It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.” And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything? For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think.
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is.
I’ve only watched snippets of ASR because he’s hard to watch. I watched the video where he went after GR Research which he looked like a fool, the other times, he wanted to promote a cheap product and wanted to degrade a more expensive product.
First, I test plenty of expensive products. At least I think they are. Take these Genelec 8361A speakers for $5,000 each:
My own amplifiers are $25,000 *each*. So I have no bias toward expensive or cheap gear. I measure them all the same. The measurements have no bias. If an amp has more noise and distortion than another and costs 5X more, then it looks bad. That is not because I did that to it. It is because the designer didn't bother to make the amplifier as performant as he could. Yet the marketing material screams fidelity in exchange for a large check to be written.
Give me high performance and great engineering and I don't care how much it costs. I will recommend it. Sure, the membership may want better value but you don't have to join that opinion.
And it is not just me. A number of studies have shown that there is no correlation between price and performance. I could build a case out of gold and charge an extra $10K for the equipment. You think that makes it sound better all of a sudden?
As to GR research, you have that backward. You are believe the word of someone trying to sell you something (Danny) vs an independent reviewer (me). You have to have very little sensibility to put your trust in a company rep who offers zero proof of efficacy of what he sells. Wires wrapped around a rope to make it look thick? Yep, that is what he has done:
Amir provides data (measurements) that anyone can use. He implemented scoring and his "can recommend" or "can't recommend" verdict. When I am looking for a piece of equipment, I'll review data available online (including ASR), look at what is important to me and note what is good, bad and don't care. Real life makes corrections: sales are tempting ;-) when someone on forums is selling their few months old piece for 40-50% of the new, it is hard to pass.
Several amps were measured fair (average and slightly below). - oh well, they sound well to me and I would put them ahead of several other "well measured" lifeless amps.
as others posted, your ears in your space with your setup during extended listening sessions and various material is a way better denominator than "best of the year" or "best measured".
It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference. I did some prikitive blind-testing at home and can't hear differences."
Wow, really? I have read a number of times on ASR that "Dacs are settled". "If they measure well they all sound the same."
Now I read a similar comment from you. For me they sound very different. When was searching for a DAC I listened to about 5 different ones at a dealer through the same equipment, There were big differences in noise levels and sound quality, and no, the most expensive was not necessarily the best.
At a friend's house I listened to a few more, again on the same recordings - mainly opera. Those based on ESS chips sound grating to me and I found it hard to listen to them for any length of time. One Chinese brand in particular does very poorly with female voices. I ended up buying a mid range one, but the one that sounded second best to me. (I could not the one that sounded best.)
The only thing Amir changed my mind on is to never visit the site again. Not because I do not believe in measurements the site is pure hate. If you don’t like what we say its attack and even take posts down. That is not vey open. I do not want to visit nor give it any clicks towards money. Period
Amir/ASR never changed my mind about anything because my mind is still open to unexpected audio experiences & observations (or as open as I can make it). That's the opposite of the mindset required by devotees of that website.
Audio is a big tent, a lifelong journey. Equipment/gear is obviously a big part of it; but maybe the biggest part of it are all my experiences hearing music performed in the real world (those experiences are rocket fuel for audio, at least in my case). So for me, open-ended audio discussions are catnip. I enjoy and participate in them.
But discussions on ASR are anything but open-ended. The regulars drank the Kool Aid long ago and punish anyone who hasn't or won't.
Kinda like spirituality. While I'm entirely without religion, I can enjoy and participate in respectful discussions of spirituality. But that's a very different experience than being in a cult where one leader's beliefs are spoon fed to me. I'll do the former sometimes, but the latter--never.
Good link. I'd like to think everyone chiming in here has seen that particular video in full.
I'm glad Amir put it out because without it, it can be difficult for some of us to make full sense of his reviews.
The level of complexity of such reviews was what put me off ASR initially. I'm always willing to learn new things but my rate of learning is no longer what it was once was.
As we know, learning is a little different from remembering.
Also, "sounds communicate to the brain far more quickly than sights.
Light travels faster than sound, but its pathway to the conscious brain is much slower.
“While vision maxes out at 15 to 25 events per second, hearing is based on events that occur thousands of times per second.”
Fascinating stuff.
I learned a long time ago that I could understand a lot more about someone by carefully listening to their voice than by looking at them.
