Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts
@crymeanaudioriver @amir_asr You are sitting there worrying if this or that other useless tweak like a cable makes a sonic difference.
I don’t worry about my equipment unless it fails. I never worry about tweaks or cables. The last time I had to choose a cable was after I purchased my first DAC and transport in 2019. I auditioned six and chose one, the Synergistic Research Atmosphere X Euphoria. Why would someone with as fulfilling a life as me worry about cables or tweaks and it is in YOUR mind that they are USELESS.
@prof "would it be safe to say you are not an electrical designer or electrical engineer? If so, under what authority do you make the following comment" - concerning creating a high end DAC out of a mediocre DAC.
Well, I have such a DAC, built by a manufacturer of equipment and cables for his and my use. It beat out a $9,000 COS Engineering D1v and $5,000 D2v by a longshot. It is comparable to an $23,000 Meridian Ultradac. Because I tried all the latter three in comparison I say this with some authority, the authority of a recording engineer (me), a manufacturer (friend) and many audiophiles who have heard the same and came to the same conclusion.
Another DAC with excellent design engineer and inferior execution is the Emotiva XDA-2. No new audio board but 7! audiophile quality regulators instead of the computer grade junk inside, similar high end power and filter caps, resistors, etc. to make this into a high end DAC on the very cheap ($400 new plus about the same in added parts).
@russ69 We must be neighbors. I frequented Woodland Hills Audio Center back in the 70s and 80s. I heard several of Arnie’s speakers including a the large Infinity speakers in a home.
This is a non sequitur, but I listened to the top measured products on ASR compared to some which measured worse, and I was shocked at how bad the top ones sounded by comparison. Because of course, they are not measuring everything you can hear. Like a good magician setting up a card trick, Amir will narrow your lens of perception before the trick begins. Never thought about that forum again after that.
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Sounds like a lot of gear! Which gear?
Which ones? That could help put your post in to some perspective.
How do you know that? Instruments are developed to augment our capabilities, to the point of detecting things humans can't detect. What exactly are Amir's instruments incapable of measuring that you can hear?
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@prof soundstage, imaging, and note decay, and that's just off the top of my head. |
invalid, Are you suggesting that those parameters are not contained within the measurements used by Amir? How would you show that? First, there are measurements that correspond with things like the soundstage being perceived as bigger (e.g. measurable influence of reflections and also speaker dispersion on those measurements), imaging (good cross-talk measurements, proper balance in both channels reaching the ear etc), good "note decay" would be implied in low distortion, etc. Also, depending on the gear, you can do things like null tests which, if the results are the same, imply no change to the signal is occurring between the measured components. It would be question-begging to assert that nonetheless the signal had changed audibly (without some very strong evidence for that claim, beyond anecdote). |
I can picture some of the filter roll off and preringing in a DAC might be something that’s not covered in a SINAD of a tone, or 2 tone measurement.
Decay is likely rolled up in impulse response. But imaging is something that happens in the head. |
