Lols Amir is like religion to the the objectivists.
Amir and Blind Testing
Let me start by saying I like watching Amir from ASR, so please let’s not get harsh or the thread will be deleted. Many times, Amir has noted that when we’re inserting a new component in our system, our brains go into (to paraphrase) “analytical mode” and we start hearing imaginary improvements. He has reiterated this many times, saying that when he switched to an expensive cable he heard improvements, but when he switched back to the cheap one, he also heard improvements because the brain switches from “music enjoyment mode” to “analytical mode.” Following this logic, which I agree with, wouldn’t blind testing, or any A/B testing be compromised because our brains are always in analytical mode and therefore feeding us inaccurate data? Seems to me you need to relax for a few hours at least and listen to a variety of music before your brain can accurately assess whether something is an actual improvement. Perhaps A/B testing is a strawman argument, because the human brain is not a spectrum analyzer. We are too affected by our biases to come up with any valid data. Maybe.
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@tonywinga, there has not been a Bureau of Standards for almost 35 years. Bringing this up shows you don’t have any experience in calibration or measurements which is likely why you were "abused". Other than absolute gain, what exactly do you think a NIST traceable calibration would be on an audio tester? A large portion of the test gear for what I do is not NIST traceable for calibration. Why? NIST does not have any standard remotely applicable. It’s fine for basic things like current, voltage, weight, thickness, etc. but not for complex measurements that either don’t have a standard or are defined by other technical bodies. This is why I don’t post often in audio forums. Conversations just end up as pages of whining because 1/2 the world does not believe what I believe and I am offended that they will not stop. What is worse, people will make things up to support their argument. Take this piece below. This is so factually incorrect that I wonder if the author even visited the site? I don’t go to ASR often either, as most of their threads end up as technical fights about things I don't care about, but when I was planning my room, I asked a lot of acoustic questions there and I can state without reserve, that most there would never discount acoustics and would abuse you if you said acoustics did not matter.
I said it pages ago, this will be just whining until one side proves to the other they are right, but I am beginning to think people would prefer to whine instead of trying to reach a conclusion. Even if either side conclusively proved the other wrong, I am not sure they would accept the outcome.
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Wow, another self proclaimed expert. Spectrum and frequency analyzers do need to be calibrated. Since I was an Engineering Manager for several years with one of my responsibilities being test equipment design, calibration and repair in a major Aerospace Company I know that first hand. All test equipment should be traceable back to the Bureau of Standards or NIST for serious test work or analysis. Nitpick over the name if you like. And guess what- equipment loses its calibration. Protocols were required to deal with product previously tested on equipment found to be out of calibration by more than a certain amount. I use my iPhone or iPad apps to measure things but I treat is as comparative data, not absolute and I always qualify that as reference only. |
deludedaudiophile You quote me then i want to be understood clearly... "Gear tasting brand name subjective fetichists" or " Measuring tool alleged Objective fetichist" focus, the two warring groups, on the GEAR PIECE ...They are gear obsessed... One group trust ONLY their ears, the other group trust ONLY the numbers they look for... The two group recognize the existence of acoustic and psycho-acoustic science for sure and give it a lip service for sure but my point is the two groups COMPLETELY UNDERESTIMATE the huge impact of acoustic treatment and especially of acoustic mechanical control of SMALLROOM and also of mechanical vibration control of the system and electrical noise floor level control of the house... The goal being AT THE END how to reach the best S.Q./price ratio ... They war each other ignoring that the only important factor in audio is not measured numbers alone or ears ALONE but their ongoing CORRELATION... Then i am not a "deluded audiophile" like your avatar name suggest i may be, and i am not an Amir disciple either... I used my EARS to tune my room by myself with a rigourous step by step process where location, reverberation time, timing, intensity sound level, time delay differential between each ears from each speakers etc play a major role.. In this process ears listenings and objective measures and objective measures ratio between the mechanical device parts are CORRELATED one with another to make the tuning process a succeess... i made it at NO COST by myself with only homemade devices... I hope to be counted in NONE of these two groups, but for sure i dont dismiss ears training like one of this group systematically do... My best to you....And welcome here....
