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Why HiFi Gear Measurements Are Misleading (yes ASR talking to you…)

About 25 years ago I was inside a large room with an A-frame ceiling and large skylights, during the Perseid Meteor Shower that happens every August. This one time was like no other, for two reasons: 1) There were large, red, fragmenting streaks multiple times a minute with illuminated smoke trails, and 2) I could hear them.

Yes, each meteor produced a sizzling sound, like the sound of a frying pan.

Amazed, I Googled this phenomena and found that many people reported hearing this same sizzling sound associated with meteors streaking across the sky. In response, scientists and astrophysicists said it was all in our heads. That, it was totally impossible. Why? Because of the distance between the meteor and the observer. Physics does not allow sound to travel fast enough to hear the sound at the same time that the meteor streaks across the sky. Case closed.

ASR would have agreed with this sound reasoning based in elementary science.

Fast forward a few decades. The scientists were wrong. Turns out, the sound was caused by radiation emitted by the meteors, traveling at the speed of light, and interacting with metallic objects near the observer, even if the observer is indoors. Producing a sizzling sound. This was actually recorded audibly by researchers along with the recording of the radiation. You can look this up easily and listen to the recordings.

Takeaway - trust your senses! Science doesn’t always measure the right things, in the right ways, to fully explain what we are sensing. Therefore your sensory input comes first. You can try to figure out the science later.

I’m not trying to start an argument or make people upset. Just sharing an experience that reinforces my personal way of thinking. Others of course are free to trust the science over their senses. I know this bothers some but I really couldn’t be bothered by that. The folks at ASR are smart people too.

nyev
decooney
2,111 posts
 

@raysmtb1 ..Threads like this make me yearn for a much simpler time. Like many years ago when we had tone controls. Everyone’s looking for a way to tweak their system these days. it was so much easier back in the day when you turn knob or push a slider.

 

Maybe it’s true that history repeats itself some times. You’re in Luck! No joke, a 50+ year in audio and audiophile buddy of mine, he’s had several amplifiers, solid state, many many tube amps (mainstream, custom, one-off builds), several Single-Ended-Triode amps (10+), and umpteen different tube preamplifiers (10+). He’s rotated through many speakers, and MORE TUBES and trying different coupling capacitors, more than anyone I’ve ever met in audio. To a ridiculous degree.

After buying a new tube preamp with "tone controls" last year, a few weeks ago he finally caved in and was ordering one these - now retired from rotating gear. And, does not give a hoot about measurements any more - just how it sounds to his ears.

Shared he wants to simply turn a knob, play music, change sound with a Remote Control. Tone controls, hey not a bad idea, back to "simpler times" - hahah. Out of Stock.

https://www.schiit.com/products/loki-max

raysmtb1's avatar
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raysmtb1
801 posts
 

@decooney thank you sir! For sharing that with me. I think the world would be a simpler place if we all let each other touch each others tone controls.

steve_wisc
45 posts
 

My thoughts on ASR, Part II....My favorite ASR story.:

* Amir tests a pair of speakers and gives them a big thumbs down.

* Manufactorer posts that entire test was done beyond the max SPL specification.

* Insta-ban/thread delete.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but there are many twisty knobby switchy things on test equipment. My thinking is I can make a graph say anything I want.

But perhaps I'm wrong

fredrik222
522 posts
 

@nyev there is a pretty significant difference between saying that one topic is fully understood and saying that there is nothing new that can come up.
 

To make it more simple for you, the topic of a chair is fully understood, yet, there are new models of chairs using what is understood differently coming out every year.

mastering92
870 posts
 

@steve_wisc

Right on. ✔

Also testing just one speaker at a time; not both. Driving them to Nabraska. Then saying they don’t produce a linear response. Also, like @kota1 said, and he’s right; Amir’s room is untreated.

I mean, if you have non-ported speakers (small) that are right infront of you - in a nearfield setting; room treatment is not nearly as important.

For floor standing speakers; which he also measures, room treatments are signficantly more important. Especially since those speakers are meant to fill a room with sound and have way more potential/reflection points. One could suggest the machine alone negates all of this, but that is unlikely. Since of course, those machines for measurements may have also been made with human error and engineering choices that the owner is unware of, which adversely impact the results.

I could go further, but this wack-a-mole is so bruised I almost feel bad.

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