@richardbrand
"Now I do have a couple of magnums of Henshke Hill of Grace in my basement ."
Now we are talking. Mount Mary is another wine I prefer.
The Audio Science Review (ASR) approach to reviewing wines.
Imagine doing a wine review as follows - samples of wines are assessed by a reviewer who measures multiple variables including light transmission, specific gravity, residual sugar, salinity, boiling point etc. These tests are repeated while playing test tones through the samples at different frequencies.
The results are compiled and the winner selected based on those measurements and the reviewer concludes that the other wines can't possibly be as good based on their measured results.
At no point does the reviewer assess the bouquet of the wine nor taste it. He relies on the science of measured results and not the decidedly unscientific subjective experience of smell and taste.
That is the ASR approach to audio - drinking Kool Aid, not wine.
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@samureyex |
While I wouldn’t characterize myself as “ an ASR supporter”, I do think ASR has provided valuable insight in several areas. 1) DACs - Providing consistent measurements for every DAC they test is helpful, though as others have suggested, these are useful data points that are certainly not exhaustive with respect to how DACs actually sound. 2) Power conditioning products - As I mentioned previously, this is an area of the industry where I believe there is a fair amount of misinformation and even fraud. So I think some of the work ASR has done here has helped prevent some audiophiles from spending money on products that may have no - or even negative - effects on the sound of their systems. 3) Network switches - Same as power conditioning products, only more.
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@samureyex @jrareform LOL! ASR s faulted for evaluating equipment based on measurements (which are actually relevant to audio such as frequency response, distortion), and then you adduce measurements that are INaudible (capacitance, resistance, maybe also color?) to support your claim of differences? LOL!!! Can you tell from listening that cable has 10 µOhm/m vs 20 µOhm/m? (no idea about actual values, as they are irrelevant to audibility). The real question is, are those different values audible, i.e. human perceptible? ASR makes excellent case that they are not, based on measurements that are RELEVANT to audio. That is why Amir makes frequent reference to threshold of hearing to put measurements into context of human experience. Yes, Amir uses equipment that can measure differences way below the threshold of hearing, which is good scientific practice. Make sure you can possibly show differences relevant to the question at hand above noise floor of measuring equipment. I use scanning electron microscopy to look at 1–10 µm structures, although light microscopy could theoretically resolve down to 250 nm; in practice less due to diffraction, but that's a different story. Re burden of proof, of course, nobody HAS to do anything. This is in context of scientific hypothesis testing, and there H0 is always no difference. Without having to show anything, scientifically there is no difference. QED. |
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