Just goes to show. But your 'three pages of nerdy' comment underscores an important point, IMO.
Really, in this hobby, from a general consumer standpoint, there's not much to get excited over, anymore. It's not like it was in the '60s, through probably the early '80s. Then there were multiple options for investigation. Things to learn and important differences to discover. What do we have to learn, now? What is left that is important for us to figure out? And will we find what we are looking for in the latest inexpensive DAC from China? Possibly it's inside the all these amps sporting no appreciable distortion, regardless of specs? Does sonic nirvana lie within a dongle interface meant to help you out with your cell phone? The one that no longer works because it went through the wash when you forgot to take it out of your pocket after you changed your shirt?
Truth is, for the average consumer there's not much to get excited about in black box electronic gear. Even the marginal stuff tends to be good enough to not make any difference when compared to the best, in a real-world listening environment. [
I'm not talking about Stereophile 'stick it in my system and then write about all the emotions I feel when listening to my music' differences, by the way.] Whether it's green section or the blue, are your ears going to tell anything about differences? Probably even the weird tube gear that folks laugh about, or sometimes seem outraged over, isn't going to make a difference. When we approach audio science... from an investigative standpoint, is anyone amazed to learn that a tube amp doesn't measure as good as an AHB-2? Or even an average SS amp? Does that tell anyone what they already didn't know, or at least suspect?
Loudspeakers are still the weak link (or at least the most noticeable link) in the chain, and I guess if one's idea of sonic goodness is a small self-powered two way forward firing loudspeaker, then there's information here to think about. Or possibly which AV receiver to consider, if watching movies in your living room is important. In those situations, ASR reports will be of some practical value. Plus headphones. Headphones are the thing, for a lot of people, these days.
On a personal note, none of those three items are of much interest to me. I have loudspeakers I'm happy with, don't use headphones much, and having the Death Star blow up and shake my living room is not my thing. So I tend toward nostalgia. Insights about the old gear bring me back to ASR. Guys like
@Frank Dernie (and others) who know about it, and are willing to write about what they know. The other material, not so much.
And it's not just me, I can see. In our current 'End of Audio' era, nostalgic analog continues to be interesting to certain folks because there's always something in it that could conceivably make a sonic difference, among the various factors one can measure. And it is interactive. Then, there's the visual aspect. You get to see something turning round in your room. It's tactile; you get to hold a record cover. I suppose you could say the same thing about open reel, or cassettes, but the price of entry to the former is quite high, and the latter doesn't have much market penetration anymore.
Because of all that, I think there will always be an interest in record players--even on an investigative site like ASR. Maybe especially on a place like ASR, because measurable differences might possibly be correlative with what is heard. Or perhaps just because of nostalgia, and it's part of a fun hobby.
At least that's my take on it.
DSC_8876 (3)
