entirely subjective!

Now here's the part that trips a lot of people up, especially the wide range of Sheldon Cooper types that we have in any technical field: recognizing that art and science can (and must) coexist. Even 10,000 years ago when primitive man was painting the walls in caves there was this art / science symbiosis. The paint itself is the science, while brushing it on the cave walls is the art.
Without the art, the paint is useless. Likewise, without the science, the painter is out of a job (or pastime).
But in the end it's not the utility of the paint that attracts us, but the art of the painter that used it.

So you could say that the paint is excellent from a technical point of view; much like a speaker can be excellent from a measurement point of view, but the paint needs to be used by the painter to produce the subjective art; much like the speaker is used to produce the entirely subjective sound quality.
In the end you don't listen to the speakers, you listen to the music that's coming out of the speakers.

A pair of speakers that measures "perfectly" will sound different is different rooms to different people. And while the research conducted by Dr. Toole suggests that a less perfect speaker will sound bad to a lot of people, there will still be some that actually prefer how it sounds over the more "perfect" one. Reread the part above about modern art, if you have a problem understanding that.

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