@texbychoice 

Amir is like the Jehovah Witness that appears at your door uninvited.  Polite no thank you does not deter the conversion sermon.  Eventually, the door has to be closed only resulting in a louder voice continuing the sermon.  

Translation:   We'd like to be able to slag Amir and his site publicly, without any push-back or correction to any nonsense we may be spreading.

Nah.

If you are going to slag someone publicly, don't complain if they show up to set the record straight. 

@amir_asr
Still you do not address the fact that you you continue to recommend products after they have been shown to have poor build quality. Ashamed or embarrassed perhaps?
To answer your question, Why do you not do your own research and look at Erin's site?l.
To answer a slanderous comment: I have no bias against Chinese products, in fact the exact opposite is the truth. Consonance is a great brand for example. I am biased against poor sounding and built equipment.
Anyway, I am done with this back and forth - you have shown your true colours yet again.

+1 @prof

If you are going to slag someone publicly, don’t complain if they show up to set the record straight.

Note too that he's taking this abuse. He's not calling the mommy-moderator to get their comments deleted, as has happened to some of us. Agree or disagree with the guy, he wears big-boy pants. 

re you certain of this?

Could it not be that the job of the brain is to ensure our survival and a strict adherence to the laws of physical reality is not necessarily a key requisite?

No not at all... Psycho-acoustic is based not only on physics but on neurophysiology of perception and social behaviour ... It is ridiculous to say that the brain adhere PASSIVELY to physical reality in sound recognition , because the brain PICK and FILTER physical reality through MEANINGS and project them in a symbolic world of his own, for example music perception and speech......You called it illusion in a derogatory manner, but all illusions are not equal ... What do you think a rainbow is ? a pure physical phenomenon ? a mere illusion ? ... Not at all... It takes a human brain to perceive these colors and not these other one and they are REAL ILLUSION for us and useful illusion ....Your measures compared to rainbows may become illusionary reality and biases of a sterile nature, because hearing is more complex than what you describe and less prone to deception than what you think ... But hearing must be trained by experience not by debunking methods.. We must learn how to listen...In acoustic and in music...

And sound perception is not merely only AN OBJECTIVE phenomenon but a phenomenon based on subjective relation to our social speech recognition power and through it to the subjectivity multidimensional aspects and to the way the brain treat time perception OUT OF THE PHYSICAL TIME DIMENSION...Musical time for example is not reducible to physical thermodynamical and metronomical time ... Ask Furtwangler ...

And Who is this person who speak to me, i can sense it very deeply and it is a subjective perception through hearing not at all based on mere physical reality.........Yes we may be deceived times to times , but in history we were not generally deceived , we survived thanks to this power of social recognition ...

« It is very simple : we can see with our ears but we cannot hear with our eyes» --Groucho Marx becoming blind 🤓

YES! Amir did change my mind. I used to think his measurements were meaningful and followed them closely. But over time I came to realize that his measurements were irrelevant to what mattered to me, specifically the sound quality of audio components. The ASR site seems to confirm this by rarely even mentioning sound quality of a measured component and doesn't even try to find any correlation between Amir's measurements and sound quality.

Eyes can be overrated @mahgister. If a personal life changing decision were made deciding whether eyes over ears are kept, these eyes would see the chopping block, pronto! Imagine a life without the music. No thanks ....

It is very simple : we can see with our ears but we cannot hear with our eyes» --Groucho Marx becoming blind 🤓

Alrighty then, blame the game on selective eye hearing ... apparently we need more training listening to each other.

@1extreme 

The ASR site seems to confirm this by rarely even mentioning sound quality of a measured component and doesn't even try to find any correlation between Amir's measurements and sound quality.

I find it utterly bizarre that you have actually spent much time on ASR and came away with that clearly false impression.

Amir is constantly pointing out issues with measurements and gives subjective impressions, often between the component with the measured flaws, vs trying to correct them with EQ etc.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/wilson-audio-tunetot-review-high-end-bookshelf-speaker.29219/

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/focal-chora-816-speaker-review.42988/

Review after review correlates measurements with audible consequences!

The only way I can imagine you drew your impression was looking for reviews of gear where measurable quirks were below the threshold of audibility, hence Amir does not comment on them.  In other words "Amir never comments on the different sound between my favorite cable, or DAC, or amp..."

"It doesn't matter if you are or are not invested in the outcome: you can still arrive at totally wrong conclusions.  All I have to do is make one product louder than the other and get you to say it sounds better even if you were primed to think it wouldn't.  And indeed, it can sound massively better with more detail, blacker backgrounds, etc". 

