Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

@audphile1

I’ve tried SS amps in my system over the years, most recently the Bryston 4B3, and I have always ultimately preferred my CJs.

I enjoy the slightly cleaner sound of my Benchmark SS preamp sometimes vs the CJ tube preamp...but then again often prefer the CJ preamp. (I actually did a blind test between them, just out of curiosity).

My view is that ultimately the level of distortion we are talking about in, say, my CJ tube amps vs a Topping or Benchmark amp, are quite low. There’s no "incredible revelation of detail" from some of the best measuring solid state amplification even compared to my old tube amps. With the tube amps it’s more of a slightly different presentation of details, vs one being "way more revealing" than another.

Of course being an audiophile means obsessing over the tiniest sonic differences. That’s what makes us kooks vs the general public :-)

So I use the tube amps because even if the audible difference is very subtle in the big picture, it’s a subtlety that is subjectively significant for me.

But I certainly think it’s a great thing for people like Amir to get measurements out there so an audiophile who wishes to can use that information. An audiophile who is seeking accuracy isn’t going to choose my tube amps over a Topping, and knowing measurements can help ensure he knows what he’s getting.

Amir, can you share what constitutes a "properly run listening test" from your perspective? What characteristics are you listening for, specifically?

It wildly varies depending on class of product.  On say, a power tweak, I listen for any difference regardless of what it is.  If I can distinguish it from not using the tweak, then that is major news by itself.

For testing of distortion, it is best to hear it exaggerated first, and then dial it back.  So if you have a low power/high distortion amplifier, first crank it way up and hear the distortion clearly.  Then back down the volume control and see at what point that same artifact is no longer there.

For things like speakers, single speaker testing doesn't make sense.  Ultimately we don't know how a recoding is supposed to sound like.  Research relies on paring at least 4 speakers together and compare them.  That way, the bad speaker will stand out as an exception to the rest.  Such tests are outside of the means of most audiophiles but a few have tried as I linked to yesterday.

In all cases, deep knowledge of what you are testing, including measurements, is a great help to focus your listening tests.  This is very important in hearing lossy compression artifacts for example.

Back to speaker (and headphone listening), selection of content is paramount.  You want broad spectrum content that is mostly invariant.  That is, it doesn't keep changing.  That way you can do comparisons without the content itself changing on you.  This is incredibly helpful when I am developing EQ filters to correct response errors.  I want to be able to turn the filter on and off and hear the effect.   But if the content changes from dumbs to vocals and then the piano, I can't do this.  

Something very useful in testing lower powered amplifiers and speakers/headphones is to have a mix of bass and high frequencies.  This way, when the bass notes come and demand power, you can listen to not only how they get distorted by the impact on the rest of the spectrum (e.g. brightness as a result of too much harmonic distortion).

Another key is to stick to the same set of tracks and only use them no matter how tired you get listening to them!  You learn what parts of them are revealing, saving you time and effort.  Throwing a new random piece of music at every new piece of audio you are testing as some reviewers do, is just wrong.

Hopefully this at least partially answers your question.  :)

@prof measurements together with proper listening tests - I have zero issues with that. But I won’t be beating a dead horse.

Per usual you not pick the one thing I didn’t mean literally. I didn’t mean brick and mortar in the sense you sell speakers out of a store front I meant more it’s a physical service and product you sell. Still I’m dubious you’ve never made money off it. You did buy your own admission say that you sell speakers from traffic you get on your website.
 

@amir_asr I’ve lost count at this point how many times you’ve avoided answering me. Last time I will ask. Why did you close down the thread for the top 5 if you don’t care about money? A thread you torpedoed. It was going fine until you said you “hate” clickbait titles which is a laughable label. 

@soundfield I’ve got an idea. You send Amir a set of speakers to measure and he submits to a listening test. Trade. 
 

@amir_asr, precisely.

As to Musicians, while they hearing does get trained in certain areas (e.g. detection of reflections in a room), they do no better than general public when it comes to matters related to audio fidelity. If they did better, then they would mostly be audiophiles which they decidedly are not. My piano teacher for example just gives me blank looks when I talk about anything related to audio fidelity! Musicians listen to music from a spot in the performance venue that is different than us as listeners anyway.

As first hand personal experience (son / musician / music lover) proves this to be factual. For I’ve tested his audio fidelity limitations and my conclusion always stands … Clearly one who enjoys better fidelity playback however, in the pursuit (insert various levels) which we / all strive for is of very little interest or concern.