I Am Tired of Bogus Measurements

That is 4 strikes @kota1 ,  Hans Beekhuyzen is not an expert, I suspect he is not an expert on anything. That video does nothing to negate the work published by Golden Sound (which I came across when researching MQA a while back). If this is the best rebuttal to a very extensive test, that indicates to me that Golden Sound is probably right. You don't negate technical arguments with words, you negate them with technical arguments.

As soon as Hans starts to call into question something as fundamental as Nyquist, you know he is highly unqualified to make any statement about the topic though he tries to recover by stating no one has proved him wrong.  Not content to make himself look bad trying to call into question, Nyquist, he then starts talking about distortion and filters, claiming all filters make distortion. Marginally true, but also linear distortion, which we are much less sensitive too. Good thing or every speaker every made would sound horrible. Try comparing the linear distortion of a speaker to a DAC. Oh boy, that would be an eye opener for Hans!  He then makes a statement that we should be using 192Khz, though no one seems to be even able to prove conclusively we need more than 44.1, but perhaps he is not aware of even the most basic things about DACs and ADCs that most of us working near the technology can pick up by osmosis. Maybe I am wrong, but I suspect Hans is not very technical.

But all that aside, he makes the claim that most people prefer MQA to not using MQA. Funny story, but researching that is how I became more aware of Audiogon. I searched the web, and the most frequent comparison was Qobuz and Tidal. It was not overwhelming in Qobuz's favor, but significantly more preferred Qobuz in my non scientific internet review.

ASR tried cancelling GR Research using bogus measurements so another reviewer showed up to check it out personally. What happened? What do you think:

I think Strike 5!

For one, that was probably the worse wine/audio analogy ever made. I always picked my wines purely on the alcohol content, color and grape type, and not the 25 other major chemical compounds that contribute to taste.

So we are on to two. Two two two .... I guarantee those two crossovers will not measure the same. Just by looking at it, I know the iron core inductor will be much lower resistance than the air core inductor that replaced it. Also, those enormous film capacitors will have different ESR at frequency also impacting the final response. Perhaps at a gross level they will be similar, but not in detail. The changes will be as substantial probably more than your worry about component tolerances.

How else do I know this is not done by what I would consider a truly experienced professional? Start with the flat wire inductor. They look so high tech don’t they? I would almost want to use one just because they look good. Their reason for existence is a claim of reduced skin effect, even up to 100KHz. First, why do I care about the woofer part of the circuit at 100KHz. They claim less self heating due to space factor and winding density, but each wire layer is heavily insulated and the total surface area is less than a standard wire wound inductor meaning that in practice, a standard air core is superior thermally. I could go on about highly variable winding diameter, etc. but I think I said enough. I will finish with the itty Miflex capacitor next to the enormous Miflex capacitor. They are both +/-5%. What exactly is that small one supposed to do? It looks like it would be about 1/100th the value. Is that supposed to be a high frequency bypass? You will not find that on the crossovers of high end speakers for a reason.

Interesting sidebar:  Do you know why audio film capacitors are always 250, 400, 630V even though audio signals are never anywhere near those levels?

@kota1. Now you have me really confused. Are you now saying that measurements are good as long as they validate your subjective experience?

@yoyoyaya

All of the measurements should be considered bogus that are promoting an "angle" or self serving point of view. Obviously a manufacturers measurements can be self serving to promote their product. A reviewers measurements can be used to promote traffic to their site to generate revenue. Both players may have an angle, I call bogus on both.

I auditioned, I liked. Screw the "measurements. I found it interesting that Nordost published an article that confirmed my experience. I had that setup long before Nordost even acquired QRT from the founder. That’s all. I would not recommend buying something because of a measurement, only auditioning.

Interesting how they used a "chain" of devices to generate the results. I didn’t believe them because of their measurements, I believed them because of my in home experience.

Another reason measurements are bogus is reviewers pass judgement without actually using the product. In this example the measurements are kept in context of actual usage:

The AV8805 is a significant engineering achievement, both in the complexity of the design (look at that back panel!) and in its measured performance.

This next reviewer never even used the product as part of a home theater as intended:

Conclusions
Performance here is not awful but clearly could be a lot better as sister group Denon has shown. $5,000 is a ton of money for an AV product so performance needs to be much more optimized than it is. .

Bogus, anyone buying equipment can skip both sets of measurements. One guy likes it, the other guy "meh". You need to audition at home.