I think it is a hard concept (or fact) to accept, that for some, deep in whatever aspect of the technology we may be in (for me speakers), that we can get a lot more useful and unbiased information about how something sounds from a very detailed set of measurements than we can from someone (not us) doing a listening review of a product. I can't speak for others, but I expect in whatever product they are experts in, that they also can get as much or more useful and unbiased information from a detailed set of measurements than they can from a listen only review done by someone else.
Why HiFi Gear Measurements Are Misleading (yes ASR talking to you…)
About 25 years ago I was inside a large room with an A-frame ceiling and large skylights, during the Perseid Meteor Shower that happens every August. This one time was like no other, for two reasons: 1) There were large, red, fragmenting streaks multiple times a minute with illuminated smoke trails, and 2) I could hear them.
Yes, each meteor produced a sizzling sound, like the sound of a frying pan.
Amazed, I Googled this phenomena and found that many people reported hearing this same sizzling sound associated with meteors streaking across the sky. In response, scientists and astrophysicists said it was all in our heads. That, it was totally impossible. Why? Because of the distance between the meteor and the observer. Physics does not allow sound to travel fast enough to hear the sound at the same time that the meteor streaks across the sky. Case closed.
ASR would have agreed with this sound reasoning based in elementary science.
Fast forward a few decades. The scientists were wrong. Turns out, the sound was caused by radiation emitted by the meteors, traveling at the speed of light, and interacting with metallic objects near the observer, even if the observer is indoors. Producing a sizzling sound. This was actually recorded audibly by researchers along with the recording of the radiation. You can look this up easily and listen to the recordings.
Takeaway - trust your senses! Science doesn’t always measure the right things, in the right ways, to fully explain what we are sensing. Therefore your sensory input comes first. You can try to figure out the science later.
I’m not trying to start an argument or make people upset. Just sharing an experience that reinforces my personal way of thinking. Others of course are free to trust the science over their senses. I know this bothers some but I really couldn’t be bothered by that. The folks at ASR are smart people too.
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@andy2 ,
What did you want us to take from that PS video article? One would not measure interconnects by measuring the output of a speaker. Speakers are too sensitive to environmental conditions, prior operation, etc., not to mention that would also introduce an indeterminate error that may also have time effects from the speaker/amplifier interface. Far more accuracy would be achieved by measuring the output of the amplifier without the speaker which is what Bob Carver did when the made the SS amp match the output of the tube amp. A little bit of Paul's bias shining through when he said made the SS amp sound as good as the tube amplifier. |
No, you worry about a ton of things in your system that don't matter while we enjoy music. You think your wires may have sound. You think your amp has sound. You think the table you put the system on has sound. You think your AC has sound. You think digital sources have sound. You think, well, you get the point. We on the other hand, buy performant systems with confidence and sit back and enjoy it. We know why it sounds right. You don't. You are forever chasing ghosts in audio. The anxiety that comes with that must be immense. Ask anyone who has converted from your camp and above is the answer they give you. While you keep upgrading, tweaking, replacing stuff to remove that other "veil" and get blacker backgrounds, we queue up another track to enjoy. So I suggest getting off that talking point. That dog don't hunt.... |
You could do that. Or, if you are in our camp, use measurements to rule out audibility in many components (i.e. they are transparent). For others such as speakers, you can rely on companies that perform double blind tests, or use research that correlates what sounds good to us with respect to measurements. I have done this across some 200+ speakers now. The research works wonderfully. Same mostly works for headphones as well although measurements there are subject to more variations than speakers. Remember, the job here is not to give you 100% answer. It is to get rid of 90% of the variability by weeding out clearly broken and non-performant gear. The rest you can choose from and take in factors beyond performance. Compare that to the alternative the few of you follow. Completely unreliable listening tests. 1000 and one opinion about every gear, every cable, everything you can name. True wild west with zero regard for decades of research into what makes sense. |
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