I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.
I just can't clear my head of this. I don't want to start a measurements vs listening war and I'd appreciate it if you guys don't, but I bought a Rogue Sphinx V3 as some of you may remember and have been enjoying it quite a bit. So, I head over to AVS and read Amir's review and he just rips it apart. But that's OK, measurements are measurements, that is not what bugs me. I learned in the early 70s that distortion numbers, etc, may not be that important to me. Then I read that he didn't even bother listening to the darn thing. That is what really bugs me. If something measures so poorly, wouldn't you want to correlate the measurements with what you hear? Do people still buy gear on measurements alone? I learned that can be a big mistake. I just don't get it, never have. Can anybody provide some insight to why some people are stuck on audio measurements? Help me package that so I can at least understand what they are thinking without dismissing them completely as a bunch of mislead sheep.
Not sure you are interested but the spuriae (peaks at certain frequencies) make the average number look worse than it is. You are just looking at the raw number and that isn't telling the whole story.
Links please. |
You are buying audio to listen to it, not to put a meter on it and measure it. Obviously how it sounds is the most important thing. In my own case I recently bought a Lindeman Limetree Bridge, even after it was lambasted by ASR, why, it sounded wonderful, it still sounds wonderful. It was lambasted for high distortion, well I doubt anybody could hear 10x the distortion or even a 100x the distortion it was criticised for. We are in the zone of analysis paralysis. ASR criticised the Bluesound Node similarly, there of hundreds of thousands sold and 99% of people are probably completely satisfied. There is a great story about washing machines (sort of) a well known speaker on product quality in the 1980's showed a slide to the audience with data from experts on washing machines. They concluded which was the best washing machine. He then asked the audience who owned a washing machine, he then asked them what they thought the best brand was, the outstanding vote was Maytag. Maytag was not the best according to the experts. At the end of the presentation he asked people who didn't have a current machine or were unhappy with their present machine what brand they would buy? Overwhelmingly they said Maytag. Because they trust the people that have got them, more than the people who measure them. Trust yourself and how it sounds to you, there is no one else who can predict that, no matter how many reviews or how many measurements. |
@realworldaudio , I feel most of what you wrote is made up. I don't think you will be able to clearly articulate what is missing from the measurements and certainly not 95% of the things that are missing. Perhaps this is the issue. This sounds more like outrage mob mentality that reasonsed criticism. I am welcome to be proven wrong.
@realworldaudio I am still waiting for you to answer the above. You have not provided one missing measurement let alone the 95% missing you claim. You can do your own Google, I did. When you can list some of that missing 95% of measurements I will indulge your request.
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Many great thoughtful comments above most of which I completely agree with. I will say that I have enjoyed several of the ASR vids. No, not a fanboy and his overall opinions on sound quality are to be taken with a grain of salt. I don't care what he is measuring I just find it interesting in the sense of a procedural exercise. Regards, barts |