Yeah but I varied the volume while comparing.   I arrived at the right conclusion.  I heard it.  DIdn't need much other than common sense.  

I listened to them.  They were different.  

 Knowing the measurements before listening causes objectivists to be anything but objective. They are already biased.  

Still you do not address the fact that you you continue to recommend products after they have been shown to have poor build quality. Ashamed or embarrassed perhaps?
To answer your question, Why do you not do your own research and look at Erin's site?l.

Addressing last part first, I told you that Erin uses the same Klippel NFS system that I have.  Indeed, he purchased his after I did.  You vehemently disagreed so I asked you to tell me what gear he is using.  Clearly you got the answer: he uses the same machine and even same protocol and reporting.  So in the future, please don't shoot from the hip without getting your facts straight first.

On the first comment, there is not one audio reviewer who provides what you are demanding.  Stereophile, Absolute Sound, etc. all publish recommended yearly list of gear.  Not once do they follow up with any reliability comments or corrections.

On my side, to anyone with common sense, it is clear that I am testing the performance of a product, not its short or long term reliability.  If I see a problem during testing, I will absolutely stop, note it and review is aborted.  See this example: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/behringer-b2031a-measurement-broken-sample.31717/

You also say I "keep" recommending.  I don't do any such thing.  I recommend a product based testing I performed at the time.  Not at the current moment.  

All of this said, if people bring it to my attention that something is seriously wrong, I will go back and address.  At times, I have actually have gone and bought the product at my expense (if I still don't have it) and verify the issue.  This is then noted and if I have leverage with a manufacturer, I put pressure on them to fix.  Here again is an example: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/smsl-m500-dac-and-hp-amp-review.9606/post-822300

"I finally got a chance to confirm the problem with the right channel being driven by itself causing much higher distortion. Review is updated with it:

Recommendation of the product has been deleted in the review and members are cautioned about this problem.
I have also formally asked SMSL to respond to this issue."

When the response didn't come in a timely and proper manner, I pushed harder resulting in company setting up local firmware updates in both US and Europe.

Ultimately it is just one of me and hundreds of products being reviewed each.  My job is to evaluate them from performance point of view using specialized equipment knowledge.  You all bear the responsibility to figure out if the product is reliable or functional.  Fortunately, ASR Forum is a wonderful resource for this.  Review threads routinely never die with owners posting questions, comments, etc.  Manufacturers routinely read and follow these threads as well.  So while not ideal, what you are demanding is happening.

If you want more, then you need to become part of the solution than the problem.  Don't keep throwing rocks and false talking points as what we are doing on ASR.  Help support the activity so that over time, there can be more resources than just me to follow up on products and extend the reach of what we are doing.

I just measured my interconnects.
 

To my surprise, Amir was wright. Nordost cables measure like 💩. The 1m pair is 99.9998 cm long. And the 2m pair is longer than the 1m pair. 

" Knowing the measurements before listening causes objectivists to be anything but objective. They are already biased.  "

Say that to your doctor next time he makes measurements of your health and then diagnoses what is wrong with you.  Tell him to just trust his ears and hands.  No need for X-ray, MRI, blood pressure, etc.  You know, the measurement stuff that biases him. 

For that matter, because you are a human being just like your doctor, surely you can diagnose what is wrong with you yourself.  You don't need no measurements or someone else to tell you what is wrong with *you*.

Eyery time this word appears can’t help but bust out laughing hysterically.

biased ... is a cancerous Witch word.

@audphile1 

I just measured my interconnects.
 

To my surprise, Amir was wright. Nordost cables measure like 💩. The 1m pair is 99.9998 cm long. And the 2m pair is longer than the 1m pair. 

Last I checked, your ruler wants nothing to do with your audio cables.  So I suggest not forcing a marriage between them this way.

Also, I checked out a Nordost Tyr Coax cable and showed that it has slightly better performance than my generic cable: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/nordost-tyr-2-review-coax-cable.35507/

Sadly for them and you, it didn't result in better sound:

Nordost Tyr2 Cable Listening Tests
I fed the output of the Topping D70s into Topping A90 Discrete. The latter then drove my Dan Clark Stealth headphone. This is as transparent of a chain as you can get. I then swapped between RG58 coax cable and Nordost TYR2. Switching time is long for super accurate assessment but I detected no difference whatsoever. My reference tracks sound as beautiful with either cable.

