ASR took the fun out of amp reviews

[kemmler3D]

I agree with OP that amp (and other) reviews are less interesting and entertaining now that I understand the important measurements better. I would say it applies to speakers and headphones to some extent too.

But I think that's a small price to pay for not chasing fake upgrades and wasting money. In one hand I have better sound for less money, in the other I have entertaining product reviews of things I would mostly never buy even if I didn't understand measurements. Not really a hard choice.

 

[olieb]

Once intrenched in a particular dogma it becomes nearly impossible to break free.

Absolutely right, and the breaking free becomes the more difficult the earlier the intrenching began.
But there is a technique for breaking free, it is called "the scientific method".
I do not know if ASR takes the fun out of reading amp reviews in certain media (it might still be funny in some way ), but it certainly brings freedom from a lot of nonsense.

 

[Mikig]

I just saw this review myself, why would anyone pay this for this when you can have a state of the Art benchmark, which BTW in Europe is 4100 Euro's, but still.

It would be more interesting to know why not everyone has benchmarks, given that it is practically the best tested... reading here and there it doesn't seem very popular around here

 

[RayDunzl]

t would be more interesting to know why not everyone has benchmarks, given that it is practically the best tested... reading here and there it doesn't seem very popular around here

The Benchmark products are somewhat expensive.

"Made in U.S.A."

Any more questions?

 

[Madlop26]

View attachment 434303
It may be an audible version of this visual effect. The left image is your “straight wire with gain going into your brain” and the right image is artificially adding noise to the same image.

The above isn’t bias, it’s just perception. If these effects occur visually, it would seem that there should be auditory illusions.

Source article.

After evaluating carefully the 2 images to me, the original is better, I see only more noise on the right, not really sharper; even if others see more sharpness on the right, the static sample can be difficult to compare to a more dynamic phenomena as music, as cherry picking can be an important bias, you would need a greater sample of pictures to compare, to see if really most people see the added grain as sharper and better or just noisier and lesser quality.

 

[kyuu]

View attachment 434303
It may be an audible version of this visual effect. The left image is your “straight wire with gain going into your brain” and the right image is artificially adding noise to the same image.

The above isn’t bias, it’s just perception. If these effects occur visually, it would seem that there should be auditory illusions.

Source article.

I don't get the point trying to be made here. The left image is clearly sharper and the right clearly has grain added which makes it less sharp and gives the skin an artificially rough appearance.

 

[ta240]

I don't get the point trying to be made here. The left image is clearly sharper and the right clearly has grain added which makes it less sharp and gives the skin an artificially rough appearance.

At first glance the artificially rough appearance can have the look of showing us more detail

 

[ta240]

I agree with OP that amp (and other) reviews are less interesting and entertaining now that I understand the important measurements better. I would say it applies to speakers and headphones to some extent too.

But I think that's a small price to pay for not chasing fake upgrades and wasting money. In one hand I have better sound for less money, in the other I have entertaining product reviews of things I would mostly never buy even if I didn't understand measurements. Not really a hard choice.

Well said.

While do miss getting excited about products like this and thinking how great it would be to own one, I don't miss spending so much money chasing the illusive and imaginary sound that so many reviewers gush over.

 

[ta240]

Just another example of a poorly executed tube amp with inflated specs to boot. The noise isn't the tubes fault it's the circuit and layout. Not all tube amps are this bad. I agree it's probably not that audible unless the speakers are high sensitivity.

The bad reputation that tube amps get because of bad designs has always been a bit of peeve of mine.

I think it bothered me more that it seemed like a pretty simple to fix problem and the reviewer was busy gushing over the 'artistry' of the wire choices and ignored the basic layout problem.

 

[Thomas_A]

ASR started the fun with amplifier reviews. Now we know there are small amps with good performance.

 

[Keith_W]

It may be an audible version of this visual effect. The left image is your “straight wire with gain going into your brain” and the right image is artificially adding noise to the same image.

The above isn’t bias, it’s just perception. If these effects occur visually, it would seem that there should be auditory illusions.

Source article.

That is a very interesting thesis you have there. I wonder if there are any studies that show that if you add noise to signal, it increases the "sharpness" of the sound.

Maybe I could conduct my own experiment by mixing in some pink noise to the sound.

