Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts

i appreciate prof sharing his perspective. the guy is saying over and over that he consciously chooses equipment that "speaks" to him in some way beyond a set of measured specs, and that he doesn’t look at SINAD charts and go "oh yeah that one clearly sounds the best." jokes and differing opinions are all good imho but the way some people have responded to these threads looks like a mirror image of the worst aspects of ASR - the ignorance, lack of reading comprehension, closed-mindedness, tribalism etc.

as for amir i think he’s got an engineer’s brain with a manager’s skill set and he’s been arguing on audio forums for 20 years. thus the certitude, the imperiousness, the unemotional attitude, the hostility towards subjective experiences of any kind, and the (it has to be said) admirable ability to wave away any/everything that challenges his position. this might not be a great set of traits for a scientist, but for a forum poster it’s basically ideal.

anyhow, for my part i’m basically with art dudley on this stuff - there’s no one Correct way to hi-fi, and the people who claim otherwise are just confused

Art Dudley-I miss him too. (I followed his reviews since the 1990s)  There are so many roads to reproducing music. His reviews were generally full of feeling for the music, music that I appreciate.

I more thing about the Benchmark L4 pre-amp. Four of the major reviews (Stereophile, Absolute Sound, Positive Feedback, Soundstage) had the reviewers extol the superior attributes of the unit at the price. However, none of them indicated they would replace the pre-amps they currently use or purchase one. Reviewers often purchase well reviewed products. This unit got outstanding reviews. Nope, no one purchase it. Why? Maybe the sonic flavor was missing (like warmth or body). I don’t know but based on what Mr. Hooper, two friends experiences with their amp & pre-amp, maybe there is a less perfect pre-amp at that price that is more endearing to the music listener.

Topping DAC versus Benchmark DAC-At significantly higher price, the Benchmark is a very superior constructed unit. My modified DAC, despite it’s ordinary parts, has a dual mono balanced design with linear power supply, nice size transformer and very good quality DAC chips. I forgot to mention how fantastically 3-D it sounds. The downside of the DAC is it’s analog volume pot. Sonically lovely, it has a significant channel imbalance when played below 50% level (measured reviews indicate the amount and setting). Benchmark now uses stepped resistor attenuators to alleviate that problem (The L4 uses 40 precision relays and two independent 256-step attenuators, one for the left channel and one for the right channel).

One other point, I only use balanced interconnects from my DAC as the unit was designed that way and sounds best that way.

@td_dayton +1, as for the one right way I can't say about components that is true but what about the room? I think a close to a flat frequency response in the room beats willy nilly, that is a constant. 

@sngreen The former forum was closed by the moderator. It got rather snarky at the end and discussion was getting off topic (especially after Amir returned to add his two cents-what his comments are worth here).

@djones51 No, Prof is not Matt Hooper. Mr. Hooper owns and cherishes his Von Schweikert VR5 speakers. Prof has Joseph Audio speakers and never mentioned VS speakers in his extensive speaker review on Audiogon. Prof thinks we are all hallucinating if we hear differences (without measuring or blind testing) and think they are worthwhile. Mr. Hooper speaks for himself.

@kota1 i personally plan to measure the response in my room at some point next year because i am genuinely curious what's going on down here. as for getting the sound i want, i fooled around with speaker placement and furniture for a solid year and a half trying to get things sounding how i wanted.

am happy to report that i don't have any audible reflection issues at all due to the 18'x6.5' and 4'x6' shelves full of records, the 200lb desk and attached shelf with more records, heavy antique chair, multiple rugs, and the heavy sleeper sofa i listen from. but i would love to have a measured frequency response to reference for when i start seriously looking at speaker upgrades (am in the process of saving now, and will be for a couple more years most likely), and also just because it's nice info to have!