Is SINAD important? - "Myths" about measurements! [Video YT]

[Sokel]

I ask again: why do folks create videos over and over to complain about this?

Oh,that I don't know.
If I had to guess is probably about camps.We people love to belong,to be a part of something.

(until the point we understand that this is not freedom and does not pushes things forward)

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

I ask again: why do folks create videos over and over to complain about this?

Because Social media thrives on senseless drama.
More drama -> more clicks -> better algorithm placement -> more ad revenue. :'D

Didn't watch the video but I agree with the apparent general consensus here:
Apart from weeding out the obvious duds (which is a very valuable service this site provides!), SINAD is only really important so we can fawn over engineering excellence.

When it comes to actually buying stuff, price/performance and features are far more important once SINAD is > 80-ish.

Where do you get that from and is there a health warning at such concerts?

There definitely should be, if you ask me. Concerts can be obnoxiously loud. Especially rock concerts.

If you ever heard a Piccolo in person at close range: you do NOT want that kind of volume in a domestic music playback situation.
My music teacher played a few tones for me and when she went into the higher registers, I was too slow to cover my ears. Had ear pain for hours.

I certainly do not want a whole Orchestra going ham in my living room. :'D

 

[thewas]

It is an incredibly good indicator of such. I know, because I see it every time I review something.

I don't understand above reasoning? Also for DACs it may be, for amps rather very insufficient.

 

[Sokel]

I don't understand above reasoning? Also for DACs it may be, for amps rather very insufficient.

It can be insufficient for DACs too at corner cases.
See Khadas TB for example,it's IMD at -30dB input signal is at -60's and sadly that's the level nice recorded music's main bulk is.
Yet it's 110dB SINAD made it sell so well (and at a pathological case it even ended up in a nice case sold 5 times its price)

 

[Blockader]

This might sound a bit like a rant, and I might come across as grumpy, but I just need to get this off my chest and call some things out.

It seems like some folks outside of ASR tend to bundle everyone who visits this forums, including Amir, into a group that supposedly believes SINAD is everything. They then create content to "prove" this wrong, imagining they've won some kind of "us vs. them" battle that they've constructed.

I’m not a big fan of SINAD as a metric either, mainly because it combines noise and distortion and doesn't account for auditory masking. However, the reviews here are not only about mentioning the SINAD numbers and concluding the review. The reviews include FFTs showing distortion products and their orders, as well as measurements of noise levels and distortion across frequencies. Almost all the information you need to understand a product's performance is there. Yet, people often zero in on just one part, like SINAD, and try to "debunk" it in questionable ways:
"Oh, SINAD isn't everything and dacs make a difference! Look I can hear the recession at 20.5khz frequency response caused by this non steep filter!" or "SINAD is bad! Look at this 57db SINAD test... I can hear the difference."

The first statement is just a way of saying, look something measurable and above the hearing threshold of most young people is audible. Duh, nobody ever denied that, there wasn't even a need to make a video about that.
For those of us who prefer a more rational approach to audio, the issue is that some people believe we can hear distortion products as low as -130dB or that there are unmeasurable factors that make all the difference. I see no problem in challenging the established science but unless the claims are backed up with evidence, it's better to shut up about it. They might not say it outright, but they strengthen their position by pointing out mistakes in everything Amir or other evidence-based audio reviewers say, trying to poke holes in their logic. "Hey don't listen to them, they are SINAD fanatics, listen to us! See we have proven them wrong, we are more legit than they are" They aim to muddy the waters as much as possible to carve out more space for their own agenda within the community. Unfortunately, Golden is exactly such person to me from my point of view.

 

[Purité Audio]

It is just one highly useful metric, all the other measurements are there if you choose to read them.
Keith

 

[Sokel]

Personally I think that the most useful way to see performance is an RMAA-like little table (and I believe their ratings are sane).
It can't substitute charts of course (which I love) but can be a fast way to see a broader picture.

