Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy

Interesting. From the SOULNOTE site, a little more on their philosophy.  Some of them apparently came from the original Marantz crew, quote -

"Soulnote believes dynamic performance keeping accuracy of the original waveform on the time axis as the most important for music playback, which is, however, still unmeasurable by any of the conventional methods. At Soulnote, only listening dominates the determination and improvement of circuit, selection of parts and mechanical construction. This approach is a kind of antithesis against the supremacy of static performance."

 

@milpai "decooney, I was not even aware of Soulnote. Seems to be focused in Europe"

No credit due to me, I found the article link posted earlier by @nonoise in this thread. A fun and related read around the topic of measurement and sound, for anyone who may have missed it. Link is underlined below.

@nonoise "By coincidence, I came upon this while reading up on new reviews by the designer of Soulnote products.

All the best,
Nonoise"

The most respected audio designers listen more with their ears than a graph.  

@amir_asr "I have my interested in what I like to do and test."

A thorouhgly developed listening test with a qualified group of listeners could be a real breakthrough in the advancement of helping people more.

@amir_asr ..."The kits he sells are hugely overpriced. None of his DIY solutions are competitive. By the time you waste all that money on his upgraded parts, you could get far better performing speakers across the board.", unquote.

True Story: As a curiosity test - I helped a close friend who paid for Danny’s service to analyze one of his speakers, test it, to design and layout all new crossovers, parts, connectors. In the process the speakers were converted from a 2.5 way to a 3-way crossover layout on a 20 year old speaker. All drivers were re-coned in the process. I use to build speakers for a living and designed a few myself, fwiw. The Grand Mozart speaker I’m referring to is featured on one of Danny’s videos.

About 1/5 the cost of a new comparable pair. Sounds notably better than stock. Buddy is super happy with the service, design, and parts. Turned out really nice, more musical too. Buddy is quite proud of himself taking the chance to test out Danny first hand.

Nothing better than the measured value of a happy customer.

@russ69 .. "I guess the thing that bugs me is some think I need to provide documentation of my opinions. I most certainly do not need to prove anything to others. The sound that comes out of my system is the only proof I need."

If you enjoy a particular type of sound - then that’s what you hear and like. 👍

Most of the musical sounding components I prefer, don’t measure perfectly.

When someone cannot effectively convey how something sounds in a descriptive and meaningful way without citing graph results at you first, I stop right there.  

@fleschler "So what ASR says about your stereo shouldn’t bother you.".

However, It can be an annoyance though if you happen to follow a recommendation based on a unit-test that produced amazing measurements. To then blindly buy the component based on those amazing test results. Install it, listen to it for a while, spending a lot of time - - and then to realize its nothing special at all, not musically engaging, dull, boring, flat, bleh. Then engage the return policy, pay for shipping back to retailer. More loss of time, cost. Been there and done that first hand. Tried it for the sake of learning. Wont make that mistake again.

Lesson learned - yes. Don’t follow measurement reports alone. Test it in your own system, your gear, your ears, your room. You might even prefer something that does not measure nearly as well and sounds very musical to your ears. 👍