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And speaking of correlation, that is a big bugaboo. Correlating test equipment is the biggest pain ever. The question is; how can two piece of test equipment, both being calibrated give two different measurements for the same part? The answer is yes. That's it. Yes. So the old saying goes; "a man with two watches is never sure what time it is." A lot of time and effort spent over the years getting test equipment in two or more locations to correlate. Then we talk about subjective evaluations and the results will be all over the map. Subjective evaluation is often used where measurements cannot give a complete picture. We do it all the time in the audio world and I'm sure that most if not all audio equipment manufacturers do subjective testing as well. A jury must be trained to listen for specific characteristics and typically receive very specific guidelines detailing how to rate a component or system. In my experience, the environment is closely controlled and the subjective evaluations are repeated by the panel several times over a few days. Our moods and previous environmental exposure can affect the results. So we Audiophiles are typically self taught in the art of listening. These forums and articles can provide instruction as well. I'm not saying I'm a great expert at subjective listening. I'm in my mid 60s now and recently I was at the Tampa Audio Expo with my son who is 31. He could hear things in the various rooms that I just could not pick up. And based on that I am telling myself now that I really need not spend so much on upgrades these days. I have hit my limit of hearing. But I have no doubt that others can hear differences that make sense to upgrade. I have a 45 year history of that.
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Ears Training is not an audiophile or only an acoustician matter it is a musician affair too.. Correlating subjective impressions with objective disposition of acoustic devices or content or ratios is the ONLY WAY... Measuring with some tool a piece of gear and claiming without listening to it in controlled environment that the tool say the gear is good or bad is beyond ridiculous, exactly like vouching for the market publicity of gear.... Stupidity has no borderline... My borderline in audio is CORRELATION between the gear potential the room acoustic ratios and the ears... |
Learning how to listen to our stereo systems is very important. So back in the day I could walk into a real live brick and mortar store and hear a state of the art stereo. Then I would go home and listen to my system and I would think, "wow, my system sucks." Now I would go back to the store and listen again to see why the stereo in the store sounds better. Is it the amp, the speakers, the preamp, the source or the room? What about the sound is better at his store vs my no good stereo at home? This could also apply to a friend or group of hobbyists where you have the opportunity to listen to their systems. An equipment manufacturer might want to bring in some mics and measurement equipment to understand why the sound is better but most of us learned to depend on our ears and our notes. In fact, without the opportunity to hear other stereo systems - be it at a friends house or a store, our systems can become quite off and we not even realize it. At least until we get in our car one day and think, "Man! This car stereo sounds better than my home stereo." Been there too. For example, about two years ago now I got to hear the Alexia 2's in Atlanta for the first time. I went home and thought, wow the bass in my stereo system sucks. I went back and listened some more and started hearing the differences between the Alexia's and my speakers. I was just about ready to drop some serious $$$ for new speakers but decided to first work on my room, speaker placement and I also added subwoofers which took another several months to position and tune. I'm at the point where my system has bass almost as good as the Alexia's but good enough at least that I'm no longer motivated to upgrade. It took me several months of work, including putting in a wood floor but I can say from experience that speakers are not the number one influence on the sound. It is the room and then the electronics. Of course, the speakers have to be reasonably qualified. My point is some actual measurements are needed at times but critical listening skills can guide us to build exceptional systems. Oh, and the other thing- it took months to find the best position for the speakers and subs because what sounded good one day sounded terrible another day. It can take time and patience to get dialed in. I also spent some time listening to the Wilsons over a year plus and I did buy some other gear at that store since I spent so much time there. I still think they are great speakers. |
Look, you didn't even know the bureau of standards has been defunct for 35 years. Don't try to invent a backstory at this point in some questionable call to authority with made up qualifications. You didn't even know what NIST was till I put it in a post. If you were truly an engineering manager involved with metrology, you would know this. You did not. You don't know what would be calibrated on a spectrum analyzer, let alone an audio one, or even how it would be relevant to the information being presented, most of which is differential in which case, calibration is effectively of no meaning. Whether one item is 1 and the other is 1.1, or one is 1.1, and the other is 1.21 is not relevant in a differential comparison. Again, if you were an metrology expert, you would know this. Similarly, whether something is 1.000KHz or 1.001KHz in audio would not be important. If it was, we could never use turntables. On top of that, many instruments today incorporate self calibration features. In a device with an independent generator and recorder, if the recorded result matches the expected generator output, then you can be rather confident of the calibration.
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I understood quite clearly what you posted. You without any lack of clarity accused the users of the Audio Science site of ignorance wrt the need for room acoustic treatment. I will post it again.
