@kota1 , posting a link to a personal report of what someone thinks they heard does not prove your point. If the reviewer was truly curious, or fully believed their conclusion, they would have gotten two DACs, one burned in, and one not, and compared them in blind test.
Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy
"Audiophiles are Snobs" Youtube features an idiot! He states, with no equivocation, that $5,000 and $10,000 speakers sound equally good and a $500 and $5,000 integrated amp sound equally good. He is either deaf or a liar or both!
There is a site filled with posters like him called Audio Science Review. If a reasonable person posts, they immediately tear him down, using selected words and/or sentences from the reasonable poster as100% proof that the audiophile is dumb and stupid with his money. They also occasionally state that the high end audio equipment/cable/tweak sellers are criminals who commit fraud on the public. They often state that if something scientifically measures better, then it sounds better. They give no credence to unmeasurable sound factors like PRAT and Ambiance. Some of the posters music choices range from rap to hip hop and anything pop oriented created in the past from 1995.
Have any of audiogon (or any other reasonable audio forum site) posters encountered this horrible group of miscreants?
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@crymeanaudioriver and yet ASR is not doing any blind tests. I will say the arrogance and condescending attitudes reflected by you @amir_asr @prof I would not take advise from any of you, nor will I ever look at the ASR site. Mostly because the equipment being tested is low scale and not my, well thing. I do not shop at Best Buy. I also find the entire ASR crowd quite offensive and see why you fit right is over there. Why don't you saunter on back. I am no expert and I do use some measurements as a baseline however what you and your ilk miss is that audio like most luxury items are also an emotional purchase. No one here at this forum is saying measurement do not have a place but it is only one leg in the triangle it is not the final chapter. The system and how it sounds is the sum of all the parts, that is the ultimate test and I have not seen a test by Amir of a complete system Pre, Amp, DAC, Cables, Source. Think those Dutch boys have though. So I am going to leave you and Amir Army to it. You have done nothing but make the divide even greater amongst the camps here. Arrogance and conceit are not going to sway minds nor opinions. I will leave you and your 19 users names to argue among yourselves. Time to listen to some music as that is what this is all about.
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If anybody here with REW wants to get busy measuring stuff start with the room. I am shocked to see members measuring components and then leaving money on the table wasted because those components won’t provide the best experience without getting the room right. The video below may not work for you but it worked for me. I shopped for the treatments, exchanged e-mails with Anthony and BAM got a fantastic result. I noticed even some of the "professionals" posting here skipped this fundamental step. DSP helps, but DSP + a great room = amazing. BTW, room treatments can be covered with acoustically transparent fabric to make it look as good as it sounds:
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You can say Amir has been slightly condescending, but given his treatment, probably far less than he should be. My condescension has circled around twisting of words, false truths, and outright lies. I am very much biting my tongue. @prof on the other hand has been a complete gentleman.
I will say one condescending thing. You may want to pick up a dictionary and learn what the word condescending means, as you seem to believe it applies to others, but not yourself.
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@prof nothing there I would brag about. So he shops at Safe and Sound.👎 |
"ASR members are soooo condescending!" ^^^ Say certain AGon members making the most condescending comments about ASR members and their equipment. And none of this is taken notice of by those castigating "objectivists" or sites like ASR. All the "arrogance and condescension" is always on the other side. But, that’s human nature for you: We tend not to notice when our tribe does it.
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@crymeanaudioriver whats it like being one of Amir’s flying monkeys? Don’t sell yourself short you have been condescending throughout this string.
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Question for the ASR guys. Referring to the SINAD chart, it is labeled "Excellent, Good/Very good, Fair, and Poor". That's in reference to its measured performance but still perhaps a value judgement but if you are measuring noise and distortion with some made up formula. Would not it be more valuable if the groups were labeled; "Audible, Perhaps Audible, and Not Audible"? |
"...that comes across as a dogmatic statement "You Can’t Change Our Minds!" Do you really want to seem that inflexible? Isn’t being open minded a two way street? It often seems that people using a purely subjective ("Golden Ear") paradigm will castigate the "objectivist" for not being open to their claims, but will remain stubbornly opposed to being open to the objectivist side."