I suggest you sell it and get your money back.  Not on the basis of my measurements mind you, but said ruler.....

If one has no real life frame of reference as to the sound of 'live' musical instruments in a non-amplified setting, then just relying on measurements might not be a bad idea. 

OK Amir, I will help the activity over at ASR.  Your impressive efforts here have won me over.

I'm going over there right now and argue that measurements mean next to nothing.

That should help.... 

:)

"The ASR site seems to confirm this by rarely even mentioning sound quality of a measured component and doesn't even try to find any correlation between Amir's measurements and sound quality."

Is that right?  Here is my latest speaker review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/focal-solo6-st6-monitor-review.45784/

"On first playback, I was impressed by the dynamics and level of bass, in addition to clean sound. I could have lived with the speaker as is but thought I should play with EQ to see if I can improve on it:

Pulling down the 60 Hz hump resulted in "tighter" bass but then it was a bit light in that department and the highs stood out more. I dialed in the dip for the highs and that helped but still too much of a trade off. So I added the third filter in upper bass to fill that region. With all three there, I liked the sound better. Clarity was improved and vocals came more to the forefront. But I could see someone liking the stock sound as well given the small amount of adjustment here.

I could detect no distortion even after the clipping light came on. On that note, the above EQ postponed the onset of the light by a bit, getting me more volume. I could only detect some muddiness starting to set in as the clipping light was more on than off. Playing music with extreme sub-bass resulted in playback of such with mild amount of distortion. Many speakers either don't play these notes or severely distort them.

With the EQ in there, I could sit there and enjoy the speaker for hours."

This is not telling you how it sounded?  And the significant correlation between measurements and listening test results?

Here is a recent headphone review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/dan-clark-audio-ether-flow-1-1-headphone-review.45821/

Dan Clark Audio Ether Flow 1.1 Listening Tests & EQ
The immediate impression was that of the somewhat exaggerated upper bass/warmth. You could listen to them as is because it is not annoying in any regard. But EQ is mandatory to bring out what this headphone can do. The complex shape of the deviations made it a bit difficult but I managed to get there up to a few kHz:

Strategy was a dip for the resonant peak and then two PEQs to boost the whole region. Upper bass was pulled down and low bass pulled up to taste. Depending on good your high frequency hearing is, you may want to play with pulling those resonant peaks down as well.

Me? I was satisfied and was blown away by the incredible fidelity I was hearing with those 5 filters. The track you see on the snapshot of Roon was to die for with amazing resolution and detail. You cold almost feel the strings courtesy of very nice spatial qualities.

The high sensitivity allowed my RME ADI-2 Pro to drive them up to as high a level as I wanted with thundering bass that resonated the cups and my ear! I wish I didn't have to take pictures of the headphone for the review so I could keep listening to them!

Let say that I did not expect to be able to correct the response as well as I did. It was tempting to just write off the headphone and not bother. But owner had told me to try so I am glad I did."

Translation: you haven't spent a quality minute on ASR to be making the claims you just did.  Poster after poster uses talking points fed to them about what ASR is.  Reality and facts seem to not be important.

Hahaha. Love it. Thanks for the recommendation. 
Listing my Tyr 2 interconnects, along with my Bricasti M3 DAC and Pass Labs XP22 preamp. Going to replace these two pieces with a Topping D70. 
Bad news is, I will have shitty sound. Good news is, I will save a bunch of money on cables and components by switching to Topping. 

" Knowing the measurements before listening causes objectivists to be anything but objective. They are already biased. "

"Say that to your doctor next time he makes measurements of your health and then diagnoses what is wrong with you. Tell him to just trust his ears and hands. No need for X-ray, MRI, blood pressure, etc. You know, the measurement stuff that biases him. "

So you deny that knowing the measurements before listening may cause bias?

How could it be a blind test then? It’s worse than just physically seeing them and seeing what make they are or their price.

@daveyf 

If one has no real life frame of reference as to the sound of 'live' musical instruments in a non-amplified setting, then just relying on measurements might not be a bad idea. 

Hi Dave.  Long time no see.  On your comment, measurements are a great idea no matter what.  Ask any acousticians how to optimize the bass response in a room: they say to measure.  It doesn't matter how much you know some music.  Knowing that you have a peak at 40 and not 50 Hz won't come from that.  It will come from measurements.