There is a certain directness about sound and especially the human voice that can speak volumes.
As Amir and the likes of Floyd Toole readily accept, the science of psycho acoustics, just like the study of the human mind, whilst being fairly accomplished, is still far from being a closed book.
No. I did peruse the site when I was looking for a DAC and he has SO many listed it became a good starting point from which to search/explore.
I'm in the camp with some others that he likely spreads at least as much ignorance as knowledge. Often likely more. I don't buy his testing approach. It's not well designed and I don't believe his equipment and its usage is appropriate to the task.
But for some things he does provide useful baselines for consideration.
A certain parameter measures better, therefore it must sound better. - Well, that is just another form of confirmation bias! Might be helpful for some, but for me that's totally irrelevant. I go by what my experience tells me, so there are different ways to establish why something means a lot or not that much for you.
Stepping beyond that, I find it useful that he does lots of measurements. Very informative and dare say educational. I have watched only very few of his videos, and I can say that his measurements are good and it's very refreshing to see someone doing it. I saw logical faults in the measurement analysis that attributed incorrect outcomes to the measurements.
I feel like ASR has clarified some things for me. I'm not sure that anybody has changed my opinion about anything in audio. At best I get new perspectives, and sometimes conceptual corrections about various technical subjects. I definitely have some subjective preference differences with Amir about some products. Amir has also prompted me to buy some inexpensive products that I've been very pleased with overall.
I like your post..because of these points in your post :
It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference.
--Dac is a mature technology now and it made no sense to pay too much for a dac relatively to the other components...It is my opinion and experience...
I also differ from ASR’s view on room acoustics and loudspeakers. There are big differences in data and perceptions, where ASR insists that research suggests, that people don’t care.
-- Subjectivist or objectivist focussing on gear miss the more powerful impact of acoustuic and psycho-acoustic basic in a room...
But you are wrong here:
The ears are very bad sensors compared to the eyes
Hearing give us insight inside resonant sound sources and information about their composition, even when not visible...( is it metal,copper or iron, or wood, it is empty orc d3ense, is there a hole, is this fruit ripe or not by tapping on it etc)
We can replace sight with echolocalization exactly as bat and dolphin do... There is even school that taught this for blind people...
Hearing is the FIRST sense which put us in contact with the world through the mother womb, and the LAST sense to disapear... And In coma hearing work not sight ...
And about "information processing" :
«For the first time, physicists have found that humans can discriminate a sound’s frequency (related to a note’s pitch) and timing (whether a note comes before or after another note) more than 10 times better than the limit imposed by the Fourier uncertainty principle.»
Also, " sounds communicate to the brain far more quickly than sights. Light travels faster than sound, but its pathway to the conscious brain is much slower. “While vision maxes out at 15 to 25 events per second, hearing is based on events that occur thousands of times per second.”
«Nowhere are the limitations of the eye relative to the ear more apparent than when comparing frame rate, measured in frames per second (FPS), to the precedence effect. If 10 still images were flashed in one second (10 FPS), people can distinguish between the photos. Once a rate of 12 FPS is exceeded, though, it’s more likely the person will perceive motion rather than images.
A comparable measure in hearing occurs with the precedence effect. If two sounds occur back to back with a sufficiently small amount of time between them, humans hear a single auditory image. For this to occur, though, the time interval may have to be as low as 10 milliseconds. Additionally, it’s still possible to hear ascension or descension in the sound — it just appears as a single tone.»
About illusion:
«Everyone has been fooled by optical illusions. Something similar is possible when listening to audio, but this occurrence is much rarer. In fact, it takes a bit of visual trickery to fool the human ear via the McGurk Effect.
To put it simply, the McGurk Effect occurs when a listener hears a word but sees different visual cues. If the word “bar” is spoken while someone’s lips move as if making an “F” sound, for instance, the listener typically will “hear” the word “far” instead.
This means that, just like the eye, the human ear can be fooled, but it takes a little visual help to pull it off.»
Also the short time visual memory is better than hearing short time memory...No comparison here...but it is the reverse completely for long term hearing memory compared to visual long term memory...there is no comparison either here...
It is way better to loose sight than hearing, guess why?
