@hilde45 nice post. Only thing I’d add @toronto416 is that, with respect to power conditioning products, I think one can make a much stronger case for a measurements-first mentality there than for virtually any other product. The point is to “filter out noise” or “lower the noise floor”. These are very easy to measure, and I would argue harder to objectively and consistently hear. So it is precisely for these sorts of products that ASR is most useful, in my view, particularly as it’s an area of the industry most prone to fraud and misrepresentation. If someone says their products filter the AC mains, why on god’s green earth wouldn’t you want someone to measure that for you before you spent a dime of your hard-earned money?
The Audio Science Review (ASR) approach to reviewing wines.
Imagine doing a wine review as follows - samples of wines are assessed by a reviewer who measures multiple variables including light transmission, specific gravity, residual sugar, salinity, boiling point etc. These tests are repeated while playing test tones through the samples at different frequencies.
The results are compiled and the winner selected based on those measurements and the reviewer concludes that the other wines can't possibly be as good based on their measured results.
At no point does the reviewer assess the bouquet of the wine nor taste it. He relies on the science of measured results and not the decidedly unscientific subjective experience of smell and taste.
That is the ASR approach to audio - drinking Kool Aid, not wine.
Showing 6 responses by mdalton
While I wouldn’t characterize myself as “ an ASR supporter”, I do think ASR has provided valuable insight in several areas. 1) DACs - Providing consistent measurements for every DAC they test is helpful, though as others have suggested, these are useful data points that are certainly not exhaustive with respect to how DACs actually sound. 2) Power conditioning products - As I mentioned previously, this is an area of the industry where I believe there is a fair amount of misinformation and even fraud. So I think some of the work ASR has done here has helped prevent some audiophiles from spending money on products that may have no - or even negative - effects on the sound of their systems. 3) Network switches - Same as power conditioning products, only more.
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Well, I notice that you only responded to one of my 3 examples, lol! But with respect to DACs, I think each of the measurements is intended to reflect some specific aspect of sound. Whether you like that quality is of course up to you. But the measurements are intended to, and I think generally do, correlate with a specific quality. For example, a high signal-to-noise ratio means the signal produced by the DAC is high compared to any background noise or interference, which in turn means that the DAC is likely to sound “clean” and retrieve a high level of detail. So the benefit of ASR measurements, which was one of your questions, is that they help informed consumers of the data know which DACs they might prefer if, for example, detail retrieval is one of their listening priorities. Finally, I’ll reiterate that I don’t believe that these measurements tell the whole story about any DAC. Two of my four current DACs measure among the best ever measured by ASR. But my favorite of my 4, while it hasn’t been measured by ASR, would almost certainly not measure as well. And it may well be that my fave is a little less detailed, or has a little more second harmonic distortion, or maybe it just has a little more bloom in the midrange cuz it has a better power supply. I’m not sure, and I’m totally fine with that. I think some of us have a tendency to get way too dogmatic in this hobby. I include some of those at ASR as well as some here at the ‘Gon. Bottom line, I believe ASR has added a lot to the knowledge base for many in our hobby, and I appreciate that. |
Think you may have intended your post referencing the Dave for someone else. I don’t have one. Regarding your post about the Puritan, you left out what mattered in Amir’s conclusions, which contained no inconsistencies. Here’s the full conclusion: “Conclusions
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Amir’s conclusion actually says “So if you have audible mains related interference that is above a few hundred Hertz, then the PSM156 may have an effect”, which is decidedly less dogmatic than my friend @samureyex. If you read Amir’s stuff on other power conditioning products, what he pretty consistently argues is that AC filtering is usually unnecessary because well-engineered products always have, and must have, power filtering built in that occurs before the conversion of AC to DC. My take is that in your use case, you are arguing that the interaction of multiple devices has generated noise that has been dumped back into the AC mains, and that one or more of your devices has failed to filter that noise before conversion to DC. And this would be very easy to measure. Now Amir, who can get dogmatic himself at times, might argue that any gear that fails to filter out that noise is poorly engineered. I have a different view. I have alot of tube gear, which is far more susceptible to noise than solid state, particularly when you’ve got the low level signal involved with an analog front end. I’ve had annoying noise gremlins that required a fair amount of experimenting to eliminate. In one case, I ended up actually having to remove a filtering device that was somehow adding noise, and replacing it with a simple star-grounded power strip. During my experiments, I came up with a crude but effective way of measuring my results: I used a db sound meter app on my phone and held the phone next to the speaker while turning up volume to 12:00. My control sample was my digital front end, which even with all my tubes was very quiet. I then would do the same when I engaged my tube phono pre into the system, trying all my different power combinations. As I said, crude, but highly effective (for me anyway). YMMV. |
I have similar views. Product types for which I have a healthy amount of skepticism include power conditioning, high-cost streamers, and network switches (omg!). Manufacturer claims regarding their low noise levels, jitter immunity, etc. could be easily documented, but in virtually every case they don’t. Hmmmm…. |