Misleading Measurements

[pkane2001]

3 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

WOW! Tons of equipment on three floors! You must be a millionaire.

 

We need a WOW button.

No, not rich, just many years of putting these together.

[Jud]

56 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

No, not rich, just many years of putting these together.

We’ll give you a “Wow!” anyway. 😉

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

How is WOW measured i wonder ?

[Jud]

1 minute ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

How is WOW measured i wonder ?

Just about the same way as flutter, but slower.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

Just about the same way as flutter, but slower.

 

 

[Summit]

15 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Which tells me a thing or two ... 😁.

 

First thing I would do if I visited you to listen, seriously, to your "best rig", would be to go throughout your home, and pull the plug out on every single item that wasn't actually needed to make that primary rig work - and see what that gave me ... that would give me a baseline for assessing what the potential in SQ was, 🙂.

 

It’s not a bad advice Frank. We tested this in in my local HIFI shop many years ago and the difference was palpable. We also moved out all other speaker from the listening room and that change was even bigger.

[Summit]

22 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

This forum isn’t big enough for me to describe all my equipment

 

Three systems (one is 5.1) plus a ton of DACs audio interfaces, headamps, amps, headphones.
 

WiFi, Ethernet and USB are all in the digital audio path between the three floors. No PC in the main listening room.

 

You don’t need to name them all by model just your favorite source, DAC, amp and speaker.

 

Favorite = best measuring (ok or sounding).

[Clockmeister]

I have one or two items i could name seems only fair as the good people have asked you nicely, and to keep things even you can leave out the one you have hardwired to bypass the fuses

[Summit]

13 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Yellow and Red Dacs have a warmer tone, blue and white a cooler sound coloration. I think this is the main reason Toole advocated blind testing😄

 

You would be surprised how much different colors actually affect us . Seriously much more than many would think. Many studies have been conducted on this topic, to get the best suited color for a creative workplace, best color to get people to relax in hospital and many other places. I prefer a dark room with only smooth spotlights on the wall behind the speakers. Also no TV or other obstacles between the speakers.

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, Summit said:

 

You don’t need to name them all by model just your favorite source, DAC, amp and speaker.

 

Favorite = best measuring (ok or sounding).

 

Here's the current configuration (that does change frequently as I test and measure components):

 

My main source is a network RAID enclosure, connected to all the systems through WiFi. The main listening setup, in the basement, has a Windows 10 PC that I built about 5-6 years ago, situated in a separate room. The PC feeds a USB to Ethernet adapter that leads into the listening room over a 100ft Ethernet cable. No PCs in the listening room, player software controlled remotely over WiFi using an iPad or a laptop. The DAC is Holo Spring, balanced interconnects to Pass Aleph monoblocks leading to PSB Stratus Gold speakers. Room correction curve applied.

[manisandher]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

... balanced interconnects to Pass Aleph monoblocks...

 

Ooh... I used to own an Aleph 4 many moons ago. Didn't think you'd be into S-E output amps Paul. They certainly don't measure as well as P-P amps, you know? 🙂.

 

Mani.

[pkane2001]

Just now, manisandher said:

 

Ooh... I used to own an Aleph 4 many moons ago. Didn't think you'd be into S-E output amps Paul. They certainly don't measure as well as P-P amps, you know? 🙂.

 

Mani.

 

Bought them when I was younger and more suggestible  I've had the monoblocks for about 25 years, and still like them. I do have a few other amps that are sometimes swapped in, when I want better measurements

[manisandher]

On 7/5/2020 at 5:48 AM, PeterSt said:

Every smallest change is audible to me and my system and none of them can be measured with known equipment (or it can't realistically be bought because it costs millions (literally)).

 

From another thread:

 

On 6/27/2020 at 3:21 AM, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

 @manisandher in the Red Pill/ Blue Pill scored [p=0.01], a 99% consistency ie probability that his perception was not a product of random chance or guesswork.

 

Yep. The two inputs were measured as being bit-identical. There seemed to be no consistent differences in the analogue outputs (admittedly with a non-SOTA ADC it transpired)... and yet... I could hear a difference.

 

Is it that our threshold of audibility is below the level to which we can measure THD/SINAD, etc., or... are we simply measuring the wrong things?

 

Mani.

[pkane2001]

8 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

From another thread:

 

 

Yep. The two inputs were measured as being bit-identical. There seemed to be no consistent differences in the analogue outputs (admittedly with a non-SOTA ADC it transpired)... and yet... I could hear a difference.

 

Is it that our threshold of audibility is below the level to which we can measure THD/SINAD, etc., or... are we simply measuring the wrong things?

