Why practically no hi-end audio companies electronics tests?

[anmpr1]

I assume Japanese audio gear of the 1950s was not so great

The problem with knowing is that there was very little Japanese hi-fi gear imported until the late '60s. By the mid '70s it was all over for mass market domestic manufacturers in America. From the Jan 1966 Stereo Review we find the following amp/receiver/tuner advertisments:

US made: Fisher t/ss, McIntosh t/ss, Bogen t, Scott ss, Sherwood ss, Dynaco t/ss, Eico t/ss, Harman Kardon ss, KLH ss, Altec ss, Heathkit ss, Acoustech ss.

Japanese: a single Sansui receiver (not sure if it was tube or ss, looks to be ss).

Japanese tape recorders were present, with models from Sony, Oki, and Roberts (which I believe was a rebranded Akai). Dynaco imported the B&O tape recorder from Denmark, and there were ads for German Dual and British Garrard changers.

Interesting marketing story: In the early '60s Pioneer began an aborted attempt to send over some amplifiers. But their ads featured a Japanese movie star, a woman Americans didn't know and couldn't relate to. Later, Pioneer hired a Madison Ave ad agency (I believe madman adman Peter Aczel had their account) and multipage glossy ads featuring Allman Brothers band members hawking their gear appeared.

In the mid to late '70s Japanese gear represented good value for the dollar. The first strictly 'high end' Japan sourced equipment I recall was Accuphase (Kensonic), which was expensive, but nothing like what Accuphase charges now. Japan really broke in to the 'high end' market with their hand made and exotic moving coil cartridges and tonearms. I think those legitimized Japanese design in the minds of a lot of Americans who followed the high-end scene. In the late '70s and early '80s, before the digital push, it seemed like almost every American boutique manufacturer was selling their own branded but Japanese sourced MC cartridge. Those, and top tier Nakamichi tape decks.

 

[Head_Unit]

Free advertising. I don't read it but I'm betting they rarely give a bad review, especially if the product is expensive.

I don't know about "rarely" but they are definitely not 100% positive.

 

[Head_Unit]

A pair of Boulder 2150 monoblocks will set you back $99,000. A pair of Purify monoblocks will set you back, say, $3,000. Is Boulder 33 times better or 33 times more powerful?

You must calculate the price by kilograms.

Hmm the $96,000 difference would buy a lot of kilograms of cocaine...everything sounds better with cocaine! BETTER THAN perfect sound, forever!

 

[Head_Unit]

When you expect your customers to be your engineering QA

Buchardt! My buddy really likes his, but the software is done by a 3rd party and not really sorted out.

 

[Wes]

Hmm the $96,000 difference would buy a lot of kilograms of cocaine...everything sounds better with cocaine! BETTER THAN perfect sound, forever!

Those who own Giga-Yachts have coke and sushi flown in by helicopter. They also keep a regular sized yacht with rent-a-girlfriends on it nearby.

 

[Spkrdctr]

Imagine you are a Lawnmower.
And Amir is Project Farm.
Do you REALLY want to go?


I think that answers the question in an elegant fashion.

Project Farm is the Grim Reaper of Lawnmowers.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Well, even if you care about measurements, you already know/guess (from physics) that you will probably have marginal improvements at best with high-end gear. When I buy "expensive" gear (all is relative), I know that I buy it for its aesthetics (which counts in the overall experience), features, form-factor or whatever other reason not related to the high-fidelity itself.

I guess that measurements might be important for speakers and headphones because these are the gear when you can really hear differences without analyzing your experience.

Plus I agree with above statements. Some people there think that because we rank gear from a sound-reproduction perspective, then people use this metrics as the deciding factor. But because haring music is a leisure/passion, the real objective function to optimize is preference/enjoyment. And that is exactly what some brands do (Bose, ...).

Bottom line, at a certain price thresold, nobody buys measurements. If I was loaded with money I might buy good-looking snake-oil cables.

Hello all, first post and I must say I am loving this forum and the work being done, cheers!

The above post succinctly captures my thoughts. And it begs some questions, As I am looking to upgrade some of my gear I have been looking over component measurements compiled here I noticed somewhat confusing information perhaps somebody can help me understand. If the measurements are so important why would there be tier 4 products that are recommended when there are tier 2 products that are not?

