Popular Post jhwalker Posted May 20, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted May 20, 2022 2 hours ago, firedog said: I have no data to back this up, but: I think Amir's measurements of devices under $1000 and under $500 is pretty influential. My impression is that there's a serious segment of people who only want to spend a few hundred on an amp or DAC and since it's often impossible to audition units anyway, they decide to buy units that measure exceptionally well, as their first criterion. It also seems like some manufacturers are responding to this, by making units that have great measurements and by publishing those measurements. Schiit and some of the better known Chinese brands come to mind. This wasn't a "thing" a few years ago. I also bought a Schiit Modi 3E for this reason. Measured well(not by Amir) , had the features I wanted, and was cheap. I'm very happy with it. I wasn't going to go to the trouble of auditioning multiple items for a $125 outlay. I'm sure many others have a similar POV. It btw, didn't embarass itself when I connected it to my expensive system. The recent extremely positive reviews of the Topping DAC (Absolute Sound, subjective only) and and Pre (Stereophile, subjective plus measurements) in which there was agreement that the two under $1000 pieces were as good SQ wise (and for the pre, measurement wise) as pretty much anything on the market in their segment is telling: Even the mainstream publications are feeling the pressure from the market to review such relatively inexpensive devices that measure as state of the art. Once upon a time, neither of those publications would review such products, as they don't have dealer networks and are only available online. I'm in that market segment; i.e., I am not averse to spending a couple thousand dollars for great audio, but I'm never going to spend the equivalent of a car (or even a house!) on audio equipment. Given that, I want to get the best-performing equipment I can, and measurements showing truly state-of-the-art performance from a device on the low end of the cost scale is a big win for me. All of my recent purchases have been driven by analysis of measurements and the associated objective narratives, and I've been thrilled with each of them. Jeff_N and pkane2001 2 John Walker - IT Executive Headphone - SonicTransporter i9 running Roon Server > Netgear Orbi > Blue Jeans Cable Ethernet > mRendu Roon endpoint > Topping D90 > Topping A90d > Dan Clark Expanse / HiFiMan H6SE v2 / HiFiman Arya Stealth Home Theater / Music -SonicTransporter i9 running Roon Server > Netgear Orbi > Blue Jeans Cable HDMI > Denon X3700h > Anthem Amp for front channels > Revel F208-based 5.2.4 Atmos speaker system Link to comment
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