I don’t know how to reconcile the competing views among the reviewers, including those writing for Stereophile, other than to listen for yourself. You could, I suppose, write all of this off as just another example of the divide between the subjective and objective schools of audio. Doesn’t this assume that measurements showing no departure from the input signal mean ’more accurate’ and (here’s the rub in my estimation) that ’more accurate’ measurements invariably mean a more convincing reproduction of a musical event?
I’m not so sure you can always make that leap. Music is complex. Accuracy to a series of test signals tells me something but it doesn’t tell me everything. Accuracy to the master recording? Leaving aside the colorations introduced in the recording chain, what’s been done to the master to make it sound ’good’?
Accurate to the live event? Where are you sitting? How good is your sonic memory?
I think, for me, the easiest way to make judgements about reproduced sound is to ask whether it sounds real. Does a piano sound like a real piano? Very few recordings of piano sound convincing to me, convey the gravitas of the lower registers and the air around the upper registers with the bite of the attack and the gradually diminishing envelope of harmonic decay.
Subjective preference? I think some people like to hear all the detail. My preference would probably go the other way, toward sins of omission, since I often find analytical systems fatiguing. But, those are conclusions, aren’t they? One person’s "analytical" is another’s "fully detailed and revealing."
Perhaps, rather than reaching conclusions, the reviewer's job is to report what they heard, without all the gloss about hot sauce and fur. One of the most interesting things about that whole dog fight was Atkinson’s characterization of his measurements as an "opinion."[1]
Full disclosure: I bought a Border Patrol and like how it sounds. I’m basically an analog guy in a digital world. I find the biggest variable to be the difference in recording quality and mastering. That’s been a long standing issue for me in vinyl-land, and as I have only recently started to play with digital in my main system (which is far more weighted toward vinyl playback in terms of expense), I’ve been sorting through various masterings of the same recording in digital formats, mainly Redbook. There are profound differences there, which I guess should be no surprise, but I’m new at this digital thing.
Will I go all spendy on a DAC at some point? Maybe. Does the BP sound like real music to me? I’ve been pretty pleased with what I hear on some recordings, despite many years of ambivalence toward things digital....
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[1]"In our review, the DAC SE impressed Herb Reichert for delivering "refined, human-sounding musical pleasures," but didn’t do well on the test bench. (In particular, I criticized BorderPatrol’s use of what I felt was an "underperforming" chip.) Given this conflict, I felt a third opinion was called for...".
I’m not so sure you can always make that leap. Music is complex. Accuracy to a series of test signals tells me something but it doesn’t tell me everything. Accuracy to the master recording? Leaving aside the colorations introduced in the recording chain, what’s been done to the master to make it sound ’good’?
Accurate to the live event? Where are you sitting? How good is your sonic memory?
I think, for me, the easiest way to make judgements about reproduced sound is to ask whether it sounds real. Does a piano sound like a real piano? Very few recordings of piano sound convincing to me, convey the gravitas of the lower registers and the air around the upper registers with the bite of the attack and the gradually diminishing envelope of harmonic decay.
Subjective preference? I think some people like to hear all the detail. My preference would probably go the other way, toward sins of omission, since I often find analytical systems fatiguing. But, those are conclusions, aren’t they? One person’s "analytical" is another’s "fully detailed and revealing."
Perhaps, rather than reaching conclusions, the reviewer's job is to report what they heard, without all the gloss about hot sauce and fur. One of the most interesting things about that whole dog fight was Atkinson’s characterization of his measurements as an "opinion."[1]
Full disclosure: I bought a Border Patrol and like how it sounds. I’m basically an analog guy in a digital world. I find the biggest variable to be the difference in recording quality and mastering. That’s been a long standing issue for me in vinyl-land, and as I have only recently started to play with digital in my main system (which is far more weighted toward vinyl playback in terms of expense), I’ve been sorting through various masterings of the same recording in digital formats, mainly Redbook. There are profound differences there, which I guess should be no surprise, but I’m new at this digital thing.
Will I go all spendy on a DAC at some point? Maybe. Does the BP sound like real music to me? I’ve been pretty pleased with what I hear on some recordings, despite many years of ambivalence toward things digital....
_______
[1]"In our review, the DAC SE impressed Herb Reichert for delivering "refined, human-sounding musical pleasures," but didn’t do well on the test bench. (In particular, I criticized BorderPatrol’s use of what I felt was an "underperforming" chip.) Given this conflict, I felt a third opinion was called for...".