I think there is some misunderstanding here. As far as I know, the Harman curve is about the frequency response of headphones. As @Marin_Weigel said, headphones that are tuned to the Harman curve approximate the sound of linear speakers in an anechoic room, which reinforces the fact that people prefer a linear response. It has nothing to do with harmonic distortion.
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I do have much more than anecdotal or personal experience on the field of loudspeaker quality evaluation and how to optimize the listening room. And there has been a lot of research done. But this has not necessarily been published. For example, every serious broadcasting corporation has its own method of evaluating monitors before they order huge quantities to equip all their control rooms. They assemble their most experienced recording engineers and have a listening panel with almost scientific methods.
If you have ever witnessed such a process, you would drop most of ideas about loudspeaker and room quality being fully measurable or determinable. These people are pretty serious, have a no-frills-approach, they know what there is to know about measurements and room acoustics. And they nevertheless talk a lot about transparency, detail resolution, bass impulses, ambience, localization, depth-of-field and audibility of reverb characteristics. All these things which can not be determined by measurements, not even closely.
You could walk into such a panel of experts and tell them a Sonos One for 250 bucks is fully meeting their demands and measures perfect and what they are doing is self-delusion and wastage of money. At best they would shake their heads. They know better.
Starting with a system without dramatic sonic flaws and good measurements is a good idea and I would always do the same as a starting point. I absolutely believe that it is possible to come to a good level of reproduction without major flaws, so I have no reason to doubt any research coming to the same conclusion.
But the more you try to understand what a ´neutral accurate system´ should ideally be based solely on very primitive and simplified measurements, you will come to the understanding that such a system cannot be real as you have to take the room acoustics and the interaction between room and loudspeaker into account.
To come even close to a sonically perfect reproduction from technical point of view, you have to have:
- perfectly flat RT60 of the room in the whole audible band
- perfectly diffuse reflexions in the room
- perfectly even directivity index and behavior of the speaker between 300 and 10,000Hz incl. all angles, narrow frequency bands (which prohibits any use of smoothening) and in the time domain
- which also results in having a perfectly small, perfectly behaving point source in the aforementioned frequency range
If you invest $200k in the room and $50k in the speakers, you might come pretty close to that and you can certainly EQ the rest of imperfections away. But I am sure that you still would be hearing some different characteristics of different speakers when it comes to the aforementioned parameters like transparency, bass character, ambience, depth-of-field/perceived stage distance and localization (and perceived dynamics, most probably). All these things you cannot influence by EQing and that’s why even serious recording engineers of big broadcasting cooperations go to the control room and have a shootout listening session.
Please note: I am talking about loudspeakers and rooms solely, neither DACs nor amplifiers.
That does not surprise me at all. On one hand, people are used to tilted frequency curves as most of rooms have decreasing RT60 towards higher frequencies, most speakers have (more or less evenly) increasing directivity index towards higher frequencies and everything from deep bass to low midrange is sounding ´fatter´ due to resonances and other in-room phenomenons.
On the other hand, a declining overall level towards higher frequencies in the room is sounding less annoying and smoother so a majority of people who are not used to the music and actual listening conditions are preferring this.
But it does not mean a neutral, accurate or anyhow superior reproduction quality. If you take measurements in the room and the idea of ´high fidelity´ seriously, a declining frequency response towards treble is a major flaw. A million times more dramatic flaw than anything that has been presented as ´evidence´ in this thread against certain DACs.
Nevertheless, people who think measurements should be necessarily perfect for perfect reproduction quality, take this lightly or do not ask themselves ´why?´. We have rock-solid evidence that a perfectly flat frequency response in the room is clearly inferior in most of preference tests.
So something is wrong with this equation in general. I have made the same experience with curves flattened by DSP or automatic room correction routines (DIRAC most of all). If the room is not perfect, almost certainly one thing is true: the flatter the curve, the more audible the flaws and the less balanced the sound.
Sorry to say, but headphone target curves are even less applicable here as headphones circumvent the head related transfer function of every listener so a flat curve is far from sounding balanced or neutral.
