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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
mastering92
870 posts
 

@speakerdude @prof lots of points to respond to. Let's hear from @amir_asr 

andy2
1,549 posts
 

On what do you base this claim?

I myself like my tube amps, but so what?  The vast majority of audiophiles use solid state amplification and are very happy with it.  (And that includes many who have compared with tube amps, or who had previously owned tube amps).

That is because a good tube amp will cost a lot more money compared to a SS amp.  To get the same performance you need to spend quite a bit more.  If money is not an issue, most people would go with tube.

The "haze" that you keep speaking of remains completely anecdotal so it doesn't really address Amir's points about how to reliably make such determinations.

The "haze" is there.  In the old day it is very apparent in SS amp, but now SS has gotten a lot better so you don't notice it as much but a listen vs. a good tube amp will reveal it.  FET amp tends to be guilty of this more so than Bipolar.

Look if SS is so perfect than nobody would use tubes.  But SS has its flaws but people will ignore it since it can output a lot more wattage vs. tubes.

 

andy2
1,549 posts
 

Let's hear from @amir_asr 

Is he your God lols :-)

 

mastering92
870 posts
 

@andy2 

Nope. I’m asking because I had posed a response to him above. Also, other members on different forums claiming his measurements were done incorrectly. Just saying...will post later when I’m home.

thespeakerdude
483 posts
 

Also if you look at a speaker freq. response and distortion, it is an order of magnitude (or even higher) higher than anything audio chain (amp, preamp), so measurement would tell you that it will dominate anything in the upstream components, it is not. You can hear the difference with different amp or preamp.

 

I have no doubt with the high output resistance of a tube amplifier that many could tell that apart from a SS amplifier because of the change in the frequency response. There have been many challenges put forth about amplifiers not run into clipping, and I assume of low output resistance sounding the same. Has anyone passed one of those tests? I can only offer my experience with active speakers, that the performance of the amplifier is indeed buried under the speakers performance assuming we are not nearing clipping. Some artifacts like noise are readily evident though, but that is to be expected. This is all determined in listening tests. These would all be SS amps with competent designs, so I don’t feel confident extending that to all amps. If I was making an amp for the high end consumer market, I think I would want to make it sound different. How else do you stand out? Otherwise you are competing with products that are much cheaper that do the same thing.

 

That is because a good tube amp will cost a lot more money compared to a SS amp.  To get the same performance you need to spend quite a bit more.  If money is not an issue, most people would go with tube.

Right now, on Audiogon, there are 113 Solid State amplifiers for sale over $5000, and 74 tube amplifiers over $5,000.

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