This is in my experience and to anyone who happens to visit there patently false. I expect you went there and tried to tell some experts in acoustics how to do acoustics, and it was not well received. Based on your posts, it is likely you made some claims wrt what you could accomplish by ear alone that from my own audio journey is not impossible.
Audiophiles can't have it both ways. You have Tony complaining that a device was not recently calibrated to a 35 year defunct Bureau of Measurements meanwhile almost no companies in this industry supply any measurements let alone NIST traceable while you claim that your ears are "accurate" enough. Surely you see the irreconcilable issue here?
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deludedaudiophile, you seem very defensive about this topic. I get the impression that you manufacture a product and are trying to rationalize not using certified or calibrated test equipment. That would be sloppy work indeed. Any manufacturer publishing specifications for their product should be backing up those specs with data from certified, calibrated instrumentation. If not, they could find themselves in hot water I would think if not able to defend their published claims. |
Sorry but the way a piece of gear could be evaluated is in a specific ROOM ONLY ... Not by an electrical partial chosen set of measures ONLY ...CORRELATION BETWEEN MEASURES AND ROOM is NECESSARY ... That was my point... I know perfectly well that there is all kind of people in this site, even acousticians... But claiming that a piece of gear is "bad" without listening it in a controlled acoustic is BULLSHIT...And this is what Amir does often and his disciples who attack "deluded audiophile" if you know what i means... And it is perfectly possible to tune a room by ears, i have done it to my satisfaction AT NO COST...It is not perfect but it works...Helmholtz did it before me and the Egyptian... I dont need any headphones now nor any upgrade nor any advice by fools who think measuring some aspects of a dac without listening to it is the way to chose one... Then read me right... Iam not a deluded audiophile nor a deluded measuring fool... If there exist only 2 cases in your audio brain; deluded audiophile and measuring fool, add a third one for me...call it CORRELATING EARS AND MEASURES guy... 😁😊
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By the way i dont pretend to teach their job to acoustician... I pretend to have been able to tune my room.. Then dont put in my mouth what serve your goal... And in case you dont know it, SMALL ROOM acoustic is a recent field in acoustic science investigations ... The market for small room acoustic is few decades old...Amphitheater exist for millenia... i dont pretend to know anything, i only experimented 2 years non stop in my room... And my room beat my 8 headphones... it is not perfect but it is enough for me.. And by the way the best acoustician in the world are on the net with their articles and books... They are not in the ASR site...And if they are there. did they contradict the idiotic way to judge a piece of gear by numbers alone ? Inform me about that i dont know... 😊 How do you think i learn to tune my room? By consulting acoustician articles on the internet...And creating my own experiments... Serious Acousticians are not dwelling in audiophile forum for sure and not in your ASR site either , they WORK ... Read my post right please before categorizing me in the "deluded audiophile "box your avatar name suggest....
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I manufacture batteries @tonywinga , or more specifically I develop the technology for the batteries that are manufactured. The only thing I am defending is common sense and against those that try to look like they know what they are talking about when they really don't. This place is great for music suggestion, good for speakers, and I like looking at rooms for design ideas which is why I have read it over the years. Some of the best music suggestions you will find. Otherwise, too many people who are convinced of their expertise in all things audio though they have likely not seen a physics class since high school. They are easy to tell, they throw around terms like Bureau of Standards in 2022, even thought it was eliminated in the 1980's. At that point it becomes obvious they picked up a term from someone else who also did not know what they are talking about either. It's tedious, and it is disrespectful to spread false information under the guise of fake expertise to a community that supposedly you respect. |
Mahgister, you appear unable to both form a coherent paragraph, nor stay on topic. Throwing out names like Helmholtz nor TYPING IN CAPS does not make your point any more succinct or accurate nor confer any expertise on you. You made a blanket statement that the users of Audio Science do not care about room acoustics. That is patently false. There is no walking that back. You made a false statement. It would be best to just admit it. I hired an expert who participated on the Audio Science site. He came highly recommended and his references included professional studios, many business who set up studios, and high end residences. I had a great chat there with another gentleman who is a distinguished Bell Labs scientist. I have even ran into an old colleague from my TI days, I was working on a wafer process that was critical to a product he was lead on. Oh, I also chatted with someone from Gik there too (the acoustic panel guys). So your claim about acoustics experts not participating there is also false. I did get directed to Gearslutz (now Gearspace) for a deeper dive into some acoustics discussions. The acoustics discussions are definitely deeper there, but of course more focused on studios and mixing spaces. The concepts are similar though. I am not sure why you are comparing your room to headphones. They don't sound the same. That is an apples and orange comparison and does not mean anything. |
You extracted my sentence of his context... Nobody in his right mind can clain that there is no one interested by acoustic here or in ASR... this will be false... this is evident for ANYONE... Second: I spoke about some people in ASR claimingv that measuring a piece of gear say all there is too say about his Sound quality... I said we must listen any produtct in good acoustic condition...not only read some chosen electrical measures to assess his quality...The final quality of any audio system is DETERMINED by his relation to a ROOM acoustically controlled... is it clearer? Dont pick fleas in my back, try to understand context...