As mentioned, I have a pretty good idea about why a declining level is preferred by many listeners. The answer would not please anyone of the ´measurements-first´ people.
Reflections dominating the sound at the listener, even if it is limited to a narrow frequency band above 300Hz, is by itself an unexucasble flaw of the listening condition making it unsuitable for any controlled preference test. But it is also a hint that there are reflections and other phenomena which are annoying to listeners.
I have made listening tests under conditions which are much much closer to the aforementioned perfect ones, including even directivity index of the speakers, passively optimized room, optimized listening distance and opting for some subjectively transparent and ´silky´ speakers. Cannot confirm the Harman curve at all.
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Seems, you’re barking up the wrong tree, since that’s not what I wrote - maybe reread my post to understand that we’re on the same page regarding at least this point.
It’s not a major flaw - It’s a perfectly valid choice and offered by various room correction softwares. REW offers a “house curve” option. A perfectly flat speaker will have a downward tilt in a real room due to absorption by soft furnishings. It’s the acoustic environment we’re acclimatised to. It should come as no surprise that it is the preferred choice.
This is very different to deliberately adding distortion to a DAC"s output. I went to great pains with ny latest speaker build to get the speaker positioning right and correct the room first (within the bounds of acceptable WAF), followed by equalisation in REW with additional correction in Rephase. I also applied a slight downward tilt as a “house curve”. The final result measures well and is very pleasing to my ears.
I still use one of the most revealing and transparent front-ends available (Benchmark DAC3HGC/HPA4/AHB2s). These terms aren’t defined by price or by hearing, but by measurement. Minimal noise and distortion means a device’s output is uncoloured and is as true as possible to the source material.
If you want to colour it to taste downstream, knock yourself out. But at least start with accurate raw material.
FWIW, I have 4 headphone amps, 2 based on ECL83s with transformer outputs, 2 are solid state. Can’t really say I prefer any one over any other. Headphones are equalised in Roon with convolution filters to closely approximate the Harman curve and tappings on the tube amps are chosen carefully to minimise any output impedance frequency dependance. With the solid state amps, output impedance is negligible.
Tubes don’t necessarily equate to “warmth”, “euphonics” or any other hyperbole popularised by the hi-fi press. Well designed tube amps can perform very, very well indeed.
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@Arindal maybe we are talking about different things. The average person listening with Roon at home is very different from a large broadcaster putting together a control room!
The broadcaster wont be using Roon and the home enthusiast wont have a perfect accoutic space.
Still, lots of ways to get good sound at home.
Well, definitely not honest, the thread
… accurately describes the capricious manipulation that happens there with 5 examples, changing goal posts being the worse. It can be as much as 30dB+! depending on how Amir was feeling on a given day. A superficial and sloppy two sentence “review” where Amir gets his hand on what’s seems to be an early rendition of product, with early firmware, measures it, doesn’t call us with any QQ, doesn’t listen and trashes it again after doing the same with 90% of hifi products that costs over $1000. Then 50 minions rush to put their nails to the coffin using highly offensive language apparently allowed by Amir, the moderator. Same seems to happen with every other major brand product in this index when sorted by price:
You seem to represent both a fan of ASR and an unwilling victim of ASR misinformation and the way review is conducted, written and your resulting perception. This is what we are not happy about! About your skewed perception because of Amirs sloppy work. The product is definitely misrepresented - there is no clear word that this is a Streamer with a Roon Core computer built in, yet it gets compared to a $900 Topping DAC and then in the last post here to a $129 headphone amp! Why not a refrigerator? There is no mention about settings, the 2nd harmonic seems to be turned on, all measurements are completely skewed, no word on analog vs digital volume, all these things affect measurements. It’s a deeply unfair misrepresentation of a great product that every other review and customers value very highly, particularly the sound and sleek Roon user experience. If you considered it’s a Roon Core, just an I5 Nucleus alone with 4TB of storage costs $3000+. None of this is mentioned and the worse part is the lack of communication with and now hostility to the designers. It all results with your takeaway of " horrific power supply artifacts" etc etc. Now look at the FFT of the current shipping unit. There is a little of residue of 60 and 120 below -125dB! What about it is “horrific”?