That’s just it, some people are more than ready to accept opinions ahead of scientific evidence. To them it doesn’t seem to matter whose subjective opinion it is, or whether there are even conflicting subjective opinions, only the ones that they want to read or hear.
You could call it an entirely subjective confirmation bias.
This subjectivist v objectivist debate is one of the oldest in audio but when did it all begin?
Perhaps someone with a good knowledge of audio journalism could help here? Was it something to do with Gordon J Holt and Harry Pearson, the 2 big names of US journalism that I’ve heard of?
I’ve read that in the early days UK reviews were mainly focused around measurements. At some point, like much else, the American influence crossed the Atlantic and the UK magazines quicky followed suit in promoting increasingly subjective reviews. A situation that has persisted for decades and is only now being challenged by sites such as ASR, Erin’s Music Corner, Archimago’s Musings, Audioholics etc. The likes of Ethan Winter and late great Peter Aczel made a concerted effort to restore the balance back towards an objective approach but their efforts met with considerable resistance, derision and even personal attacks.
Doesn’t this sound a little familiar now?
Why is this the case?
The subjectivists approach actively encourages consumers to spend, spend, spend ever increasingly large amounts of money on equipment and cabling. Most of them usually include an ad hoc performance league masquerading as a buyer’s guide that always correlates with increasing prices. Spend, spend, spend! This buyers is regularly updated with ’new and better’ products as they become available for purchase and quite callously renders yesteryear’s highly rated products as ’old news’. Everyone from the manufacturers, the dealers, and the journalists seems to be happy with this state of affairs. Few dare to challenge this unwritten dictat.
Why bite the hand that feeds you?
Everyone, that is, apart from a growing number of consumers who are beginning to ask a few questions and demand a little more proof of these claims. And this is where the main issue seems to lie. An increasing demand for evidence based reviews and recommendations will inevitably threaten the livelihood of some of those with vested financial interests. Some will no doubt adapt and adopt a more science based approach but others will be prepared to fight to the death rather than renounce their views. Especially when it means a loss of earnings and income. History has many examples of folks willing to die for their beliefs, usually political or religious, rather than renounce them. However, the pursuit of money is another powerful driving force that also seems to be incredibly difficult to renounce. Such are the ways of mankind. |
@cd318 What have I repeated infinitum. I at least want manufacturers to post test measurements of their own rather than puffery or minimal specifications. Furthermore, high end cable and nearly all tweak manufacturers have no specs. That’s why I opened another forum. Another thing, since when is older, used equipment to be dismissed in place of new equipment? For those who want great sound without breaking the bank, I strongly suggest good to high quality used equipment instead. This goes for amps, pre-amps, phono stages, SUTs, speakers and cabling. Why pay top dollar (or even bottom dollar) when there are ample alternatives. I made this point yesterday. No comments about it. @prof You’re doing it again, twisting my words. Most music listeners (many friends who perform music as well) don’t care about measurements or audiophile equipment. If they like what they hear they will buy it. (Often, if they like what they see, buttons or nice finish, they may prefer that). You can’t change our minds refers to people hearing differences. We are not deluding ourselves although many audiophiles do have problems hearing and/or do not have sufficiently trained to hear or understand what differences there are to be heard. Dramatic differences can be heard by (nearly) everyone. Subtle differences are of course more difficult for most people. My golden ear friends are better than I am in ascertaining subtle differences but after 50+ years of listening to so many systems and making recordings, I am quite good at detecting and comprehending differences. Dramatic differences are like hearing Disney Hall versus Dorothy Chandler or Wilson versus Magnapan speakers. How about Bose versus Magicos? That's how dramatic a digital cable change can be. Amir hasn't heard it. Sad! @kota1 Loved your link. Great quote-Every scientific genius in history was been subjected to viscous derision by the scientific dogmatists of their generation who were often laughably wrong in retrospect. History is filled with examples and this debate of break-in/burn-in is no different. |