First anybody in his right mind know that we cannot compare headphones with speakers...They are different BUT.......They cannot be compared en GENERAL, they can be compared by an owner in his room... Second i prefer my speakers now to all my headphones why? Because i can replicate the INTIMACY we feel with headphones with my room/speakers ...And all other acoustic cues are on par or better with my speakers.. With the same system it was not the case a few years ago without any acoustic control of my room... i prefered headphones at this time in the same uncontrolled room... is it clearer?
i dont doubt a second that the acoustic discourse is better on ASR than here...i know that there is more "specialist" there than here...
This does not means that measuring a piece of gear ONLY and only measuring it is the final word about his quality...If Amir say i take measure and this dac is good this other bad...This is not enough information about the sound quality of anything... Improving Acoustic conditions in my experience beat most upgrade... This is my point... The final word is a listening in the room with a good acoustic... A reviewer speaking of any product in a non treated and non controlled room for me cannot give the final word... be it here, in an audio magazine or in ASR...
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By the way i never insulted you, i even welcome you, remember?
Then instead of insults try to discuss.. I never pretend to any SCIENCE... I pretend to have experimented in my room and to my surprize discovered many acoustic basic facts that change my listening experience... Then i spoke about what i know: SOME acoustic and psycho acoustic basic fact help more than upgrading our piece of gear generally ... Especially costly one for MOST people and especially if what we already own is relatively good to begin with... I dont speak about people or for people who can afford anything at any cost here... Second: speakers cannot sound the same in different SMALL room... Third: it is easy to deduce from that that reviewing piece of gear by only measuring some electrical characteristic is not enough.. No need of a doctorate in digital engineering for that.. i hope all is clearer ...
By the way i dont throw the name of Helmholtz to be smart , i used some different devices with his name on them... I used capital letters to insist on a word... This is not like your sentence about me which is an insult, but just a way to be best understood... And also i said already many times here i dont doubt that Amir of ASR is honest... Some of his disciples less honest...They develop the idea that we can assess quality of a product without listening in the proper acoustic condition, and they use some electrical measures to mock anybody who like a product after listening to it only...These few disciples called anyone who listen without knowing the numbers meanings a "deluded audiophile" is this ring a bell ? 😁😊 My opinion is less simplistic than the opinion of most audiophile or the opinion of some ASR disciples : we must takes any measures seriously yes for sure, but we must listen ALSO the product in a very well controlled acoustic room.. This is the way to speak about ANY audio product for me.. Is it clear enough? By the way english is not my first language, i only read english dont speak it well.. But i think that my 2 last post are COHERENT...
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Welcoming me does not change the fact you made a false statement, that I did not take out of context. That would near impossible given what you said, and you both will not admit to the actual words you wrote nor their meaning. I don’t perceive any ability to have a coherent honest conversation with you. |
Anybody can be proven to make a false statement with any extract of words... With this avatar name you dont seem to be of good faith if i think about it after your insult..... Only an idiot can say that there is no acoustic expertise here in all the audiogon forum or on ASR... I am not an idiot ...This was not my point....This is explained in my last 2 posts... You take advantage of some bad sentence out of the context of all my posts here to pick fleas in my neck... Be it... I never insulted you and this is a FACT .... No distortion of my posts context will change this simple fact: to assess a product we need to listen to it in well determined acoustic condition... this is in all my posts here...You can distort this simple fact and claim that i said that there is no acoustic specialist on ASR if you want and put that in my mouth... This is stupid claim i never did...There is acoustician here and in any other big audio sites... This does not change the fact that most people in audio UNDERESTIMATE acoustic power concerning S.Q. improvement versus a new electronic design upgrade... This is my point... Measuring the gear is not enough to judge 2 designs one against the other...Acoustic here is key... it is clear even with my bad english syntax..