And of course, what is on the recoding is not a copy of the live experience.  No microphone can capture what your two ears and a brain do in live music.  And of course that is on top of all the manipulations done in mixing and mastering of music.  It is best to think of a recording as a painting of real life, not a photograph.  In that sense, familiarity with real instruments won't help you.  This is why musicians as a rule are not audiophiles.

@amir_asr ...I am not a paid reporter as to sit there and take copious notes.

...All in all, a few rooms did stand out and one was Dutch and Dutch.

So turns out you don’t need to spend that much money to get superb sound (although $15K is not cheap).

------------------------------

Thanks for the clarification about your approach and what stood out to you at the PNW audio show.  

Also just to add to my response

@amir-asr

…

 

Sadly for them and you, it didn’t result in better sound:

Nordost Tyr2 Cable Listening Tests
I fed the output of the Topping D70s into Topping A90 Discrete. The latter then drove my Dan Clark Stealth headphone.

 

This is as transparent of a chain as you can get.

And you know this how? Let me guess…you measured transparency of these components? Or determined how transparent they are by the results of your measurements?

Also, you heard no difference between Nordost and generic cables. Well there are two possible reasons as to why…

1. The said Topping audio chain is not as transparent as you thought it was

2. Your ability to detect differences between components and cables is impaired by either your measurements results based bias or your ears just don’t work as well as convince yourself they do.

To my earlier point…. Your testing is flawed on many levels and like I said in one of my earlier posts, your listening tests are too far from a real life scenarios. No one in their right state of mind would be running Nordost Tyr 2 cables with Topping and that goes for the crowd on both sides of the fence.

@amir_asr As a former pro studio musician, I guess I do not fit the mold. LOL.

Nonetheless, as I stated before, if one has little experience with the sound of the ’real’ live instrument in an un-amplified setting, then I guess relying on someone else’s expectation of what the instrument sounds like, and therefore the measurements that are assigned to this sound, is the choice that is left. IMO, if something sounds good and measures poorly, then the measurement device is off, the same applies if something sounds bad to our ears and the measurements are great...then the measuring device is measuring the wrong thing.

Personally, I trust my ears above all else, regardless of what the measurements may or may not be showing me. Same goes for when i pick an instrument to play, my ears ( and well, my hands also) are the final decider, regardless of other ’expert’ opinions as to the instrument quality ( or lack thereof).YMMV.

1. The said Topping audio chain is not as transparent as you thought it was

2. Your ability to detect differences between components and cables is impaired by either your measurements results based bias or your ears just don’t work as well as convince yourself they do.

Ah...the old "the problem is your gear or your ears" refrain from the Golden Ears.

Really...it's the only response they have, which is why you see it over and over and over and over and.....

I can hear angels singing on the Kinda Blue record.  What, it's not measurable and you can't hear them?  Well, it couldn't be my imagination...so it must be your gear isn't resolving enough or your hearing isn't acute enough.

The cozy, unfalsifiable world of the audiophile...

When I play an acoustic instrument (guitar, for example), I hear it a certain way:  I am holding it, my ears are above and behind the soundboard, vibrations are being transferred to my body, etc.  I am not hearing it as the audience does.  I do have considerable control of what the audience hears, but it is inconvenient and disorienting trying to hear what I sound like through monitors while performing.  I am more relaxed and musically lucid if I don't obsess over what I must be sounding like and just play for my own sensory satisfaction, trusting that my presentation is set up competently.  I am seeking emotional connection, not audio perfection.

Perhaps this could help explain why musicians generally are not audiophiles.  As a musician, I have an adequate hifi.  I have heard more startling and revealing systems, but after the novelty wears off I end up allowing myself to be engaged in the program (lyrics, melody, harmonic content and rhythm).  If the hifi is too good, I find it harder to subject myself to the emotional content and end up just admiring the equipment.

The discussions on ASR are interesting, but the objective testing has little to do with how I select components or listen to music.  What I look for is a general level of excitement in a review, or a suggestion of possible synergy with equipment I already own.  That may provoke me to find out more about a component.  So, yes, ASR has been valuable to me – if not "changing" my mind certainly expanding my mind with new considerations and possibilities.

