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

@prof:
" ’If I hear it, I am not wrong. No way! And you can’t bring ANY of your arguments or evidence that will change my mind!"

Here is the thing. A while ago I was looking around for a new DAC. I listened to about 8 and in no case was the cost of the DAC mentioned. I just sat in a chair and listened to the same music. One that I disregarded very quickly was the Topping. The mid range is shrill and fatiguing. When I mentioned this on ASR I was told I was wrong and thrown out. I heard what I heard.

I could not afford the DAC I liked best by quite a long way and ended up buying one that sounded/sounds excellent to me. Interestingly that DAC measures well in the minion’s list, but that had no bearing on my purchase. I also like others that did not measure well, and do have a fondness for the scorned R2R Dacs. Again I hear what I hear and am not about to spend money buying something because someone tells me it measures well. Plus I want something that lasts and is not going to break like the Topping because of poor quality control. (Funny that minion leader NEVER addressed that point!)

Interestingly, yesterday on FB one poster, (likely an escapee from ASR), posted that Amps that measure the same sound the same and that those with exceptional measurements are by far the best. There is one amp about which ASR members are wetting themselves at the moment as the best measuring Amp of all time. Yes it is ok. No I would not buy it as I find it boring. If your argument now is that I clearly like distortion, I have listened to the Mola Mola suite and think they are great. The same goes for the Kii3s and the D&Ds with their inbuilt amps and Dacs. They do sound excellent. Seriously? What a pile of horse manure

On another note, I do follow Erin’s page as well as a few others that rely quite a lot on measurements. None are as dogmatic as ASR and none of their followers as arrogant, rude and objectionable as Amir and many of the ASR minions.

No religion, you just have to believe in a higher power than yourself...maybe like Amir? 

I don't take everything Amir writes as gospel.  I've had various disagreements with him on his forum.   So I think critically about what I'm reading, and whether the arguments follow from the data.

On the other hand, I'm quite aware he knows FAR more than I do technically, and has tons of expertise in areas that I sorely lack.

I don't really find it hard to acknowledge when someone has expertise that I lack.

My ego can take it.

How about you?

 

 

 

 

@laoman

@prof:
" ’If I hear it, I am not wrong. No way! And you can’t bring ANY of your arguments or evidence that will change my mind!"

Here is the thing. A while ago I was looking around for a new DAC. I listened to about 8 and in no case was the cost of the DAC mentioned. I just sat in a chair and listened to the same music. One that I disregarded very quickly was the Topping. The mid range is shrill and fatiguing. When I mentioned this on ASR I was told I was wrong and thrown out. I heard what I heard.

 

So you and others continue to demonstrate that my anaylsis is correct.

"You heard what you heard" and nobody can tell you otherwise. As opposed to at ASR people can actually correct their impressions through additional evidence. They are open to being wrong.

I’ll contrast your experience with my own regarding "I heard what I heard."

In the 90’s some folks were sure all properly functioning DACs/CD Players sounded the same. I understood the basis for this, but at the time I had a Meridian CDP, a Sony CDP and another DAC. They all sounded subtly but distinctly different to me. However, I knew I could be fooling myself so I had my engineer father-in-law help me do blind tests (with the levels matched using a voltmeter at the speaker terminals, to ensure precise volume matching). Results: I easily and reliably was able to detect which player I was hearing, even when I couldn’t see which one was playing. I even repeated the results in another blind test later on.

So blind tests do not always equal "No Sonic Differences." They can uncover real sonic differences.

Another example: I moved from an Apple based streaming server system to a Raspberry Pi/Logitech streamer. When I did I was surprised to find the sound a bit more bright and brittle with the Pi system. This bothered me because I wasn’t expecting any sonic difference, and yet there it was, play to hear!

Before I got more frustrated I thought I’d better check and a friend helped me blind test between the two servers. Well...what do you know? Once I didn’t know which was playing there was NO difference to the sound whatsoever that I could reliably detect. Not a bit of added brittleness or brightness to distinguish one from the other. I tried and tried. Nothing.

So, that was good enough for me. No sonic differences were really there. And sure enough, once I’d done this test I never heard a difference between them again. My system sounded like it always had.

 

Sometimes we are hearing accurately. Sometimes we are mistaken.

I find these to be very useful lessons in what it feels like to imagine differences. Sound perception really does change with our attention, our mood etc. And then we attribute this to an objective component, rather than our subjective interpretation.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s too bad more audiophiles haven’t had this experience. It would make these conversations much less adversarial. But most just can’t accept the idea that if they REALLY feel like they heard something that they could actually be mistaken.  (Plus, then you wouldn't get to Lord it over others, like "objectivists" by rejecting any expertise on the grounds "your expertise doesn't count in the face of My Personal Experience!")

I suppose part if it feels like a house of cards to some: "Wait, my senses are reliable to get me through the day, all day long, and now you are trying to tell me they aren’t reliable? That can’t make sense!"

Well, yes, they aren’t of course totally unreliable. Our senses are generally reliable. But we are also prone to error as well. See: optical illusions and countless other instances. Nobody needs to "science the sh*t" out of everything they do. But if we really want to get at the truth of some things, then we should be ready to admit that our human fallibility is one of the factors we have to control for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@laoman

I don’t know if you are stupid, are being deliberately obtuse, or cannot comprehend written English.

Do you think insults are really necessary?

Is it possible you maybe didn’t understand the point of what I wrote, rather then me being an idiot?

I wrote that I had no idea of the cost of or the Dac to which I was listening. I discarded those I disliked and purchased the best sounding Dac in the price range I could afford.

Yes. I know.

The point was that you wrote that the folks on ASR said you were "wrong" about the shrillness of the DAC, but that you wouldn’t countenance this because "You heard what you heard."

The point was...it really is possible the DAC really wasn’t producing any shrillness and that you were imagining it (a bias listening effect). It is actually possible the ASR guys were right. It’s possible that JUST LIKE MY EXAMPLE WITH MY SERVER, where I felt like I was hearing brightness/brittleness in the highs, but I was imagining it, you too may have been imagining it.

Blind testing can be one way to remove variables, like our biases.

It could also possibly be that you were NOT imagining the difference. But given the state of the art in DACs, and Topping’s reputation for well designed DACs, it should raise some red flags if someone says "this sounded shrill." I personally would, as in the case of my music server, want to rule out imagination first.

Because we really, really can imagine these things easily. And no it doesn’t matter whether you like the most expensive DAC or the least expensive. Our bias works simply by listening for differences (and even when we aren’t deliberately listening for differences).

This, yet again, goes to show how hard it is to discuss these things with someone who has never actually put their ears and biases to the test in blind testing. It’s humbling...and educational...but some will refuse to even consider the idea.

It's sort of like having had hearing tests performed by audiologists that show you can't hear over 20kHz, and coming back to a group of people who absolutely insist they can hear up to 30 kHz, but never put that to an actual test in an audiogram (audiograms are a form of blind testing), and dismiss the expertise of audiologists or anyone who has actually taken the test.   Sometimes you don't know what you don't know....