2. misc-audio
  3. 185168-1635

Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.”  And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything?  For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think. 
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is. 

chayro
cd318
2,636 posts
 

@asctim 

To my ears, straight stereo two speaker playback ALWAYS has a particular sound to it, a degradation of the tone of center panned sounds that's unmistakable. It's a particular effect, and like Amir says about dipole planar speakers, I find it tiresome. 

 

Yes, there are millions of systems like this.

I particularly recall hearing the Quad 2805s and feeling the same...and yet, some folks love these speakers.

 

Or could it also be that stereo recording itself is in some way a dilution of the textures of a recording?

There are certainly many recordings where I favour the mono version for exactly this reason.

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,906 posts
 

@ghasley +2

All the best,
Nonoise

soundfield's avatar
soundfield
42 posts
 

To my ears, straight stereo two speaker playback ALWAYS has a particular sound to it, a degradation of the tone of center panned sounds that's unmistakable.

The science behind this is very clear and long known. https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=9136

Those who don't hear it as a problem are lucky because they only have to buy two speakers and don't have to find a way to do any up-mixing.

Ironically Amir is vehemently anti-upmixing. See this thread https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/what-do-listeners-prefer-for-small-room-acoustics.286/page-7#post-9703

But he went completely mute when he hero Toole made clear he does just that https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/effect-of-loudspeaker-directivity-compared-with-in-room-measurements.21508/page-14#post-1031803

Not a peep out of him about that ;-).

I haven't done a HiFi Show demo sans decorrelated rears in at least 7 years.

 

somethingsomethingaudio
116 posts
 

Keep deflecting @soundfield  

you both look like Tooles

othercrazycanuck
30 posts
 

@amir_asr ,

The LRS was both measured by me and by Workwyn for AudioExpress with the same results.  Speaker beams heavily creating a very narrow listing spot.  In addition, it has little to no bass.  These are facts enforced by physics of speaker design and there is nothing you can do about it:


Did you post the correct graph?  I went and looked at the review. This is the vertical directivity graph. I think it should be narrow because it is a line speaker. This would be a feature not a fault. On your website, the horizontal directivity seems wide, but I may be reading it wrong.

 

More to discover