@prof measurements are important and that’s without a doubt. But alone, the measurements cant tell you how a component will sound or what sonic changes a cable can make.
Testing Nordost Tyr 2 on a Topping DAC driving a Topping amp using headphones won’t tell you much for few reasons - Topping components aren’t high end by any means and listening in headphones, no matter how good they are, can’t give you the full scope of a tested component and can’t reveal changes to imaging and soundstage simply because headphones don’t do soundstage like a pair of high end speakers can set up with right components in the properly treated room. It’s just not the same. And there’s no way around it.
Amir, having a very decent system from what I understand with mega-buck components and speakers, chose to test the cable in much less than ideal configuration. And this is not just with that cable. There are more instances of such listening tests conducted by Amir. If you tell me this isn’t a definition of flawed testing, I don’t know what is. 

I have an educated bias when it comes to purchasing audio equipment.

I do not want to purchase a cartridge with a rising high end and I haven’t in 54 years.

I do not want to purchase a speaker that requires high powered amplification. Medium power (20 watts to 125 tube watts generally).

I do not want to purchase a tangential tracking tone arm.

I will not purchase a stat speaker again (tried them for 20 years).

These are among my biases, mostly based on measured statistics concerning those audio products.

Measurements are important mostly as a starting point. Listening to equipment in a system in a room will either please me or not (I’ve walked out of most of the audio 1000s of showrooms I’vve heard due to bad sounding systems, often due to acoustic and electrical issues in showrooms).

@audphile1 Absolutely. Using higher end equipment (tweaks included) may or may not work well with lesser equipment, particularly if the lower end result will lack resolution of some audio factor (detail, body, dynamics, PRAT, etc etc). I wouldn’t know that my higher end DAC was good without an equally excellent transport. They work in symmetry. Imagine using Hallographs on Bose speakers. Nope.

@audphile1 

measurements are important and that’s without a doubt. But alone, the measurements cant tell you how a component will sound or what sonic changes a cable can make.

Yes actually it can.  Measurements really can tell you what you won't hear in a cable.  Amir showed how the measured signal of the Nordost lined right up with that of a cheap cable.  That tells you they will be audibly indistinguishable (in any likely set up).

You apparently reject this because you believe whatever you think you hear.  That's the problem.

It's no doubt the same problem that lead you to claim:

Testing Nordost Tyr 2 on a Topping DAC driving a Topping amp using headphones won’t tell you much for few reasons - Topping components aren’t high end by any means

On what basis do you conclude the Topping is not "high end?"  What do you think that means?   Amir actually has measurements showing the excellent performance of the Topping, with noise below our hearing threshold.

It's not "high end" in being expensive...but you shouldn't judge gear based on price, but on performance!  And not on manufacturer's claims either.  Amir actually tests manufacturers claims.

And if you simply reject the objective evidence Amir provides because your "ears" tell you, after listening to the Topping, it's not "high end" then that just brings us back to my point:  it's the Golden Ear refrain. "I Know What I Hear...measurements be damned." 

It's not actually unfalsifiable, because you COULD put what you think you hear to blind test controlling for bias.  But most audiophiles won't do that, so in their world "what they perceive" is unfalsifiable.   Just like my claim to hear angels on the Miles Davis record.  And since I won't be blind tested, and I reject the primacy of measurements, well...nobody can prove me wrong.

@amir_asr also just FYI…I watched your review on YouTube…

Tyr 2 is the top of the Nordost Norse line. Cables in that line cary the names of gods in Old Norse (Germanic Mythology). Not an indicator of how the cables sound by any stretch of imagination. But a quick search prior to recording your review would have helped you learn something new that you can relay to your viewers and prevent you from appearing ignorant while poking fun at the names Nordost chose for their cables. It did make your attempt at sarcasm and humor fall flat on its face right out of the gate, at least to those familiar with the subject. 

@prof I am not here to prove you right or wrong. I’m expressing my point of view and my take on the review.
I also don’t know of any Miles Davis recording under the name of “Kinda Blue”. I’m very familiar with his “Kind of Blue” album as I have 2 vinyl albums of it, one by MoFi on a 45rpm and one by Analog Productions on their fantastic HQR Clear Vinyl. I also have the original CD as well as remastered one plus a DSD file. They all, just like different cables, sound very different. I can tell you what album version is playing blindfolded. Just like I can tell you when you switch from generic XLR cables to Nordost Tyr 2. In my system that I am very familiar with. There are no singing angels on “Kind of Blue”. Just awesome music performed by amazing musicians that were recorded by a very talented team of sound engineers. You can disagree with me all you want. But the Topping DAC and amp don’t cut it here and like I already mentioned, headphones aren’t capable of reproducing the fine layers and depth of soundstage you’d experience with a properly set up 2ch stereo system.
I guess Amir would agree with me here or else he’d be using the Topping amp in his reference system in place of his $23,000 amps. I stand my ground on his testing being flawed and the results of his review being inconsequential without conducting a proper listening test. You can continue sticking to your guns. You have an argument but it’s just not a valid one. That is my take on this matter. If it doesn’t make sense to you, I’m completely fine with that. 

