ASR Audio Science Review forum YouTube Channel

[ASRMichael]

17 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

 

My condolences for your choice of username. 

Ha ha! Can I change it? To say ASMichael?

[sandyk]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

Not that I feel that the site would have much to offer for me, and the stuff I could give to the forum wasn't welcome either.

 

That is their loss for sure !!!

[botrytis]

13 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Ha ha! Can I change it? To say ASMichael?

ASSMichael? Sorry 🤣

[ASRMichael]

Just now, botrytis said:

ASSMichael? Sorry 🤣

That would be perfect! 

[fas42]

On 3/1/2021 at 8:04 AM, botrytis said:

Exactly. I am a lower tier person and I admit it. But, I enjoy listening to everything and all levels of equipment but I can tell you when something is off. Measurements, hearing IN YOUR ROOM, etc. all need to be done.

 

And that's how it works - in part. If you have any reasonable level of passion about this game, it always obvious when a system is below par. But measuring is generally useless, as a means of providing anything useful, IME - the only thing that truly matters is knowing how to resolve what your ears are picking up - if one is obsessed with measurements meaning everything, then when you get the numbers looking better, you will try to force your brain to follow suit, as regards the hearing. Only to be punctured by your significant other commenting, "Why does the stereo sound worse at the moment ... ? 🤣

[fas42]

4 hours ago, semente said:

This reminds me of Toole’s proposed theory that listening to speakers in mono is more discriminating because the rating differences were larger than when the assessment of the same three speakers was performed in stereo.

What seems to have happened is that the listening panel was coached to prefer wide dispersion and rated this type of speaker higher when in mono because it produced increased envelopment than narrow dispersion models.

This is called science.

 

 

 

This is in fact a very easy way to assess a system's performance - stereo speakers, with true mono material played over them. The worse the factors are, that degrade all the performance parameters that matter subjectively, the faster the sound will dive into the nearest speaker, when you move sideways from the central spot - this can range from head in a vice criticality, to never losing the sense of the sound coming from the space beyond the speakers, no matter how far sideways you go.

[botrytis]

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

And that's how it works - in part. If you have any reasonable level of passion about this game, it always obvious when a system is below par. But measuring is generally useless, as a means of providing anything useful, IME - the only thing that truly matters is knowing how to resolve what your ears are picking up - if one is obsessed with measurements meaning everything, then when you get the numbers looking better, you will try to force your brain to follow suit, as regards the hearing. Only to be punctured by your significant other commenting, "Why does the stereo sound worse at the moment ... ? 🤣

 

I said I am a lower tier person not my system is sub par. I would put my office system against many I have heard and come away grinning. The two on are not same thing. 

[Josh Mound]

Just to underscore my previous comment about fairness:

 

First, take a look at Amir’s critical comments about soldering on Schiit’s products, which Amir used as justification for planting seeds of doubt about the quality Schiit’s products, even when they measured well. ("Typical poor soldering job from Schiit." Etc.)

 

Now, look at this recently posted photo of one of the “fixed” versions of the Topping amp that was blowing up headphones. Is Amir providing the same level of criticism of Topping’s work? Nope.

 

ASR's supposed objectivity is really a rigged system that revolves around Amir's personal opinions, grudges, and (sometimes) financial interests. It's not fair to companies or to consumers.

 

Edit: For some reason my hyperlinks aren't working. 

 

Here are the posts where he criticizes Schiit's soldering:

https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/schiit-magni-heresy-headphone-amp-teardown.10330

https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/schiit-magni-3-headphone-amp-teardown.10328

https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-teardown-of-schiit-fulla-v2-dac-and-headphone-amplifier.3154

https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-teardown-of-schiit-modi-2-usb-dac.2082

 

Here's the post with a photo of Topping's "fix":

https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/topping-l30-headphone-amplifier-review.15226/page-184#post-662279

 

Edit #2:

I get it why the links to ASR aren't working. Haha. I love it! 🤣

[botrytis]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

This is in fact a very easy way to assess a system's performance - stereo speakers, with true mono material played over them. The worse the factors are, that degrade all the performance parameters that matter subjectively, the faster the sound will dive into the nearest speaker, when you move sideways from the central spot - this can range from head in a vice criticality, to never losing the sense of the sound coming from the space beyond the speakers, no matter how far sideways you go.

 

God, you are so full of nonsense. You have no clue as to what you are talking about.

[lucretius]

delete

 

[lucretius]

28 minutes ago, JoshM said:

Edit #2:

I get it why the links to ASR aren't working. Haha. I love it!

 

I see the forum software is mangling the URLs.  @The Computer Audiophile, why is this necessary?

[The Computer Audiophile]

32 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

I see the forum software is mangling the URLs.  @The Computer Audiophile, why is this necessary?