 

[kemmler3D]

I wonder if there are any studies that show that if you add noise to signal, it increases the "sharpness" of the sound.

I think it would be an interesting test to just add some PN or WN at a barely-perceptible level and see what happens. There are plenty of snake-oil-y products and discussions that seem to assume very low-level (inaudible) noise somehow becomes more audible when music is playing. What's the subjective experience of marginally perceptible noise?

What I can tell you is that if you add noise where the level follows the program material, and is definitely audible but not very overt, it can make things sound a bit livelier, especially with drums. It's more like a special effect than a general enhancement, IMO.

 

[Multicore]

I agree with OP that amp (and other) reviews are less interesting and entertaining now that I understand the important measurements better. I would say it applies to speakers and headphones to some extent too.

But I think that's a small price to pay for not chasing fake upgrades and wasting money. In one hand I have better sound for less money, in the other I have entertaining product reviews of things I would mostly never buy even if I didn't understand measurements. Not really a hard choice.

But what do you want from an amp? It's just an amp. Amps are boring and good ones are especially boring. The traffic jam I can see from the window is much more interesting than an amp. It's really not hard to find more interesting things to write about.

What are you going to say? It makes the speakers go and the volume knob works. Yawn.

 

[kemmler3D]

But what do you want from an amp? It's just an amp. Amps are boring and good ones are especially boring. The traffic jam I can see from the window is much more interesting than an amp. It's really not hard to find more interesting things to write about.

What are you going to say? It makes the speakers go and the volume knob works. Yawn.

Right, what I'm saying is ignorance is bliss. Not knowing how boring amps are can be fun.

The subjectivist fantasy-land reviews make it sound like there's new vistas of sound quality to be discovered in every piece of equipment. Like you could find some new nuggets of unique and precious sound quality somewhere in a corner of the housing. It's a type of entertainment, if you don't realize it's all nonsense.

But I'd rather have more money and good sound, than have fun reading reviews.

 

[Mikig]

The Benchmark products are somewhat expensive.

"Made in U.S.A."

Any more questions?

as many as you want

my statement confirms that the public is totally varied and unpredictable: everyone buys with a different goal, even when they know they can have an excellent product they often prefer something else. Is it a question of taste? of charm? of lack of knowledge? of influenceability? of economics as you say? of tradition? of affection for a technology? for a brand? for a school of thought? it is always fascinating to know people's point of view...

 

[Mikig]

Right, what I'm saying is ignorance is bliss. Not knowing how boring amps are can be fun.

how defeatist you are no more boring than a Dac or a streamer….it's better to go and talk about turntables at this point

 

[Multicore]

The subjectivist fantasy-land reviews make it sound like there's new vistas of sound quality to be discovered in every piece of equipment. Like you could find some new nuggets of unique and precious sound quality somewhere in a corner of the housing. It's a type of entertainment, if you don't realize it's all nonsense.

It's alien to me. Did you in the past enjoy such literature?

 

[HalSF]

The top values in the Stereophile review are artisanal and antiquarian, not technical and state-of-the-art audio engineering. The aesthetic is nostalgic roots-of-the-hobby throwback appreciation, and sheer subjectivity is a secondary factor.

 

[kemmler3D]

It's alien to me. Did you in the past enjoy such literature?

Not so much amps or DACs (I've known amps are amps since I was a kid, due to rants from my objective-oriented dad) and learned that DACs are DACs many years ago after seeing that they all fared the same in an ABX test.

But it was much later that I learned that subjective evaluations of speakers and headphones are also not nearly as useful or informative as they seem, compared to measurements.

It's not like I was ever sitting around and reading reviews very avidly, except for competitive analysis at work, but sometimes the descriptions were pretty intriguing... less so now, I do the same as OP, scroll straight to the graphs.

 

[Multicore]

Not so much amps or DACs (I've known amps are amps since I was a kid, due to rants from my objective-oriented dad) and learned that DACs are DACs many years ago after seeing that they all fared the same in an ABX test.

But it was much later that I learned that subjective evaluations of speakers and headphones are also not nearly as useful or informative as they seem, compared to measurements.

It's not like I was ever sitting around and reading reviews very avidly, except for competitive analysis at work, but sometimes the descriptions were pretty intriguing... less so now, I do the same as OP, scroll straight to the graphs.

What about Amir's subjective remarks - do you skip those too?