I'm not anywhere close to the sharpest tack in the box but I can't help but think that there is too much emphasis being put on numbers and not enough emphasis on what things actually sound like. I am sincerely not trying to be a jackass and to understand what I may be missing here.

I can't help but keep thinking about the definition of timbre and what it means in the world of electronics.

Thank you in advance for helping me to figure out what all of this means in my real world application.

 

[SIY]

I can't help but keep thinking about the definition of timbre and what it means in the world of electronics.

Except in contrived pathological cases or tone control/EQ, it means nothing in the world of electronics.

 

[Doodski]

I can't help but think that there is too much emphasis being put on numbers and not enough emphasis on what things actually sound like.

Think of the objective testing as another arrow in your quiver or another golf club in the bag. If a piece tests poorly to horribly then you'll know and if it is testing well compared to other well testing pieces then you have some choices. More choices than if ASR was not active.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Except in contrived pathological cases or tone control/EQ, it means nothing in the world of electronics.

Please pardon my ignorance but I don't think I understand exactly what you're saying. Perhaps you would be so kind and expand on what would be under the heading of contrived pathological cases and what would be tone control/EQ occurrences where it the quality of sound (not related to pitch or volume) would apply.

I appreciate everyones patience, I'm trying to get up the learning curve ASAP. I have heard stereo equipment being described as warm (or not) fast, revealing, accurate, euphonic, fatiguing, tube sound and a bunch I can't remember at the moment. I'm just trying to get a handle on where these differences stem from besides speakers where I think I may have a more well rounded base of knowledge.

Thanks again.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Think of the objective testing as another arrow in your quiver or another golf club in the bag. If a piece tests poorly to horribly then you'll know and if it is testing well compared to other well testing pieces then you have some choices. More choices than if ASR was not active.

Indeed, I think it's a wonderful arrow. I'm also quite interested in speaker design and following the ASR speaker project with great enthusiasm.

 

[Doodski]

Indeed, I think it's a wonderful arrow. I'm also quite interested in speaker design and following the ASR speaker project with great enthusiasm.

I'm not really into the speaker geeking out stuff. I like amplifiers and mechatronics. Speakers as a topic here at ASR is veryyy popular and we have some very knowledgeable peeps here for speaker geeking.

 

[SIY]

I'm just trying to get a handle on where these differences stem from besides speakers where I think I may have a more well rounded base of knowledge.

Imagination, reinforced by the refusal to implement basic controls in listening evaluation.

 

[Foulchet]

People who judge by ears do now always lie or imagine, but I would take their report only on the "basic" side i.e. keep comments on overall FR (bass/mids/treble comments etc.) but ditch things which means basically nothing like "revealing" (do they mean neutral ?) or "I feel like musicians are in front of me". I generally try to find speakers or headphones close to FR I like, I do not pay that much attention to other measures because I have never encountered material which really sounds noticeably distorted under normal use unless they are some penny gifts.

About sighted "imagination", well, if imagination creates something (which I believe), then you are still hearing it if you consider that hearing lies in the brain and not ears (which are receivers). The only dangerous thing (only for your wallet) is to try to find a general truth in it and then base your decisions on this, you are going to be disappointed many times because you cannot infer something rational from your own psychological biases which are probably not linear.
On the other hand, if you completely ditch your enthousiasm in an activity which is supposed to be a leisure, then you might also make choices that are not satisfying even if the gear you buy is the best technically speaking.

So at the end, to me, everyone has to solve its own equation when micro-adjusting our choices without being too serious about this. Because the cold hard truth is that you do not need most gear you buy, even great measuring one. A cheap all-in-one mass-market Hifi does the trick.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

People who judge by ears do now always lie or imagine, but I would take their report only on the "basic" side i.e. keep comments on overall FR (bass/mids/treble comments etc.) but ditch things which means basically nothing like "revealing" (do they mean neutral ?) or "I feel like musicians are in front of me". I generally try to find speakers or headphones close to FR I like, I do not pay that much attention to other measures because I have never encountered material which really sounds noticeably distorted under normal use unless they are some penny gifts.

