Wanting to be seen as smart and being intelligent are not the same thing folks.
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.
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The same could be said about non-audiophiles, who don’t even bother putting the amount of effort you have in to what they listen on. People just listening in laptops, iphones, earbuds, enjoying music and getting on with life. But we audiophiles care about sound quality, and are also fascinated by audio gear (which is why sites like this exist). The degree to which anyone is fussing over something will vary among individuals and have little to do whether one is in the "measurements camp" or the "listening only" camp; it will depend on the individual or even what particular stage they are at (e.g. in "upgrade/auditioning equipment" mode or sitting back enjoying the system mode). So, sure you can find ASR members who spend a lot of time fussing over measurements (doesn’t mean they aren’t enjoying their system too). You can also find plenty who just bought some gear based on the available measurements and...that’s that. They just sit back and enjoy. Alternatively you can find plenty of "subjectivist" audiophiles who endlessly fuss over their speakers/amps/DACs/tubes/cables etc "breaking in" or all manner of tweaky stuff that you won’t find ASR members worrying about. And you can also find more subjective members who aren’t fussing like that and are just enjoying their system - some change their gear a lot, other’s don’t. So there isn’t any in principle sense in which looking at measurements means someone isn’t able to just enjoy their system. You may enjoy reading a subjective review about equipment, someone else may enjoy reading how a particular thing measured. It’s all good. |
I think it is a hard concept (or fact) to accept, that for some, deep in whatever aspect of the technology we may be in (for me speakers), that we can get a lot more useful and unbiased information about how something sounds from a very detailed set of measurements than we can from someone (not us) doing a listening review of a product. I can't speak for others, but I expect in whatever product they are experts in, that they also can get as much or more useful and unbiased information from a detailed set of measurements than they can from a listen only review done by someone else. |
@andy2 ,
What did you want us to take from that PS video article? One would not measure interconnects by measuring the output of a speaker. Speakers are too sensitive to environmental conditions, prior operation, etc., not to mention that would also introduce an indeterminate error that may also have time effects from the speaker/amplifier interface. Far more accuracy would be achieved by measuring the output of the amplifier without the speaker which is what Bob Carver did when the made the SS amp match the output of the tube amp. A little bit of Paul's bias shining through when he said made the SS amp sound as good as the tube amplifier. |
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