The notion that a system comprised of components that measure well objectively would be ‘boring, strangled and clinical’ is misguided at best. I was firmly in the subjective audio camp for the better part of 30 years, always churning through gear and mixing/matching components in an effort to get them to play well together. I now have a system with components that all have superior objective performance measurements and I can confidently say it sounds great and was easy to get good sound from.
There are many reasons to purchase equipment beyond objective measurements, but good objective measurements should not be viewed as a negative, nor should they be used to characterize the sound of a system.
My discussion with Amir are not about if his measurements are valid or not but about Amir’s arbitrary assumption that good sound=minimum measurable THD. I challenged Amir on this with clear example of analog tape. Rather than having a discussion about for example why analog tape measures worse, but sounds better than CD, he continues with his dogma of SINAD which states the opposite. My whole point here that yes these type of measurements provide valuable information but then that information has to be INTERPRETED and CORRELATED with what someone can hear. I don’t believe Amir offers any hypothesis like this in his reviews. Instead Amir arbitrarily says Good/Bad based on his own invented fundamentalist criteria. He says he listens to half(!) of products he tests (!). How can you be missing this crucial element of scientific testing when you claim you are testing the sound quality which implies it is what we are hearing?
That’s why this isn’t SCIENCE. Science is well defined process of hypothesis, testing and conclusions that can sustain peers reviews. Amir fails here.
I’m now stated out my point and am bailing out from this discussion until it’s a normal professional dialog without obvious holes in the scientific process that were pointed by me and many others.
No such position was taken by me. Poor THD+N shows lack of design hygiene and is a strong predictor of other issues/sources of interference as both I and stereophile review found (both subjectively and objectively).
And I answered that. Once again, tape content can sound better because the masters are better, not because the format is better which is not. It has audible hiss that can trivially be heard and higher distortion which is harder to hear. A digital capture of tape at CD rates will be indistinguishable from tape. A copy of CD onto tape will have obvious audible degradations. To a trained ear at least. There is a reason the world of recording abandoned tape. Tape was the best format in analog days, but digital put it to rest. Shame as it is a beautiful format to look at as it plays its content!
As to SINAD, my reviews have complete suite of tests, not just SINAD. SINAD is the first test. Your product did poorly in many other regards. As a simple example, your filter settings don’t work:
That slow, leaky filter is incorrect and violates what needs to be done to properly reconstruct a digital signal. You put in settings to override it which is nice. But the override does not work. Again, stereophile review found this some 5 months ago yet you have not fixed something this simple. Back to the point, this test is not SINAD and found another design issue in your product.
SINAD of digital/CD absolutely is authoritative in showing how much better it is than tape:
Yes, it doesn’t sound as bad as SINAD indicates but that FFT spectrum shows what we don’t want inserted into our playback chain.
Bottom line is this: with better PCB layout and measurements, you could have produced a much better product than what you have in Bridge II and at no cost to your customers. This is what your competitors such as Benchmark are doing. You can continue to stick to your ideas of fidelity but times are changing. People are paying attention to measurements. And choosing products accordingly.
@Amir_Majidimehr Your last comment i believe begins to address these comments from @Michal_Jurewicz1. Please forgive me in advance for my lack of knowledge. I have a switch that allows me to add/remove a tube preamp in my chain. I like it in and out. When it’s out i believe it sounds more faithful to the original source sound. When it’s in it maybe changes the sound in a way Michael describes. I enjoy both. I’m curious if you think there is value in having this type of feature in a single device?
After a wait of almost 6 weeks, my BB2 finally arrived on February 26th.
Now that it has been running for 9 days, all the trouble is forgotten. I use it as a Roon Core, streamer and headphone amplifier. It powers my “Composer” from AustrianAudio.
… @Michal_Jurewicz1 : you are right speaking this out " I read this “review”. Unfortunately the SCIENCE at audioscienreview.com seems to be from the mid 20th century. We are now 70 years later and there is an ample science on brain and psychoacoutics that these guys seem not to even know about."
They (ASR) measure resistance and look at 1kHz for “music quality” and make assumptions out of this … Actually, best when those who enjoy music do exactly the opposite of the “findings” made by ASR… I own a BB and it is superb and the musical quality is exceptional.
so enjoy the music and do not spend your live time speaking with those…
For me, ASR is a valuable service, Amir reviewed several of my headphones and a couple of DACs and, as a result, ASR equipment reviews will precede my purchases going forward because it serves as an excellent foundation for a purchase. In those reviews, you get the objective measurements, the subjective impression by a professionally trained listener. And he has a bit of experience leading engineering teams to develop audio products.
Amir and ASR filled the huge hole left by Tyll Herstens whom I relied on for purchases prior to ASR. Amir has the equipment, knowledge, and experience in audio to do what Tyll could not.
From my experience, manufacturers/vendors generally work with, not against, those who point out issues with their equipment.
How they react is telling about them, not, in this case, about the bearer of bad news.
@DanHP432,
You might want to do a bit more reading on ASR, Amir has a thread about psychoacoustics and its relevance to our perception of sound for those who need a foundation, and it is woven into the reviews, discussions, and topics such as equalization.
Contemporary research is also posted, and discussed thanks to folks who attend/present at conferences (including Amir).
You might consider to study how VNS (humans vegetative nerve system) works. Specifically, how the sympathetic and parasympathetic regulation act in human’s body. The science about this is a medical discipline so has nothing to do with electrotechnics. You might also check how specifically the sympathetic nerve influences the frequencies around 2k Hz when it comes to stress (Mozart made a lot of sound around these frequence… seems he was simply experienced in music as Michal is in creating good sounding music equipment). The sympathetic and parasympathetic regulation is also the reason why blind tests simply not work (see the influence of the sympathetic nerve to recognition of frequencies in stress situations).
BTW: the ASR channel is extremely unpolite, offending and insulting … this is my opinion. So, when you do not agree, well that’s OK…
It says Audio Science Review, but it should not have been titled that by @AceRimmer as it was about the debate that started here.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
178
And you NEED to stop criticising moderators decisions on something like a thread title!
This is now the second time I have seen this and that is known as axe grinding or grieving and is against the forum rules.
Please do not let me see this a third time!
There will be no further warning!
Hey @AceRimmer i did not mean it in the way you are suggesting. I honestly felt the title of the other thread should have been what i was suggesting so there was less griping about people’s attitudes at ASR and more discussion about audio science. My apologies for my own poor form and very much appreciate your volunteer contributions here.
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AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
180
No worries, appreciate the honesty and the explanation which I think now makes sense to me over your posting regarding it.
Let me look it over.
Likewise and on the other thread @Michal_Jurewicz1 post was flagged and I’m not sure why, but I’ve appreciated the debate between him and @Amir_Majidimehr. I still haven’t looked into what second order harmonics really means, but i would not have even known about it had these two not been having what i feel is civil discussion. Thank you for all you do again!
of experience leading engineering teams to develop audio products.