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Occam's razor can shed some light there ..
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Is SINAD important? - "Myths" about measurements! [Video YT]
- Thread starter patoulol
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How well do you understand them?
It's because they test so astonishingly poorly. The reviewers I mean, not the amps.
Have you seen any of these listening sessions/comparisons done with any meaningful controls (blind, levels matched, etc)? If not, then we are just listening to storytime. You do realize they are salesmen, right? You are watching infomercials.
Here is an excerpt from an interview with the founder of Stereophile, J. Gordon Holt that seems to sum it up well:
"Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?
Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel."
45 Years of Stereophile
It was 45 years ago this month that the first issue of Stereophile, just 20 pages in length, went in the mail. It had been founded by one J. Gordon Holt. Gordon had been technical editor of High Fidelity magazine in the 1950s, and was tired of being asked to pander to the demands of advertisers.
www.stereophile.com
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See @BDWoody response below . But even that isn't the most elegant reason . What do all those individuals have in common?
Can we please separate the differing goals of "transparency" and "sounds real good"? While we're at it, can we separate the sources of "sounding real good" from those that exist *in the audio signal* and those that exist in the listener's brain? I think keeping those two concepts straight will make your inquiry a lot more concise.
ASR is primarily concerned with what happens to a signal when it passes through equipment, and how that signal is presented by the loudspeaker or earphone. There are certainly other sources of listening and hobby pleasure, but its a wildly different topic without a lot of scientific structure, at least within the hobby and the way you are talking about it.
As for reviewers, audio mags, and dealers, they rave about nearly everything they review/sell because the financial dynamics of their business require it. That would be the razor you are looking for.
Here's a good place to start. I suggest reading through it, as the discussion helps it makes even more sense.
Audibility thresholds of amp and DAC measurements
Introduction A recurring theme on ASR is whether or not the various measured qualities of the devices are audible. In this post, I'll present some clear and visual thresholds for when those imperfections can be considered a potentially audible concern. I will not explain the basics of amp/DAC...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Not at all. I suggest you read the above thread, then see where we are.
Maybe you just don't know it when you hear it...in DACs.
You cannot hear better than a competent DAC performs. So what's better than that?
[subjectivist special pleading omitted]
Even if you can't do it -- and it isn't easy to do properly, with hardware -- you should acknowledge that your perceptions from sighted, non level-matched comparisons are highly, inherently, susceptible to error. And that should guide you in all your claims about comparative audio quality.
It's really that simple. Actual audio science uses controls for perceptual bias. Without them, acknowledge the risk of (gross) error due to inadequate test method. Stop arguing for workarounds or pleading for more purely subjective reports.
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Their job is to differentiate and promote products . Perhaps , just perhaps , if they were to test in a controlled way, these differentiators may disappear . But then all they would be left with is descriptions of form and function rather than sonic characteristics . Which wouldn't keep all of them in a job .
Now, a question back to you . You haven't been here long . In your first posts you were struggling to use your equipment. Now , days later , you're challenging our host's whole methodology . Any elegant reasons why that may be ?
I could do that. Personally I use a 3-year old DAC myself.
The reason I am not is because many of these products have short cycles and are replaced with new versions. And new versions often have better/more features such as trigger, VU meter, EQ, etc. And they come in different styles and form factors which may appeal to people.
When people ask me if they should upgrade from a few year old excellent DAC, my answer is always NO, unless they need a feature in the new version.
Since the human auditory system is so bad at hearing distortion, even those most of the tube amps are transparent, especially when they’re paired with speakers without subwoofers in a non-treated room. Usual bookshelf speakers without subwoofers have about 3% intermodular distortion, and compared to that, the 0.5% second and third order harmonic distortion of tube amps is nothing next to that. Even with subwoofers, most tube amps are transparent to the source for a casual listener.
https://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/ test your listening here and show us the results, since you are scientist you'd like to put the theory to the test, I believe.
In almost all forums, whether evidence-based or not, people greatly exaggerate how audible distortion really is. Geddes ran several blind tests on distortion audibility, and the results showed that people couldn’t even hear the harmonic distortion from tube amps at all. However, participants were able to hear intermodular distortion easier. The reason is basically auditory masking function of the human hearing.
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You haven't defined what "better sounding" means and by definition then, that is non-scientific.
Scientifically, lower noise floor DACs have been coming and this can be shown to be audible depending on how loud you play. Many DACs have been transparent with playback level of 120 dBSPL. If one were to go louder, or use other processing which reduces this performance (e.g. EQ), or use ultra sensitive speakers, then there is a small reason to seek even more quiet products.
None of the above is about "better sound." If you are not hearing any impairments, then that is that. DACs don't have a sound in the manner you are thinking.
