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Arcam AVR11 why sound better?

Hard to believe a properly operating Arcam unit would sound better in most circumstances. Not the most capable or powerful amp in any case, so what makes it "better" other than their marketing? No magic in Arcam that I've ever seen....
No magic for sure, but people somehow believe the "better sound" they heard are real but are not measured/measurable. It is not logical, if there are in fact things not measurable, yet would result in audibly "better sound", then people would have to audition a large number of devices, rely on their ears, brains/memory, as those "not measurable metrics" would result in "sound quality" that would be random, not designed/intended by the designers, or the designers designed for those qualities random, i.e. just by chance lol..
 
No magic for sure, but people somehow believe the "better sound" they heard are real but are not measured/measurable. It is not logical, if there are in fact things not measurable, yet would result in audibly "better sound", then people would have to audition a large number of devices, rely on their ears, brains/memory, as those "not measurable metrics" would result in "sound quality" that would be random, not designed/intended by the designers, or the designers designed for those qualities random, i.e. just by chance lol..
Many of the measurements are not audible. For example you can’t hear the difference of a 125 sinad amp over an 80. That just the limits of our ears,brains. Measurements must be take within the context of what we can hear.
In this case the Arcam does have some failings. The amps are good the processing has issues.
 
Many of the measurements are not audible. For example you can’t hear the difference of a 125 sinad amp over an 80. That just the limits of our ears,brains. Measurements must be take within the context of what we can hear.
In this case the Arcam does have some failings. The amps are good the processing has issues.
Based on the test results, in direct mode withour dsp functions, the Arcam avr10 is going to sound as good as its competitor's, to humans anyway.
 
No magic for sure, but people somehow believe the "better sound" they heard are real but are not measured/measurable. It is not logical, if there are in fact things not measurable, yet would result in audibly "better sound", then people would have to audition a large number of devices, rely on their ears, brains/memory, as those "not measurable metrics" would result in "sound quality" that would be random, not designed/intended by the designers, or the designers designed for those qualities random, i.e. just by chance lol..
Or just convinced by boutique brand nature or price....or just a slight level difference for casual comparisons....
 
have heard several avrs. nothing beats arcam/nad in musicality.

though overall Yamaha is the king of avrs. noone can match their deep experience with musical instruments which reflects in their avrs. it gives them an edge as they understand music and sound like no other.

above is personal experience. others could find something else better as our hearing tastes and perception are very different.
This exactly match with my feelings.
So, what was your test procedure? Please explain in as much detail as possible.
Watch 2 movies almost full. The same on each avr. After callibration + listen couple of tracks in stereo however that doesn't matter for me. AVR is used only for Movies and concerts.

I choose Arcam :) And I am happy about that. When ASR test will include 5 ch measurments?
 
This exactly match with my feelings.

Watch 2 movies almost full. The same on each avr. After callibration + listen couple of tracks in stereo however that doesn't matter for me. AVR is used only for Movies and concerts.

I choose Arcam :) And I am happy about that. When ASR test will include 5 ch measurments?
Feelings? Musicality? It's an amp, and nothing particularly special about it....
 
Watch 2 movies almost full. The same on each avr. After callibration
That's not exactly the way to go. The fact that you didn't compare level-matched alone will throw any other differences way off. How close were the calibrations? Maybe you screwed one up? Were all the crossover settings the same, what about any other settings? Did you even watch the same movies? There are so many variables here to equalize to make the comparison actually fair.
 
:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:

It seems you didn't read any of the preceding posts included for your benefit. Why not?

Jim
People who trust their ears "blindly", and may not understand enough about specs and measurements would also just trust their own subjective measurements, i.e. sighted comparison listening tests that are naturally, also often not well controlled, so they won't likely want to spend time reading the preceding posts.:)
 
People who trust their ears "blindly", and may not understand enough about specs and measurements would also just trust their own subjective measurements, i.e. sighted comparison listening tests that are naturally, also often not well controlled, so they won't likely want to spend time reading the preceding posts.:)

That's like a child attending a school free of charge and refusing to learn. :mad:

Jim
 
That's like a child attending a school free of charge and refusing to learn. :mad:

Jim
Cost has not effect on the decision to not learn.
If two AvRs sound the same why worry? When choosing av kit. The approach i take is to read technical reviews on here, then listen to the short list. The choice is based on sound,budget and features of the shortlisted kit
 
Measured response and features are obviously first place to start. My next box is reliability and that is a pretty firm one for me.

But then comes the whole room correction nightmare. It is completely different from the basic criteria and will depend on your room, gear and setup and ultimately your preference and time needed to invest in proper setup.

But that is not to say that units with Dirac and poor reliability should be passed through the screen because they sound “better” than other Dirac units that are objectively more reliable.
 