 

[Chagall]

It's worse in the scenario where it encourages someone to overspend on a product, IMO - precisely as with any other technically-true aspect of audio which doesn't relate to sound quality. I'm equally ornery with somebody saying "don't buy a MiniDSP 2x4HD, it has poor IMD (which is almost assuredly below the threshold of audibility with music)" and someone saying "don't buy a Topping L30, it doesn't use gold-based solder and sounds worse as a result". In that respect, I see commonality between an obsession with a measureable-but-not-audibility-correlated metric and every other form of snake oil in the industry. That isn't so that that this is the default pattern on ASR, or of Amir - but objectively I do observe people being told that they should buy new equipment or pay more than they would otherwise in order to get something better-scoring (more often than not on sites other than ASR, but with reference to the rankings here), and that is indeed quite annoying to me.

You aren't going to get a better experience of sound by buying a JDS Atom if you have an O2, or frankly, most likely even if you have an original Magni, which measured meaningfully worse. In that respect, I don't want people to get the misimpression that something that "measures better" is going to impact the sound inherently, any more than I'd want them to think that a better metallurgy in their cable will impact the sound. So that is to say, the "spin" here is - at least insofar as I'm putting spin on things - part of my general annoyance with focusing people's attention on the parts of audio that functionally don't matter (DACs, amplifiers, and indeed "source gear" as a whole) over the areas that do matter (headphones, speakers, and digital signal processing). Cameron, of course, believes in that sort of thing, so I'm sure his motivations differ, but he's been long banned from this forum, so he can't speak to his POV here - you are welcome to inquire on our forum, of course.

I would just counter that with the countless posts on ASR of members asking will XY DAC or amp be an upgrade. By far the most common response and consensus are "Don't waste your money, it's already as good as it gets". Also, the most common response to "I hear a difference" (usually with more expensive gear) is to do a level-matched blind test and not waste your money.

If other sites reference measurements and equalize them with rankings - that's on them and their users should call them out on it. But I fear the users will be very confused if the narrative is "SINAD is almost snake-oil".

 

[danadam]

There definitely should be, if you ask me. Concerts can be obnoxiously loud.

When I was at Hilary Hahn/Sibelius concert some time ago, I remember I had a thought, that if I was listening to that at home, I would certainly lower the volume a bit

 

[Sokel]

I would just counter that with the countless posts on ASR of members asking will XY DAC or amp be an upgrade. By far the most common response and consensus are "Don't waste your money, it's already as good as it gets". Also, the most common response to "I hear a difference" (usually with more expensive gear) is to do a level-matched blind test and not waste your money.

If other sites reference measurements and equalize them with rankings - that's on them and their users should call them out on it. But I fear the users will be very confused if the narrative is "SINAD is almost snake-oil".

I like seeing it the other way around.
Everything that can be used as a selling point cuts both ways.
In case of SINAD is funny,cause the ones using it as a selling point run out of other claims,like SQ so they use strange language ,like Topping for example who says "from extreme to more extreme"
That's implying improved SQ in my book which is not the case by a long shot at 120dB SINAD.
I know,market finds its ways and anything can be used.But no one can seriously claim audible differences (often never implying noise which is the obvious but other,undefined parameters)

The fumiest of all is that sometimes these devices use what they call "Sound color" which is added distortion in the 50's and 60's order and around forums the consensus is that no one can tell them apart switching from the 120dB SINAD mode.

Amir and others are right,education is the only way.

 

[SSS]

I feel like you are tilting at a position I'm not espousing here - my claim is not "ASR values only SINAD", and if I've said that somewhere, please point me to where, because I'd like to correct it. My claim is "products are ranked on ASR by SINAD"...because you have a ranked list of products using SINAD, sometimes SNR, and very few other metrics of the many you do measure (e.g. there is no analogous table for distortion-free range on multitone tests, maximum output power at a given distortion and load, etc).