About sighted "imagination", well, if imagination creates something (which I believe), then you are still hearing it if you consider that hearing lies in the brain and not ears (which are receivers). The only dangerous thing (only for your wallet) is to try to find a general truth in it and then base your decisions on this, you are going to be disappointed many times because you cannot infer something rational from your own psychological biases which are probably not linear.
On the other hand, if you completely ditch your enthousiasm in an activity which is supposed to be a leisure, then you might also make choices that are not satisfying even if the gear you buy is the best technically speaking.

So at the end, to me, everyone has to solve its own equation when micro-adjusting our choices without being too serious about this. Because the cold hard truth is that you do not need most gear you buy, even great measuring one. A cheap all-in-one mass-market Hifi does the trick.

Bringing up "I feel like the musicians are right in front of me" is a great place to ask some, mostly rhetorical, questions. Is our perception of soundstage a pathologically imagined thing? Are there ways to scientifically test for soundstage? Can electronics produce or help to produce soundstage or is it solely the speakers.....or the source?

I totally agree that we are subjective consumers of music and as such I don't think I will ever get to a place where I believe subjective terms don't matter or aren't legitimately descriptive.

Which gets me back to my question of why some second tier gear isn't recommended while gear on tier four is. I guess that's not a question so much for the testing is another arrow in the quiver but rather this who might be of the opinion that feel like testing is the end all be all.

Also my apologies, I know a lot of this was probably all hashed out in month one of this forum and having to cover this subject matter again and again with each new member might feel like banging ones head against a brick wall.

 

[somebodyelse]

Which gets me back to my question of why some second tier gear isn't recommended while gear on tier four is. I guess that's not a question so much for the testing is another arrow in the quiver but rather this who might be of the opinion that feel like testing is the end all be all.

Recommendation is a subjective 'am I willing to put my name to it?' call, not purely measurement based. Having second tier measurements but a top tier price and a user interface that's buggy as hell won't win you any prizes, and a single glaring problem may be a deal breaker in an otherwise good product. On the other hand things like the worlds cheapest dac get both a headless panther and a recommendation - the performance may be objectively pretty poor, but the price is rock bottom and it doesn't have any show stopping deficiencies so it's still good value for some uses. There's sometimes an element of moving goalposts too - something that was worthy of recommendation a few years ago may now be pretty bad in comparison to what's now available for much less. Headphone amps are one area where things moved a long way very fast.

 

[egellings]

Every so often you get a cheapie over-performer that truly punches above its weight. I remember the NAD 3020 (I think that was the model number) of long ago, an inexpensive $175 integrated amplifier that simply had no right to sound as good as it did. It was inexpensively but competently made using garden variety electronic parts. I still have mine, recently recapped, and it works like a charm. It's surprisingly good.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Recommendation is a subjective 'am I willing to put my name to it?' call, not purely measurement based. Having second tier measurements but a top tier price and a user interface that's buggy as hell won't win you any prizes, and a single glaring problem may be a deal breaker in an otherwise good product. On the other hand things like the worlds cheapest dac get both a headless panther and a recommendation - the performance may be objectively pretty poor, but the price is rock bottom and it doesn't have any show stopping deficiencies so it's still good value for some uses. There's sometimes an element of moving goalposts too - something that was worthy of recommendation a few years ago may now be pretty bad in comparison to what's now available for much less. Headphone amps are one area where things moved a long way very fast.

Thanks, of course the things you say make complete sense. That being said I have found that the conclusions offered after testing results sometimes confusing and not always explicitly addressing the discrepancies between test results and recommendation. I'm sure I will get up to speed with understanding the nuances after reading more of them and becoming accustomed to writing style etc.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Every so often you get a cheapie over-performer that truly punches above its weight. I remember the NAD 3020 (I think that was the model number) of long ago, an inexpensive $175 integrated amplifier that simply had no right to sound as good as it did. It was inexpensively but competently made using garden variety electronic parts. I still have mine, recently recapped, and it works like a charm. It's surprisingly good.

That's why I'm here, looking for the most bang for the buck.

 

[egellings]

You might look for one of these used, if 30 or so wpc does it for you.