You can communicate if you are not deaf and replace sight to some extent with echolocalization, but you cannot replace hearing for communication and navigation... As said the mathematician Euler losing sight, it is a good thing for my concentration...Ask Beethoven his opinion ? Ask Ray Charles who gave his money to a deaf childs , not a blind one; and to the journalist who made the documentary very surprized by this, and who ask WHY ? Ray answered laughing, being blind is no problem at all...
Last thing :
Audio people think that to learn how to listen we must change the components and listening to the results... This is very deceptive and push people to meaningless strings of upgrades... and they will NEVER learn how to listen sounds in this exclusive way... We learn to hear when we LISTEN using acoustic concepts in simple basic experiments...No other way... As Musician learn how to listen by playing ...
He's only changed my mind about some power conditioning products but never about actual stereo products! I think measurements are important up to a certain point. This is one reason I read Stereophile to read the measurement section of their reviews! So many amplifiers (especially tube amps) not even coming close to their specified power claims! They measure distortion at 1% and it appears the manufacturers measure it at 10%. Why don't we have a standard for this with tube amps? The same goes with speaker sensitivity. I have seen so many speakers that were several dB lower than their claimed sensitivity specifications. I truly believe some things in audio can't be measured yet and the final judge is my ears. With this being said measurements are important and keep manufacturers honest about their published claims!
ASR gets facts back in HiFi, which was lost for more than 25 years.
You've really allowed ASR to mislead you if you think it has an exclusive on the facts or truth. But it rather is how Amir promotes himself - as a savior, a warrior against an industry, an unvarnished truth-teller.
It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference. I did some prikitive blind-testing at home and can't hear differences.
I never had the feeling of audible differences between cables and solid-state amplifiers. There are exceptions (TotalDAC and Devialet Class-D sounded strange and ASR measurements afterwards confirm it).
What disturbs me at ASR (mostly the users not Amir only): SINAD as a fetish, not looking at other measurements more. Anything above 90dB is inaudible. Benchmarking on 120dB or more is theoretical. Even the low performance of 60dB of record players is irrelevant for sound differences.
I also differ from ASR's view on room acoustics and loudspeakers. There are big differences in data and perceptions, where ASR insists that research suggests, that people don't care. Also I agree with Magico, that resonances and diffraction need to be minimized. More focus should go there, to me it's very audible.
Loudspeaker measurements on Klippel is an important source. It should be mandatory for high end speakers, because in demo rooms one can't discern well the room from the speaker and they sound different at home. Why don't Magico and Wilson disclose their data?
I prefer ASR over the always positive reviews of Guttenberg, absolute sound, Stereophile.
And finally: ASR gets facts back in HiFi, which was lost for more than 25 years. The ears are very bad sensors compared to the eyes and other senses, it's the brain which extracts the sound using imagination and other senses. That's why it can be easily fooled. Everybody can see differences between TV screens side by side, audio is harder.
The site doesn't seem objective to me at all. Amir seems to have some very strong biases, to the extent that he doesn't even bother to listen to everything he measures.
@ossicle2brain: You sound offended. Deeply touched. I am sorry to cause that to you. I meant no harm.
What I meant to say is your story: you bought two cables from Amazon which you don't even have a name or a brand. Then you determined which is of the two is best by measuring them. Kudos to you for coming to a conclusion, but I must say, what made you think that another generic cable bought in Amazon would perform any better than the stock cables that come with the equipment?
This is a general response to the initial question, which was an excellent one. ASR provides objective information that I can use to narrow the field of options when shopping; that appeals to my decision-making process. It won't to everyone. There are simply too many options out there promoted by those in the industry, and those whose pocketbooks permit ego-driven extravagances, and become defensive about justifying them. And if you're satisfied, good for you. But I'm just as skeptical of the "If it sounds good to you" school of thought as I am of religious devotion to data. The fact is, there are better ears than mine, and far worse. I can learn from both those better ears, usually musicians, as well as Amir.
Here's a parallel circumstance currently in the news. It occurs to me that the owner and passengers of the ill-fated submersible would be alive today if they had demanded objective evidence of the vessel's safety, rather than relying on the owner's sales pitch. Fortunately, no one's life is at risk making audiophile decisions.
Got it. Understand. Perfectly clear now. Carry on. Keep on fighting 💪
Fighting? I’m not fighting but it seems like you want to. I just relayed my experience with a poor cable that I found by measuring. How is that fighting? Do you think I am lying? What is your problem?