That is it though. They were scientific geniuses. You are not. Neither are all the detractors of science writing here on this topic, nor the cable vendors, nor the amp designers, nor designers of probably any of the audio equipment we buy. Those scientific geniuses and certainly all the ones from the last 50 years, all had one thing in common. Before they had their defining moment of genius, they already had a very strong theoretical background in their field of study/work. My plumber is not going to get lucky and perfect cold fusion, and my dentist is not going to cure cancer. Those advances do not happen in isolation, they happen because those geniuses studied the work of those who came before them, and to study that requires the knowledge and language to understand that prior effort. Ergo, it will be the user base of ASR who makes advances in audio, not the ones here. |
@crymeanaudioriver Well that was stupid! How many actors have great inventions? Paul WInchell, Hedy Lamarr come to mind? No. Winchell became the first person to build and patent a mechanical artificial heart, implantable in the chest .Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress and inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems. I am not a genius, but I am very smart from book learning and experience. Touche your greatness! |
@fleschler Yes, that’s precisely what I thought you meant, and that is my point. This is the dogmatism buried in to the pure subjective mode of vetting audio gear. If you are of the "ASR" state of mind, you start of by immediately acknowledging our fallibility. You may perceive that the music signal is audibly changing between, say, two different USB cables.
But you will understand "I could be wrong. I’m fallible." So it STARTS with acknowledging I Could Be Wrong, and then appeals to ways in which you can find out you are wrong: For example if someone measures the signals from both USB cables and they are precisely the same. This is some evidence the signal was likely not changing at all. But if you want even further confirmation that the measurements aren’t missing something, you can do a blind test where you are truly relying on what you can hear (and not + what you can see). If you can’t detect any sonic difference, then you have a good basis for learning "Hey, looks like I was wrong in thinking one USB was altering the signal vs the other." Similarly, if you are SKEPTICAL that, say, Amplifier A will sound audibly different from amplifier B, then you have ways of changing your mind there too. If someone presents measurable evidence that Amplifier A has distortion levels in the audible range and B doesn’t, then you have some evidence for changing your mind. And, again, blind tests in which the difference is reliably identified adds more evidence. So from the ASR point of view, one always starts with some humility WITH REGARD to the confidence we have in our own judgements of perception, acknowledging from the outset we could be in error. AND it provides ways of "Learning I was wrong, through evidence." Anyone taking the ASR approach is in principle open to being wrong; they just ask for good evidence. In other words "Here is what I believe, but I could be wrong, and HERE is how you can show that I’m wrong." But what you have just re-iterated states the problem with pure subjectivity perfectly. Your stance seems to be ’If I hear it, I am not wrong. No way! And you can’t bring ANY of your arguments or evidence that will change my mind!" Can you see now where the actual close-mindedness resides? That approach is unfalsifiable. If "My Own Perception Is Reliable" is the ultimate litmus test, then even when someone else uses precisely the same method to "disprove" your belief - he listens to the same set up and declares ’There is no sonic difference," you can always say ’Well, the only shows your hearing is not as perceptive as mine, because I Know What I Hear And You Can’t Show I’m Wrong!" Can you tell me in a case where you are "sure" you are hearing sonic differences, how...using your method of relying on sighted perception!... someone could show that you’re in error, so you’d change your mind?
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Complete rubbish from an arrogant condescending troll.
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I had to research the Hedy Lamarr story. That is a huge leap from the website whose text you plagiarized. Jumping between radio frequencies to prevent jamming is not "scientific genius". It was both a simple solution to a problem and it was already done manually in the early days of radio when two people communicating would decide together to change channels to avoid interference. It took me a total of 5 minutes to find this out. To think that event was necessary to have WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth is a gross reach, but you didn't write those words, so I will only partially hold you to them. She also did not do this on her own, but with someone skilled in the art.
