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Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?

Vintagear73

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I'm pretty sure the main idea is "some devices may have perfect specifications, but end up sounding bad."

The context clue would be: it's literally what you said.
You finally figured out at least one part.
At first I was genuinely curious, because I've seen this claim dozens of times but only been presented with evidence once*. But now we're just being rude to our host, clogging his lovely site with meaningless banter.
It was absolutely not my intention to belittle the author of the test. On the contrary, I can only praise the effort he put into the test, but I only expressed the opinion (or claim that suits you already) that the specification on paper is only one side of the medal and that it is impossible to determine that something is good with just by reading specs.
Did you listen to Emulator II and red what its characteristics are on paper?
This sentence is for smart person enough.
If you can conclude only from specs on the paper that something it sounds great, then you are a genius who can hear how grass grows.
Besides, you are the one who performed with an attacking attitude from the beginning. I see you don’t understand when something is being tried to be explained and I don’t want to argue with you anymore.
 

Vintagear73

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It's important not to conflate a playback setup with a recording setup, the latter of which you describe above. Yes, during the recording process there are creative reasons to add harmonic distortion and excitation using tubes, tape, transformers, "warm" mic preamps, et al. Whatever is recorded using colorful equipment will still be present on playback.

For most people here on ASR, the goal is to reproduce a recording as it is rather than adding more layers of noise. If you like those distortions, there are plenty of methods to add it after the fact.
I totally agree with this. I am also a supporter of the recording process as you wrote. But even here it is possible, by choosing bad equipment, to make the recording sound bad at the start. It may sound harsh, blurred, etc.

So I’m just trying all the time to say that all of this should be choose by listening, not just reading technical data.
I didn't mean anything bad at all.
 

tvrgeek

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So, this thread has degenerated into the total non-believers of any difference and those who DO wonder what we are not measuring or interpreting because we do hear differences. So much for trying to move forward in measurements. If I can hear a difference, it is measurable. SNAID is a great wheat from chaff first pass as products that measure terrible in that regard usually sound terrible. The question is in the top half. Decent measuring to superb. They don't exactly track.

I would suspect, there is a threshold of parameters we are not testing or interpreting that beyond no one can hear a difference. That would be the holy grail line in the sand. It would also probably put a lot of EGO brands out of business. From a Benchmark up to kazillion-dollar monoblocs sitting on platinum spikes, is there a difference? I am not sure. I can't afford the Benchmark, so I am not there yet.

I do know when I listened to several well made mid range integrated amps ( Atoll, SIM) they sounded the same to me. When I heard an Arcam and a Rotel, in a bad big box room, they were night and day, Even crank the Rotel clearly louder and it still was lifeless. Typical "no power supply" defective sound. I suspect, the Arcam would have been indistinguishable from the SIM and Atoll as they were all "good enough". This is why I believe we need some sort of burst mode testing on amps. Not a simple transient. Something that shows the effect of the rails collapsing, or is it poor PSRR? Is it different amps handling the reactive load differently? They do. Is where the feedback point physically wired allowing load dependent parasitic influence? How well things like this addressed are not always cost driven, but designer skill. I have built amplifiers and played with these things.

Some of this non-belief can easily be differences in hearing. I have been very careful to protect my hearing. That is not true of most people. I would like to see any participants in an ABX have a hearing test , results held for analysis not to bias their perception. I know for me, because I focus on it, I do not hear the "problems" as clearly as I did 30 years ago. I know as when doing impedance sweeps on tweeters, I know where I hear them fall off and noticed it is lower than it was. 40 years of speaker building, I have measured a few tweeters. I can still hear these issues. My wife more so.

Maybe, try this idea. We did not have children, so we did not deal with several years of our genetic evolution sensitivity to that 3K band. Maybe parents have adjusted to tune that out, where we have not. So we may be more sensitive to smaller imperfections in the sensitive band than parents. I know a weekend at my Nephew's with three young ladies ( 4,5, and 6) and a 2 year old, my hearing and nerves were shot.

I observed in college, engineers had expensive stereos, music majors cheap ones but a speed control on their record player. Almost uniformly. I can't tell if a 440 is 445, but a music major can. A difference in subjective hearing.

So, can we look to the science? What can/should we measure?
 

KSTR

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i never said blind testing does "nothing", i just say it can be flawed just as much as a subjective opinion so its no "fool-proof" evidence either
IMHO, blind testing quite often is not done correctly and thus does not yield the resolution it could actually achieve in proving a positive, which is the goal. Proving a negative isn't. Biasing plays a big role both in sighted as in blinded listening.
 

Geert

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I can't tell if a 440 is 445, but a music major can. A difference in subjective hearing.
After lots of training (not just passive listening, but following a training program with lots of exercises and practise).
 

Killingbeans

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(while thinking about it, i started with me being biased on your side guys, till i heared those differences myself.... thats the thing... how could have this been placebo???)

That's one of the sad truths about of our perceptions. You can't just shift it through sheer willpower like that.

