Send in the Clowns

@laoman Daniel von Recklinghausen, the head engineer of HH Scott (a US manufacturer of tube amplifiers in the 1950s and 60s) once said all you need to know:

If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad; if it measures bad and sounds good, you've measured the wrong thing.

If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad; if it measures bad and sounds good, you've measured the wrong thing.

This statement should preface every thread on every audio forum on the internet. 

Thanks for starting the thread - this debate has bothered me for some time.

The career I've been in for nearly 30 years involves analytical testing of both fluidic and electronic systems, all of which sits well outside the realm of audio. That experience has, however, made me realize what I view as an objective truth: In the grand scheme of things, the ability to measure electrical signal has not been with us for very long at all, relative to all "things" that can be measured. Moreover, it's probably fair to assume that the advancements in electrical signal measurement have been driven by an interest in measuring "things" other than those that translate to auditory perception. It should therefore not be particularly surprising that we've only broken the edge of being able to measure audio signals in ways that translate to how our brains perceive sound.

A good analog would be to travel back a few hundred years to a time when optical technology was in its infancy and we still believed Earth was the center of the universe. Through optical advancements, we've clearly come to understand otherwise. And with time, perhaps we'll be able to measure the audio signal charcteristics that translate to how our brains perceive audio properties such as sound stage and imaging, and the auditory queues for spacial arrangement we can perceive in highly resolving audio systems. 

For now, I'm perfectly happy to enjoy the experience I perceive with my system and accept the fact that no one can currently explain through signal measurement how the changes I perceive in cables and electronics affect that experience. And yes, I'm well aware of placebo and confirmation bias effects.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”

William Bruce Cameron (quoted famously by Albert Einstein)

From personal experience, and accounts of other audio friends, I’ve listened to many of the inexpensive overseas and US made top measuring chip DACS as measured by a well known “scientific” audio forum.
These DACS sound mediocre at best. Nominally gray, flat, electronic sounding. Lack of: color, life, and inner vitality that keeps one from really getting something out of a good listening session. DACS like this are good for cars, desktop PC speakers, etc but can’t compare to the much better musical DACS available.

Basic measurements are an important part of design and basic functional verification but their response to passing musical signals and the relevance of that analog result to “musicality”, simply can’t be quantified. As Nelson Pass said, IIRC, our ears are not microphones, and our brains are not oscilloscopes”.