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My quote did not remove any relevant context.
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Do you learned how to read? i think so if i read your posts... Perhaps my english is not exemplary i dont doubt that...But your interpretation is not my words... it is evident here that i spoke about SOME people on ASR not about ALL people there.. i even precisely mention a "few bullys"... I must conclude after your insult that you have a grudge about me here because you seem too much intelligent to be unable to read the context..Who are you then? you are new here, and i welcome you, and you picked one of my post, misread it in an evident way and you go on after me... Comical...
For example in my post , "their common point"; "their" refer to whom here? it refer to the "few bullys"...not to the ASR site in his totality... Anybody read that clearly in my post and not your distorted interpretation... I know you are clever, then what i must conclude? I even said many times here and in this post that Amirm was polite and honest then what? There is only 2 possibilities you have a grudge against me but i dont know you then i must conclude to your bad faith... Sorry but i refuse to think that you cannot know how to read a text like an idiot..You are not an idiot, you are evidently very intelligent... Then you quoted me in bad faith...For whatever reason i dont know... Are you one of the few bullys on ASR? your choice of name for your avatar goes in this interpretative direction... It is the first time someone insult me here AFTER i welcome him on another thread where he was attacked...Comical...
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« They are many pompuous very clever but closed minds ignoring anything resembling a listening experiments but Amir was polite...There are good people also there listen me right but they are dominated by a minority of bullys protecting the master...They are easy to recognized, some come here ridiculizing anyone who listen with his ears... Their common point is a total ignborance of acoustic condition because they need electrical tools they dont need to tune a room... All rooms are equal for their activities...» |
This is your first post criticizing me with a TRUNCATED sentence from my original post : With this truncated extract everyone can think rightfully so that i speak badly about ALL PEOPLE participating in ASR forum...
With this truncated quotation of my post , anybody can think that i spoke about EVERYONE on ASR and not about a "few bullys"...For sure... You quoted my COMPLETE post ONLY after my 2 answering posts about your insinuation, thanks.... Then everybody can read my real intention clearly and your misinterpretation of my ORIGINAL post and intention ...
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Deludedaudiophile, good luck with your battery venture. You might want to learn more about metrology. You can take some courses or learn more from the ISO or MIL Q Specs about test equipment certification and traceability. These are industry standards and plenty of calibration labs around the country to get your test equipment calibrated and certified for a reasonable cost. Turnaround times are pretty quick if no repairs are needed. |
Who do you think you are fooling? Do you think people referencing 35 year defunct organizations like they still exist are taken seriously by anyone but the deluded? You need to get with reality bud no one buying your story. Throwing ISO or MIL into a sentence does not mean you know anything. If anything that you don’t reference specific standards shows you are just attempting to grandstand in the hopes someone will believe you. Those are not standards. One is a standards body, the is just some letters. Mil spec standards are across a range of entities. P.s. the battery venture is doing fine, it’s a good business to be in, lab budget almost unlimited but tied to profitability. Only small companies send their stuff out for calibration. The equipment we have that can be calibrated is done on site. But you wouldn’t know that.
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deluded audiophile, your behavior- argumentative, disrespectful of others, spending 5 seconds reading about something on the internet and thinking you are an expert, indicates that you are a young adult living in your mom's basement somewhere who has accomplished nothing. Step away from the keyboard and go outside and play. The sunshine will do you good. |
Bud, you referenced a 35 year defunct organization and didn’t even know it ... 35 years. ANYONE with actual working experience dealing with anything related to calibration and standards would not have done that. Just who do you think you are fooling? Again you referenced an organization defunct for 35 years. Not one or 2 years, 35 years. You are not fooling anyone.
PS the important acronyms and items of interest are NIST/ NVLAP, A2LA, IAS who are members/adhere to ILAC/APLAC so their results are accepted anywhere, and ISO/IEC 17025 defining their operation. Most of our equipment can only be calibrated by the manufacturer most of which have been certified by one of those bodies listed above. |
@tonywinga what does lying about your qualifications and experience say about you? |
@csmgolf :
Yup! No doubt. I figured this out from the first few posts. Easy.