You say this, but in many years of limited objective testing of source equipment - with the exception of the extremely pulled punches of @John Atkinson - we still saw an industry of products that had generally inaudible distortion, and generally low levels of noise. From my POV, SINAD if anything enables people to sell more expensive amplifiers and digital to analog converters to consumers, and I'm really not keen on that trend - laypeople shouldn't get the impression that it's reasonable to pay $300 for a discrete circuit to do a job an NE5532 in an audio interface can do just as well from an audibility standpoint.


This is true - ironically, I think that folks who mostly interact on ASR are somewhat insulated from the people who do annoying things with data from ASR, because I mostly see those dilettantes on Discord, Youtube, Reddit, etc. The median poster on this site understands the measurements being discussed, and isn't rushing out to buy (or tell others to buy) a new product just because you liked it - but there is a meaningful following of surface-level readers who do misuse the data you're putting out there. That's not to say that this is your fault, of course.

Mad_Economist. I followed partly the discussion. Don't understand what you want? Is your company or sales affected? Should amir change the displays of a test? For me as an EE the test results are pretty clear to understand. Of course, more measurements are always feasible. And watch the name "science" here. This forum is not only to test audio equipment (which selection is somewhat random) but also to discuss audio and technical topics. I assume that in this forum many educated people (probably on university level) are here who understand the measurements and their results and relevance. If somebody does not understand the measurments so should not read it.

 

[Tell]

I ask again: why do folks create videos over and over to complain about this?

Because that SINAD ranking is what people see, and they think it's all about sound quality and that higher is obviously better and that stuff down in fair/yellow must be not so good. Of course you, me and lots of ASR don't because we know what SINAD means at that the rest of the measurements do matter as well and that that ranking is mostly about good engineering, but in the end that doesn't matter for all the less technical people and ASR haters out there, they only see a SINAD ranking list and that their beloved tube DAC is down in the bottom of that list and therefor discredit the whole thing.
So to help those people out some kind of asterisk on bottom of the SINAD ranking image that it is more about how good the engineering and that other measurements do matter as wel, and maybe even also a audibility threshold line to be more clear about that aspect as well?

 

[Koeitje]

So at what SINAD do you discount a product?

When there are a good amount of alternatives that provide the same functionality but with better performance.

 

[boxerfan88]

It's not really TBH... as SINAD is really an engineering metric that measures the quality of an audio or electrical signal (i.e. ratio between the desired signal and N & D). It’s a technical measurement and not directly related to perception or audibility.

Our hearing is influenced by many factors apart from just SNR and distortion, like the type of distortion, artefacts and psychoacoustic aspects.

A device with a very high SINAD may not necessarily sound "better" to a listener compared to one with lower SINAD, or even different. Audibility also depends on the specific listening environment, the equipment used (i.e. headphones, speakers), and the listeners ability to hear distortions.

While a higher SINAD often indicates a cleaner signal, it doesn’t directly necessarily guarantee that a listener will perceive a noticeable difference in sound quality.

That said, if one had a choice between 2 devices with the same functions/connectivity, decent aesthetics and the same price range, yet one was 110dB SINAD and the other was 55 SINAD... what would be the reason to pick the lower SINAD device?


JSmith

Well, 110 SINAD vs 55 SINAD is not my use case, so I won't go there.

The last time I went DAC shopping was over a year ago.
My choices were extremely limited as I needed a 8ch DAC with balanced analog output for my digital crossover project.
I was deciding between SINAD 120 DAC vs. SINAD 118 DAC.
I think many will end up in similar situation ... choosing DAC where their SINAD score is quite close.

Besides reading the reviews here, I read up reviews & owner comments elsewhere before making the decision.
If I had the budget, I would have bought the SINAD 118 DAC because the multitone performance is better, oddly both uses the same ESS9028 chip.
In the end, my decision came down to price - I went with SINAD 120 DAC because of price (almost half).

 

[Blockader]

Well, 110 SINAD vs 55 SINAD is not my use case, so I won't go there.

The last time I went DAC shopping was over a year ago.
I was deciding between SINAD 120 DAC vs. SINAD 118 DAC.
I think many will end up in similar situation ... choosing DAC where their SINAD score is quite close.

