Is it just me or am I the only one that has had it with overly pushy audiophiles that push measurements as the end all be all. I’m not talking about healthy discussions on measurements but obnoxious ones that talk down to you because of the measurements of your system or equipment is not perfect for them? All cables and cords are snake oil to them if it doesn’t register on their meters? Am I the only that feels this way?
This subject has been rattling around my brain all day.
It occurred to me that the preference of many for vinyl over streaming/CDs gives us a steer towards there being more to assessing sound quality than just measurements.
By all objective metrics, the digital formats should be superior to vinyl. Yet, many people prefer listening to vinyl records. I have made comparisons between the formats using a Linn Klimax DSM/3 and a Linn Klimax LP12 with Urika II.
My preference was strongly for the sound of vinyl, despite the turntable falling short of Linn’s best. Granted not every LP is perfect, but generally the LP12 has a touch of magic that the DSM/3 lacks.
I’d argue that this is fair indication that measurement doesn’t tell us everything.
Don’t try to tell me that my preference for the LP12 is the result of confirmation bias. This test is repeatable. Also, it would have been much more convenient for me if I’d preferred the DSM/3. That would have saved me considerable expense.
Ideally, I would have used a wider range of players. For my purposes that is not necessary and I’ll leave it for others to do. Of course, my preference is the result of subjective judgement. Isn’t that the nature of qualitative assessment and why quantitative measurement can only go far?
@everyone glad you are on this thread. Love the points of view and humor. This is what it’s about. Disagreeing without name calling or making enemies. Thanks.
The only measurement I understand the amp power, preamp gain, speaker sensitivity, sormetimes cart measurement, and cables length.i care most of the musical performance and system matching.
If you’ll allow me another analogy, I think back to the seventies and eighties when I found myself in the world of business. Without any formal training and very little guidance, I had to invent my own way of doing things. I had studied physics at university so I naturally fell into using numbers and accounting to control and shape the organisation. I looked for mathematical relationships in the figures as if I was doing physical science.
This approach was successful up to a point, but the real world is irreducible, messy and unpredictable. Organisations have both a hard and a soft side. Numbers and accounting aren’t a panacea. You have to leave room for the individuality, intuitiveness and creativity of people. To give their best they need a degree of autonomy and freedom so that the organisation can respond to complexity.
Similarly in hifi, the quantitative engineering approach is the essential foundation on which everything is built, Yet it is not the whole story because there is a need for qualitative thinking to get the complete picture. There has to be a balance between control and freedom or the scientific and the artistic.
Mbmi I believe you, probably my X1 don’t have good measurements but sound amazing.Even the yagdrassil don’t have a good measurement I think but according to the review of Robert Harley it sound phenomenal.
My ’2 bits’ ( "2 cents!? Average ’stop ’n rob’ has that in and on the parking lot...") is I like to see some ’basic stats’ on any item that a card has to be used to buy it.
It seemed to be a standard issue of publication, and the cynic in me wonders why the ’habit’ got an intervention it didn’t need.....z
After a time, I’ve assumed that any decent to SOTA piece of gear has reached a ’singularity’ of sorts....
’Beyond This, All Else is Taste and Preference."
Cables, IC’s, and the plethora of choices seem to point to that of late to this unwashed and guilty irrelevant.....seems a very subtle version of 'eq' imho...
...it's your dollar$ to do with....
I just enjoy where I’m at for the present that won’t hold still.... ;)
You’re so fine
Lose my mind
And the world seems to disappear
All the problems
All the fears
And the world seems to
Disappear....
When I was first getting into this hobby and visiting music stores (decades ago), I appreciated the staff that would let me play my music on the equipment I wanted to compare in my price range and not talk during the demo.
One salesperson who started talking all this audiophile jargon and went off on his own tirade rather than asking me where I was at and what I think I wanted; all I remember thinking is...this guy isn't making it with the girls ( a nicer way to put it).
And, while measurements are a nice comparative use tool, we all have different rooms, responses to what we are hearing, etc. All that said, I do appreciate Erin's Corner, more than some of the others for what he brings to the table.
One salesperson who started talking all this audiophile jargon and went off on his own tirade rather than asking me where I was at and what I think I wanted;
I had that once about 25 years ago; I remember it vividly. How can I demo the speakers when every 3 seconds he had something else to say? Needless to say he was never my salesman. There is that age-old saying amongst salespeople in any industry: Never talk yourself out of a deal, or talk past the close.
There is a store in Dallas if you come in more than one time the cut it off so you can’t hear it. To me it’s about getting people to hear what they want and seek. That’s why I demo stuff to folks. It’s about them being happy and stuff sounding good.
This should be the basis... the most critical aspect. Of which there is no measure. Then after that appraisal of details, slam, imaging, micro details, micro transients...hmm, what is the measure of imaging... watts per cubic cm?... detail... hmm... not that either. Most of the measurements are very poor proxies for a small and distant aspect of the music we hear.
Physics is physics, and math is math. Those are usually not open to debate.
Sorry, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Science is always open to debate. That’s why most of what we know about physics today is called scientific theories, not necessarily laws. Einstein questioned Newton’s theory of gravity and found holes in it. Oppenheimer asked why the atoms couldn’t be split and did it. Science is always open for discussion. We are still not sure what light is: particles of energy or electromagnetic waves? It can be argued both ways. I wholeheartedly agree with your last paragraph though.
@spenavthats why I question a lot of the scientific type audiophiles. If I change materials, connectors , copper, silver, braiding , shielding amounts etc there is going to be a difference in sound. How can you be pro,science and then say you can’t hear a difference ?
@calvinj OP - if, and only if change can at least theoretically affect the sound.
Change is Sun position in the galaxy is also a change. Neutrinos passing by have gravitational field that affect human brain. It is 10 in minus 100 power, but some may claim they feel it.
@spenav - there is nothing "unknown" in USB or Ethernet protocol. Your signed mortgage documents do not change with time and ripped music does not lose any bits sitting on a hard drive :-) Are you concerned that music file may change when you copy it between folders?
@mikhailarktake care my man we agree to disagree. Wouldn’t take your advice at all when it comes to this. The music moves me not your opinion or measurements.
@calvinj OP - have you noticed sound changes with the amount of consumed adult beverages? So there :-) Also, never underestimate how furniture, rearranged by your SO affects the sound!
I’m not taking about a sound field distribution across a room, which I would call "soundstage," but more the ability to "precisely locate" specific instruments in a 3-dimensional space, which I would call "imaging."
If this can in fact be shown with some calculations and a waterfall plot, I’ve never seen one and I’m asking you to show us all some representative examples, because I think that if it could be done, it would be done.
In fact, I've never seen "soundstage" calculations/graphs presented, so maybe you could steer us to some of those too. Comparisons would be most interesting.
@toddalin - It can be done, but who exactly needs it - as in who would pay for it. Audiophile community does not care. Speaker measurements exists because they are used in professional audio where no one "just trust their ears". Now, imaging is a sound field distribution over time. So it is minimum 6-dimensional measurement that is hard to visualize. 3 space variables, time, then as a minimum - frequency and amplitude at a given point in space. More realistically several frequency variables (coefficients in frequency domain after Fourier transform). So we are facing many, many variables. Hard to visualize, but it can be measured and compared. Will require several microphones at different points, measurements of the room itself and a bunch of math to extrapolate the complete field.
I care, and I’m betting a whole lot of other people do too! And don't think that any company that could show that theirs excels above more expensive others wouldn't do it just for bragging rights.
Stereophile Magazine reviewers continually talk of soundstage and imaging or lack thereof. If it could be measured, there would be mention of it.
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