SINAD vs. $

[pozz]

Why would IME, SINAD not be a valid/sufficient measure of audio quality? I mean sure, you have FR to taken into account for, or jitter/IMD and such as well. But I can't think of a time here where I've seen blue-tier SINAD measurements followed by bad metrics otherwise.

Unless I am missing the point of what you're trying to say; being that - "the music itself is a measure of audio quality" or something off field I am completely missing.

Also retail prize, what does that mean? Success in the market?

Retail "price", most likely.

SINAD will not show other behaviours or even outright broken elements in design. It only describes the operating range without noise or distortion.

 

[pozz]

True, but how many of us are going to ship 30kg power amplifiers across the Pacific or risk multi thousand dollar esoteric pieces to freight companies?

I'll bet there are plenty of very high performing amplifiers sitting in the lounge rooms of many of the members here. Amplifiers bought in a different time at significant cost and designed by incredibly skilled engineers and manufacturers. Amplifiers that were already very competently reviewed by magazines of the past where measurements were everything.

So ultimately, Amir gets mostly plenty of lightweight little Chinese toys to test because they are, let's face it, disposable and no-one is going to get too upset if they get lost or wrecked in transit.

There was a time after WWII, during the economic reconstruction led by the Allies (for their purposes), when Japanese manufacturing was synonymous with cheap mass-produced junk. The direction that eventually took goes without saying. But the outsourcing that for the last handful of decades represented the relationship with the Chinese will, and is, giving way to their efforts to establish their autonomous expertise and quality.

And I'm sure more people with funds will be curious for Amir to poke their gear. Enough have entrusted it to random people promising vast improvements through upgraded caps or the like.

 

[Tks]

SINAD will not show other behaviours or even outright broken elements in design. It only describes the operating range without noise or distortion.

There was a time after WWII, during the economic reconstruction led by the Allies (for their purposes), when Japanese manufacturing was synonymous with cheap mass-produced junk. The direction that eventually took goes without saying. But the outsourcing that for the last handful of decades represented the relationship with the Chinese will, and is, giving way to their efforts to establish their autonomous expertise and quality.

While SINAD won't show "broken elements" in design (whatever that means, as it could mean anything from broken hardware design where you have pisspoor heatsinks, or just grounding blunders, OR simply catastrophic software-side failures). I still feel pretty safe raising the request for showing blue-tier devices that suffer such examples of being broken while holding on to blue-tier SINAD metrics. Again, I'm not saying it's impossible, I just haven't been exposed to any to then turn around and hold firm to the statement of almost saying something like "Yeahhhh, SINAD don't mean much".

As for the whole history of Chinese goods being as badly perceived as older Japanese goods of the WW2 era. I said when I was in highschool that China could beat us in overall production capacity mixed in with quality - per dollar if we simply were willing to pay for such.

And boy does the Matrix Audio line of devices demonstrate and verify these sentiments I held.

On the outside, I see shoddy Chinese quality as a byproduct of demand, and of a nation in rapid uptick. Sure they probably don't have 100% of the sophistication it takes to be in the watch industry what Swiss mechanical watchmakers are. But boy are they catching up at a rapid pace.

 

[pozz]

While SINAD won't show "broken elements" in design (whatever that means, as it could mean anything from broken hardware design where you have pisspoor heatsinks, or just grounding blunders, OR simply catastrophic software-side failures). I still feel pretty safe raising the request for showing blue-tier devices that suffer such examples of being broken while holding on to blue-tier SINAD metrics.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...n-da9-1-es9038pro-dac-and-headphone-amp.3618/
Best example I can think of next to the recent Emotiva AVR review. Not top tier, of course.

"Quality" as such by itself is not very representable. What is representable is the number of its facets, of which SINAD is but one.

 

[pozz]

@bogart I don't have enough of a sense of manufacturing costs to really put those kinds of controls together. I wouldn't mind doing the research in a few years though, when there are a lot more samples to play with.

 

[pozz]

For more data please see the Attribute Comparison Tool for electronics and speakers by @RickSanchez.

 

[Wes]

Plots of 0 to $200 might be fun.

For amps a 3D graph using power and price with SINAD as the dep. variable would be useful.

Further exploration using breakpoint regressions and examining the residuals may be instructive...