Except that it does.
Keith
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Do You Regret Your Pre-ASR Audio Gear Choices of the past?
- Thread starter MattHooper
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Keith
The specs are a great starting point. No one wants to pay good money on poor equipment. The transducers are a little more subjective. You can easily reach a point of diminishing returns very quick. But you have to compromise on something you like...not what someone tells you. Reviews from publications should be taken with a grain of salt. I never let them be my main deciding factor. They use ambiguous adjectives that are nothing more than print filler. The tests and advice from all the people on ASR is the best source of information.
Sorry but it can't. Can any test predict how people with a hearing defect will hear the sound, no. However that is merely an extreme of the natural variation of hearing. You can test what has been produced, you cannot test what as been heard, it's impossible.
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You're talking about outliers. I'm interested in equipment for normal hearing...+/- 3dB
Is that your normal or my normal? No measurement of a sound parameter is a reliable prediction of what an individual hears much less what they like.
Fair point, the question is "is there a normal?"
Measurements will show if a component is audibly transparent , loudspeaker measurements ( if you understand them) will give you a very good idea of how neutral the design is.
Keith
Keith
Is neutral a perfectly flat frequency response?
And what does neutral mean, not too high, not too low, just right? Again just right for who? Human hearing is weighted towards the mid frequencies, so does neutral mean a straight line on a graph, a measurement, or does it mean producing a resulting sound that is natural for the human ears, the actual final piece of 'test' equipment? I have listened to many speakers with a flat response measurement that sounded awful!
And that will tell you if you like the sound they create?
Yes thanks. He makes the point most clearly that measuring a signal and listening to sound are not the same, one can find correlations but how each person's brain responds to the impulse on the eardrum is in fact different and subject to many influences, expectation being one of them, others however include preference, experience and knowledge. Also listening to sound is quite different to listening to music. As I have said 40+ years ago at uni one of our design professors worked for Lowther, amongst other speaker manufacturers. Even then he was aware of the psychoacoustic nature of hearing as distinct from measurements of electrical signals. I also did a post graduate diploma 40 years ago in engineering noise control, and have many years of dealing with noise, specifically its impact on hearing. Yes measurements can inform you of certain characteristics of a components performance, the degree to which this correlates to the enjoyment of what you hear however is extremely uncertain. Quote AI (et al), While hi-fi measurements can be a useful tool for understanding how a component performs, there isn't a direct correlation between them and the enjoyment of music. Measurements are valuable for designers and engineers, but their impact on an end-user's enjoyment of music is subjective and influenced by individual preferences, listening habits, and the specific musical content.
A significant issue today is not the actual measurement but often the interpretation of what the measurement means. Tests and reviews saying a piece of equipment is better because one has 0.00001% and another 00002% distortion when to the human ear 0.01% is indistinguishable from 0.02% and neither can be correlated to actually how it sounds, never mind better but even different is analysis paralysis. When such reviewers then do not even listen to the equipment but base their conclusion on data alone makes them meaningless. It reminds me of taking my son to the museum, upon looking at a dinosaur he asked the attendant how old it was? He relied 66,000,023 years. I replied that's remarkably accurate how do you know, he replied well when I came here 23 years ago I asked and it was 66 million years old then.
A significant issue today is not the actual measurement but often the interpretation of what the measurement means. Tests and reviews saying a piece of equipment is better because one has 0.00001% and another 00002% distortion when to the human ear 0.01% is indistinguishable from 0.02% and neither can be correlated to actually how it sounds, never mind better but even different is analysis paralysis. When such reviewers then do not even listen to the equipment but base their conclusion on data alone makes them meaningless. It reminds me of taking my son to the museum, upon looking at a dinosaur he asked the attendant how old it was? He relied 66,000,023 years. I replied that's remarkably accurate how do you know, he replied well when I came here 23 years ago I asked and it was 66 million years old then.
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No regrets. Before I retired, I had an LG "dolby atmos" soundbar and subwoofer for my living room system and a very small Klipsch desktop speaker system. They sounded decent to me, but I knew they weren't great.
After retirement, I started reading up on what was available and that led me to ASR. The most "expensive" thing I have purchased was a pair of Klipsch Heresy IVs ($3,500) which I am completely happy with. My main system in the living room uses a pair of Fosi V3 monos to drive those Heresy speakers and they provide way more power than I will ever need. I know I would gain no improvement in sound quality by replacing them with a McIntosh or any other overpriced amplifier.
After retirement, I started reading up on what was available and that led me to ASR. The most "expensive" thing I have purchased was a pair of Klipsch Heresy IVs ($3,500) which I am completely happy with. My main system in the living room uses a pair of Fosi V3 monos to drive those Heresy speakers and they provide way more power than I will ever need. I know I would gain no improvement in sound quality by replacing them with a McIntosh or any other overpriced amplifier.
You may well prefer a coloured loudspeaker, and its measurements will explain the nature of the colouration.
Keith
And blind preference testing shows that most people don't prefer coloured loudspeakers.
'Everybody hears differently and likes different things' - well, no they don't. We know that, it's been researched. There's a minority of outliers? Yes. That's not surprising either.
I don't know how many times someone thinks they have to point out that there's no difference between 0.01% THD and 0.0001% THD like that will be some big revelation to the rest of us. I would like these people to stop missing the point. It gets tedious.
The great idea simply is to have a common (transparent) baseline. Finally finishing the pseudo magic business of component matching. Simply get neutral measuring sources, amps, and speakers. Then add any PEQ of your liking. If someone wants to screw the sound towards tubes just press 'tube sound'.
You're right. After looking at detailed responses of different headphones, I was surprised at the variation in frequency. Yet they sound so good.
Not really, I've never spent any significant money without first doing the homework on it.
I've really only regretted a couple choices in wife's.
LOL
I've really only regretted a couple choices in wife's.
LOLDon't we appreciate a good wine more after drinking box wine?Not really, I've never spent any significant money without first doing the homework on it.
I've really only regretted a couple choices in wife's.
Chr1
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I certainly do. Same goes for bad wine.
Gave up lugging glass bottles whenever possible a few years back. Being old and owning a motorcycle but no car was the decider for me.
(Nowadays I decant it into a bottle before drinking tho....It's waay too easy to consume more than intended otherwise!)
Gave up lugging glass bottles whenever possible a few years back. Being old and owning a motorcycle but no car was the decider for me.
(Nowadays I decant it into a bottle before drinking tho....It's waay too easy to consume more than intended otherwise!)
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