I’ve explained in the past. The short version is this, fans of ASR and schadenfreude have purposely started threads here to bash AS and attempt to drive traffic away to ASR. Much of the time it’s blatant, without even trying to hide it. Many here will remember Professor Scott’s thread. 
 

Rather than wake up to a soup sandwich of a thread, I stopped the links from working and thought I’d add exactly what I think about ASR’s use of the word science by adding quotes around the word as an added joke. 

[plissken]

8 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

This post is in reference to the Taiko Extreme...so many opinions rather than say I’ve heard it and I think X! 

 

I've been on the Taiko website and they have bigger, fundamental, misunderstandings about computers:

 

When I read this they are confusing RAID with backups. I see this rookie mistake all the time.

 

Here's one of my servers: HPE Gen7 Proliant DL360e. The server with 24GB of RAM was $155 shipped.

2 Xeon L5640 (total of 32 logical cores)

128GB ECC DDR3 10600 RAM ($120)

8 TB of storageRAID 5 ($300)

480GB Kinston SSD Boot Drive ($55)

4 GBe Copper Ethernet

2 10GBe LC SR Ethernet ($20 for the card, $18 for the 10GBe transceiver)

1 Lights out management Ethernet. This is a great feature BTW.

 

My total cost was $668. Able to hit ~670MB/s between servers (I have a 2nd DL360e and a Dell R620) and my HPE Z420 workstation. I can get 332MB/s to my lowly Celeron N3150 based systems (100% silent machines BTW). I have a Pi3 B+ in one room and a N3150 ASRock based machine in another.

 

The servers are in a rack in the basement.

 

IMG_20210302_225919

 

IMG_20210302_224720

 

IMG_20210302_224728

 

IMG_20210302_224747

 

[fas42]

3 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

God, you are so full of nonsense. You have no clue as to what you are talking about.

 

And you have no clue as to how impressive the illusion is, that competent playback can throw up, and which the conscious mind can't reject ... you still can't understand that it's possible to fool the ear/brain with reproduced sound of sufficient integrity - in the visual field, there are examples galore of how it's possible to make the unconscious mind believe some visual trickery; even when the conscious mind knows it's being fooled. But it's so hard for some to accept that quite remarkable trickery can also occur in the auditory world ...

[ASRMichael]

3 hours ago, plissken said:

 

I've been on the Taiko website and they have bigger, fundamental, misunderstandings about computers:

 

When I read this they are confusing RAID with backups. I see this rookie mistake all the time.

 

Here's one of my servers: HPE Gen7 Proliant DL360e. The server with 24GB of RAM was $155 shipped.

2 Xeon L5640 (total of 32 logical cores)

128GB ECC DDR3 10600 RAM ($120)

8 TB of storageRAID 5 ($300)

480GB Kinston SSD Boot Drive ($55)

4 GBe Copper Ethernet

2 10GBe LC SR Ethernet ($20 for the card, $18 for the 10GBe transceiver)

1 Lights out management Ethernet. This is a great feature BTW.

 

My total cost was $668. Able to hit ~670MB/s between servers (I have a 2nd DL360e and a Dell R620) and my HPE Z420 workstation. I can get 332MB/s to my lowly Celeron N3150 based systems (100% silent machines BTW). I have a Pi3 B+ in one room and a N3150 ASRock based machine in another.

 

The servers are in a rack in the basement.

 

IMG_20210302_225919

 

IMG_20210302_224720

 

IMG_20210302_224728

 

IMG_20210302_224747

 

Seriously? I’ve never not know an IT person to spout out.... Raid is not a backup! It must be the 1st thing in the manual! 
 

Lets be clear mind you. Raid is a form of redundancy? Which in turn is a backup of some sort. 1 drive goes down & you replace the drive without losing all the data across all drives. Obviously subject what Raid you using. But I agree it’s not a 100% back & there is risk attached to it. So for 100% safety sake backup to another device if you are worried about it. 
 

You calling Emile a rookie? 

[PeterSt]

5 hours ago, plissken said:

I've been on the Taiko website and they have bigger, fundamental, misunderstandings about computers:

 

I am afraid that you don't know Dutch well. But to me that makes perfect sense.

I will be the same reason why it is difficult to understand my English. Half of the words need to spring in between the others from consistency or logic. Plus, I think that we (or at least I) take a lot for granted as your knowledge. Emile does that there too.

Change your mind set (as in that he surely will know what the difference between a backup and RAID is) and it will be readable as intended.

 

PS: For AmirM (or others), our own Audio PC's are also 28 or 32 core Xeons (on real server boards).

[charlesphoto]

I have a Drobo 5D that I do backup to a Synology NAS (Raid), and to stand alone hard drives (8TB and 12TB). No RAID in itself shouldn't be considered a resolute backup, but is good enough in itself as a 'middleman' that if a drive goes down (and both of mine have double redundancy) then it can be quickly repaired. And mine isn't for just music files but photo files which imo are a lot more valuable. 

