Your opinion on Hanson Hsu's ZR Acoustic concepts?

[pask74Participant]

Hi John,

I'm pretty intrigued by Hanson Hsu's approach of acoustics.
He was interviewed by Warren a while ago.
http://deltahdesign.com/zr-acoustics/

The whole concept sounds a bit esoteric to me, what's your impression?

Thanks,

Pascal

[John BrandtParticipant]

Well, I'm sure that his products can work to some extent.. (What extent, no one knows because there is zero testing data for his zero acoustics)

His rooms work 'okay'... But the problem that I have is with his Marketing and the way he tries to bullshit people.

I would LOVE to have an honest conversation with the man, perhaps to understand WHY he would do such a thing, because he obviously understands a little about acoustics. (And once you understand a little, you KNOW that you have a LOT to learn! LOL)

Anyway, first - I recommend that you watch these two seemingly unrelated videos:
https://youtu.be/69qYusZyLrs
Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://youtu.be/eUB4j0n2UDU
Michael Shermer

This is an issue that I happily take up to defend the 'information' world. Today, snake oil salesmen are more abundant than they were in the American pioneer days. There are no controls in place to prevent their treachery. Education is the ONLY defense. I volunteer to call them out.

Acoustics is NOT and never was a 'BLACK ART'. It is counter-intuitive for sure! But it's not undiscoverable. It IS science and has NO place for mystical thinking. Either this man, Hanson Hsu really believes the rubbish he's talking and he is firm in his delusion, or he's an outright liar and marketer without ANY integrity.

I'd honestly like to find out which it is.

The thing is; ZR acoustics is courting the studio market because most of these people want to solve the issues with their recording spaces with less 'stuff'. They want to say that they have 'Quantum Acoustics' working in their studio... Nice buzz word.. (completely meaningless, by the way). People want it now, they want it quick and they want it easy and cheap. That is a fact that marketers use.

People, in general, will 'follow'. It's human nature because we are social animals. People also will 'obey' authority. So if you set yourself up as an authority figure, people will just do what you say, even if it's ridiculous. And if they have a lucky outcome, woohoo! you're famous! (just be careful that you don't fool yourself)

Remember the conversation between J & K on the bench in MIB 1?
J: But why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it...
K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it!
K: (continues..) 1500 years ago people KNEW that the world was the center of the universe. 500 years ago everybody KNEW the earth was flat and 15 minutes ago you KNEW that people were alone on this planet. ~pause~ Imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow.

In comes Hanson Hsu...
I think the idea of 'blind faith', believing something without evidence, is a horrible notion. The problem I have with it is that it teaches us to be satisfied pseudo-explanations, which are really no explanation at all, things that sound good, things that are not an explanation but appeal to emotions.

It is this willful obscurantism that is the enemy of science and the enemy of truth.

Some of the things that scientists and researchers have found are of great confidence, but they are always open to the possibility of being proven wrong at some point in the future. The facts of the physics of acoustics is about as well demonstrated as anything we know and is absolutely certain by the normal standards just as we are certain that the earth rotates around the sun and not the sun rotating around the earth.

- Formally, we have to say 'that is a hypotheses that one day may be disproved', but we all know that it won't be.

Questions about acoustics require hard scientific work. That scientific work consists of explaining complicated things in terms of the interactions of their parts or of simpler things. We always try to explain complex things in terms of simpler things.
--- We do NOT resort to magical language.
We do NOT snow our audience with pompous words that actually mean nothing.
We use words that actually have meaning.
We use expressions that can be tested.
We work hard at understanding the universe in terms of it's component parts.
We don't invent super-arching entities that have no explanation in themselves.
We do not invoke ideas like Quantum acoustics.

If we have a difficult problem, we explore & explain it in the interactions of all the components involved. Small parts working together in ways that researchers understand.

That said; Don't follow me! Be skeptical. Check it out.. Get the data. Sometimes listening is NOT the way to check it because, if you watched Dr. Tyson's video, humans err. They err a LOT! The mic doesn't. It does exactly the same thing every time you plug it in and measure. -- I have equipment and software that doesn't CARE which side of the bed it woke up on or what it ate for breakfast... or if it's girlfriend just dumped it... You get what I'm saying? - I hope everyone get's a chance to read this...

Trust the testing. Listen of course! but you KNOW the A/B tests with equipment are far, far better at telling what's going on with any particular product, piece of gear, etc.

All the best!
Cheers,
John

[pask74Participant]

Thanks!

[Jared ShermanParticipant]

That question opened up quite the can of worms, haha! Classic response for sure!

[Pedro Pitta GrozParticipant]

As anyone that has been fighting with his small rooms acoustics forever this kind of claim makes my blood run faster for a wile. I went too search everything related I could find and found nothing.
Thanks for the videos. Just the kind of stuff I like to watch in a holiday morning like we have today in Portugal.

Pedro Pitta Groz

[Author]

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