Explain to me why is this bad to have some noise at -125dB when getting a beautiful rich musical playback vs -130dB with dry , clinically sounding Topping is the client preference? If you like max out Sinad, get the Topping , but don’t defame Mytek when there is nothing wrong with it!. We design for beautiful sound, and superior user experience (no word about it either in the review) and we don’t and will not design for max Sinad because this is not what we do.
Amir’s “reviews” are not real “reviews”. It’s the most sloppy unprofessional approach you can imagine to presenting any product from any review site I have seen. All products , even the ones that are recommended are capriciously misrepresented. In most cases if this was the only info you could read about a product , you wouldn’t be even able to tell what the product is intended to do. All this combined with hostility towards designers instead of typical courtesy and cooperation.
As for the 2nd harmonic. You could have turn it on or off in the menu, so if you don’t want it, turn it off and you get an FFT as above and a better Sinad.
With the mantra of “ASR is always right” you appear to think that ASR mission is indeed to teach everybody a lesson. Like someone said earlier “Presumptuous beyond belief”
Benchmark designs for max measurements and we respect that and are friendly w John. We don’t design for max Sinad and we won’t. We design to get Mytek Sound because this works for our clients. I have been designing electronics (ADCs and DACs) for the last 40 years. What did you design? How many circuits did Amir built? There is nothing in the superficial understanding of audio at ASR that’s valuable for us, I typically get inspired with fun idea things from other designers and products that many were trashed at ASR. ASR is useless as a source of deep hardware design clues (unlike for example diyaudio.com) and I’m really annoyed with its culture so this no place for me. ASR just happened to drag me involuntarily to their corner and here we are sorting this event out.
When I have more time I’ll try to better explain Mytek design process in more detail as I feel this may require a more convincing explanation to measurement only proponents audio hobbists. It’s far more nuances than what you guys think is possible.
BTW: Like I mentioned once, when we have this heated, but IMO still civilized exchange, a TROLL working for ASR in this thread, keeps flagging my posts and they got hidden/removed so for example Amir posted answers to my post that’s disappeared. Dear Troll, why don’t you stop this and just let ASR play a fair game?
Thnx M
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How did you come up with this? If you are not happy with the frequency response of your speakers, adding disortion wont fix that??
The beauty of Roon is its DSP function that allows you to address flaws from speakers/room.
If you want to add some distortion, 2nd harmonic, there are much better ways than a fixed level in a dac. Do it in software, you can precisely control the level and turn it off if you want.
To buy flawed speakers and fix it with a flawed dac is… illogical…
If you prefer alternative frequency curves and added dustortion, no problem. You can tune it anyway you want - we have all the tools now. If your serious, and not just arguing for the sake of it, I can walk you through how do it.
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Well, what is horrific is that you don’t even know how to read your own measurements!
The vertical axis is “dBrA” mean it is relative to something. You needed to set that to the peak level of the signal as I do. But you did not. Instead, the 1 KHz signal is at around -15 dB, not 0. That means we need to add 15 dB to amplitude of power supply spike, arriving at its level being 125-15=110 dB below reference signal.
Easy: your claim of sound fidelity is “nonsense” :). You are repeating typical audiophile myths that an audio device that measures superbly sounds “clinical.” This is an absurd claim that not backed by a single reliable controlled test. It is a convenient way to sell underperforming audio hardware by companies and owners defending purchases of the same.
Your own measurement shows a spray of harmonics going on to near 20 kHz, not just a single 2nd harmonic distortion anyway. Those later harmonics are not subject of perceptual masking and hence, if you want to make a claim of audibility, those would be it. As per your own reference earlier in the thread in that interview, higher order harmonics are not preferred.
You have no evidence of such “sound.” You keep claiming it without back up. Psychoacoustics research shows there is no way, no how what you showed as far as second harmonic is audible. You can still claim it with a controlled listening test but you lack it. This is unscientific and simply wrong.
