Now, now Children… 
I thought this thread had run out of steam and was getting ready for its well deserved quietus. And then one post, which rubs somebody the wrong way, and the moribund patient leaps to his feet and, with a semblance of renewed vigour, spits out a few disgruntled rumblings. Those are his last words, though, and he finally goes the way of all flesh. What were those words? Unfortunately, there is some confusion as to what he actually said. Some believe that he mumbled “there can’t be a difference”; others believe they clearly registered “I can hear a difference.” The two camps engaged in a hearty tussle for a while, but that ended too, since in time nobody could remember what it was all about. The records of the whole affair were then dutifully consigned to a dusty corner of the General Archives of Obscure Musings.
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I will also quote myself from the similiar Audiophile SATA cables thread.
Though, I do think most expensive equipment actually handle RF noise very well.
Audiophiles should buy well engineered products without any faults that you need to compensate.
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Precisely. And that’s where objective sites like ASR do add value - independent tests to tell you whether something is, in fact, well-engineered.
There are some outstanding examples of very bad engineering that have been revealed on the test bench.
For the audiophiles reading the above sentences -
I’m not saying you should buy based purely on measurements. Measurements will tell you if something has a chance of standing up to the manufacturer’s claims.
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It would be great if a simple SINAD value would tell us how something sounds. Unfortunately that’s not the case. We actually need to listen to our music playback system, funny isn’t it?
But you can’t audition everything at home so you need ways of narrowing the field at least. I have a few methods of my own for this, measurements are one of them. Nothing funny about it.
Yes indeed, there are many qualities I look for when I choose equipment for home demo. Measurements are one of them. Then there are subjective listening experiences from as many sources as possible. Obviously looks, price etc. have huge impact. Combine all of these and we have narrowed the selection substantially.
The biggest influences by far in a system are the room and the speakers and their interaction.
Everything else is secondary.
SINAD isn’t the whole story, but if the SINAD measurements are good, a component isn’t doing anything harmful to your music signals.
By contrast, if the SINAD measurements are terrible you’re not going to hear any differences from tweaking anything else in your system because it’s all going to get lost in the noise and distortion.
Some of the reviews of said equipment are frankly comical given how spectacularly badly it measures.
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I agree, speakers and acoustic are number one. It doesn’t mean that electronics wouldn’t have massive impact though.
There can be two equipment with stellar SINAD measurements which have very different sound signatures.
People preferring badly measuring gear only tells that we all hear differently and prefer different things. I’ve auditioned PS Audio Direct Stream in my home system and very much liked what I heard. Its ASR measurements are horrible.
The problem is then with your analog equipment not being good enough to prevent the supposed degradation
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Yes, you are correct.
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The measurements are horrible because a particular piece of equipment introduces signal distortion into your audio chain. Now, of course, some people find that pleasing. Would it not though be more effective to create your preferred sound using DSP and room configuration?
To be fair to ASR, the whole point of the reviews on that site are to indicate if something has been correctly engineered, at least when it comes to DACs and amps. The methodology is to get the signal (digital and then audio) from source to speaker/headphone without introducing noise or distortion of any kind. You don’t need to audition something that isn’t doing anything more than transporting a signal. It either works or it doesn’t.
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Of course. No one here or at ASR are saying that SINAD is the whole story. It’s just one measurement, about signal to noise and distortion. Linearity/frequency response, crosstalk/intermodulation, jitter, low pass filter implementation - I guess there is many things to measure who all says something about a product.
Two DACs with SINAD > 120 dB and the same linearity will, for all practical reasons, sound the same. For amplifiers, more specs must align for them to be sounding the same.
The “all DACs/amplifiers sound the same” argument is pretty much made up from the anti-ASR camp, is my experience.
You’re quite right. It would more correct, ASR-wise, to say that 2 DACs that measure well will be audibly indistinguishable. A DAC that measurers badly (poor SINAD) will “sound” different from a DAC that measures well, only if the difference is within audibility thresholds.
For the record, I have, love and use a product that are not recommended by Amir/ASR.
I bought it exactly one year before he measured it. Would I bought it if I had seen the measurements first? I don’t know, maybe not. Mostly because not of how it measures, but it’s relative high price/performance.
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Pretty much everyone in ASR is saying that SINAD is everything… there’s usually even no listening involved in the ”reviews” published there.
How can we discuss when you’re making things up?
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What am I making up? People are immediately ridiculed on ASR if they share anything remotely subjective there. It’s science and theories only for the most subjective hobby out there, fun! Yet there’s plenty of interesting stuff on ASR but I hate the religious attitude that forum has.
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Nobody says that on ASR. Amir listens to amps and onwards in the chain when it comes to reviews.
No they are not. What is often ridiculed is the making of objective claims from subjective impressions.
What’s religion got to do with a site frequented by some of the least religious people I’ve ever encountered? I think you might be confusing religion with conviction.
