Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?

[Dimitrov]

I would much rather you didn't. I already replied to your other post, and I wasn't the first.

I deleted my post.

 

[marX]

I saw the recent WiiM pro Plus review by Cheapaudioman and he says it has a lot of bass but it's not 'tight'. I wonder what 'tight' would mean.
How could it be explained 'properly'?
Does more bass which is 'loose' mean something to do with the decay of notes and the presence of resonances?
OR is it due to some emphasis on the upper frequencies in the bass region?

 

[Deleted member 21219]

I saw the recent WiiM pro Plus review by Cheapaudioman and he says it has a lot of bass but it's not 'tight'. I wonder what 'tight' would mean.
How could it be explained 'properly'?
Does more bass which is 'loose' mean something to do with the decay of notes and the presence of resonances?
OR is it due to some emphasis on the upper frequencies in the bass region?

..... or perhaps what he heard has nothing to do with the WiiM. Or it could have been cognitive bias. Or more probably, he never heard anything at all; he made it up.

Here's how to explain it "properly": amateur reviews (without tests and measurements) on YT are the bottom of the garbage barrel compared to scientific reality.

Jim

 

[NTK]

I saw the recent WiiM pro Plus review by Cheapaudioman and he says it has a lot of bass but it's not 'tight'. I wonder what 'tight' would mean.
How could it be explained 'properly'?
Does more bass which is 'loose' mean something to do with the decay of notes and the presence of resonances?
OR is it due to some emphasis on the upper frequencies in the bass region?

We have @VintageFlanker's measurements here. With excellent measurement results nearly across the board it is extremely unlikely that the Wiim Pro Plus is anything but totally audibly transparent. The pre-requisites for any attentions paid to Cheapaudioman's listening impressions would be:

1. Him able to tell it from others in properly controlled double blind tests, and
2. Measurements of his unit don't show any anomalies

Otherwise, what he said can be safely ignored.

WiiM Pro Plus - Review & Measurements (Streamer)

WiiM Pro Plus - Review & Measurements Hi Folks, Here is another review, measurements-based, today about the WiiM Pro Plus (or "Pro+"). While some rumors already mentioned it for the last couple of months, it is just launched today (August 8) officially. The WiiM Pro Plus comes with a $220...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[VintageFlanker]

How could it be explained 'properly'?

It can't be explained whatsoever, because his statement is absolutely wrong to begin with.

 

[GXAlan]

I saw the recent WiiM pro Plus review by Cheapaudioman and he says it has a lot of bass but it's not 'tight'. I wonder what 'tight' would mean.
How could it be explained 'properly'?
Does more bass which is 'loose' mean something to do with the decay of notes and the presence of resonances?
OR is it due to some emphasis on the upper frequencies in the bass region?

Output impedance and input impedance are the only things I can think of. It would show up if there is a big difference between running the WiiM Pro Plus through the 1.7V or 10V sensitivity and then doing a sweep from 5 Hz to whatever. But that would only make sense if cheapaudioman was using a downstream product with really bad impedance matching.

@VintageFlanker can you run a sweep with the different E1DA sensitivities to see if it’s different? That would suggest capacitor coupled output (to prevent DC)

 

[item]

The DAC measurements here have shown over the years that whilst some cheap products perform much better than some expensive ones, ie price is no indicator of design competence all except the very worst are much better than any speaker (or headphone, though these don’t interest me much) and it seems to me that almost everything else in a Hi-Fi chain is more worth measuring than DACs...
Power amps are much more interesting

Yes. To which we might add, more generally apropos: why measure the inaudible?

Once people listened to people playing instruments; then people listened to people playing machines; the people listened to machines playing machines, and now we're listening to what machines think about listening to machines.

 

[item]

LOL. So now you see the nasty side of the audio business!
Finally people can see the truth behind those machines and people in business hate it! LOL

I entered the audio business twenty years ago. I find the majority of trade insiders to be venal, ignorant, egotistical and duplicitious in various combinations. The few decent humans I met left the industry.

As an ex-importer of Wyred 4 Sound, I've no problem with Amir's findings, though I have questions about differences between his data and that of others. I never found W4S DACs to sound absolutely transparent: they are attractively voiced: they sound expensive - whereas many cheap, neutral DACs with high SINAD ratings sound exactly that – cheap.

There's a weird expectation bias at work here – in which we're told that something is inaudibly better, and everyone runs out and buys it from China, kidding themselves it sounds great. Before it was What HiFi; now it's ASR. But it's the same as it ever was in terms of herd behaviour. Having said that, I've purchased quite a few items recommended here and found most to be excellent value, and I would rather read ASR than thinly disguised advertorials. Independent reviewers like Darko get an unfair rap: they're certainly not shills because they approach the same question from a different perspective. Not everything reductive is scientific in the sense of being 'useful'.