If you dig up some positive reviews of really, really dumb snake-oil products, like magic rocks or stickers, you'll very likely see sentences like: "The most remarkable thing is that before this review I was very sceptical about it having an effect, but now that I tried it, the difference is like night and day!"

Hardcore objectivists still hear all kinds of things that shouldn't be there. They just attribute it to placebo rather than something that can't be measured. They have good reason to do so. Every time a person uses the argument "but I wasn't expecting a difference!" and subsequently gets subjected to a proper blind test, they fail just as miserably at detecting it as anybody else.
 

AudioSceptic

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You finally figured out at least one part.

It was absolutely not my intention to belittle the author of the test. On the contrary, I can only praise the effort he put into the test, but I only expressed the opinion (or claim that suits you already) that the specification on paper is only one side of the medal and that it is impossible to determine that something is good with just by reading specs.
Did you listen to Emulator II and red what its characteristics are on paper?
This sentence is for smart person enough.
If you can conclude only from specs on the paper that something it sounds great, then you are a genius who can hear how grass grows.
Besides, you are the one who performed with an attacking attitude from the beginning. I see you don’t understand when something is being tried to be explained and I don’t want to argue with you anymore.
This is very simple.

Please give us at least one example of a DAC which measures well but "sounds bad". Failure to do so can only lead us to think you are a troll.
 

mocenigo

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This is very simple.

Please give us at least one example of a DAC which measures well but "sounds bad". Failure to do so can only lead us to think you are a troll.

I would say that any good measuring DAC can be considered “bad sounding”. Remember, “bad sounding” admits a subjective meaning: If your benchmark is a vacuum tube output stage DAC and you like it, then any perfectly measuring DAC sounds bad in comparison.
 

LTig

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I totally agree with this. I am also a supporter of the recording process as you wrote. But even here it is possible, by choosing bad equipment, to make the recording sound bad at the start. It may sound harsh, blurred, etc.
This is certainly true, but ...
So I’m just trying all the time to say that all of this should be choose by listening, not just reading technical data.
... the cure is not to buy equipment with a counteracting sound (you would need a lot of different units for all those differing flaws in existing recordings) but get accurate equipment with easily adjustable tone controls.
 

tvrgeek

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https://josephcrowe.com/blogs/news/distortion-and-sound-quality-what-is-reasonable might be a paper that should change how distortion of speakers is measured?
Some good points on method. A lot of assumptions, though they seem to be based on experience. Some of his comments are wrong. Like distortion from most ribbons. He contradicts himself suggesting 1% is a reasonable target and goes on to say his experience subjectively is much lower. Maybe a place to start a study.

I suspect this method might reveal what I discovered about how amplifier noise floor and tweeter quality relate with the controlling factor being the compensation method, DP or Miller. Cheap speakers, DP. Great speakers, Miller.
 

Blumlein 88

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If all you can do is claim I am wrong, then you are not helping the further of objective testing.
Suppose I let you choose a few tracks that let you hear glare around 3100 hz. I take those run them thru a few different DACs which I record with a good ADC. I'll even record well in excess of the base sample rate.

I send those back to you, and you listen and see if you can identify each DAC by its glare level with any reliability. Would that convince you if you fail to do so that maybe some other influence is involved? If you can pick them out correctly it would convince me you are hearing something.

Or you could save me some trouble and see if you hear 8th generation copies thru a DAC vs the orignal in a couple of such threads I've posted in the past.
 

Sal1950

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Yes, modern measurements tell everything.
 

Plcamp

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I suspect this method might reveal what I discovered about how amplifier noise floor and tweeter quality relate with the controlling factor being the compensation method, DP or Miller. Cheap speakers, DP. Great speakers, Miller.
I think you are saying here is…that in order to maximize the quality from a high end tweeter, you need to increase the speed of the amplifier feedback loop by moving it to higher order to achieve superior control of the tweeter voice coil.

I’ve not seen what you did…am I interpreting correctly?
 

BDWoody

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i also dont get the talking about needing 500 peoples, if 50 audiophiles say they hear a difference and actually can proof with ABX test they can hear a difference, what does it matter if 450 other people dont hear a difference? clearly there is a difference then.

Right.

So where are the 50? Where is the one?
 

Sal1950

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Vintagear73

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This is very simple.

Please give us at least one example of a DAC which measures well but "sounds bad". Failure to do so can only lead us to think you are a troll.
You all hunt for certain words that suit you.
I speak in general all the time (or maybe literary if it suits someone) and not only about DACs.

OK, "sounds bad" may be a rough word. Maybe is better to use terminology sounds good, or less good.

Maybe is not the best example, but in the late 80s I bought a new Sony CD player (sorry but I don't remember the model anymore). Back then it was advertised as 18 bit, etc. Their THD was probably 0.0 and something%, dynamics at least 90db. By comparing with the vinyl were more than phenomenal.

And what about that? Total disappointment. Harsh, one-dimensionality, in short - bad. Worst then 1st or 2nd generation of Marantz/Philips CD players.

I'm sorry, but the specifications on paper are not crucial to me. To theorists for sure, but in practice they can only be a guide that can interest me in this product in the sense that I go to hear it in the best possible conditions.
 
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