ACTUAL MUSICAL SOUND VS. MEASUREMENTS

This subject has been rattling around my brain all day.

It occurred to me that the preference of many for vinyl over streaming/CDs gives us a steer towards there being more to assessing sound quality than just measurements.

By all objective metrics, the digital formats should be superior to vinyl. Yet, many people prefer listening to vinyl records. I have made comparisons between the formats using a Linn Klimax DSM/3 and a Linn Klimax LP12 with Urika II.

My preference was strongly for the sound of vinyl, despite the turntable falling short of Linn’s best. Granted not every LP is perfect, but generally the LP12 has a touch of magic that the DSM/3 lacks.

I’d argue that this is fair indication that measurement doesn’t tell us everything.

Don’t try to tell me that my preference for the LP12 is the result of confirmation bias. This test is repeatable. Also, it would have been much more convenient for me if I’d preferred the DSM/3. That would have saved me considerable expense.  

Ideally, I would have used a wider range of players. For my purposes that is not necessary and I’ll leave it for others to do. Of course, my preference is the result of subjective judgement. Isn’t that the nature of qualitative assessment and why quantitative measurement can only go far?

@wolf_garcia exactly I dont like math problems mixed with my music. I wanna not think and let go and let the music move me. BINGO! 

@everyone glad you are on this thread. Love the points of view and humor. This is what it’s about. Disagreeing without name calling or making enemies. Thanks. 

The only measurement I understand the amp power, preamp gain, speaker sensitivity, sormetimes cart measurement, and cables length.i care most of the musical performance and system matching.

If you’ll allow me another analogy, I think back to the seventies and eighties when I found myself in the world of business. Without any formal training and very little guidance, I had to invent my own way of doing things. I had studied physics at university so I naturally fell into using numbers and accounting to control and shape the organisation. I looked for mathematical relationships in the figures as if I was doing physical science.

This approach was successful up to a point, but the real world is irreducible, messy and unpredictable. Organisations have both a hard and a soft side. Numbers and accounting aren’t a panacea. You have to leave room for the individuality, intuitiveness and creativity of people. To give their best they need a degree of autonomy and freedom so that the organisation can respond to complexity.

Similarly in hifi, the quantitative engineering approach is the essential foundation on which everything is built, Yet it is not the whole story because there is a need for qualitative thinking to get the complete picture. There has to be a balance between control and freedom or the scientific and the artistic.