Truthfully, DACs – as standalone devices – achieved a sufficiently high level of competence some years ago – which isn't to say they all sound the same. Atomising performance to this level is relatively trivial to accomplish but it's an exercise in counting the number of angels dancing on a pinhead. We really need an empirical way to assess the whole local playback environment from a human perspective - without involving humans. Or maybe we don't. The question will always persist: “But what does it sound like? And do I like it?"

 

[Mart68]

I entered the audio business twenty years ago. I find the majority of trade insiders to be venal, ignorant, egotistical and duplicitious in various combinations. The few decent humans I met left the industry.

As an ex-importer of Wyred 4 Sound, I've no problem with Amir's findings, though I have questions about differences between his data and that of others. I never found W4S DACs to sound absolutely transparent: they are attractively voiced: they sound expensive - whereas many cheap, neutral DACs with high SINAD ratings sound exactly that – cheap.

There's a weird expectation bias at work here – in which we're told that something is inaudibly better, and everyone runs out and buys it from China, kidding themselves it sounds great. Before it was What HiFi; now it's ASR. But it's the same as it ever was in terms of herd behaviour. Having said that, I've purchased quite a few items recommended here and found most to be excellent value, and I would rather read ASR than thinly disguised advertorials. Independent reviewers like Darko get an unfair rap: they're certainly not shills because they approach the same question from a different perspective. Not everything reductive is scientific in the sense of being 'useful'.

Truthfully, DACs – as standalone devices – achieved a sufficiently high level of competence some years ago – which isn't to say they all sound the same. Atomising performance to this level is relatively trivial to accomplish but it's an exercise in counting the number of angels dancing on a pinhead. We really need an empirical way to assess the whole local playback environment from a human perspective - without involving humans. Or maybe we don't. The question will always persist: “But what does it sound like? And do I like it?"

I'm sure you'd like that to be true but I've had expensive DACs here against my cheapo Chinese and there's just no difference.

I mean I could buy an expensive one tomorrow and not worry about it so don't think I'm just making the best of it. But what would be the point? I like the looks of the Topping so even aesthetics is not a reason to pay more.

Darko does not know enough to approach any hi-fi related question but he does seem to be learning albeit slowly. Maybe not a shill but definitely a salesman.

'What does it sound like?' Well it should sound like whatever recording is playing through it, otherwise it's not hi-fi.

 

[DonR]

What does "cheap" sound like? Or is it more of a "you'll know it when you see it" type thing?

 

[BDWoody]

I never found W4S DACs to sound absolutely transparent: they are attractively voiced: they sound expensive - ...

So, deviation from flat frequency response, or the addition of 'attractive' noise and/or distortion is what costs the extra money, rather than higher fidelity?

...whereas many cheap, neutral DACs with high SINAD ratings sound exactly that – cheap.

There's a weird expectation bias at work here...

It's not so weird, as bias is just part of being human, but you may have it backwards. Have you tried your comparison while making an effort to eliminate that very natural bias? Otherwise, you think it's a surprise that you describe expensive stuff as sounding better, and cheaper stuff as sounding cheap?

... – in which we're told that something is inaudibly better, and everyone runs out and buys it from China, kidding themselves it sounds great.

Is that what we all do?

 

[Doodski]

Independent reviewers like Darko get an unfair rap: they're certainly not shills because they approach the same question from a different perspective.

Darko is a snake oil loving reviewer. He goes for some pretty weird stuff sometimes. He has a knack for sounding technical but at the root of it he's not scientific at all and is as subjective as they come.

 

[fpitas]

What does "cheap" sound like? Or is it more of a "you'll know it when you see it" type thing?

My little finger never extends as I listen to cheap stuff.

 

[fpitas]

Yes. To which we might add, more generally apropos: why measure the inaudible?

Once people listened to people playing instruments; then people listened to people playing machines; the people listened to machines playing machines, and now we're listening to what machines think about listening to machines.

That would be kind of cool. Chat GPT I guess?

 

[tmtomh]

Woody Guthrie reminds us that an instrument is a machine too.

 

[fpitas]

Woody Guthrie reminds us that an instrument is a machine too.

View attachment 305184

True. I get the feeling we've been scolded, but I have no clear idea what the subject is.

 

[DonR]

My little finger never extends as I listen to cheap stuff.

Ahh! The pinkie extension test. Rock solid science at its best. My favourite is the tightening gonad.

 

[Ricardus]

I've no problem with Amir's findings, though I have questions about differences between his data and that of others. I never found W4S DACs to sound absolutely transparent: they are attractively voiced: they sound expensive - whereas many cheap, neutral DACs with high SINAD ratings sound exactly that – cheap.

I'm sure you could tell the difference when you knew which one was which, but not when you didn't.

Is this another one of those new users pretending to be objective in their early posts but are really bogus anti-science accounts?

 

[ahofer]

Maybe @item is just used to altered FR of certain types of high-end equipment, and associates neutral with cheap. Or he's imagining things. We'll never know, and neither will he, until he does a little experimentation.

 

[fpitas]

Is this another one of those new users pretending to be objective in their early posts but are really bogus anti-science accounts?

Oh goodness. Does that happen here?