Misleading Measurements

[firedog]

On 7/4/2020 at 6:17 PM, semente said:

 

This particular case is not so much that measurements are misleading but whether a couple of measurements are enough to characterise audible performance; I defend that they're not.

Life would be very easy if a spinorama could characterise loudspeaker performance in full and predict preference. But this is the real world...

Agree. I don't think measurements at ASR tell the whole story: For instance, does my -110db SINAD DAC sound audibly different from a -114db SINAD DAC of similar design from same company? I doubt it.  Bruno Putzeys talked about how he thinks measurements can tell you what you need to know about an amp, but you have to run many different meaurements, and not just the standard ones, to see how an amp actually behaves. Some of the people at ASR seem caught up in the numbers for the numbers sake. Others seem to just be looking for good values - units that seem to have near state of the art performance - at least for basic parameters - and that aren't wildly expensive. They are appreciative of the engineering success. 

I think such measurements are useful if they reveal something like high levels of distortion, as has been found with some high end/well regarded DACs and amps. People or reviewers may like how they sound; I'd prefer to find a unit that measures well and sounds good - and not spend my money on euphonic distortion.