Opposite of ASR?

[Dialectic]

Marvin (SBAFs equivalent of Amir) just bought an APx555.
To quote the good man:

The APx555 was meant for research, discovery, science, engineering. Not SINAD bullshit. It's time to take back the word science.

and

I'd rather fight on the "who is the better measurement guru" front. I know certain other folks with APx555s are lazy or have resorted to sloppy "I don't give a F and I won't bother to investigate" methodologies. Bring it on I say!

That's spending a lot of money to prove @amirm 'wrong' and prove:

Are there certain behaviors which are common to ESS chip DACs, AKM DACs? Certain topologies? Certain patterns which explain what we hear.
Also would be fun to do stuff like set the record straight on potentiometers... maybe frame them in proper visualizations so if channel balance is 0.5db off, it's not graphed like it was the end of the world.

 

[Jinjuku]

LOL. A thread at audiophilestyle about their purge and the bias against instrumentation and I pointed out the same way you did with site traffic that there is indeed a desire for what Amir is doing with ASR and that how something started in 2016 has just absolutely lapped the incumbents.

Bottom line is I'll trust these subjective folk when they actually will do ears only evaluations. Until then and like always: If you don't trust your ears, neither can I.

 

[mhardy6647]

I have to say -- as a guy who is not a mass spectrometrist, but who's worked with lots of folks who are -- the democratization of high-resolution, high sensitivity mass spectrometers, and elegant (and too easy-to-use) software tools to apply to the data have given me pause. This may seem like an irrelevant comment, but the underlying (potential) issue is the same -- the misuse of analytical tools by neophytes.

N.B. NOT saying, at all, that this is the case here (or, heck, for all I know, even at That Other Site -- which I have never visited); just SAYING that it's a knock-on effect of (too) easy-to-use analytical platforms.

Sorry for the off-topic, but not entirely off topic, digression.

 

[garbulky]

Every other Hi-Fi related site.
Keith

Yeah pretty much If they don't produce measurements, they would be completely subjective. I enjoy several of them. TAS, Stereophile, Part time audiophile etc. Probably Part time audiophile and Darko audio would be the polar opposite of ASR

 

[ahofer]

So the opposite of ASR would be:

[edited]

• Prevailing sentiment that measurements tell you little or nothing
• contempt for Toole/Olive/Harman research findings
• tend to go off into objectivist-bashing
• Seriously discusses the merits of cables and tweeks.
• prefers boutique separates to active/integrated components
• tends to believe more expensive is better Believes in a strong correlation between price and high fidelity
• obsessive interest in perceived differences between electronics, relative to transducers and rooms
• believes in "synergies" between components
• believe "everything matters" to the point that a few hairs out of place can ruin the sound

Sounds like Audiogon to me, but I have less experience with the other sites mentioned above.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Kinda like the difference between Superman and Bizarro. Even as kids, we knew Superman was a force for good, Bizarro was just nutz. Seems a lot of folks these days really don't understand this, and not just in the audio world...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro

 

[Willem]

I guess one other characteristic would be an obsessive interest in links in the chain that matter relatively little (i.e. the electronics) rather than in speakers and the room.

 

[silentt29]

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[SIY]

I have to say -- as a guy who is not a mass spectrometrist, but who's worked with lots of folks who are -- the democratization of high-resolution, high sensitivity mass spectrometers, and elegant (and too easy-to-use) software tools to apply to the data have given me pause. This may seem like an irrelevant comment, but the underlying (potential) issue is the same -- the misuse of analytical tools by neophytes.

N.B. NOT saying, at all, that this is the case here (or, heck, for all I know, even at That Other Site -- which I have never visited); just SAYING that it's a knock-on effect of (too) easy-to-use analytical platforms.

Sorry for the off-topic, but not entirely off topic, digression.

I gave a presentation on FTIR a few years ago entitled “The Laminated Card.” It was all about some of the crazy misuse of that technique now that the spectrometers are small, cheap, and have actual GUIs. The title came from my experience with a customer’s tech who kept rejecting our material based on “following procedure” which was a poorly designed procedure. The tech had no real knowledge, the spectrometer was just a black box to her, and she couldn’t see why her results were garbage. So perfectly good material was being returned because of The Procedure followed blindly.

I half-joked that I missed the days when an FTIR was huge, expensive, and needed a PhD scientist to run it.

 

[Jinjuku]

as a guy who is not a mass spectrometrist, but who's worked with lots of folks who are -- the democratization of high-resolution, high sensitivity mass spectrometers, and elegant (and too easy-to-use) software tools to apply to the data have given me pause.

Totally understand as I deal with 'network engineers' that can only drive a Web UI. Best case is that configs are completely sub-optimal most cases the configs are broken.

But that stuff tends to sort itself out.