Nope. I gave you credit for having Roon core in the review. I then compared you to Eversolo DMP-A6:
It is $850 and is a full blow streamer and can have local storage. Granted, it is not Roon core but is gorgeous with its massive display that can be customized to show things such as VU meters:
This is how it performed:
Notice total absence of power supply noise. This is again your streamer performance:
There is no comparison. You have that spray of harmonics mixed with spray of noise from the power supply making for messy amount of impairments. So much so that their combined energy sinks the difference between signal and those elements to just 98 dB. CD/16 bit audio has a rectangular noise floor of -97 dB so you are barely clearing that in a $5,000 device no less!
Someone can buy the Eversolo and put $500 toward a quiet NUC running Roon core and have a far more performant system for far less money than your solution.
I post other products to counter your claims that other designers hate ASR testing, not to compare yours to theirs. You have however produce DACs so in that context, they make sense as well.
We buy your products, not you coming alone with it to design DACs for us. So it doesn’t matter how long you have been doing this. That aside, it is interesting that you couch that as DAC & ADC. Clearly you haven’t been putting a computer inside a DAC for 40 years. Folks like Eversolo haven’t either but they have been building media servers for a long time. They understood, on their own, that they also need to build exemplary DACs even inside a noise platform that has a computer (they run Android). They got there. You have not. They charge a lot less. You charge a lot more.
While the above is shameful status of how badly the high-end audio market gone off the rails, there are very expensive products that are recommended as show in the above graph. Specifically, the Mola Mola DAC which retails for $11,500 and got my strong recommendation. Why? Because it produced superlative performance, the best I had seen at the time.
Look at how clean the FFT spectrum looks. Bruno Putzeys is a long time designer that cares about producing the most transparent product he can.
The high-end audio market needs to wake up and start measuring products and fixing issues they find. If they don’t, and product lands on my bench, then they get what they get. This is how TotalDAC tested for example in the above list:
The red graph is a $250 device. Green is the TotalDAC. Are you going to claim this the type of performance a DAC needs to have? That it has its own “sound?” Surely they have happy customers like you have. Are they up to something you are not? See the problem?
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I am with you. A flat curve is preferable and the Harman target curve with its falling level towards the heights is only a (bad) choice for people who are not willing to treat their room for the best possible sound. Because with neutral speakers AND the strong reflections above the bass they get ear bleeding.
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Unfortunately this is the game of roulette many audiophiles play with high-priced gear purchased on the basis of sighted listening impressions, subjective reviews and the recommendations of other purchasers on internet fora.
One bad component after another is tried in order to fix something that’s “wrong” with the sound.
The benefit of having measurements allows poorly designed products to be avoided in the first place.
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From acoustical and technical point of view and to anyone who has ever listened to the alternative, it keeps being a major flaw. Admittingly a popular and pretty wide-spread one, and there is an explanation for that as it usually sounds less annoying that alternative flaws (such as increasing direct sound level to higher frequencies and alike).
Nevertheless I wonder why people who insist on acoustically neutral and technically close-to-perfect reproduction take this as granted and do not try the neutral variant which they propagate extensively.
Having a vast experience with rooms and speakers, I cannot confirm that. Most of current rooms do not have enough of treble-absorbing areas to really make a difference in RT60 (if they were equipped with curtains, carpets and sofas in the 1970s, this might be a different thing).
A technically neutral speaker with even directivity index plus a room with balanced RT60 will have a more or less flat overall measurement as a result (maybe with the exception of everything >8K, but that is not really relevant).
I seriously doubt that. I go to live performances without reinforcement regularly, from chamber music to big opera houses, and I have never experienced such ´dull reverb´ and subjectively damped overtones in the treble region (even in concert halls paneled in wood sitting close to the last row).
