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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
p05129
503 posts
 

Who listens to ASR? Terrible reviewer, a measurements are everything type of guy, just like stereo-hole, which has determined that something that measures very good can sound bad and vice-versa. 

I can't believe I read some of these posts here on agon. These are more appropriate for the ANA site. Somebody claims wearing a blindfold will alter the sound you hear. Ok, how about when you wear glasses, the glass/plastic will have a reflective surface that will also impact the sound. How about if you're bald? Another reflective surface. How about if you have long hair over your ears? Is your hair a defuser or an absorber? How about if you have cataracts? Sound kindof off the wall IMO.

1 more thing: buying a new better piece of equipment might trigger you to get another piece of equipment that betters something you might already have. This is not a placebo effect, it's upgrading. Say you have a great sounding system in a small room and you move into a much larger room in a new house. So you upgrade your speakers to a larger pair, then find out you need a more powerful amp to fill the room, so you upgrade the amp. This happens quite a bit, moving to a new house and your current system isn't the best for your new environment

 

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jimrobie
46 posts
 

NYEV, very well said.  Several months ago I bought up a simple observation about ASR, specifically related to the number of highly rated DAC's from a certain Asian country.  I got a direct response from ASR who pointed out that he had rated one USA brand very highly which was true.  The next day the WHOLE discussion was taken down by Agon which I find ridiculous.  So thank you for bringing it up so eloquently.

I even posited that it may simply be that the engineers from said country are the best at implementing this relatively new audio segment and these new DAC chips.  It may be these engineers are the best at designing for measurements that ASR and maybe others are currently defining as important.  Especially in a new audio segment, I think we may see new ways to measure what we are actually hearing as you allude to.

nyev OP
1,031 posts
 

I feel our knowledge of chairs may yet evolve.  Only recently we’ve started focusing on that fact that sitting for too long causes issues, with many employers encouraging the use of standing desks. So @fredrik222 , again, I get the logic of your argument, but I guess I just don’t agree with it, because I think we still have a lot to learn about how commercial electronics impacts our senses.

 

fredrik222
522 posts
 

@nyev i can see that, and you keep confusing things, so you will never actually understand what you don’t agree with. The health issues related to sitting is not something that changes what we know about chairs. Sure, it may influence future designs, but again, it doesn’t change what we know about chairs. 
 

since you can’t get things like this straight in your mind, you are not able to have a scientific discussion, and that is why people who believe in facts and science have very little patience with people who just vomits words.

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