The approach i take is to read technical reviews on here, then listen to the short list. The choice is based on sound,budget and features of the shortlisted kit

:facepalm:

If there is a difference in "sound", then the unit is either incompetent or defective. Tests and measurements will indicate whether there is a characteristic above the threshold of human hearing. If there are none, then there will be no differences in "sound".

You seem to be an apologist for subjective capabilities where such capabilities do not exist. You said ...

If two AvRs sound the same why worry?

... yet you contradict yourself in the same paragraph by using "sound" as a legitimate basis for choice.

We all have a choice to make in life ... science or superstition. It would be best for all of us to choose wisely.

Jim
 
:facepalm:

If there is a difference in "sound", then the unit is either incompetent or defective. Tests and measurements will indicate whether there is a characteristic above the threshold of human hearing. If there are none, then there will be no differences in "sound".

You seem to be an apologist for subjective capabilities where such capabilities do not exist. You said ...



... yet you contradict yourself in the same paragraph by using "sound" as a legitimate basis for choice.

We all have a choice to make in life ... science or superstition. It would be best to choose wisely.

Jim
When I went to school we had never heard of black holes and there was no water on the moon. How ‘science’ changes along with our better understanding.
 
Fortunately we ar not dealing with black holes around here so it gets much simpler, to an extent.

There is much complexity but not really that much at the first step you are describing. Much more is to come with RC, but that is not really what this post is about.
 
When I went to school we had never heard of black holes and there was no water on the moon. How ‘science’ changes along with our better understanding.
Agreed, but it may be not that relevant in this case as it depends on the science that is applicable to the topic being discussed, some less known/understood science such as Covid related health science(hate to use Covid as example but it is an example) will likely change with time/better understanding, some don't, examples: how transistors, capacitors, resistors work, Electrical principles such as Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's law, power formula, Fourier, harmonic analysis, basic electromagnetic theories etc., just to name a few that are some of the basis involved/applied in the design of many electrical audio devices, the science of those are well know, have been understood and not changed for a long time. If there are something that matters to audible sound quality differences, such something would have been bench tested and measured, if not, >99.99% chance we don't need to worry about those, though anything is possible.. Anyway, I guess I am repeating things I alluded to in my early post already so I guess that's it for me.
 
When I went to school we had never heard of black holes and there was no water on the moon. How ‘science’ changes along with our better understanding.

What we hear isn't always true. Black holes were hypothesized in the 1700s, and discussed in the light of relativity in 1916.

There's a mistake that many people make who don't understand science. Science doesn't change. Science is, and always has been, the effort to better understand the universe around us. That purpose has never changed.

However, many people conflate "science" with the information that science brings us. That information (what you have correctly called "better understanding") changes, as science continues the never-ending process of acquisition of knowledge. Every year, we know more and more ... about medicine, about astrophysics, about molecular biology .... and about audio. (I had to include that. This is, after all, an audio site. ;) )

I may be old, but every day, I anticipate with relish the new knowledge that is disseminated to us from the scientific community. It doesn't just make life interesting, it makes life downright exciting! :)

Jim
 
this whole neutral thing confuses me. it seems a PERFECT amp/AVR is not supposed to have any character at all.

by this logic all ice cream flavours should taste the same. all cars should have same 0-100 speed. all perfumes should smell the same. there should be only one language in the world.
 
this whole neutral thing confuses me. it seems a PERFECT amp/AVR is not supposed to have any character at all.

by this logic all ice cream flavours should taste the same. all cars should have same 0-100 speed. all perfumes should smell the same. there should be only one language in the world.
The bigger question is why you believe there are such differences and whether they're audible.....The car analogy is weird at best. You being confused due to your approach does make sense, though.....
 
this whole neutral thing confuses me. it seems a PERFECT amp/AVR is not supposed to have any character at all.

by this logic all ice cream flavours should taste the same. all cars should have same 0-100 speed. all perfumes should smell the same. there should be only one language in the world.
It seems counter-intuitive that decent amps should sound the same or do sound the same. I understand the confusion. The reason why decent capable amps that are not intentionally colored sound the same is because the electronics do not have difficulty amplifying the frequency range that comprises your hearing ability. Electronics these days daily deal with very high frequency stuff up into the several gigahertz in electronics that are all around us and this is done with great accuracy. So imagine the following numbers for comparason.

A human's hearing range if very good is ~20 Hz to ~20,000 Hz. This is the frequency range that an audio amplifier deals with and maybe a little bit more.

Now for high frequency electronics that goes up to several gigahertz that is for example, 5,000,000,000 Hz. (Or 5 billion Hz.)

So again...
20,000 Hz for your ears and ~5,000,000,000 Hz (5 billion Hz.) for decent electronics in PCs and such.

So you maybe can see now that audio amplifiers have been a solved issue for decades. It's not a big big deal to amplify the frequency range that your ears require. :D

Using car, ice cream, perfumes and language analogies for electronics is not a realistic comparison and in fact is very unsuitable and that's why it makes no sense.
 
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