The real reason why so many ´flat-on-axis´ speakers result in a tilted room response (with all its drawbacks reproduction-wise) is the tendency to have constantly and increasing directivity index. Why is that so? My guess would be that many manufacturers are not daring to implement measures for an even directivity index in the midrange on one hand, while an increasing index still sounds less annoying and ´warmer´ than an uneven one.
I do not doubt that it is pleasing your ears, as according to my experience this is a setting which is usually sounding smooth, non-annoying and sometimes even adding more depth-of-field. But would you rule out the possibility that a significantly better reproduction would be possible if the indirect sound field would be balanced as well?
According to my experience, the ´tilted-by-directivity-index´ variant in many cases lacks dynamics and resolution in the treble region, having a tendency to sound dull, lame and distant.
I do not see the difference between adding non-linear distortion to a DAC´s output and adding linear distortion to the indirect sound field. The main difference seems to be that the latter is clearly audible and changing the way we percept music reproduction dramatically, as the former seems to be more subtle given the level of the added components.
I have never personally compared it in this particular case, but it seems to me that the level of distortion added is regarded not to be audible as distortion as the level is way too low. I wonder how it is possible that seemingly the same people insisting that one’s ears cannot distinguish between the different settings are on the other hand taking it as a hint that the components are anyhow flawed or inferior.
But we can put that to the test:
Could you explain please why a constant tone of 150Hz, -115dB below reference signal, is audible under everyday listening conditions? The highest peak of harmonic distortion seems to be k2 peaking at -98dB or 0,0015% compared to reference signal level. Is there a reliable controlled test meeting your own standards existing showing that this level of THD is clearly audible and perceived as sonically inferior?
If we agree that it is not audible, what is the point in publishing the measurement, ranking devices based on such data and labelling them as ´underperforming´ just based on something that is not audible in your definition?
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What is “everyday listening conditions?” Why should you buy products that make you have such a condition for audibility/inaudibility when you can get absolutely silent response?
While this kind of noise may not be likely audible, it indicates poor design/layout which can translate to noises becoming audible. Evidence of this exists in the kind of reviews Michal likes as I have posted before:
“Downstairs, with my desktop system, I noticed some low-level noise and hash, the kind that can sometimes leak through a computer soundcard, and also some hum. The hash was not audible from the balanced or headphone outputs—only the unbalanced. At normal listening levels, with no music playing, the hash was audible but low in level.”
In other words, the measured noise is just the proverbial canary in the goldmine. If you allow power supply leakage, then other types of leakage can and does exist per above. Indeed, we have measurements to back this:
Notice massive amount of interference. Such interference is usually a function of what the device is doing and can get a lot worse depending on conditions. A good design has isolation so noise is not going to come out regardless. Here is the Eversolo again in the same test:
Clear audible? No. It is a bit like this: you are not going to get sick if the waiter spits in your soup before bringing it to your table. But do you want him to do that?
I commented on one specific thing, i.e. 2nd harmonic. Noise is another matter altogether and that is combined in SINAD to drag the Mytek way down the rankings. Noise is absolutely audible because it can exist in absence of signal so no masking is involved. You can see that in the reviewer case above where he heard it while nothing was playing.
If I didn’t measure, you wouldn’t know what product has a problem, and what doesn’t. My measurements allow you the analysis. Without it, you would be blind.
Note that people are running with marketing stories thinking they are getting a higher fidelity product than those costing 1/5th the cost. To the extent the situation is inverted and demonstrated using measurements, then folks may want to rethink why they would want to pay such a premium.
Let me repeat again that getting these noise sources down costs nothing. It simply requires skilled engineering and measurements. The Mytek could have been as good as Eversolo in which case, it too would have gotten my strong recommendation, assuming the filter bug was fixed.
Put your ear next to your tweeter. Do you hear a noise? If so, the case is made that noise can be audible. This audibility is much worse for headphone listeners so we need to do the best job possible here.
The power of measurements is that it has enabled people to save a ton of money, buying highly performant products that are transparent under all conditions, while costing so little. This is why I measure and reward companies that bring such products to us.
