What to trust ear or measurement?

[mansr]

Nelson Pass, Bruno Putzey and John Westlake are all exceptionally knowledgeable audio engineers. All of them have at one time or another stated that whilst measurements are important, they can’t by themselves be used to design a “good” sounding product. If that doesn’t at least give you pause for thought then maybe its time for a little introspection.

Saying those words probably doubles their sales.

 

[Inner Space]

Nelson Pass, Bruno Putzey and John Westlake are all ...

... men with something to sell. They won't alienate half (or more) of their potential market. Instead they'll try to please all the people all the time. Actually I remember Westlake from his time at Pink Triangle. He seemed like a solid guy. I bet his toggle switch did nothing at all. Probably a private joke.

 

[amirm]

Nelson Pass, Bruno Putzey and John Westlake are all exceptionally knowledgeable audio engineers. All of them have at one time or another stated that whilst measurements are important, they can’t by themselves be used to design a “good” sounding product. If that doesn’t at least give you pause for thought then maybe its time for a little introspection.

Nelson Pass produces products with copious amounts of distortion. If he thinks that is pleasing, then he should develop critical listening skills so that he can hear the damage he is doing to source signal.

I don't follow Westlake. Products he has designed that I have tested measure well and I see no indication of any kind of by ear tuning.

Bruno uses both math and measurements to produce lowest distortion amplification. No way there is any influence of his ears in his designs. What he says after the fact, is neither here, nor there. All designers listen to what they build and say their bits sound good to them. The fact that they don't agree with each other on what is good for their ears, should tell you to not put weight on that.

 

[amirm]

(JW even went so far as to design a DAC for Project that has a toggle switch whereby in one position it measures really well and in the other it measures worse but in JW’s view it sounds better. Reportedly, the great majority of users prefer the second setting.).

A lot of companies label their DAC filters that way. It doesn't mean there is merit in any of it. If they can present a blind test where they can tell filter differences, let alone hear an improvement, then I start to listen.

 

[Kaiju]

Audio products don't care or know if you are measuring them, or listening to them. They output what you put in them. The product is also not entertainment. The content is entertainment.

Thank you @amirm for your clarification what you've said makes lot's of sense.

ps. thanks to fellow members too for convincing input.

 

[restorer-john]

I might pay thousands of dollars for that drawer, if the numbers were equal. I grew up in a metalworking city and have a kind of baked-in appreciation for well executed precision, and a corresponding horror of cheap and squalid adequacy. I fully appreciate this is where hard science bleeds into the softer sciences, but to use something mechanically pleasurable many times a day for 15 or so years is an enhancement for me.

Consider the expensive and beautifully engineered bespoke loading mechanism for a TOTL CD player is all about the continuation of the premise that you are buying the best that company could make. Amir worked for Sony, he should know. The world's first player, the Sony CDP-101 had a solid metal drawer mechanism running on twin linear ball races- you could pick up the entire machine by the drawer and hold it in mid air, all 7.6kg of it.

Take any of their TOTL CD players of yore, they used the BU-10 die cast base unit, linear high speed motors for tracking, BSL sapphire bearing spindle motors and a loading/chucking mechanism that runs on polished stainless steel rods and ball bearings driven by decoupled twin motors.

Basically, they never wear out.

Those machines also produced absolute state of the art figures back in the day. Nothing came close. And, what's more, they still produce those same figures 30 years later. All with 16/44 content. My favourite single box machines are the 1990 X7esD, 17kg of absolutely magnificent Sony engineering. Apart from a few loading belts every 10 years or so, they are as new.

Let me tell you, the joy of a beautiful acoustically sealed loading mechanism silently and positively loading and unloading discs never gets old. Reading a TOC in less than half a second never gets old, and neither does track access anywhere on a disc in less than a second. Couple that with flawless technical performance and it doesn't get much better.

Sure, they may have cost nearly AU$2799 (USD $2,000) back in the day, but who got the better value, the guy who went through four or five plastic players, gave up and ended up using a DVD player for audio, or the guy who still gets joy, three decades on, from products built to last?

 

[Koeitje]

You say that based on..?

Actual tests of Leica lenses? What else would I base it on.

 

[Dichotome]

... men with something to sell. They won't alienate half (or more) of their potential market. Instead they'll try to please all the people all the time. Actually I remember Westlake from his time at Pink Triangle. He seemed like a solid guy. I bet his toggle switch did nothing at all. Probably a private joke.

No he did it because Project asked him to and they made that request because of sites like this. However John has publicly said that the own brand DAC he is currently working on will certainly not be designed purely on the basis of measurements. And anyone who thinks he is saying that for marketing reasons clearly knows nothing about John.

 

[solderdude]

This John ?

 

[Dichotome]

Saying those words probably doubles their sales.

nothing wrong with a bit of healthy cynicism, but once it becomes nothing more than a knee jerk reaction then you’ve entered the land of the ignorant. Here’s a personal development tip; try to better Identify the times when you need to be a little more discerning.

The responses to my perfectly reasonable post surprised me a little, but they reminded me of something. Then I realised what it was. They were like the utterances of cult members who recite their dogma unquestioningly in the face of perfectly rational challenges. I believe in Science and it’s methodologies. I have little time for people who don’t respect scientific research and the explanations it provides of our physical world. But it’s also the job of Science to continually challenge itself, otherwise our level of knowledge would simply stagnate.
Being dismissive of other viewpoints is sometimes appropriate. The trick is judging when you need to be a little more open minded.