 

I personally don't believe in the value of a $27k music server (lord how I'd love to afford a computer so powerful for Lightroom though, but even then the limiting factor would be the software itself) but I'm sure the builder knows the difference between backup and RAID. But no need to be so full of one's self to doubt that in order to try and gain some internet points. Save that for over at ASRanon. 

[plissken]

4 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Raid is a form of redundancy? Which in turn is a backup of some sort

 

No RAID is not backup. Period. RAID is real time continuity in face of a single point, or could be multiple points of failure, that allow graceful recovery with no lost production.

 

You let me know how good RAID is for all these cryptoware attacks places get hit with. The entire RAID, 'some form of redundancy', whatever get encrypted. Smart customers have backup.

 

I had a small business get hit with ransomware and had the initial VM's backup in 8 hours. Took 2 more days to re-image all desktops. And that's a great outcome when it comes to ransomware. I've been in situations where the FBI has been onsite.

 

 

[charlesphoto]

6 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

No RAID is not backup. Period. RAID is real time continuity in face of a single point, or could be multiple points of failure, that allow graceful recovery with no lost production.

 

You let me know how good RAID is for all these cryptoware attacks places get hit with. The entire RAID, 'some form of redundancy', whatever get encrypted. Smart customers have backup.

 

I had a small business get hit with ransomware and had the initial VM's backup in 8 hours. Took 2 more days to re-image all desktops. And that's a great outcome when it comes to ransomware. I've been in situations where the FBI has been onsite.

 

 

 

We're talking home music files here - no need to be so IT about it all. RAID is fine as long as one also has a stand alone hard drive backup (or two or three). 

[ASRMichael]

Seriously you digging yourself a hole. Everyone knows you work in IT, no need to float your expertise. The point I was making was you were effectively calling Emile a rookie? Can we compare the Extreme to your pictures above? in fact don't answer that.  

[plissken]

14 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

 

We're talking home music files here - no need to be so IT about it all. RAID is fine as long as one also has a stand alone hard drive backup (or two or three). 

 

It is what it is. RAID is RAID and backup is backup. One isn't the other. For $27K you would think a vendor would know the difference. Based on their verbiage I don't think they do.

 

I recommend Acronis. I backup entire machine using their block method and then I use their online for important files only. Synology has a nice backup client and that's a really nice swiss army knife solution they have. I only have a few use cases that I can't deploy them. If the file type is a database or other complex file type like .dfx (autocad) I can't use them.

[charlesphoto]

I use Carbon Copy Cloner on my 2013 Mac Pro to take care of my backup chores. 

[plissken]

18 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Seriously you digging yourself a hole. Everyone knows you work in IT, no need to float your expertise. The point I was making was you were effectively calling Emile a rookie? Can we compare the Extreme to your pictures above? in fact don't answer that.  

 

I've no problem with the comparison. I don't think his hardware comes anywhere near the level of engineering of a Dell or HPE server. Period. I don't run my server in room, I run them in a rack in a basement corner. So my requirements are different. I'm not calling anyone a rookie. I'm pointing out a misconception by a vendor of a $27K box that should know better.

 

I've got redundant power, I've got Lights out Management, I've got hardware RAID with 1GB of cache, I've got 8 drive bays. All under $700 for enterprise class hardware. I've posted about this particular server before that with 32GB of RAM it came in at $155 shipped and clean as a whistle. You don't need to spend gobs of money on this. You don't have to sacrifice anything either. This box will do whatever DSP you need.

 

 

[plissken]

4 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

I use Carbon Copy Cloner on my 2013 Mac Pro to take care of my backup chores. 

I was using Mobi and then CCC bought them. They have a nice solution.

[PeterSt]

29 minutes ago, plissken said:

You don't need to spend gobs of money on this. You don't have to sacrifice anything either.

 

 

 

And this is my basement. It will sound like sh*t because it wasn't made to play audio. For that we build different machines.

 

I am shouting for over 2 years now that the PC is more important to the sound than the DAC. And it better be believed because without exception each customer agrees fully. You just never tried it, I suppose. Or you think you know better. Or you think you are an Amir. Hahaha.

But seriously. If you think you are an audiophile you must seriously invest in the playback hardware.

 

I don't do it exactly the same as Taiko.

 

 

So a Server board in there, that 28 or 32 core Xeon processor, running at 500Mhz (settable) and of course with a Linear PSU inside. Oh all passive. No watercooling either. wait, not even heatsinks (except for the CPU heatsink). CPU 60 degrees C max. Weight 13Kg.

No room heater at all.

 

So is this better than the Taiko ? ... -> Unimportant. Both ate infinitely better sounding than your laptop.