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Not if you are making technically implausible claims...no. In many instances (not all, but many) we really can say, through measurements, that "X is bad" or "the difference you heard was in all likelihood your imagination." It doesn't matter what room you listened in. That would be like saying "I saw a working Perpetual Motion Machine!" A physicist explains why that is impossible and you reply "But did you test it in the guy's GARAGE where I saw it? If not...your opinion doesn't count!"
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Instead of trying to understand my point...You put something i never said in my mouth here : 😋 For sure it is POSSIBLE to say with adequate measurements that some piece of gear is badly designed... Engineers know what they do in their design and used standards .... Where i did speak about the contrary? But you commit to an error if you think that measuring will be enough in ALL CASES and all time to judge between two products of similar price and/or design... You are intelligent for sure i dont doubt it and you already said that in your first sentence: yes you are right i dont make implausible technical claims either... Acoustic method will not transform miraculously a bad design in a good one... But now put my posts in their context, it is necessary ALSO to correlate listening with measures... And between an upgrade in gear for example most of the times and acoustic improvement , the greatest possible improvement could come and come often from an improving controlled acoustical environment Why? Because no piece of gear work optimally at his peak sound level PERCEIVED quality in a bad room or in a room uncontrolled... We must learn how to listen (acoustic/psycho-acoustic) audiophiles or engineer alike... I never say that Amirm measuring could not be useful, i said that some of his bullying disciples make communication difficult here or there... It is the same here where a few are agressive toward those who focus mainly on measures...I myself trust only correlation method...Because we all love sound and music at the end...
My best to you.... And deepest respect...We may differ on many subjects but i know that you are an honest person... |
Jez @deludedaudiophile Give him a break… he said he was a manager and not a technical expert.
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I've seen him downgrade a product because it didn't measure as well as the competition or it was substantially more expensive with no gain in value. A downgrade doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't sound good. The opposite is also true. I've seen him recommend products that don't necessarily measure well (although the flaws are still inaudible), but are a great value.
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Most of you on this forum likely do not know or have ever heard of a gauge R&R. Most also likely do not understand the concept of accuracy and precision. That's not a slight. This is a difficult concept and much work has been done to define it and apply it to test measuring equipment. I want to start with something most of us know quite well- the bathroom scale. If you are like me, we have a love/hate relationship with our bathroom scale. It's a simple device that can either make or break our day and yet we typically do not think twice about whether or not it is telling us the truth. What do I mean? Well, for starters I can get on my bathroom scale three times consecutively and get three different readings with a range of 2 or more pounds. Even worse, I find that I can move the scale around on the floor and get even more variation. This is one of the newer scales with a digital readout to tenths of a pound. While my bathroom scale indicates a precision of 0.1 lbs, the repeatability is much worse which implies the accuracy is likely off by a few pounds. I don't know because my bathroom scale has no reference back to a standard. I notice the scale at the Doctor's office has much better repeatability. I see just 0- 0.1 lbs variation if I step off and back on again and the Doctor's scale has higher precision based only upon the display showing hundredths of a pound. But I have rarely seen a calibration sticker on the scale in the Doctor's office. I have seen stickers on the scales at a research dept and at the hospital. Probably because they publish reports. Accuracy is typically not well defined. Typically, gages are rated accurate to within a certain percentage of full scale. Let's say a bathroom scale is rated to +/-0.5% of full scale. (Not likely that good for a $30 scale) That means the manufacturer is stating that any reading will be (for a 400 lb scale) within +/-0.5% of 400 lbs or +/- 2 lbs. So I could have lost one pound overnight but my bathroom scale might tell me that I gained one pound! Isn't that frustrating. What's my point? Let's say you go to the butcher shop and you buy a 10 lb ham. Then you stop by another shop and just to see, you weigh the ham on their scales and find it only weighs 9 lbs. Wouldn't you be upset? How about you stop at the gas station and buy 10 gallons of gasoline only to learn you actually got just 9 gallons. Well, take comfort in knowing that by law those scales and gas pumps are calibrated back to a standard. If you look at the scale at your butcher shop you should see a calibration sticker. The same goes for your local gas pump. Take a look on the face plate of the pump for the calibration sticker. If we count on these everyday items to telll us the truth then why not expect the same