Of course, there is percentage of the market, myself included in that, who would pay a premium for products that look great, come with great support, etc. I am happy to even play thousands of dollars for them. But they need to not underperform budget products. It is irrational to get fancier case but worse electronics.
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I absolutely agree, but according to my experience not only the lack of room treatment (resulting in a level of reflexions at the listening position being significantly too high) and the increasingly problematic fashion of pretty empty, high RT60 rooms are contributing to that dilemma to have either a downward-tilted overall response (and ´lame´, ´dull´ sound lacking treble details) or an annoying, harsh sound (due to reflexions and uneven reproduction of direct and indirect sound). The constantly and significantly increasing directivity index of many speakers is contributing to that much more. That is particularly the case with slim speakers combining small or average midrange drivers with waveguide-loaded tweeters, horn tweeters and alike. It seems to be tempting for many developers to opt for an increasing directivity index towards higher frequencies to avoid annoying hiss, harshness and dominant reflexions in the area 2-8K. But that is a solution that comes at a significant cost resulting in many cases in a dull reverb and subjectively lame, murmuring reproduction lacking transient perception, directness and treble detail.
I did not come up with this example to take over their choices as a consumer. It was rather a proof that seriously down-to-earth engineers and acoustic experts rely on subjective sound quality evaluation of speakers, do reliable group experiments and base their choices on rather subjective and non-determinable aspects of reproduction (such as transparency, localization, ambience, depth-of-field, detail resolution, bass character and alike).
I can say from own, vast experience, that this pro/broadcast method of finding a perfect speaker setup in a room is even more attractive for home listeners the more tempting the acoustical environment is.
What recording engineers prefer and what consumers like the most, is according to my experience pretty close to each other. Recording engineers tend to listen at lower SPL (and want full transparency and resolution at these levels) compared to home consumers, while the latter are more attracted by dominant and kicking bass. But despite from these little differences they have surprisingly similar preferences.
The dynamic range between the noise floor in a typical residential building and the desired max SPL for living room reproduction. I personally cannot imagine such a situation in which a 150Hz tone, -115dB below reference signal, is audible.
I do not see a point in ´absolutely silent response´ if the noise originating from the system is anyways several 10dB below audibility or the noisefloor in the room. In my understanding it increasingly looks like measurements and excellent results on a solely technical level are regarded to be goals completely separated from the audio performance. I would not condemn that approach, but it is in my understanding not anyhow useful when it comes to choosing a device for best audio experience and best sound quality.
Some highenders are said to aim for the purest copper imaginable in their wires. One has 99.999% OFC, another 99.99999%, giving a subjective feeling of ultimate purity (and maybe ´cleaner sound´?). Isn’t that a similar fetish-like approach like focussing on measurements and different specs far beyond audibility?
´Can´ or ´will´? Did you measure any noise above the threshold being most likely audible under home conditions, or not? ´Indicate poor design´ is a bit of a thin base for pretty defeating verdicts like ´underperforming´.
I have no objections to measurements in general and affordable products offering good performance in particular. On the other hand I do not see a point in throwing that much time and effort onto measurements of DACs and digital equipment when differences resulting from these specs are that much below the threshold of being clearly audible, while other, clearly audible and sound-defining aspects are neglected and overlooked. As it is the case with certain aspects of loudspeakers and how they interact with the room.
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There’s more to it than this.
Here’s some interesting discussion by none other than Floyd Toole himself:
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Thanks for the interesting link. It read it already some time before.
In my strongly (actively and passively) treated man cave and a smooth RT60 with 0,25 s over the complete audible freqency spectrum I do not care about the Harman target curve. I do not like it and it makes no sense here.
In our relatively poor treated living room, where my wife is queen, things are different. Here we use Audyssey with its reference curve. But I am still not a fan of this target curve. It is some kind of bad medicine. You always decrease (some at least) direct and diffuse sound.
I read somewhere in the past that there are two kind of music listeners. There are „overtone listeners“ and „fundamental ton listeners“. I think the belonging to one of this groups decides whether one likes the Harman target curve or not. And there is of course the directivity of the speaker that matters a lot.
