I am fine with objective testing. But, I found out a long time ago that measurements don’t come close to telling the whole story. Great measuring devices do not always sound good and poor measuring devices do not always sound bad.
Edit: Replaced “subjective” with “objective”. I know the difference but was focused on something else when typing that out.
It’s funny how someone is wheeled out as an ‘expert’ as long as they support their agenda otherwise they are just classed as a ‘snake oil’ salesman.
What I get from this is that you don’t want to send it because of its high cost (which is absolutely valid), not because you’re not in the slightest curious about how it measures. Am I correct?
Did you mean ‘objective’? If you did, it wouldn’t agree with calling ASR “dangerous”.
ASR is dangerous because is wholly objective in a field that requires subjective evaluation.
Look here:
My goodness. @moderators, will you please lock this thread? We don’t seem to be able to play nicely together.
Not even the slightest curious. I prefer to go by how something sounds, not how it measures. Plus I’m pretty sure Naim measured the heck out of it when designing, plus the ultimate listening tests. I’m way more interested in demoing their new Atom HE side by side to see if that would be an upgrade or not.
I recently subbed a new Matrix Mini-i Pro 3 for my 2009 Naim Unitiqute in the office while it went back for a screen repair. The Matrix sounded very good, and I’m sure it measures well, probably much better than the older DAC chip in the Naim, but when I got the UQ back and compared, guess which one is going on the used market? It’s not all about measurements.
And you are of the opinion that objective and subjective testing are mutually exclusive?
D10s anybody? Anybody at all? Maybe these thread-jacking arguments could be settled by a penalty shoot-out!
Please stop making sense.
Did you read my text?:
“I am fine with objective testing. But, I found out a long time ago that measurements don’t come close to telling the whole story. Great measuring devices do not always sound good and poor measuring devices do not always sound bad.”
If you had, you would see that I do not think they are mutually exclusive. However, I do feel that objective tests alone cannot tell you how a device sounds. How a device sounds is FAR more important than how it measures.
I think there may be some misconception going around. I’m not saying people should not listen to what they buy. But simply dismissing measurements as completely irrelevant (which is the only explanation I have for people who are not in the slightest curious about them) is just giving manufactures a carte blanche to push completely baseless claims about their products, with no way to keep them honest. That’s religion, and I’m not very religious.
Which is why you should listen before you buy, and/or only buy something that can be returned.
That said, how do measurements (good or bad) keep mfg from making up (or not making up) audiophile verbiage?
Again, no indication whatsoever that he listens at those volume, merely that he tests at those volumes.
Nice to see that it doesn’t suffer from the “ESS IMD hump”. That’s about the only lingering concern with some ESS implementations.
In general, audiophile verbiage is 100% subjective and more often than not bogus. There are many cases where you can verify their claims. If they say using a 1M-tap FIR for oversampling improves frequency response, you measure the frequency response, and if it’s not better than what you get with 1K taps, you call BS, whether you can hear the differences or not. When they say their technology is lossless, you go compare the input and the output and if there’s a delta, you call BS, whether you can hear the delta or not. When they say that using a $50K external clock with their DACs reduces jitter, you measure jitter and if it’s not better, you call BS, whether you can hear the difference or not. And when they use terms like “time smearing”, you call BS on the spot, because they’re just telling you that science doesn’t apply to the real world.
If manufacturers didn’t publish their own measurements, we would need ASR to get them. If manufacturers did publish their own measurements, we would need ASR to cross-check them, as an equivalent to scientific peer reviews. We need Amir.
I usually read reviews of gear I am interested in, including ASR reviews.
Then try to get said gear from Amazon or somewhere with an easy and generous return policy.
Then I listen…that is the true acid test, end of story.
Unfortunately the last item I got that had rave reviews as far as measurements on ASR was in reality truly boring and sterile to my ears.
Yes maybe it was just too perfect for my tastes and I like some " colouration" to my headphone amplifier, I admit that might be the case .
Btw, it was the Topping A90.
And saying that I am off for round two on another head amp that measured spectacularly at ASR, the Singxer SA-1.
Amazon again…just in case.
There are power supplies under those “sofa cushions”… Not really made to sit on although some of us would from time to time… BTY the entire backplane, inside of the small inner arc, was hand wire wrapped with little blue and white wires… Hella goodness with signal and image processing back in the day…
I agree(!)
I think good measurements are the first step in the decision process. After all, a ‘boring’ but faithful signal can be colored with EQ, but coloration introduced by distortion is impossible to remove.