Perhaps this is the issue. You don't fundamentally understand science. Neither of the two developments you mentioned are scientific discoveries. The first is a relatively simple engineering idea, a practical solutions to problem, and if Hedy Lamarr had not been involved, it would be a non event, like the other 10's of thousands of practical ideas that people come up with every year. It is akin to intermittent wipers. I don't think we would consider that a scientific advancement would we? Winchell built a pump to replicate the pumping functions of the human heart. Not a scientific discovery, but an engineering development. He was not the first to think of this idea, and it is not clear that he even advanced the overall development. This is a medical view of the development timeline of artificial hearts: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5358116/
The largest portion of intelligence is genetic. Book learning and experience does not make you smart, it makes you skilled. At the highest levels of "smart", recent research indicates you can only train for minimal increases in intelligence.
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Well, since I’ve been asking this question - "by your method how can these matters of fact be settled?" - of "pure subjectivists/golden ears" for years and no one has ever answered...you’ve made a pretty safe bet. Would like to learn I’m wrong this time, though. |
I don’t think you understand. Dramatic differences should be heard by most listeners. Subtle differences are more nuanced and may require some musical and or audio (learned) abilities beyond what most people can easily detect or appreciate. If you think that dramatic differences cannot be heard, that's your opinion and certainly not the majority of Audiogon members. |
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this |
You've avoided answering the question, and missed the point. People can imagine "dramatic" differences. They really, really can. Like I said, if we really want to get at what is true, it doesn't matter how much conviction someone has in their belief or claim; what matters is the plausibility and the evidence for that claim. And as I've pointed out: the approach at ASR is acknowledging one can be wrong in what we believe or seem to perceive, and offers ways of learning one is wrong, and helping to settle questions in dispute - through evidence.
Whereas you keep repeating versions where you simply assume your perception is reliable, as you have done again, which is begging exactly the question at hand. And you don't offer a method for how anyone could show you are in error. So far, your position still seems to be a form of dogmatism - "Some differences that I hear are OBVIOUS and that's that! Nothing can show I'm wrong!"
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@henry99 , One thing I have learned in just a few short days, is that one thing @prof is not, is incoherent or rambling. You may not understand him, but that is a fault of you, not him.
Do you think maybe you are being a bit dramatic? And if you are a believer, perhaps take heed of not bearing false witness. Then again, we could look at the apt Timothy 4:3, "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."
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He has been here for a while. 19 different usernames. I learned that @crymeanaudioriver is full of the crapola!
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@prof: Here is the thing. A while ago I was looking around for a new DAC. I listened to about 8 and in no case was the cost of the DAC mentioned. I just sat in a chair and listened to the same music. One that I disregarded very quickly was the Topping. The mid range is shrill and fatiguing. When I mentioned this on ASR I was told I was wrong and thrown out. I heard what I heard.
Interestingly, yesterday on FB one poster, (likely an escapee from ASR), posted that Amps that measure the same sound the same and that those with exceptional measurements are by far the best. There is one amp about which ASR members are wetting themselves at the moment as the best measuring Amp of all time. Yes it is ok. No I would not buy it as I find it boring. If your argument now is that I clearly like distortion, I have listened to the Mola Mola suite and think they are great. The same goes for the Kii3s and the D&Ds with their inbuilt amps and Dacs. They do sound excellent. Seriously? What a pile of horse manure On another note, I do follow Erin’s page as well as a few others that rely quite a lot on measurements. None are as dogmatic as ASR and none of their followers as arrogant, rude and objectionable as Amir and many of the ASR minions. |
I don't take everything Amir writes as gospel. I've had various disagreements with him on his forum. So I think critically about what I'm reading, and whether the arguments follow from the data. On the other hand, I'm quite aware he knows FAR more than I do technically, and has tons of expertise in areas that I sorely lack. I don't really find it hard to acknowledge when someone has expertise that I lack. My ego can take it. How about you?