What? Who? Where? I think you’re arguing about a straw man here.
Where? Applicable to what? What are you arguing about here?
The Harman curve is about headphones, isn’t it? For instance, this Sean Olive article. Why are we talking about speakers with respect to it?
Don’t keep us in suspense.
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Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II was one of the most listened to pieces at recent Canjam for example, also appreciated at Florida Show and anybody interested can listen to it at Axpona. It sounds significantly superior, the DAC has more resolution (significantly better chipset), the sound is more musical with deeper bass extension and better transients due to linear power supply. In comparison Eversolo sounds thin, has less detail and smaller soundstage and less dynamic bass and dryer midrange. BB2 is a different class of sound than Eversolo. It’s a significant step up. The fact that the measurements are different at that very low level of -120dB shows that it’s not the the amount of THD, but the type of distortion that matter for the perception of the actual sound. Again , any noise generated by computer is very very low at -120dB. Brooklyn Bridge II is a great sounding unique all in one product with many advantages over Eversolo, the main being it can be the hard of a larger powerful Roon setup. And it has a great sounding 4 channel headphone amp too. Yes you can look at the graphs, but before you make a final judgement: listen , there is no excuse no to do this. Anybody here having an opinion without listening should not be speaking and how this or anything else sounds like. As for the 2nd harmonic Amir seems to be the only person in audio world who doesn’t like it. That’s fine, but it is an opinion and preference. You can clearly hear its impact when turning the HAT ™ on. With 2nd harmonic boosted by 12dB general sound quality stays the same, same soundstage , same resolution, it just get a bit more groovy. It’s subjectively a better and more enjoyable sound for many.
M
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That statement has no meaning. SPL noise numbers are without any value. Our hearing is not linear. You must know the spectrum of the noise to determine its perceptual audibility. On top of that, every room is different. Some of us have dedicated, ultra quiet room. Others live in a noisy city apartment. Comprehensive survey of rooms were performed in peer reviewed research showing the variation and how there are rooms that are completely silent to our ears. I cover that in my video here:
Also, keep in mind that good portion of my audience is headphone listeners. Many headphones and especially IEMs block huge amount of room noise and are sensitive enough to pick up the slightest amount of noise in the audio chain. For this reason, I test headphone amps at just 50 millivolts of output and show this ranking:
Even state of the art headphone amps struggle to clear the noise floor of 16 bit content. You need to get to 90s in that graph to have totally inaudible noise floor for most sensitive IEMs. Yet there are amps that deliver just 50 to 60 dB.
But again, I showed you a direct quote from stereophile reviewer that complained about noise from Mytek Bridge II clearly indicating that less than good engineering is going on here.
All this said, no, I am not worried about just power supply noise at those levels. They will be below threshold of hearing in low frequencies.
What? How am I supposed to determine the spectrum of noise in everyone’s home? My job is to find you equipment where this question becomes moot. And do so with you saving a ton of money. You want to pay huge amount of money more than that to get less performant gear? Be my guest. My measurements give you that information as well.
I didn’t like it because after 6 months and counting, you couldn’t be bothered to fix a simple bug in setting the correct value in the ESS DAC filter setting. 6 months! Did you not listen to the different filters? Likely you picked one that you made default that “sounded best.” Right? Yet, none of those changes in the UI were reflected in the device and hence the sound it produced!!! You were shown the same thing in stereophile review. So please don’t tell me what your ears tell you. Your eyes and brain are clearly overriding that and leading you to completely false conclusions.
If you didn’t have the bug, I would have said that while the engineering is not great, the functionality was good, the looks were good and so I would not be opposed to people buying it. But that there are much cheaper ways to get there with better fidelity.
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The point is that you found some very early or broken unit that clearly had an old firmware and when you discovered that filter is stuck on default you did not call to ask us to ask about a firmware fix or another unit. Instead you published this creating an impression that there is something wrong with the design rather than a simple software bug that does happen occasionally in every software driven equipment especially when it’s just released. BTW the default filter is actually the minimum phase slow apodizing with ideal impulse response and minimum smear. This filter actually sounds the best (but oops, you didn’t listen).