regarding measurements of stereo gear. Knowing that calibration of the equipment to a standard was done, what test equipment was used, and also the procedure so that the measurements can be duplicated or verified by someone else is crucial to know that the data is telling us the truth. Also important is to know how these particular measurement data relate to how the piece of gear performs. For example, I can measure the resistance of two different speaker cables with an Ohmmeter or even a resistance bridge for more precision but still conclude no difference. So why do they sound different? Some speculate that better cables reject RF noise. Sounds reasonable to me. So why hasn't someone published test data showing the RF rejection characteristics of different cables? Maybe they have but I just have not seen it. This would not be easy testing. It would require a Faraday cage and some sophisticated measurement equipment. Still, we cannot and should not take every measurement at face value and make conclusions from that about what we are or are not hearing. I had my own saying in Engineering: "No-one believes the test data except for the person who took it. Everyone believes the calculations except for the person who made them. |
So in my vanity, I will take several readings on my bathroom scale but accept only the lowest reading. I don’t do a statistical calculation of the group of readings. That’s the very definition of biased testing, I think. And what’s it matter? When I go to the Doctor’s office they will not accept my weight based on my scale’s readout. They take their own measurement on their scale. No one believes the test data except for the one who took it… |
Are you still going on about this? You don’t even expect measurements from 99.9% of audio companies, but you nit pick because a test site that produces likely accurate results within the framework of the measurements they are taking, produces results you don’t like? My background is physics, so not an EE, but I understand most of the terms pretty well as we use similar measurements. I personally don’t care if the amplifier I bought was 200 wpc into ohms or 195. I will never hear the difference and it is an acceptable margin of error or manufacturing tolerance. I would care about 170 because I paid for 200 and that is not an acceptable tolerance. In my industry, we specify batteries are either +/- tolerance or +/-0 (no lower than) depending on the product / contract. Now if I am not mistaken, harmonic measurements, which are more important than power as long as power is close, is a relative measurement. As well, as we discussed previously, it appears the test equipment in question both ships calibrated, as well as has a source and receiver. That provides a level of inherent feedback on current calibration. Last, due to the relative nature of the critical measurements, the best measuring tested device, if available, could be used a 2nd reference to calibration to set a minimum benchmark. For example, if the best device you tested had a THD of 0.0010 %, and you test it again, 0.0010, you can be confident in the current operation of your system to testing devices with equal or higher distortion. We have a wide range of "reference standards" in our labs and production for validating current calibration, not to mention you are calibrating a whole fixture or system, not one item provided by a 3rd party vendor.
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In the late 1970's I worked at a high-end audio shop in DC and they purchased what was then a "sophisticated" A/B switching unit, which allowed the user to switch back and forth between a pair of amplifiers (among other things). I remember setting up a customer for an extended A/B comparison between a McIntosh 2205 and a Luxman LRS (Laboratory Reference System) power amp. After a LONG audition the customer ordered the LRS amp, saying he thought that sounded "smoother" than the McIntosh. I later found out that our tech had ordered a new main board for the switching unit, as it illuminated the lights for unit A and unit B when you pressed the button to make the switch, but the electronics inside the unit were not actually switching amplifiers...so my customer was actually only listening to the McIntosh amp. When I found that out, I called him and let him know the situation, but he enjoyed the Luxman so much, he decided to keep it! |
No, it's not placebo. A placebo effect is short lived, leaving a dead patient. Placebo effect is the lousiest of analogies to use. If someone still enjoys what they're hearing over the long run, it's because it sounds good to them and is the antithesis of the"placebo effect". In fact, it reinforces the view that long term listening is the deciding factor. All the best, |
@nonoise , Can you point to any scientific papers that validate your hypothesis? I have a strange past time. I strive to make the perfect cola syrup (preferably diet, but that is whole different ball of wax). We all have our vices. One of the many amateurs posted a blind taste test he did, absolutely convinced Coke was his personal Gold Standard. It would be the obvious best to him out of about 12 if my memory serves. Decades of drinking Coke, and he didn't pick it out of a lineup as best. His preference, when everything but taste was taken out of the equation was Pepsi. Even though he had been conditioned for Coke. I am sure there is a similar wine story, but I choose not to learn too much about wine lest it remove the pleasure of a bottle of good plonk. In my mind, my Pepsi story negates your audio listening hypothesis. |