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So you and others continue to demonstrate that my anaylsis is correct. "You heard what you heard" and nobody can tell you otherwise. As opposed to at ASR people can actually correct their impressions through additional evidence. They are open to being wrong. I’ll contrast your experience with my own regarding "I heard what I heard." In the 90’s some folks were sure all properly functioning DACs/CD Players sounded the same. I understood the basis for this, but at the time I had a Meridian CDP, a Sony CDP and another DAC. They all sounded subtly but distinctly different to me. However, I knew I could be fooling myself so I had my engineer father-in-law help me do blind tests (with the levels matched using a voltmeter at the speaker terminals, to ensure precise volume matching). Results: I easily and reliably was able to detect which player I was hearing, even when I couldn’t see which one was playing. I even repeated the results in another blind test later on. So blind tests do not always equal "No Sonic Differences." They can uncover real sonic differences. Another example: I moved from an Apple based streaming server system to a Raspberry Pi/Logitech streamer. When I did I was surprised to find the sound a bit more bright and brittle with the Pi system. This bothered me because I wasn’t expecting any sonic difference, and yet there it was, play to hear! Before I got more frustrated I thought I’d better check and a friend helped me blind test between the two servers. Well...what do you know? Once I didn’t know which was playing there was NO difference to the sound whatsoever that I could reliably detect. Not a bit of added brittleness or brightness to distinguish one from the other. I tried and tried. Nothing. So, that was good enough for me. No sonic differences were really there. And sure enough, once I’d done this test I never heard a difference between them again. My system sounded like it always had.
Sometimes we are hearing accurately. Sometimes we are mistaken. I find these to be very useful lessons in what it feels like to imagine differences. Sound perception really does change with our attention, our mood etc. And then we attribute this to an objective component, rather than our subjective interpretation. As I mentioned earlier, it’s too bad more audiophiles haven’t had this experience. It would make these conversations much less adversarial. But most just can’t accept the idea that if they REALLY feel like they heard something that they could actually be mistaken. (Plus, then you wouldn't get to Lord it over others, like "objectivists" by rejecting any expertise on the grounds "your expertise doesn't count in the face of My Personal Experience!") I suppose part if it feels like a house of cards to some: "Wait, my senses are reliable to get me through the day, all day long, and now you are trying to tell me they aren’t reliable? That can’t make sense!" Well, yes, they aren’t of course totally unreliable. Our senses are generally reliable. But we are also prone to error as well. See: optical illusions and countless other instances. Nobody needs to "science the sh*t" out of everything they do. But if we really want to get at the truth of some things, then we should be ready to admit that our human fallibility is one of the factors we have to control for.
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Do you think insults are really necessary? Is it possible you maybe didn’t understand the point of what I wrote, rather then me being an idiot?
Yes. I know. The point was that you wrote that the folks on ASR said you were "wrong" about the shrillness of the DAC, but that you wouldn’t countenance this because "You heard what you heard." The point was...it really is possible the DAC really wasn’t producing any shrillness and that you were imagining it (a bias listening effect). It is actually possible the ASR guys were right. It’s possible that JUST LIKE MY EXAMPLE WITH MY SERVER, where I felt like I was hearing brightness/brittleness in the highs, but I was imagining it, you too may have been imagining it. Blind testing can be one way to remove variables, like our biases. It could also possibly be that you were NOT imagining the difference. But given the state of the art in DACs, and Topping’s reputation for well designed DACs, it should raise some red flags if someone says "this sounded shrill." I personally would, as in the case of my music server, want to rule out imagination first. Because we really, really can imagine these things easily. And no it doesn’t matter whether you like the most expensive DAC or the least expensive. Our bias works simply by listening for differences (and even when we aren’t deliberately listening for differences). This, yet again, goes to show how hard it is to discuss these things with someone who has never actually put their ears and biases to the test in blind testing. It’s humbling...and educational...but some will refuse to even consider the idea. It's sort of like having had hearing tests performed by audiologists that show you can't hear over 20kHz, and coming back to a group of people who absolutely insist they can hear up to 30 kHz, but never put that to an actual test in an audiogram (audiograms are a form of blind testing), and dismiss the expertise of audiologists or anyone who has actually taken the test. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know....
