Master Thread: Are Measurements Everything or Nothing?

[Purité Audio]

It ‘should’ be the first point of discussion, how to improve SQ without spending anything or at least very little.
Keith

 

[Mart68]

Yeah, I didn't mean I was surprised. I said I was furious. You could also say it's in their interest to help their customer reach the most convincing experience. And you could also say sometimes people do things that are not directly in their interest.

It may be that your pal wouldn't stop regardless. Some people only stop the tweaking and upgrading when they run out of money or lose interest.

Like a pal of mine who finally ran out of crazy tweaks to apply and then never listened to the (very expensive) system ever again. No more worlds to conquer.

 

[Rõlnnbacke]

Speaking of retailers and their moral responsibility...

I have a good friend who spends all his money in hifi. I've tried to talk to him about abx testings for cables but he got so furious I decided to backpedal. He invested so much (time as well)... our friendship is more important.

So, anyway, he has a 100K system. He has two dealers, and he regularly changes stuff in his system, they buy him some gear back as well. They come to his place to check it out, find solutions and what not.

what I'm FURIOUS about, is that they don't tell him nothing about his room/general set up.

My system costs a tenth of his and I have much MUCH better spatialization, for instance. And it's not surprising when you see how every thing is set up.

They let him buy more stuff, they let him dig into other gear, but they never tell him to change the room configuration. I'm mad at them.

Is there any chance you could excite some enthousiasm in your friend about another dealer you know who is integer, like Keith proposed? I can understand that you are angry (that's the main reason I clicked on 'like').

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Speaking of retailers and their moral responsibility...

I have a good friend who spends all his money in hifi. I've tried to talk to him about abx testings for cables but he got so furious I decided to backpedal. He invested so much (time as well)... our friendship is more important.

So, anyway, he has a 100K system. He has two dealers, and he regularly changes stuff in his system, they buy him some gear back as well. They come to his place to check it out, find solutions and what not.

what I'm FURIOUS about, is that they don't tell him nothing about his room/general set up.

My system costs a tenth of his and I have much MUCH better spatialization, for instance. And it's not surprising when you see how every thing is set up.

They let him buy more stuff, they let him dig into other gear, but they never tell him to change the room configuration. I'm mad at them.

Can you suggest to him, a look at ASR, before he spends any more?

 

[guy48065]

That is audibly transparent - just like 95+ % of all the dacs measured here.

It won't sound any different - if compared in a controlled blind test - from any of the others.

I believe in a different religion. One with eyes--and ears--open.

 

[Brian Hall]

I believe in a different religion. One with eyes--and ears--open.

A very expensive religion that ignores reality.

 

[UprightCitizen]

The latest number of Swedish LTS magazine MoLT includes a test of the ultra. They set it up for a double blind test but could quickly conclude that it was not transparent after an initial round of (not double) blind test with pink noise, compared to the dac of a reference that has proven inaudible in many tests. The names I recognized are not novices and promoted the idea of a transparent audio reproduction long before this website was even an idea, so I'd take the test somewhat seriously.

 

[Soniclife]

They set it up for a double blind test but could quickly conclude that it was not transparent after an initial round of (not double) blind test with pink noise, compared to the dac of a reference that has proven inaudible in many tests.

Do they give more details of why they stopped there, because a sighted test isn't going to carry any weight.

 

[UprightCitizen]

Do they give more details of why they stopped there, because a sighted test isn't going to carry any weight.

It was sighted only for the test leader. According to the article, they stopped because it was so apparant for all involved that it colored the sound in the higher frequencies that they saw no point in carrying on. It is described without much detail, and raises a few questions. Still, I would definitely say that the people involved know what they are doing. They wrote that the colotation was not unpleasant and that the device is very feature packed, so it may still be a very good purchase.

LTS members can access the issue here: https://www.lts.a.se/

There is supposed the be sound files uploaded too somewhere there, but I have not bothered myself.

 

[mlsstl]

Interesting.... Setting up for a double-blind test and then not following through, leaving all the sighted biases in place. Makes it difficult to take them seriously.

 

[UprightCitizen]

Interesting.... Setting up for a double-blind test and then not following through, leaving all the sighted biases in place. Makes it difficult to take them seriously.

Read again. But yeah, the whole thing is a bit puzzling, but whatever...

 

[mlsstl]

Read again. But yeah, the whole thing is a bit puzzling, but whatever...

