If the subjectivity in audio systems design results exclusively from economic choices, why hasn't someone invented the cost-no-object perfect audio reproduction system?
I don't believe that we understand everything we will one day understand about acoustical / audio science theory or engineering/production (nor about virtually anything in our physical world). Many scientists and philosophers throughout human history have made this mistake. Unfortunately, I can't prove a negative hypothesis (but neither can the scientists - it just boils down to a belief system, on one side of which we will all come down, thereby influencing which side of the practical debate you will incline to). I don't believe we have perfect measurement instruments, instruments capable of telling us the effect of the human experience of the perception of hearing (music, in this case). I wouldn't be able to believe this if I didn't also hold the opinion above. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in a thousand years. Maybe I'll be proven right. In the end, it's been said well enough above by several people that modding should be a scientific approach to improving the original product design based on a profound understanding of the original design, it's limitations whether economic or preferential, and the contexts a modder's audience will use the product in. For instance, maybe Slim designed the SB to operate perfectly within it's cost/price point taking into consideration certain power delivery conditions, but a certain modder believes that many consumers operate with different conditions, and designs mods to improve the SB's performance taking those conditions into consideration. That's the more complex argument, but I believe modders just seek to replace bits and pieces in order to try to improve perceived performance (or maybe even measured) at a component level, and maybe that works, sometimes. Seems a reasonable argument to me to a degree. Put in a cap with better measured performance and overall quality should improve. How likely is it that putting in a superior component where a cost decision drove putting an inferior component in will degrade sound? I'm sure it's possible, but hopefully unlikely, and people would stop buying those mods pretty quickly I'd hope. So even if it's Darwinian evolutionary, trial and error survival of the mods that "work" (defined as being perceived as an improvement by more people than not), then modding is understandable. -- joncourage ------------------------------------------------------------------------ joncourage's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2837 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28080 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