 

Mani.

 

Did you participate in Archimago's THD blind test? THD/SINAD are not the wrong thing to measure, they are a very simplified, average number approximating a much more complex non-linear behavior. As a first order approximation, these might be useful, but certainly not enough for a careful analysis of a device. Other measurements are required for that.

[semente]

58 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Did you participate in Archimago's THD blind test? THD/SINAD are not the wrong thing to measure, they are a very simplified, average number approximating a much more complex non-linear behavior. As a first order approximation, these might be useful, but certainly not enough for a careful analysis of a device. Other measurements are required for that.

 

Oversimplification seems to be quite common. The Spinorama comes to mind.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, semente said:

 

Oversimplification seems to be quite common. The Spinorama comes to mind.

 

It is among those who insist on a simple yes/no answer or a single number to describe a complex behavior. Even Chris was asking for a simple pass/fail answer

 

Spinorama is actually one of the more complex subjective audio experiments I've seen. There's nothing simple in the setup, the controls, or the analysis of the results.  The outcome of the experiment was then used to construct a predictive model that tried to estimate the subjective quality of a speaker among an average group of participating individuals, done by Sean Olive. The ASR "number" was designed to approximate Olive's model, and it is an over-simplification to my mind, just like THD is. Spinorama-type studies and measurements, on the other hand, represent much more than a single number and tell a much more complete story.

[Confused]

20 hours ago, fas42 said:

For some bizarre reason the concept of weighting barely registers in the audio world - in many fields this is a vital component for assessing the relative importance of various factors; a brilliant number in some area is almost irrelevant, because it has a low weighting in the overall. But audio is caught up in the 'purity' of specific numbers, in themselves - no wonder people have no idea how good some component will sound; when starting from this low base in measuring technique.

That is actually a very good point I think.

 

It does beg a question though.  To what measurements would you allocate a high weighting?

[pkane2001]

48 minutes ago, Confused said:

That is actually a very good point I think.

 

It does beg a question though.  To what measurements would you allocate a high weighting?

 

One way is through a mathematical/statistical analysis of a group of testers, correlating objective results to preferences. For example, here's what Sean Olive did to allocate "weight" to different objective parameters to come up with a subjective score for loudspeakers (I mentioned this in my previous post): 

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332210798

 

(the PDF linked on this page is about loudspeakers, and not headphones as the page itself incorrectly claims!)

 

 

[fas42]

5 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

The DAC is Holo Spring, balanced interconnects to Pass Aleph monoblocks leading to PSB Stratus Gold speakers. Room correction curve applied.

 

Oh dear ... the Thiels, which were a match made in heaven for the Pass, are consigned to the darker regions ... ?

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

Oh dear ... the Thiels, which were a match made in heaven for the Pass, are consigned to the darker regions ... ?

currently doing duty in the video (5.1) system

[fas42]

4 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Bought them when I was younger and more suggestible  I've had the monoblocks for about 25 years, and still like them. I do have a few other amps that are sometimes swapped in, when I want better measurements

 

But they don't sound as good, so they then get swapped out again ... 😁

[fas42]

4 hours ago, manisandher said:

 

 

Is it that our threshold of audibility is below the level to which we can measure THD/SINAD, etc., or... are we simply measuring the wrong things?

 

Mani.

 

The latter.

[fas42]

4 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Did you participate in Archimago's THD blind test? THD/SINAD are not the wrong thing to measure, they are a very simplified, average number approximating a much more complex non-linear behavior. As a first order approximation, these might be useful, but certainly not enough for a careful analysis of a device. Other measurements are required for that.

 

As is obvious to everyone who takes subjective SQ seriously - my current budget active speakers' biggest issue, so far, is their sensitivity to the mains quality - which has been a major part of the optimisation of every rig I've had ... something which no-one ever, ever measures  ...

[pkane2001]

10 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

As is obvious to everyone who takes subjective SQ seriously - my current budget active speakers' biggest issue, so far, is their sensitivity to the mains quality - which has been a major part of the optimisation of every rig I've had ... something which no-one ever, ever measures  ...

 

Really? Mains interference is never measured? Maybe it's not something a THD or SINAD number by itself will reveal, but certainly distortion and noise floor plots will show it.

 

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Really? Mains interference is never measured? Maybe it's not something a THD or SINAD number by itself will reveal, but certainly distortion and noise floor plots will show it.

 

 

Of course it can be measured ... but no-one actually does it ... give me a single link, to any online document, that has a specific measure of a particular component's performance in this one thing - no, "part of the overall picture" stuff, please!