You could have responded something like this " Yeah it makes sense that a brass connection plug could tarnish causing poor connectivity/conductivity" But instead it seems that you just want to bicker.
Too bad that there is no ignore function on this site....
You are right and it is pretty evident, especially because he can do very well paid job with his experience... Measuring is his hobby..
i dont like objectivist at all... But it is useless to be mean...
As i said, subjectivist and objectivist do the same mistake focussing on gear, as if the most important factor was secondary : ACOUSTIC...
He just confirmed what I already thought. I’ve been away from a Audio for a long time and could not believe what was going on when I got back. He does it as a public service. There’s nothing in it for him. He reviews equipment that people sent him and he takes donations to buy more equipment to review. He certainly is not getting rich doing what he’s doing. I am absolutely sure that the amount of aggravation is not worth the amount of money that people send him.
He just confirmed what I already thought. I’ve been away from a Audio for a long time and could not believe what was going on when I got back. He does it as a public service. There’s nothing in it for him. He reviews equipment that people sent him and he takes donations to buy more equipment to review. He certainly is not getting rich doing what he’s doing. I am absolutely sure that the amount of aggravation is not worth the amount of money that people send him.
"His does all this pro bono" Are you sure? He does not do it pre bono, he asks for donations. Also what does he do with the equipment that certain companies send to him?
What I’ve come to appreciate is that he points out shoddy wiring, poor grounding, fire hazards… things that none of the major publications ever point out… and at least to me, these things matter.
As for his measurements vs sound… unfortunately this is opportunity lost.
Amir has one of the finest measuring systems available and is a complete moron in his ability to use it to its potential. Add to this his methodology and lack of understanding as to how a system functions and the result is obvious: regarding him as anything other than a hacker fulfilling his ego driven necessity to make a complete fool of himself is a HARD pass.
Electronic measurements of gear did not correlate linearly and perfectly well with listenings impressions...
Paradoxically, any designer must use very precise set of recognized standards measurements as general starting point but they use after that their alchemical electrical art... But it is an art, a craft, not a mere learned technological recipe .... They learned to put complex parameters together and figure out by experience how playing with them to make miracles happen..
Nelson Pass or Atmasphere for example are artists too not just engineers..
But there is a more exact correlation between acoustic and psycho-acoustic measurements and subjective experience... Exemple : Smyth realizer or virtual room acoustic with Dr. Choueri are based on acoustic and psycho-acoustic measurements ...
Then subjectivist and objectivist see half of the truth and are blind to the other half... They forget that the gear components must be acoustically embedded in a room to be LISTENED TO OPTIMALLY...
"And the same measurements are just as good as Mola Mola Tambaqui on other, way cheaper, DACs, like various Topping. Have you seen the point ranking system he has? So why in the world would you be happy spending $16,000+ in a DAC, when you can get the same measurements and points, and even more points, with a DAC costing a few hundred bucks, a small fraction of your Mola Mola"
Yes, the measurements are the same, BUT the Mola Mola 1) sounds a lot better 2) has far better build quality and is not likely to fail in a short period of time like on particular piece of Chinese crap touted by the minion master. (Does he get a cut?)
"So you needed measurements to tell you which pair of interconnects you keep? Blue pill vs. red pill. You couldn’t hear a difference by…. listening to them? Yeah, I know, shocking!"
Yeah this is an interesting one. They may indeed sound the same but it's obvious that the conductivity of the plugs is better on the one. The other reaches the same low impedance if I push and rub the meter leads onto the plug. So it may be that most of the time the connection is strong enough to overcome this. But much depends on the actual plug mechanical connection. How tight it is. The other interconnect plugs are made of actual gold. I think the bad measuring ones are probably brass. They are less likely to hold a good connection.
So here is a case where putting a meter on it and measuring is very instructive. I'm not going to take a chance on the brass connectors that measure badly even though they may sound fine. It's possible that they may not stay that way.
And I realize that I bought some crappy cables. They looked sort of gold in the pics. Fools gold.
Amir has changed my mind about some things, I like that he's taking on the high end of the hobby and offering a system of checks and balances. Remember that his site has no advertising, so take that as you may. But he's influenced me on the subject of DACs. I used to yearn for some expensive R2R DAC, Denafrips or Holo, or even DCS or MSB, but I've since abandoned that kind of coveting. DACs are a solved problem now and the goal is transparency devoid of color. My DAC is extremely cheap by audiophile standards yet I find that it sounds fantastic, and its purchase was definitely influenced by ASR measurements.