Besides reading the reviews here, I read up reviews & owner comments elsewhere before making the decision.
If I had the budget, I would have bought the SINAD 118 DAC because the multitone performance is better, oddly both uses the same ESS chip.
In the end, my decision came down to price - I went with SINAD 120 DAC because of price (almost half).

Above 100db SINAD, the most important factors become build quality, reliability, and above all, features. Output voltage of the dac also matters if you have high SPL speakers.

 

[boxerfan88]

When it comes to actually buying stuff, price/performance and features are far more important once SINAD is > 80-ish.

Interesting data point.

According to the chart ... >80 to 89/90 is red (poor/trash). Fair begins at 90.

 

[boxerfan88]

Above 100db SINAD, the most important factors become build quality, reliability, and above all, features. Output voltage of the dac also matters if you have high SPL speakers.

For my case, price won

 

[Sokel]

Interesting data point.

According to the chart ... >80 to 89/90 is red (poor/trash). Fair begins at 90.

Play a 0dB test tone (NOT AT FULL LEVEL-BEWARE!) and attenuate it at -80dB (better with an analog way so noise will go down too if there's any)
Tell us what you hear,either noise or distortion.

 

[beagleman]

If someone were to rely solely on the SINAD ranking chart provided on this site, disregarding all other information, they would almost certainly identify a device that offers the best performance and cost-effectiveness. Of course, anyone is free to take their chances with other approaches, such as additional research or listening tests.

I think where I find "Issue", is many posters I have seen, Value SINAD over everything, which is their prerogative. But to me it hints at an issue, when said posters, put out blunt statements about "I would never even CONSIDER that product based on SINAD alone it will sound unlistenable".........but NEVER reference that they are simply reading a number that was measured, and have never even HEARD the item in question.

Their comments make those less in the know, believe, that one can ascertain HOW IT SOUNDS, without having to hear it at all, and that there is some line of audibility that is not really an audibility line, but a point some simply will not go below, based on their interpretation of what they "Want to believe" is acceptable numbers or not acceptable numbers.

My point, is the audibility matters, when one starts making "Sound quality" comments, mixed WITH numbers but has not even bothered to give it a spin.

In other words, one should not say "It sounds horrible or unacceptable", oh yeah but I never really heard it, I just saw a number..........Kinda wanting it both ways.

 

[beagleman]

You are not hearing me and repeating exactly what I was responding to. The SINAD is just a number in the dashboard. I simply put it in a table so that members know how that number compares to other numbers. That is all it is. A way to organize presentation of a number. I organize other numbers like this such as sensitivity of headphones. Are you going to say just because I do that, we rate headphones by their sensitivity???

To be sure, the presentation is powerful because it exposes how bad audio industry has gotten in letting simple performance metrics lag for no good reason. No product is made cheaper by making higher distortion and noise. Heck, it is the other way around, with cost going up. In other words, the number telegraphs itself to the industry. I had nothing to do with the situation getting this way. But am part of a solution to it.

Companies need to measure and optimize for lowest performance and noise unless they can demonstrate, through controlled listening tests, that excess distortion & noise has a positive subjective value.

Until then, pointing the arrow at us as if we have created a problem is totally out of line. Your favorite product has too low of a SINAD? Go ahead and prove to me its efficacy regardless. Don't complain about SINAD itself. And certainly don't create FUD around how it is measured, etc.

Amir, I think in theory I actually agree with you in many ways, as I come from an engineering and technical background, and for sure see the value in measurements and of course agree SINAD matters.

Where I differ, is maybe while great to have a focus on that metric, many forum members are blindly following it as being one of the only or the most important indicator of things, being JUNK versus Good.

They have no desire to define products based on "It is going to be audible" versus "will it not be audible", but simply follow a number and that to them is the only defining parameter to them.

I just believe one should Hear something if they are going to say, it "Must sound bad", especially in regards to noise and distortion, where audibility in real world usage varies a good bit.
Saying the number appears low is not the same as "It would sound substandard"
In other words, some members are making very vocal subjective claims based on a measured number and Zero experience with the unit.