Yes, of course, perception and measurement can, and in many situation, actually WILL,
disagree. WHY?
In my experience it is something to take as a ’given’, something to accept - not easy actually.
Something even more hard to learn is, the level of ’SQ limitation’ of one’s front-end feeding one’s speakers - THIS includes your cable/system synergies, big time!
Something I had to learn quite recently after over 25 years of looking - in the wrong places too.
In my case, I had taken for granted that my Transparent Ultra, pre to amp, was ’beyond reproach’.
Turns out that was not quite so!
A more like accidental change, of this item (Transparent), for a Madrigal HPC XLR (25 years old!) affected my digital (and analogue) performance most profoundly!
Former harsh like digital sounds, trying to mellow down (make mor 'musical') by e.g. CDP interconnects, using another DAC, with very pricy Transparent Reference digital interconnect, and on - all was of rather marginal outcome.
The ’right’ pre to amp interconnect, all of the sudden, ’changed’ digital harshness into... previously unheard DETAIL, AIR, TONALITY, CLARITY etc.!
So, the looking for more ’warmth’ in digital reproduction, in this case turned out to be just a band-aid for low cable/system synergy.
This is just an example for what can happen if one ’looks’ in the wrong place - based on some long held assumptions.
I hope this makes some sense, as its not a very easy thing to get accross.
Michélle 🇿🇦