I also once yearned for boat anchor amps to power my inefficient speakers. That is no more, as I have discovered high end Class D. My ears and my back and my wallet are all thankful for that. But I'm no sheep in the herd as I'm a vinylphile and I have to defend its honor on the ASR forum. And I love my old Maggies despite the small sweet spot and the need for a sub. With the addition of Magna Riser stands they've overtaken my Vandersteens as top dogs in my system, despite the price difference. I feel no need to upgrade, not even to the LRS+, never mind expensive Revels, the ASR favorites.
I've been very subjective in the past, used to depend on salesman for taste, but that's changed. My system is affordable but I think it sounds incredible, can't stop listening and I get lost in the music, which is what it's all about. To bring this level of sound quality to the masses is something admirable in my book.
OTOH I'm re arranging my system and one pair of interconnects tests 0.1 ohm and the other jumps around due to the metal the plugs are made of. The good one is shiny gold and the other a more brassy gold. Is it even gold? Guess which ones I'll be using and which tossing.
So you needed measurements to tell you which pair of interconnects you keep? Blue pill vs. red pill. You couldn’t hear a difference by…. listening to them? Yeah, I know, shocking!
I watch his videos because I enjoy watching stuff about gear.
I don't like the ASR forum.
Funny story though.
I just purchased a Mola Mola DAC.
I saw that he did a review of it where he thought it measured well.
I found myself feeling even better about my purchase.
Yeah I know.... dumb.
More a lesson how "stuff" gets in our heads without us realizing it.
And the same measurements are just as good as Mola Mola Tambaqui on other, way cheaper, DACs, like various Topping. Have you seen the point ranking system he has? So why in the world would you be happy spending $16,000+ in a DAC, when you can get the same measurements and points, and even more points, with a DAC costing a few hundred bucks, a small fraction of your Mola Mola
Back in the 70s in Boston, before Car Talk took its time slot on WBUR, we had a show called Shop Talk, with an objectivist BU physics professor and a subjectivist psychoanalyst bouncing ideas and taking calls. The science guy was very like Amir.
The Yankee Skinflint ethos ruled, and the keepers of the flame ran the Boston Audio Society. It was an interesting time. Blind ABX testing was the holy grail of confirmation bias busting. Parts is parts! But many of these guys manufactured gear…Apt/Holman, Dunlap Clarke, DBX, Burwen Acoustics, Apogee Acoustics, Cizek, to name a few. IMO, their approach didn’t produce great gear.
OTOH I'm re arranging my system and one pair of interconnects tests 0.1 ohm and the other jumps around due to the metal the plugs are made of. The good one is shiny gold and the other a more brassy gold. Is it even gold? Guess which ones I'll be using and which tossing.
The whole point about learning HOW TO LISTEN with acoustic is just that : we learn in the process that we can trust our ears for the realization of our audio dreams...
In acoustic biases induced by the gear and specific ears/brain is not something to be eliminated as in the market testing of products or as in the design with engineering standards, but something that can motivate us to create the speakers/room to our liking FOR OUR EARS which will do the tuning ...We can and must educate our biases not erase them......
Good measuring stuff often sounds bad and vice versa.
For the engineer and for the geek factor it's fun but otherwise?
But we want reassurance. We don't believe our own ears.
Actually in my case that's true because I can't hear much over 10Khz and a bunch of noise can happen above that. So for instance, my Mani 1 sounds great to me but my daughter can hear the hiss. And I tried the Mani 2 which has less hiss and returned it. The female vocals were grainy. That's a no go for me. Yes it's quieter - for young ears - and the bass is a little better but I focus on female vocals.
I think that Amir, in a round about way, reminds us of how powerful our biases are.
Good point.
These days there are entire industries devoted to the science of fooling us by exploiting our psychological frailties.
Call it marketing or call it plain lying, there's little doubt that it now features in all walks of life. Folks like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Rolf Dobelli, Dan Arialy and others have made a good living by shedding light on how our minds can be manipulated.
You only have to look at the recent MoFi controversy. All of a sudden, previously content customers and reviewers became unhappy with the sound quality only after it emerged that some digital masters had been used instead of the advertised analogue ones.
