When you hear a difference in a controlled blind test you hear an objective difference that is clearly exceeding audible thresholds and one can check this with measurements.
Also one can have a preference... having a preference means you like something better it does not necesarilly mean it IS objectively better as in not altering the sound in any way.
The preference of one person may differ from those of another. Dark and rolled off to one person is another one's 'full bodied, warm and smooth' sound.
This you can't debate, only measurements and relations to non-sighted controlled listening tests.
Thanks for the response but here is my confusion in logic.
I think we can take as a hypothesis based on experiments that what (a) one subjectively perceives as good and (b) objectively measures as good in some established metric are
uncorrelated. Not negatively or positively correlated. Speaking strictly objectively not as “in my experience” as the latter is subject to distortions via sample size and subjectivity.
So, when someone claims DAC A sounds better than DAC B (or others), it could very well mean that DAC A does not suffer as much from some added elements as DAC B (or others), not necessarily that DAC A is adding elements that are negative relative to others.So why would it pre-dispose one to not review DAC A or to view the claim as a necessarily negative mark against the vendor/manufacturer as implied earlier? In the interests of an objective, open mind for science.
Science can be useful in many ways. One of which is to differentiate wheat from the chaff not necessarily to find the perfect kernel. Especially, in the practical realm of limited resources for buying equipment.
For example, in other threads, a relatively inexpensive multi-channel DAC (
Essence Evolve II-4k) was brought up by the vendor and later a generally positive
review in Stereophile was linked by author based on hearing and considered better compared to another DAC (a miniDSP). These DACs are much more affordable to more people than say the top measurement-rated Okto DAC. It would be very useful to see tests and measurements (even from a scientific curiosity point of view) whether measurements reveal some objective difference between the miniDSP and the Essence and even more so compared to a
cheap multi-channel DAC of the type one finds on Amazon at basement prices but almost exact same features as the Essence.
Is the vendor of Essence repackaging the same cheap DAC in a better chassis or is it actually a better engineered product that measures better and shows reasons why it might (or not be) worth several times more. Even if neither of them approach perfection in measurement metrics and despite subjective reviews. Yes, one cannot measure all but there are so few multi-channel DACs anyway.
While I read Stereophile to see what is going on in the industry, I find their focus in general, too out of reach for mainstream consumers in price and expectation. Is the audio science community sitting at the other extreme thumbing their noses at anything that does not reach some objective perfection?
This is not a criticism or a demand on anybody to do anything in their voluntary work, just as a point for self-reflection.