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@prof I don’t really find it hard to acknowledge when someone has expertise that I lack. Well, I believe I have that expertise in listening that you may lack. Other posters find some of your statements so unusual that they cannot respond. I’m sorry that you lack my capabilities after 50+ years hearing high end audio to denote something that is superior from that which is inferior, and I don’t mean on a subtle basis. Dramatic to me is much more than most high end reviewers commonly allocate to something new in the marketplace to sell. I’ve been fooled by subtle differences and mostly avoided costly purchasing errors. I don’t need test measurements to prove my listening results when a DRAMATIC (and positive) change is heard. However, to justify my own results, I have two golden ear friends and other friends and family to listen and approve or disapprove the change. When it is a subtle change, I can get a mixed review, sometimes it’s worse. When it is a dramatic improvement, I only receive accolades. Since I moved into my custom listening room, accolades are the typical reaction-listeners don’t want to leave. Who leaves the last spoonful of gelato in the can without finishing? |
Yet again...your replies are just exemplifying all my arguments for me. Every reply is based on your own infallible hearing. No other evidence need apply. And if for instance I didn't hear a difference between some tweak or cable where you thought you heard a difference, it could never be that I'm hearing what is real and you are wrong. It must always be you are right. And since you leave no way at all of adjudicating such questions, or learning if you are wrong, the only retort you leave yourself is to Lord it over anyone who disagrees - as you are claiming...with zero evidence... to have superior hearing capabilities to me. Let's see, how plausible is this brag? Well, I've been an audiophile obsessed with sound for most of my 58 years. Been a musician too. I've been obsessed with live vs reproduced sound for so long I've done recordings and comparisons of live vs reproduced. I have been so obsessed with sound that it became my livelihood - I work in pro sound post production doing sound for film and TV. I am typically balancing and mixing the audio of up to 60 tracks at a time. I am manipulating sound all day long down to the finest nuance, literally matching the "air tone" of different rooms. I guarantee you would not be able to pick out many of the things I can pick out in tracks. I've heard countless super high end systems. I've been an audio reviewer, and have had friends in the industry for decades, still hearing lots of the best of the best stuff. (My friend's system is currently cabled up with about $50,000...just for the cabling!). My reviewer friends call me to listen because they trust my ears to hear things they will miss. Etc etc. But...nope...you have somehow diagnosed that I must have cloth ears compared to your "capabilities." Well, anyone can claim "capabilities." I can claim to hear angels singing in the background on Kind Of Blue. Oh, you can't hear them? Poor you...you must lack my "capabilities." I can say that stuff all I want to puff myself up and lord it over you. Except you'd immediately recognize I haven't given an ounce of evidence for my brag. So we'd be even ;-) I've actually been willing to truly put my ears to the test - to see when I can hear differences WITHOUT the knowledge of what I'm hearing. Apparently this is experience you lack. And so long as you continue to lack this experience of really putting your claims to a test where you might fail, then I'm sorry, the claims fail to impress.
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I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm pointing out you COULD be wrong. Because people can imagine differences that aren't there. You aren't Superman. Do you have ANY idea why blind and double-blind testing is used in scientific studies? Are you aware AT ALL of the fallibility of human perception? There's only a billion studies showing this. This thread like every such thread just shows this inherent personal dogmatism. People in the "If I hear it it's real" camp simply can not admit they could be wrong. Don't even seem to realize it's a possibility. It's fairly astonishing to ignore that much about the human condition.
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Alright - comparing the 8 I listened to the Topping was unlistenable for me with Callas' Casta Diva compared to the other 7. Happy now?. How can I imagine differences when I did not even know what the fricken Dac was? It was the last on the list by far. I have noticed that ESS Sabre chips are not to my liking. |
If you stream most of your music like I do the DAC isn’t the issue, it is getting a pristine a stream as possible. The streaming services are the bottleneck IMO. Find ways to upgrade your network, your ethernet, reduce the noise and jitter coming from your streamer, etc. Upgrade your content with hirez downloads, vinyl if that is your thing, etc.
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