Misleading Measurements

[992Sam]

Late to the thread, and been reading thru it with interest, but add me to the camp of those who feel Amir and his site have an agenda, and are completely anti-audiophile ..  Seems like anyone going on there trying to disagree finds himself banned at some point... so the site is essentially a preaching to the choir echo chamber for those who essentially equate an iPhone DAC with a hi-fi DAC just because it measures the same in certain parameters. 

[992Sam]

2 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Ouch!!! Sure that will respark this thread! 

 

why not?  With Covid, and it being a holiday evening, I'm bored and this thread has been entertaining to say the least...    

 

Would be nice to see a true study done between what is measurable in terms of audio quality and what is psychological and subjective....  I also have to wonder if a lot of the 2nd, 4th and odd order harmonics that are masked / amplified by certain setups in power supply, cable shielding, and other EMF/RF factors aren't more easily heard by some than others and thus the endless debate over measurement vs how it sounds?

[992Sam]

19 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

It's really very easy ... if it's trivially obvious when you hear music coming from somewhere, that it's an audio system - then the distortion is audible. When the distortion and misbehaviour that matters is inaudible, then all the qualities that audio people chase will be there in abundance - no-one really knows how to measure one state versus the other; hence the ongoing kerfuffling ....

 

Personally I like to look at things thru extreme examples sometimes to better understand them...

 

For example, is there intrinsically better sound from a piece of audio equipment that is made of the highest grade transistors, capacitors, resisters, transformers, and other components vs a similarity engineered piece of equipment, only using the lowest grade components available?    OR.. better yet... if were replaced all of the wire in our high fi systems with lamp chord, and those black (rend and white ended) RCA cables that came with the $99 DVD player that CostCo sells...   would our systems sound then same?  Especially under load?

 

While I've never tried this experiment directly, it's almost self evident that as with most things in life... you get what you pay for, and that stuff that measures well, will usually work well, but not always... as those measurements might not be looking at the entire picture (or sound as the case might be).

[992Sam]

Just now, danadam said:

Can you give a few examples?

no, just came across a lot of threads where if the guy sticks his neck out against the prevailing crowd.... the words "Banned" appear under their username. 👍

[992Sam]

7 hours ago, danadam said:

I see. So we can't check if they "sticked their neck out" in a similar manner as wbh did. Ok. A bit sad to see such accusations without some more substance behind them.

 

look man, I know what I saw.... just go find the PS Audio DirectStream DAC review thread and you'll find at least 3 banned users.. all of them dared try to defend the DAC they felt sounded good against the measurement nazis in that thread including Amir.   I saw the same all over the board while lurking... 

[992Sam]

4 minutes ago, SoundAndMotion said:

- The other was you. You know why, and the reason you were banned was *not* an unwillingness to toe the pro-measurement line. People here have been banned for the same reason you were banned there.

 

you did your homework very well....  I didn't want to have to spell it out for you 😉

[992Sam]

51 minutes ago, mav52 said:

He has always had an agenda.  His site, its agree with him or hit the door.  I take that site for what it is.

 

49 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Yes, exactly. In fact, in 99% of the cases people express frustration with me because I don't ban people quick enough.

 

 

yeah, I know... I was a victim of such a ban because I refused to bow down and worship on the alter of measurements..

 

I too run two different very active Facebook chat groups, as well as moderator on a major aviation message board... you get people that are obsessed with banning someone, that isn't someone you want in a position of power..  freedom of expression is critical to having a healthy and vibrant online community. 

[992Sam]

22 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Hey, what a great discussion for an objective sub-forum -- let's bash the other site that has no-one left here to defend themselves.

Well at least you can post something like this and not get banned here....  if a guy posts the equivalent over there, they're gone! out! ... later..

 

[992Sam]

1 minute ago, danadam said:

Ah... so that's what your "slave shop factories" comment was. 🤦‍♂️

 

it was a statement of pure truth...  there is no doubt, whatsoever that a majority of workers in Chinese factories, especially electronics factories are borderline slaves... certainly by contrast to US, Japan, EU and other labor markets..   But to attack their limitless source of cheap, knockoff, and intellectual rights disregarded product hit a soft spot clearly.  