 

[Jimbob54]

This John ?

I prefer even snake oil to vapor.

 

[solderdude]

Saying those words probably doubles their sales.

And the question arrives that when one doesn't make statements like that, will they be taken seriously in audiophile and audiophool communities. Afterall they want high performance and are willing to pay the prices.
Ultimate goal of course is to generate more sales of course by drawing in a wider audience ranging from anti-science to pro-science instead of only one 'group'.
You almost HAVE to say you also design by ear if only to draw in people not believing in science anyway.
Likewise you also have to say your device(s) are 'better' sounding, more 'analog' and 'smoother' while throwing around popular buzzwords.

How many manufacturers are there that are not guilty of luring potential clients with (popular) buzzwords

I have never seen any evidence of certain components having specific audio properties and not being shown in any measurements.

 

[Objectivist01]

Consider the expensive and beautifully engineered bespoke loading mechanism for a TOTL CD player is all about the continuation of the premise that you are buying the best that company could make. Amir worked for Sony, he should know. The world's first player, the Sony CDP-101 had a solid metal drawer mechanism running on twin linear ball races- you could pick up the entire machine by the drawer and hold it in mid air, all 7.6kg of it.

Take any of their TOTL CD players of yore, they used the BU-10 die cast base unit, linear high speed motors for tracking, BSL sapphire bearing spindle motors and a loading/chucking mechanism that runs on polished stainless steel rods and ball bearings driven by decoupled twin motors.

Basically, they never wear out.

Those machines also produced absolute state of the art figures back in the day. Nothing came close. And, what's more, they still produce those same figures 30 years later. All with 16/44 content. My favourite single box machines are the 1990 X7esD, 17kg of absolutely magnificent Sony engineering. Apart from a few loading belts every 10 years or so, they are as new.

Let me tell you, the joy of a beautiful acoustically sealed loading mechanism silently and positively loading and unloading discs never gets old. Reading a TOC in less than half a second never gets old, and neither does track access anywhere on a disc in less than a second. Couple that with flawless technical performance and it doesn't get much better.

Sure, they may have cost nearly AU$2799 (USD $2,000) back in the day, but who got the better value, the guy who went through four or five plastic players, gave up and ended up using a DVD player for audio, or the guy who still gets joy, three decades on, from products built to last?

Build to last, mechanically engineered are good things, back then it was necessary to produce good measurements. But now we are in an age where pocket dongles are accurate than those massively engineered stuff.

remember eniacs ? Now we have mobile phones faster than it.

point none of those mechanical engineering is required these days, to get a good sound, if the engineer knows how to isolate or correct the problems from emi and vibrations in his design

 

[solderdude]

When I was working for Technics I always liked the drawer of the SL P500. It was a real joy to see (and barely hear) it open and close.
It was the top model at that time and the trays of all other models did not compare.

I had the smaller sized SL PJ33 but installed the DAC chip and analog filters of the P500 in it.

It still works problem free, they had excellent laser mechanisms with brushless DD motors and linear motor for the laser.
After these models cheaper and worse mechanisms appeared followed by CDM4 Philips mechanisms along with shitloads of repairs.

 

[tuga]

In a previous post I mentioned the difference between "Tasting" and Objective Listening (evaluating performance from an observationist perspective).

In the introductory slides of their AES tutorial on how to perform Perceptual Audio Evaluation B&O's Bech and Zacharov described objective listening in a very straightforward manner:

 

[trl]

Measurements can be useful for engineers, no doubt. But is there any correlation between ever improving measurements and better sound? I think not! Audio products are made first for listening, not measuring, right! They're not scientific test instruments, they're entertainment, or at least I hope so!

I can't argue much on the above, I'm sure that for a lot of folks the extra added harmonics (read as: increased THD) might sound better to their ears, but for me what is really important is that my audio system should be able to reproduce an output sound pretty similar with the original one intended by the conductor of the orchestra or by the engineer from the recording studio. If I want something else, I can simply buy a digital harmoniser.

 

[Dichotome]

I prefer even snake oil to vapor.

the prototype of the DAC in question was compared to a £16k Chord a couple of months ago. Despite his chagrin, the owner of the Chord promptly placed an order for JW’s DAC. Maybe the vapour is working a bit like a plasma tweeter?

Don’t believe everything you read. JW is a technical wizard, but he is also a perfectionist with woeful project management skills. That‘s a problematic combination. I am however expecting the new DAC to be shipped this year.

 

[BDWoody]

Despite his chagrin, the owner of the Chord promptly placed an order for JW’s DAC.

Well sure...

Wonder how they 'tested.'

 

[Purité Audio]

No he did it because Project asked him to and they made that request because of sites like this. However John has publicly said that the own brand DAC he is currently working on will certainly not be designed purely on the basis of measurements. And anyone who thinks he is saying that for marketing reasons clearly knows nothing about John.

Is this the DAC that John has taken £300k in advance sales and has not produced a single item after seven years?
Keith

 

[Dichotome]

Well sure...

Wonder how they 'tested.'

JW has an array of extremely expensive test equipment and I’m sure he will have tested the Chord. But that’s not the point. Which way do you think the expectation bias was of the Chord’s owner and how strong do you think that bias was? (£16k is a lot of money for a DAC by anybody’s standards.). If you think that should be dismissed out of hand then carry on your merry way.