Sonic Subjectivists vs. Audio Objectivists: False Dichotomy of the Studio World

We hope you’re taking it easy this Fourth of July Weekend. We know we are. That’s why you’re getting not one but two back-to-back editorial classics from Trust Me, I’m a Scientist, now ported over to SonicScoop for all of posterity to enjoy.

This one originally ran March 4th, 2013, and takes a somewhat more nuanced approach to the views expressed in Ethan Winer’s piece “Audio Priorities“, which was published here yesterday.

In my view, when it comes to great audio, science and measurement do matter. But so do individual tastes and preferences. Even (and perhaps especially) idiosyncratic ones.

There’s a war on in the audio world.

It’s a very silly war. But it crops up from time to time nonetheless, wasting energy and polarizing people’s opinions about things that just aren’t worth fighting over.

I’m talking about the ongoing war between subjectivists and objectivists, And I’m here to recommend that you never, ever pick one side or another.

Instead: Pick both.

First, a little background. Just who are these people?

The “Sonic Subjectivists“, at their best, are those of us who believe that artistic process and individual experience are of primary importance in the studio.

They believe that there is deep value in making subtle choices between tools, which cannot be boiled away by the most reductionist overreaches of science. They recognize that what looks best on paper is not always what sounds best to the ear.

The audio “Objectivists“, in our best moments, are pragmatic, clear-eyed realists who are interested in real evidence rather than cheap anecdotes.

They are concerned with what’s essential, what’s provable, and what can be shown to get results. They believe, quite correctly in fact, that everything that we can hear can be measured in some way or another.

They’re often interested in all this measurement and evidence, not because they don’t value art or the energy people put into it, but precisely because they do.

Why Choose?

If both these outlooks sound more or less equally appealing, then I’m glad to hear it! Like so many dichotomies, the subjectivist/objectivist dichotomy is a false one.

There’s no good reason to force yourself into picking between evidence-based understanding and visceral personal preference.

I suppose all that arguing is to be expected. We audio obsessives can be a persnickety breed—especially when we’re allowed to get together on the interwebs before letting off steam elsewhere in more productive ways. (Seriously, have you heard of “journaling“? Though in fairness, it’s not nearly as bad as the average political conversation on the web…)

At our worst, the subjectivists among us can be a bunch of audiophile cranks and kooks who are superstitious about sound, buying up bags of magic beans for their hi-fi systems and obsessing over the directionality of cables.

Our objectivist side can be no better at times, turning otherwise decent people into grating know-it-alls—Poindexters and party-poopers who are so busy studying the forest that they can’t stop to appreciate the unique charm of any given tree.

Tell a die-hard subjectivist the basic truth that your average 16-bit CD has higher fidelity than tape or vinyl in every way that can be measured, and he may look at you like you’re lying.

Tell a die-hard objectivist that you understand this, but prefer the sound of tape or vinyl anyway, and he may cock his head like you didn’t hear him about that whole “fidelity” thing just now.

If you demonstrate to an ardent subjectivist that he might not be able to hear the difference between two similar sources when blindfolded, he may snarl at you that the test must be “rigged”.

Tell an objectivist that his newer, cleaner, cheaper, quieter alternative isn’t floating your boat, and it can come across as the ignorance of some backward-looking curmudgeon.

All that such a level of mistrust does is stoke insecurities, when the wisest course of action would be to borrow the best from one another’s perspectives. And there’s a lot we can learn from each other.

An objectivist can tell you that the room you record and mix in matters a lot. We can test this, and we can measure it, showing you without doubt that any improvement there (up until a certain point) will have a greater impact on the quality of your recordings than a purchase of any high-end piece of boutique audio gear.

But a subjectivist can remind you that the relationships we have with our tools can go beyond mere measurement, and that sometimes the story that a piece of equipment tells is just as important as the sound we can measure it making.

There are times when design or or ergonomics or workflow or tradition can inspire confidence—and confidence is essential to artistic expression. Without confidence, there is no music worth hearing.

An objectivist can tell you which tool is more neutral, which one is more colored, by exactly how much, and in precisely what capacity. But only a subjectivist can tell you which one is worth using. There are classic hardware and software tools that remain classic, not because they graph out better than any other, but precisely because they don’t.

A subjectivist, on the other hand, can tell you what tools he likes the sound of best. But only an objectivist can really find out why—and figure out how to reproduce similar results in other ways.

We all have both of these extremes lurking inside of us, and we’re well-served to recognize it.
When we don’t, we make mistakes.

When We Get It Wrong

In 1965, CBS bought the Fender musical instrument company, and after a short while, their engineers went to work redesigning much of the line.

This was in part to cut costs, but also in great part because these “objective” engineers saw ways to easily improve the circuits in ways that they were sure “ought” to make sense.

Namely: They figured out ways to make guitar amps provide a cleaner tone at a louder volume! What’s not to like about that?

Alas, what looks better on paper doesn’t always sound better to the ear, and the CBS-era revisions of Fender’s classic amplifiers, which lack some of the classic grit of earlier models, are still valued less than the pre-CBS ones to this day. The difference in tone is one that can both be measured, and heard.

The difference in dollar value that remains today between the pre- and post-CBS Fender amp line is not only due to the relative rarity of amps made before and after the divide.

It turns out that when you take away familiar and euphonic sounding distortion, people notice. And not all of them will like it. In many ways, the familiar-sounding is the “good sounding.” Charts be damned.

Throughout the ages, subjectivists have gotten things very wrong as well: They’ve fallen for all sorts of thoroughly-debunked tricks, a full list of which is too long and too embarrassing to present here.

(For starters, there’s the obviously silly but once much-popular notion that freezing or applying green sharpie to a CD can improve its sound. But many classic debunked notions may sound far more plausible at first, like those involving specialty power cables.)

One important thing to remember here is that when our subjectivist side gets it wrong, our subjectivist ears really may experience a difference. It’s just that the difference we “hear” may exist inside the mind, rather than out there in the air. When it comes to perception, as powerful as our senses may be, there is no denying that the stories we tell ourselves are even more powerful still.

Another important thing to remember is that when our objectivist side gets it wrong, it’s not necessarily because the measurements are wrong. Knowing what to measure—and what arguments your measurements can and can’t support—is equally crucial.

In the end, these sides of ourselves do not have to be at odds. Every truly meaningful advance in audio technology has come when objective measurement and subjective preference meet.

That tradition continues at every truly successful audio company today, both inside the box and out.

Justin Colletti is a mastering engineer, educator and writer. He edits SonicScoop.

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