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How much can be measured -- and how much cannot?

There has been a lot of discussion over the years on Audiogon regarding the measurement of components and other audio products. Some people claim everything is either measurable now or will one day become measurable with more sophisticated measuring equipment. But others say there are things in high end audio that will never me measurable and that measurements are really not that important.

Here is a typical example -- a quote taken from the Stereophile forum regarding their review of the Playback Designs MPS-5:

"JA 2/17/10 Review Measurements of Playback Designs MPS-5
Posted: April 13, 2011 - 8:42am

John Atkinson's 2/17/10 review measurements of the Playback Designs MPS-5 revealed less than stellar technical performance even though Michael Fremer really liked the player. I've included JA's closing measurement remarks below followed by the manufacturer's comments.

To my knowledge there was never any followup in Stereophile regarding the manufacturers reply the MPS-5 could not be adequately measured with traditional measurement techniques.

I believe Stereophile should respond to this reply in the interests of its own measurements credibility.

Len"

How important do you think measurements are? Are the ears really the only true arbiter?
sabai
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
"the complete nature of the resulting sound still cannot be known until heard regardindless"
Exactly! when all is said and done you still 'must' rely on your ears to judge the sound quality.I don`t believe we disagree on this conclusion.
Regards,
tbg
5,263 posts
 
And around and around we go. In all cases where JA didn't like much in measuring and Fremer liked the component I have always agreed with Fremer. A classic example was the WAVAC SH-833 monoblock amps. Fremer loved it as did I on risking hearing something I could not afford as CES. Atkinson panned it and it does look pretty awful. My conclusion is that we can measure what is not important to what we hear.
sabai OP
2,027 posts
 
Onhwy61,
You state: "We can trade opinions, but our belief systems, which I believe are marketing driven, prevent us from being educated, at least to some large extent."

Some of how we hear may sometimes be marketing driven -- for some people. But our brains are wired for music, the same as they are wired for language and the same as they are wired for enjoying beautiful things. Marketing is only a small part of how we perceive music and the extent to which we enjoy music. IMO. This is a highly complex matter where many individual factors contribute, as well the collective unconscious playing an important role. IMO.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,269 posts
 
When I say marketing one of the concepts I'm referring to is that only through the meticulous selection of and then synergistic mating of equipment can audio satisfaction be attained. I suspect some people will find the last sentence nonsensical. And it could be, but have you ever had a moment of musical bliss when listening via clearly non-audiophile equipment? It happens to me all the time and I think it's because music and the emotions I bring to listening to music trumps the quality of equipment I'm using. Has all the knowledge each of us learned in our individual audiophile journeys actual conditioned us to enjoy music less if not reproduced via high end equipment? If so are you really better off than when you started?
unsound
7,338 posts
 
I'll admit the obvious: we can't know all that we don't know. In as much as we might not be able to know in entirety what a system will sound like from specs alone, we can still get an understanding of many of the sound attributes a system will have from specs. Not only can specs be a valuable tool in shortlisting components for consideration, we can also use them as a baseline to share an understanding of how a system comes to sound as it does. Despite what so much of the reviewing community does to create a mysticism of how audio gear comes to sound a certain way, let's not forget that audio gear is still an exercise in engineering. The experience derived from audio gear might be predominately subjective, but getting to that point might be predominantly objective. I doubt we could have a satisfaction with either without the other. IMO, being able to correlate one with the other is an ongoing quest that needs to vigorously pursued.
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