ASR, in turn, keeps recommending steep 100dB/octave filters because they measure best. Unfortunately they also sound the worse (artificial and synthetic).
I just don’t understand why do you have to ran this forum in this way where you imposing your opinions and your will on unwilling participants without our consent. Had you started like every other normal reviewer by calling the manufacturer you want to review, getting a unit from them, learning what they have to say and then taking all this into account, it could have been a win win for everybody. Instead ASR is now a very unhealthy environment that no manufacturer wants to touch with a 12 foot poll and now I’m being advised to just stop this pointless discussion where we both simply have different opinions on the subject of audio and looks like we may never agree. BTW, I tend to speak my mind, am I the only product designer that publicly engaged in dispute with ASR? Ooff I’m exhausted.
For you any distortion is bad, for me some distortions are good, you say you can measure “the sound”, I say some elements of what we hear can’t be easily measured, you say switching power supply is better, I say linear toroid is better, you say CD sounds better than the 1/2 " 30 IPS tape master, I say the opposite, you think 2nd harmonic is bad, I say it may be good in some dose, you say a DAC today has to have 130dB Sinad, I say Sinad is not the main and only thing, you say phase shift doesn’t matter, I say time smear does matter - it seems like we will just never agree on these topics because we think about audio differently. Your choice of the “best” equipment (max Sinad) is a clinical dry sounding collection of amps and dacs that I know, have heard/tested for many years and they are described as such in many other reviews. But I do appreciate the sound of many high end pieces you criticized and trashed. We just simply have different opinions on what constitutes good sound and this is completely fine.
One day we could try the ultimate test: battle of the sound systems- you put together yours and I put together Mytek playback system and we’ll see what people prefer. That would be a fair resolution of this debate - graphs and numbers mean little as evidence no matter how hard you try because it is about ears. The evidence will be what people hear and say sound better.
Quote from AM:
“While the above is shameful status of how badly the high-end audio market gone off the rails”
You are free to voice your opinion and built the system you think is the best , recommend it to your audience, sure no problem with that. But please don’t use your giant megaphone (I don’t have one) to try to “save” industry or the audiophiles just because you think that they should be preaching your religion instead of their own.
Quote from AH:
“In 1985 Hifi Choice already wrote about the Pioneer A-80 that measured extremely well on distortion, noise etc: “In a sense, this amplifier continues to show how weak the correlation is between conventional measurement and subjective sound quality. Lacking in depth, lige and ambience, the A80 was a sonic disappointed and cannot be recommended.”
Already in 1985! Have some people fallen asleep the last 40 years?”
Exactly. Things were gauged by measurements then in the early days of the 70’s and 80’s because we had things to learn but then as the industry matured equipment designers realized that these numbers were pretty useless to asses the actual sound and so the high end boutique market with variety of sound flavors gradually appeared. Class A, Class A/B, Class D, feedback, no feedback, tubes, horns, you name it - everything with some kind of distortion that worked or not for a given person. It’s not that they were not measured during the design, but rather, the measurements in hifi equipment was not the goal anymore and hence the listening experience became the main gauge.
Now after 50 years ASR thinks they reinvented a “brand new” shiny wheel and wants to sell it to us again so all of us to go back to the one and only measurement mold of Sinad so all DACs can sound exactly like a Topping.
This, thanks God, is no going to happen as we will continue tinkering and building bizarre things to forward this beautiful hobby ahead, despite Amir’s AP armed with Sinad ideology looming large on the horizon.
M
3 Likes
The problem is when you don’t measure - you might find that at different input signal levels the 2nd harmonic and 3rd harmonic swap in being most dominant, as signal level reduces…
I’ve measured DACs and seen this
Nobody seems to talk about it, probably because they never checked it
So the generic comment that 2nd harmonic is good makes sense if you change level and now 3rd harmonic dominates
Good reason to aim for all harmonics to be as low as possible
8 Likes