Sites like ASR can go a long way towards stripping away this veneer of slick marketing spin. That very visible exchange between Amir and GR - Research was no doubt mildly entertaining, but I didn't see why Amir should single out Danny Richie.
Not when there's plenty of other miscreants out there propagating equal amounts of 'blinding with science' falsehoods.
Besides, whatever ASR put out can easily be challenged or responded if the manufacturer so wishes.
That free interchange of ideas and opinions is largely what this hobby is all about, isn't it?
Ok, there's also the music, but you know what I mean.
Ultimately it is all about money and business, and it's not too difficult to see why some folks here get very hot and bothered by that fact.
"Because as for my speakers and amplifier and dac only the relation between them matter FOR the end goal of their integration to my room by acoustic..."
I watch ASR for entertainment value but he did catch PS Audio with their pants down on the power regenerator subject. Paul’s weak response substantiated it…just sayin.
No as far as Amir goes, but I can say the same thing about Jeff Day (opposite end of the spectrum) who first appeared on the scene as an inexperienced poser (IMO).
I don't watch his videos, but frequently refer to his written reviews. I appreciate the technical content and analysis. I regard the measurements, especially for electronic equipment, as a good starting point for evaluating equipment. In my opinion well designed electronics should at a minimum have flat frequency response and low noise and distortion. Of course I also follow up with listening, in my own system where possible. Has he changed my mind? I don't really think so, I just use his site as another tool to further my knowledge and enjoyment of this hobby.
My simple answer is no. Expanding, I started the hobby in the late ‘70 when box stores preached the work of Hirsch and true boutique audiophile vendors were in their infancy. These new proprietors taught me to listen and not rely on measurements. A shout out to Audio Breakthroughs, American Audiophile (now gone) and Ears Nova. I have listened since.
As a regulatory affairs professional and quality engineer working closely with medical device electromechanical design engineers, and aligned with others here who have said the same, measurements are critical in the design phase and quality control phase. Then optimization must prevail by listening and a purchase decision must be by listening.
To an inside thread - with the utility supply in my area, my system, and to my ears clean power by conditioning made a significant improvement in all areas of reproduction.
I have used and owned a few of the products Amir has talked about. He does his measurements and says it’s not doing much or anything. Well, I can hear the changes quickly. Be it a power conditioner, PS Audio Regenerator (my favorite), or a quality power strip. As for power cords, they impact the power supplies and how they react to the sonics of the gear and are very easy to hear again. Its not phycological, because you buy it and bring home then hear a difference that is not there, it is there you hear it, unless you like to delude yourself and I don’t. I own many power cords that I have in storage, the other night while playing my system and ML 532H amp, I thought about the PS Audio Xtreme plus power cords I have and have not used in a while, well I pulled it out, and plug it in and let the amp warm backup, this, of course, cost me nothing, so I cared little if I heard a change I like or not. A few hours later and hit play on my SACD player and immediately I heard the difference from my other power cord a Seltech, it had more body and more presence, and the image was solid but also more relaxed sounding, while not as detailed, it more than made up for it by sounding more tone and color.
So it is not that the Seltech Ruby was bad, it is just that each made the amp and what came out of my speakers give a different presentation. All the vocals were there the vocals but they all came across differently due to how the power cord was interacting with the power supply within the ML 532H and it driving the speaker. You could blindfold me, spin me in circles and sit me down and I could tell you 10 out of 10 if the Ruby was plugged in or the PS Audio Plus. Tests and specs are just that, how things interact when being used together is always an unknown till you have in your own system. Is there a lot of half-truths and marketing BS in audio sure there is, but experience hobbyists and listeners know better. A friend had old MC30 amps by McIntosh refurbished, they were 1959 tube amps and he had a 20K well-reviewed amp, he pulled that and inserted the MC30 1959 amp! Amir would test and spec out nowhere as good as the current amp, he listened and listened and listened, and he said he never heard his system sound as real, musical as it sounded with the MC30, not his past amps all 20K and up. He was shocked at how this old 1959 amp could make more music than the state-of-the-art current amp or any other amp he had in the system over the years. Specs and graphs are one thing, what we all know we can hear is another, like cooking you pick your flavors and spices to what taste good to you, audio system as well. Amir way just by the DAC with the best spec and your done, preamp, amp, and so on. Well, my friend would now tell you differently and that is to his own hands-on experience from an outcome he had not expected much like me swapping ONE power cord on my amp.
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