@holmz
I felt there is no other way for you to get the info you were requesting about gear.
The measurements of the gear are different than the measurements of how the gear behaves in a room right?
That depends on if it is a signal measurement or a room measurement?
The former is an electrical thing for components, IC, speaker cables, amps.
The later is about fields, which are measurement of the resulting acoustic field… that combines the electrical signal with the speaker and the room.
To isolate and remove the room and speakers, makes it a bit easier to consider how each component, IC, cable etc is contributing or not to the overall picture.
The ICs will not really have a whole lot to do with the room, unless it is high inductance or capacitance and being use like a tone control.
If there is some other thing happening with crystal boundaries, or dielectric polarisation, then that too should show up as the signal being changed when comparing one IC with another.
When this cannot be shown, it leads me to believe that it may not be measurable.
I advocate getting the room right first and yes, in room measurements can indeed make the trial and error process a bit faster (and maybe even less expensive).
^This^ I can abide.
Now, to answer your question to the OP of how to separate the real deal from a fable I can’t tell you a single measurement that will get you 100% guaranteed satisfaction that your money was a good investment. If you know a better way than auditioning it in your own room I am open to trying it.
Well there is a null test, and ICs should respond well to that… and power cords should show that the signal coming out of say a power amp is either the same or changed if one can compare them. But this never seems to be shown.
Speaker cables have inductance and capacitance, and the speakers have larger current demands than an IC. When a cable coma-any has specs that is great.
With, or without, that I can only assume that if I want the total inductance and capacitance to be low, then I should probably keep those cables on the short side.
I’ll likely stay with the IC mostly using Mogami/Neutrik combo, and a few speaker cables of Magomi or cotton/.copper, and a few ICs using silver and cotton.
Most of my ICs are only as long as they need to be, and I would rather spend the money on electronics until such time as I can understand if the IC are different or not.
Better is good, but to begin with can we even know if they are different?
I would not recommend just taking some expensive speakers that measure well and sticking them in a room with bare walls like some of our scientifically minded guests.
There are step function and impulse response measurements.
The FR can be largely corrected with DSP/EQ, and the impulse response somewhat corrected with Dirac.
Whether someone starts off with the room or speakers, they often often end up with both good speakers and a somewhat treated room. More often than not the room work comes later… so there is no great dishonour in having speakers that measure better as a start.
It doesn’t matter too much how well treated a room is treated if the speakers have poor impulse response, poor frequency response, resonating boxes, being output limited by compression, and have high harmonic (IM, and Doppler) distortion… but the room treatment may help with their radiation pattern and remove some brightness from the FR.
For casual listening, fine. For critical listening and professional reviews maybe get some feedback from a knowledgeable third party like Anthony Grimani at www.sonitususa.com or Jeff Hedback at www.hdacosutics.net.
A lot of people start with a speaker in a room, and then go to DSP, Dirac, or RoomPerfect, and/or add treatments.
I guess this last part is what separates us?
Namely whether it is a for critical listening, or causally listening to music.
And then what are we critically listening for?
I often start out wanting to listen to music and get blocked by sibilance, and once the grating sibilance is gone, then I get happy again.
The recordings that are overly sibilant just end up staying in their sleeves most of the time.