If your goal is transparency to the source (which is mine), then a DAC that I recommend, is recommended on that basis. There is a peer reviewed research which defines transparency based on threshold of hearing and what is technically possible to mimic a live concert. You often hear me talk about noise and distortion that is below -115 dB to summarize that research. Your pleasure then, depends purely on your music which you get to choose. This level of transparency is what I call perfection and is most definitely correlated with listening as it is based on psychoacoustic research.
That's like saying you an open minded scientist and then ask why people recommend taking mega doses of vitamins to cure cancer. Are you saying the quiet part out loud? That you don't believe in audio science and are purely a subjectivist, chasing completely non-scientific (mostly paid) opinion of youtube personalities?
Tube products can be shown to not be transparent and pollute the original source. Their high impedance for example can modify the response of a speaker, adding constant coloration to music. And no, the above reviewers are not qualified to hear that coloration since in controlled testing, they don't even poses that basic ability:
Above shows how consistent/reliable each group of listeners are in describing the tonality of a speaker. As you see, Audio reviewers rank very low.
As noted, you should only watch these videos for entertainment and for functionality description.
My own subjective testing of tube amps either shows them to be transparent, or distort, or hide low level detail -- all demonstrated through measurements.
thewas
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I am surprised by the mass and patience of replies to every new member with such a posting pattern, in one of my languages there is a saying, "don't jump over every stick that is held out to you", as this usually really doesn't bring anything.
The point is about sensory perceptions informing claims about audio quality. Not the history of the world.
Amir doesn't know what 'our' listening pleasure is. He can only report his. Which he does when there is reason to believe it matters.
Reporting 'pleasure' from listening to one DAC with good measurements but 'displeasure' from another with essentially the same measured performances, would be nonsensical. Yet it can and does easily happen in the world of audiophilia.
Of course. Have you heard of these things called 'vinyl records'?
You are tediously overthinking it.
Who say there is only one 'perfect' DAC?
And who says all DACs offer the same options? Or form factor? Or price point?
I'm wondering why you're spending your precious moments here making specious arguments.
Below is quoted from this post by Dr Toole.
An Enticing Marketing Story, Theory Without Measurement?
This is a multi-faceted issue (which is what makes it so fascinating), and I don't know of any other way of approaching it than starting from two assumptions: Humans separate source from room in their hearing; the room sounds like spaciousness; the listener hears the source itself effectively...
audiosciencereview.com
...
The other point worth mentioning is that back in the early 1990s, at the NRC in Ottawa, I constructed a flexible-geometry room complex to examine the effects of the listening room on subjective loudspeaker ratings. The experiments are described in: Olive, S.E., Schuck, P.L., Sally, S.L. and Bonneville, M. (1995). “The Variability of Loudspeaker Sound Quality Among Four Domestic Sized Rooms”, 99thConvention, Audio Eng. Soc., Preprint 4092. and also in Section 7.6.2 in the 3rd edition of my book. There were three very closely ranked and very good speakers in the test - it was not easy. The rooms were very different. Real-time double-blind listening tests were done, as well as time shifted binaural versions of those tests. Binaural results and live results closely agreed. The key finding was that when listeners did the multiple randomized comparisons in the same room, each of the four rooms in turn, the sound quality ratings were very similar. This was also true when the experience was through calibrated insert earphones using binaural recordings. The significant variable was the loudspeaker, and the room was not a significant factor. However, when the binaural recordings were presented in randomized sequence, not permitting the listeners to adapt to the room, the room became the dominant factor and the loudspeaker was not a significant factor. So, it is undoubtedly true that the room modifies the overall sound, but it is also true that with an opportunity to adapt to the room, listeners were able to decide on the relative merits of the loudspeakers in the same way in very different rooms. Clearly we have significant ability to "listen through" rooms.
Yes. Good speakers will sound bad in a bad room. But a good speaker will still sound less bad than a bad speaker in the same bad room. Therefore, speaker ratings from properly performed listening tests not conducted in your room are just as applicable to your room.
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He isnt looking for a new DAC. Neither is any of the reviewers you referenced earlier. They, like Amir, are performing a function in the industry. Evaluating and highlighting products worthy of note or avoidance.
But Amir focuses on measurable (and reproducible) aspects of performance whereas aforementioned reviewers are giving their "opinion".
Yes. Measurements that have been shown to correlate with user preferences repeatedly.
No, this is neither true nor follows. There is very good correspondence, and Amir is pretty well-versed in psycho-acoustic research.
I am an anecdote. I have a system that measures very transparent, and it sounds real good. I have, in particular, found the guidance on speaker measurement here particularly revealing.
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Good luck with that then. How does one measure earnestness? Above what level do they become credible?
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