Someone stumbling onto this thread might feel like this:
All the best,
Nonoise
Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy
"Audiophiles are Snobs" Youtube features an idiot! He states, with no equivocation, that $5,000 and $10,000 speakers sound equally good and a $500 and $5,000 integrated amp sound equally good. He is either deaf or a liar or both!
There is a site filled with posters like him called Audio Science Review. If a reasonable person posts, they immediately tear him down, using selected words and/or sentences from the reasonable poster as100% proof that the audiophile is dumb and stupid with his money. They also occasionally state that the high end audio equipment/cable/tweak sellers are criminals who commit fraud on the public. They often state that if something scientifically measures better, then it sounds better. They give no credence to unmeasurable sound factors like PRAT and Ambiance. Some of the posters music choices range from rap to hip hop and anything pop oriented created in the past from 1995.
Have any of audiogon (or any other reasonable audio forum site) posters encountered this horrible group of miscreants?
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@henry99 Requoting you: There has been NO ONE who says that measurements, ASR measurements or any measurements are useless! Most seem to be like my (and Henry's) view. They aid in the evaluation of equipment, but I do not rely on them alone. What has been the issue from the 1st page (of this forum) is the CULTURE of ASR! And that to that, you keep reiterating their point again and again, ad nauseam. For a man who flaunts his education, I would think you’d get it by now. (@crymeanaudioriver). |
It is not in my review charter to help either camp in that. That aside, I did build an emulator of a 2-way speaker per stereophile. And used it for a bit of testing. It didn't reveal anything useful so I retired it. I have used real headphones for headphone amps. That too was a useless exercise as the back EMF combined with the impedance of the amp produced completely erroneous and misleading THD measurements. Similar situation exists with testing amplifiers with speakers. Even if something useful popped out, who is to say that speaker is representative of any other? It may be a corner case, an easy case, or a difficult case. Who knows. I do vary the resistive load to test for load sensitivity and report on that (usually a problem with low-end class D amps although some high-end ones suffer the same). Finally, keep in mind that any speaker or emulated load of one would have to be at very low power. There, distortion may not be material at all (swamped by noise). This is why JA at stereophile only uses is load emulation for frequency response test. Yes, there is a $15,000+ load cube that provides a couple of reactive loads (NOT representing any real speaker). Audio critic had one but I think it blew up on them and they no longer used it. I would spend the money if I thought it would add value but it simply doesn't. Making sure this point is understood: there is a very high bar for adding more tests to the suite that I run. Every test suggestion must come with strong justification which I have not seen in any of your posts. Folks on ASR routinely make such suggestions. You want a new test? Come back with real data that shows usefulness. "Would be nice" isn't going to work. A lot of things would be nice but not when it clutters existing measurements and take time and resources form testing other products. |
What is the solution? Ban them after a few posts when you realize they are going against the grain of the forum/thread? |
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