Thorsten Loesch vs Amir

 

It’s an interesting read so far, the following quote from Loesch in the thread is what I would call as plain as the nose on your face:

“I will not particularly criticise Amir, but I’m looking forward to the day when he finally fixed the groundloops/pin1 problem plaguing his AP2 measurements, something really basic.”

Amir will not address that statement in any credible way since this would be an admission that he is totally incapable of dealing with the intricacies of proper measurement details and would make all of his tests suspect. Even if Loesch’s opinion that maybe Amir was dumb enough to have pin 1 connected to the shell of his xlr connectors when he performs a test there is obviously some reason for the constant apologizing for the ’I tried everything I could to get rid of that 60hz crap but couldn’t do it.’ Not to mention the interference and noise sources common in a residential neighborhood which would negate the chance of any single test results being repeatable.

@larabee

Can you explain it in context of this:

What is Thorston saying?

• Is it to not connect pin1 on XRLs
  or
• Not to connect pin1 to the shell of an RCA?
  or
• Something else?

I think the warning here is to avoid the cult of personality prevalent in consumer audio that is almost completely absent in professional audio. My customers never ask "who" designed a particular speaker. They do ask for particular engineers when it comes to system implementation, integration and tuning, but design? Never.

I don't know why, but I wasted time looking at Thorsten's posts, and some of Amir's replies. I never came across anything on XLR connectors, just one comment about power cables. I did come across Thorsten's strong opinions against ABX while at the same time, I think, putting forth superiority of the ITU methodology. We do extensive formal listening tests so it is something near and dear to my heart. I agree with Thorsten in principle on many areas of testing, differ in some, but also disagree with his fundamental premises on ABX (including that it is discredited, which is not true).

The overall impression I get from both of them is that they are not used to, and certainly do not like being challenged by people who are able to do it effectively and calmly. To me, they both try to browbeat their detractors as a way to avoid addressing the arguments made against their positions. I doubt I would enjoy a spirited discussion with either of them. I am reminded of one of my favorite comedy sketches by George Carlin. I will just say obviously neither of them is stupid, and I don't think either of them is nuts, so that leaves one option.

I am looking to buy a high end DAC.

Does anyone have the link to the manufacturer of the Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC?

• Not to connect pin1 to the shell of an RCA?
  or
• Something else?

@holmz

Something else. There's something called the 'pin1 problem' dealing with balanced lines. Quite often the ground tab of the XLR connector gets tied to pin 1 (they are right beside each other on the connector, contributing to the confusion around this).

You can get into noise problems with this. We avoid that by simply leaving the ground tab alone and only using pin 1.

Another area where this is problematic is trying to get single-ended gear to work with balanced equipment, while also supporting AES48. I'm not going into this in depth, but to give you an idea of the mayhem that can go on let's take the example of a magnetic phono. Its a balanced source, but 99 44/100ths% of the the time is treated as single-ended. But you wind up with the 'ground wire' that other single-ended sources don't seem to need.

(Yet I still run into tonearm manufacturers that are unaware that magnetic phono cartridges are a balanced source!)

You can ground the ground wire to the ground of the RCA and quite often it will work fine. But every now and then it doesn't.

Its that fiddly bit where it doesn't always work that's the problem.