Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy

fleschler,

Here is my own approach to these questions:

Nobody is being force to become engineers or do scientific or blind tests when evaluating equipment. Nor should they be.

But it’s still the case that many of us want to know what is true...or LIKELY...or not in regard to claims about audio gear, because there are so many different claims, and we care about how we spend our money and time.

So if I’m voicing skepticism about your results, you don’t have to do a thing. Just carry on. But I am giving my reasons for why I find the claims uncompelling.

So when you say if you hear dramatic results it suggests you must be hearing something real, unfortunately that’s not true. We really can imagine "dramatic" results. Just consider the astounding number of experiences people believe they’ve had, everything from alien abductions to becoming convinced they were part of satanic rituals when they were a child to utterly implausible alternative-medicine treatments that "worked" etc. If someone can imagine they were probed by an alien, you think an audiophile can’t imagine "less midrange glare or better dynamics?"

So I approach another audiophile’s claims not on the strength of his personal conviction, but on the plausibility of the claim. If someone is describing to me the differences he heard between Devore and Magico speakers...hey...TOTALLY plausible given that we know very well speakers differ in very audible ways. Could there be some bias infecting the claim? Of course. But as a practical matter, it’s reasonable to conditionally accept the claims of the sonic differences.

But if someone is declaring their new $1,000 USB cable has dramatically improved his system, deeper bass, bigger soundstage, more dynamics and all that...well that is a more implausible claim based on how digital signals work. I’m not going to demand THAT person make his decisions based on MY criteria, but I am going to explain why I would want stronger evidence than that person’s say-so, before I accept the claim. And I will defend why that is rational for me to do so.

So don’t mix up what I’m saying as a declaration you have to do anything different at all in your pursuit of gear. I am simply defending the reasons for skepticism. If you think those reasons are poor ones, then yeah that becomes central to the debate.

@mattw73

Do I make all my purchases because of high SINAD rating? No, but it helps as a starting point for certain types of gear I may be looking for. I have my own brain and I’m able to make my own decision on what sounds good to me without asking a hundred different people about what they thought about something I purchased.

Can you give an example of what that gear (you may be looking for) is that ASR helps you as a starting point in. It’s a bit confusing really. And where does the science come in, in measuring?

@prof Do you believe that power cables can exert different sonic sound to a system, or they are not capable of a difference or significant difference.

My enigineer friend’s example of Pangea power cable versus GroverHuffman power cable is based not only on subjective hearing but also knowing the manufacturing process of those cables. The Pangea lacks the current capability and isolation of the GroverHuffman cable. The latter has a triple powdered metal suspended in a glue for the RF/EMI shield encased in a silver shield and then in a faraday cage-like copper shield. It has 2 mil thick, embossed all copper elements in an air core dielectric which he owns a patent on. After trying Furutech, Oyide and several other high end connectors, some Taiwanese all copper connectors were chosen as they did not impart a "brighter" sound for their brass, silver and rhodium connectors. Luckily he found copper connectors which did not get loose over time and had excellent grip. I don’t know if they are OFC or 6N. It was also determined that using these off-brand connectors were cost effective and permitted the cables to be sold at a reasonable price (some Furutech connectors can cost as much as the rest of the cable components or more). Every component of his cables was selected from listening to the results of various materials.

Cut open a Pangea 9 SE Mk II cable and you’ll find Cardas Grade One Copper, OFC copper, and Litz wire copper conductors. Quote-Counter-spiraled conductors offer superior noise rejection, and the triple-shielded design provides high-current noise isolation. The large-diameter 7-AWG construction boasts seven-way multi-gauge geometry optimized for high-current delivery of 50/60 Hz AC power. The solid-blade 24k gold-plated copper AC contacts provide superior electrical contact end quote. The triple-shield is not very sophisticated and the counter spiral, Litz design could or may not be the reason for the poor sound. Regardless, at least I know what the physical differences in the cables are. The difference in sound was extreme with the Pangea ruining a very high end system of nearly $1/2 million.

I was ASR member since November 2018. It was different back then. We absolutely could and did have objectivists-subjectivists discussion threads like this one. Only without name calling. Learned a lot from each other in the process.

Got booted off ASR in fall of 2022. As far as I understood, for arguing with moderator about the degree of Fourier Transform math applicability to some of the gear evaluations Amir routinely does.

Things changed quite a bit in these almost four years. I agree with those characterizing the nowadays ASR moderators attitude as "Scientology", "Vulgar science", or "Popular science".

References to actual formulations and proofs of theorems, or peer-reviewed scientific papers, are no longer accepted as relevant. Only measurements in Amir-prescribed way.

How did it happen? Being somewhat of an ASR old-timer, I believe I have an insight. Back then, there also was a cadre of loud members. Yet we were all equal, with low "like"scores, and could compete on merit of our arguments.

Soon enough, we discovered that spending half a Saturday digging out originally recorded samples, processing them, doing A/B/X, and presenting ASR with raw data, processing protocol, and results, would yield maybe 5 likes.

However, quickly inserting a snide remark, typically at the expense of a new member, especially of a new subjectivist member, proved to be a sure way to score around 10 likes. And so the loud ones jumped on this bandwagon with both feet.

In about two years, one could observe an incredibly smart, experienced, and polite member, with 30+ years of professional experience in the field who would stand at about the same ASR rating as someone with opposing qualities yet really good at derogatory jokes.

Year three appeared to me as a tug-of-war between the two camps. I was usually subscribed to several of the more technical members. In year three they were posting less and less, and then most of them stopped posting. So did I.

Meanwhile, Amir was doing tons and tons of relevant testing, which I appreciated, and I supported him financially. In a way, ASR became by favorite audio consumer reviews paid online magazine, yet I no longer contributed to discussions.

We moved into a larger house this year, and I finally got an opportunity to have three rather different audio systems: for office, living room, and guest room. Some gear reshuffling and purchasing was in order.

Went back to several Web sites and Youtube channels, including ASR. The character of discourse on ASR was quite shocking. Tried to correct certain inaccuracies like I did in year 2020 (naive me!). Got booted out two days later.

As I understand, the loud ones are ruling ASR now. I can't make a blanket statement obviously, because I don't know all of the current moderators and those who reported me to the moderators. Yet things surely changed.

Quick look at the current status of some of the known old days loud members confirmed that they are "Technical Experts" and such now, factually deciding who stays on ASR and who goes. Online "social credit" experiment gone wrong I guess ...

Thank you for your valuable and insightful perspective, and welcome to a place that hopefully, you can feel comfortable posting. 

On an aside, have you recognized any of the "technical experts" posting here who've been running roughshod over the members back at ASR?

All the best,
Nonoise