I read it a couple of times before replying. The psychiatry of sighted bias is well established. I've recommended this book many times before, but Dr. Cordelia Fine's book "A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives" is an excellent read (though isn't about audio specifically). Being an expert or professional in the audiophile world doesn't change the brain's ability to be influenced by sight, reputation, brand names, and so on. They had a chance to clearly demonstrate their perception was correct and not just subjective bias and they p*ssed it away.

 

[UprightCitizen]

I read it a couple of times before replying. The psychiatry of sighted bias is well established. I've recommended this book many times before, but Dr. Cordelia Fine's book "A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives" is an excellent read (though isn't about audio specifically). Being an expert or professional in the audiophile world doesn't change the brain's ability to be influenced by sight, reputation, brand names, and so on. They had a chance to clearly demonstrate their perception was correct and not just subjective bias and they p*ssed it away.

Not being double blind leaves some poking at on the table, but it was still not sighted for the participants.

 

[mlsstl]

Not being double blind leaves some poking at on the table, but it was still not sighted for the participants.

Pretty well established how easily unsighted participants can be easily lead by someone who knows the details. Like I said, they had a chance to remove doubt about their perception and chose not to take it. That by itself is quite suggestive -- I've already made up my mind. I don't need no stinkin' test!

 

[UprightCitizen]

Pretty well established how easily unsighted participants can be easily lead by someone who knows the details. Like I said, they had a chance to remove doubt about their perception and chose not to take it. That by itself is quite suggestive -- I've already made up my mind. I don't need no stinkin' test!

It's not my test and I have the same objections as you do, but to just write it off as nothing is going a bit far. While it's certainly not conclusive, it might be an indication that it might be a more flattering position to be a little bit more humble regarding the absolute transparancy of products than what's been shown in this thread lately.

 

[mlsstl]

It's not my test and I have the same objections as you do, but to just write it off as nothing is going a bit far. While it's certainly not conclusive, it might be an indication that it might be a more flattering position to be a little bit more humble regarding the absolute transparancy of products than what's been shown in this thread lately.

Having read the audiophile press and forums for many, many decades now, "humble" is not the word that pops into my mind when reading subjective review.... I'll start when they do.

 

[UprightCitizen]

Having read the audiophile press and forums for many, many decades now, "humble" is not the word that pops into my mind when reading subjective review.... I'll start when they do.

I don't know if you are thinking of MoLT when you mention audiophile press, if so I'd recommend that you familiarize yourself with LTS before you make silly statements. I see a lot of comments on this forum written by members lacking the basic knowledge in relevant engineering fields to even interpret the presented data or evaluate the methodology of the tests. Even less so able to convincingly correlate them to hearing thresholds etc, a lot in this area could still be cobsidered up for debate as far as I know. Yet the comments are not seldom smirky and very self assured. A lot of knowledgeable people on here too, but thats another story. It's good to turn to science, and I applaud the strive for reproduction over creating pleasing sounds with a sound system. But...

I have the ultra myself btw, I'm happy with it.

 

[antcollinet]

I believe in a different religion. One with eyes--and ears--open.

Why do you need your eyes to tell you what something sounds like?

The fact you do - should tell you something.

 

[Soniclife]

While it's certainly not conclusive, it might be an indication that it might be a more flattering position to be a little bit more humble regarding the absolute transparancy of products than what's been shown in this thread lately.

That's just it, it isn't an indication of anything, if they had followed through and got the same result that would mean something, and the science and engineering would have a chance to advance. But as it is it's just another valueless data point, anything else is just an appeal to authority.

 

[Miguelón]

The vision angle is a good one. I am always entertained users demand 4k on their smart phones and yet are perfectly happy with half that revolution on much larger computer monitors...

And on my smartphone they totally exaggerate the impact of 1080 on image quality...

View attachment 468433
..

Adapting low resolution upon higher resolution physical pixels doesn’t produce artifacts?

I don’t know the process, but I’m mentally happy when source file is at an entire multiple of the resolution, as for example playing 1080p in a 1080p screen or 720p in a 1440p one…

Agree on your opinion, even 20/20 people cannot solve more than 400 ppi at 15 cm, and often they neglect screen quality in their workplace.

Last weeks I realized I’m very sensitive to flickering screens, I can read for hours on my ipad mini (lcd IPS 326 ppi), but my OLED iphone gives me crazy even with bigger fonts and 460 ppi, infinite contrast and so forth… apparently the diffraction is the pulse width modulation technique for dimming used in OLED panels.