[992Sam]

14 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

You do realize that ‘sufficiently advanced technology’ is a relative term, right? It has to do with the level of knowledge and understanding.  The less understanding, the easier it is to believe in magic. I’ve stopped believing in magic in audio a long time ago. It’s basic engineering and science. No magic.

 

 

I have an EE degree, and work in a technical field, so I too am very comfortable with science and measurements, but what I also am fully aware of is that the science of human hearing (the other half of the equation of listening to music is the listener)... isn't as set in stone as the physics of electromagnetic behavior, so while we're very easily able to test the noise floor of a electronic component, or a dozen other tests using a high quality scope...   there isn't much we can do to test the subjective nature of some people's hearing ability ... some can detect extremely minor changes in timing, while others cannot.. some can detect frequencies better than others.. etc.. 

 

So to measure something purely by how it measures on a scope.... misses half the equation of how it measures to the subjective human ear, and that is something that couldn't be discussed on the other forum with any real balance.  

[992Sam]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Well, that partly true, but it's not the full truth. There's plenty known about human hearing. A lot is understood, studied, measured and well established. Psychoacoustics is also not magic, although the field is made more complicated because of all the variations and varied tastes among human subjects. Magic is only required by those who chose to ignore the advances that have been made in the past 30-40 years.

 

nonsense... one of the least understood biological and psychological fields is that of hearing and how it varies so greatly between people... especially people that are biologically very similar (read twins for example)...

 

What we don't know about how the human ear's eventual delivery of the signals generated by sound waves to the human brain (or various individual human ears), essentially how we hear, things like..  even and odd order harmonics can fill a book alone.. much less getting into the effects of jitter and how some are far more able to discern when jitter is high on a recording while others can't tell...  for that matter, there are many who can't tell the difference between a 

mp3 and a FLAC 192/24 file of the same recording..  So whereas you can measure the difference between the two files, the fact that even one person, much less many from a random large sample hear different things from the same recording says a lot with regards to the importance of measurements and the experience of hearing music, weather live and analogue, or digitally reproduced  back into analog via a HiFi system. 

[992Sam]

2 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I didn't mean "basic" as in simple, rather as in "well established and well understood, requiring no magical thinking". Just like the general theory of relativity is basic science, and yet, it's not simple, and I bet most here will not be able to explain the math behind it. In all sciences, imagination and conjecture is just the start of the journey. Demonstrating, understanding, deriving the root causes, and explaining it in a way that can be used to make testable predictions is the harder part of the process that is mostly lacking in high-end audio. 

 

 

yeah, but you (nor anyone) can explain white an identical set of twins can hear the same sounds and one like while the other dislike them... some handle certain frequencies better than others... some take pleasure from certain amounts of bass, while others prefer the mids or the highs...  this same SUBJECTIVE response translates to audio equipment that might measure as perfect in one respect, but not musical in another... while the opposite is true for a different item.

 

How many power supples, how isolated components both within a piece, as well as how that piece is isolated from interference such as RF, and Magnetic Fields has effects on some people's hearing that others don't hear...  and this is why trying to quantify all of this with numbers isn't ever going to work, because humans don't always respond the same way.

[992Sam]

2 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Of course hearing and sound perception varies among humans. Why would anyone argue anything else? But physics of sound, and the outer limits of human hearing abilities are well known.  So why invent new magical explanations for any of this when sufficiently obvious, well-established ones exist? Magic is not required.

 

One might call it magic, while  another might simply be able to hear a harmonic that the first one didn't in the same piece of music playing thru identical equipment ....   is it magic? of course not... but can't it be said that an amplifier with certain 2nd order harmonic distortions will sound different than one without them? yes... but only to those who can hear it!  And that's the rub... not everyone can hear things, and not all of those things register as pleasurable to everyone.