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

Amir is like a superman in term of listening.  It only takes him 1.5days whereas it takes people at Stereophile weeks. :-)

That's the logical fallacy of the Exluded Middle. Don't be silly.

 

No it's not.  It was an example of a lazy argument I was flagging one not to fall in to, and therefore leaving it open to you to justify your position.  I didn't foreclose that you had a good argument; I asked for the argument.

 

I've already done that. In my view, a test of an audio component is not complete without a listening evaluation. I understand you disagree, and that Amir disagrees vehemently. So be it.

 

Sure, that's fine.  Except that opinion offers no justification for your characterization of Amir's position, re any specific instance where he didn't listen.  It still hangs in the air looking like a lazy dismissal, rather than engaging his reasons.  Hence...my previous example remains relevant.

 

I think Amir needs to test equipment using transient methods.  I think his tests mostly are done using frequency domain which is steady state.  Most of stuffs in music happens in transient.

 

Phase and Magnitude in the frequency domain transforms into the time domain.

Phase and Magnitude in the frequency domain transforms into the time domain.

That is true in theory but I don’t think Amir even doing that. But jitter is difficult to test in frequency domain, just to name a few.  There are more.

@amir_asr wrote and I quote  'So please don't pull that stunt and debating tactic at me.  The reality is that you are bothered by what we do so you want it stopped'

Dear Sir,

I was just beeing polite and answer to your comment on my previous post. I do not see any subject that we might debate over (cars included) and certainly nothing bothers me about your hobby. Its mystery to me if and why anybody is? 

But, as you have mentioned cars and audio, you have missed the crucial point. Performance of cars can be messured, bot not the feeling of driving one. Same with audio, despite all marketing or messured perfromances, the feeling or recreation of some percived musical event is something that is happening inside our heads. For that reason there are so many different visions of sound and that is why we have Franco Serblin and Magico, set tubes and monster ss, etc

Now, I do not believe that you have not realised that before, its just something inside you that makes you want spread your black and white vision. Nothing wrong with that either, but  just dont stop with audio. You could do so much more. I urge you to reconsider possibility to expand your field of work. There is a whole world of windmills out there. You are perhaps suffering from illusion of your own 'grandezza', but without it you would not even started doing what you do. So, go ahead, noble  ingenioso hidalgo, the world needs salvation