My exact point is that the measurement used here, clearly aren't comprehensive, and that measurement of audio in general is not developed to the point of being satisfactory in describing what we hear.
Disclaimer: I am not an native English speaker, so go ahead and pick my words apart if you wish
First let me say that I value this forum extremely highly, as it is a unique source of measurements that represent a "smell test" or a minimum hurdle for audio equipment. Whether this means that a Topping D90 will in reality sound the same as a dCS Rossini (which costs >20 times as much) is quite a different question.
I find most of the contributions in this forum very competent and well informed. However it strikes me that in some of the back and forths, the basis of science is simply thrown out of the window.
In order to conclude that sufficiently identical measurements result in identical sound quality, a number of conditions would need to apply. The most important is that the set of measurements captures ALL the relevant parameters that determine the sound quality. I do not doubt that the measurements presented here go a long way and represent some important ones, but I think we are far from a proof that the mesaurement suite is exhaustive. One very simple reason they don't is that the test environment is not the same as the listening environment. The measurements take place between a DAC and an analyzer. The listening sessions take place in the context of a complete Hifi chain in a room and a listener as the "measuring device". I think no scientist would conclude that the measurement will correctly and fully predict the behaviour of the listening room sletup and the psycho-physical listening entity. Yet many posts seem to simply postulate it does, without giving any scientific proof.
I have raised this question in
this thread. There I described in detail how our (blind) listening tests were conducted that led us to the conclusion that four different DACs did indeed sound different.
As science is (amongst other things) always a question of scope of the experiment, I do wonder why scientific rigour is not applied to the question, how suitable the set of measurements used is to predict sound quality in a listening environment. I have never seen the question adressed (and it IS a scientific one). If the question is raised, I have often seen answers that did not adress the question, but discredited the person asking the question, which I really find a pity in a scientific forum.
I would very much welcome a place in this forum, where this issue could be discussed as a scientific and not as a dogmatic question.