@prof

Amir showed how the measured signal of the Nordost lined right up with that of a cheap cable. That tells you they will be audibly indistinguishable (in any likely set up).

You made a theory or a claim here. That’s all. Saying "they will be" is not good enough.

Why not prove it with a YT listening comparison of the two cables?

Since you/Amir made this claim, then the burden of proof is on you.

you COULD put what you think you hear to blind test controlling for bias. But most audiophiles won’t do that

First of all, you and Amir should follow your own advice.

You made a baseless claim here.

Audiophiles A/B all time when choosing components and cables, or when making tweaks. Because a listening comparison is the ONLY method used for judging sound quality.

There are many A/B tests on the YT and even blind tests.

Alphaaudio 12 speaker cables blind test

Why do you act like that, going around shouting about your measurement results without even listening to what you measured?

I can just see Amir going along to the Met with his Klippel, testing the voices of the sopranos and suggesting which one to give a contract  to for the next season of Madame Butterly or La Boheme. I am amazed the Met has not hired him yet. Oh wait a minute, Yannick Nezet Sequin listens to voices and does not measure them.

Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything?

Yes, I think so. I'm an electronic engineer and have repaired broken audio equipment. I always had to measure before (if it's working sufficiently) and after to confirm I'd fixed the problem. With this skill and knowledge it's hard to live in the purely subjectivist world. For example, I have seen repeatable evidence that well designed audio has an inherent ability to reject mains-carried noise and that (as long as it's well made) a mains cable can not change how a piece of well designed electronics works.

What have I learned from @amir_asr  ? The courage of my convictions! Also, like the OP, to not be surprised that I can hear a difference when I make a change, but to check that the change is real and if so, valuable,

I have seen repeatable evidence that well designed audio has an inherent ability to reject mains-carried noise and that (as long as it’s well made

What if a product promoted by ASR or by you doesn’t sound good, should I base my desicision on my ears or your measurements?

Do you people ever do listening comparisons?

By the way, Amir owns a Mark Levinson No 532 power amplifier that costs $20,000. I find it strange that Amir couldn’t find a much cheaper well designed amp. Perhaps you could guide Amir to some well designed cheaper components.

I mean components with identical measurements sound the same, right?

Measure three times to cut only once.

I did not read anything from ASR. Well, I seldom read reviews of any kind. I do not have to read reviews which are based solely on a measurements - I'll elaborate: If manufacturer did not disclose them already, there is a problem; on the other hand, calibration of the measuring equipment is yet to be standardized worldwide. So, why would I trust something that is probably corrupt? More about corruption later.

Our technology at the present time is obsessed with making money and showing power, - in short, providing bread and games to the masses - it does not have time for finding answers on all our questions. In audio, we are still measuring rudimentary stuff. Since our science established those values that audio world measures, Physics went over the hills and far away... Technology has yet to catch up.

I often compare music to wine. Sometimes, I ask sommelier for advice. That is usually when I am not familiar at all with what is on the table. 
Measurements of any kind, in regards to the food we eat and wine we drink, can not possibly capture all the aspects of the tested subject. On top of that comes pairing - which is a very nuanced subjective, foggy area. I met plenty of people who would always pair any chicken dish with white wine, because that is the rule. In short, learn rules to break them better: just once, stop listening authorities and try nice Bordeaux Merlot with your chicken... 
Using science to explain yet unexplained sometimes leads to a breakthrough. Unfortunately, as we are corrupt as a species, it leads to the misuse of the facts to suit one's needs... Just read how Edison tried to discredit Tesla.
I am waiting on someone who is going to attempt to measure human reactions on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata... with encephalography, of course. And playing Apple phone with pods vs. serious audiophile headphones / amp / source. And headphones vs. speakers. Those measurements might tell us more about anything in audio than everything ASR or any other reviewer could ever possibly do. Whole another area would be to use same encephalography approach on, say, 30 pianists while performing it. Now, imagine using those measurements to compare, and subsequently review a piece of equipment.

So, my conclusion is rather simple: when one is insecure so much that can not trust your own senses, measure things. And measure three times, to cut only once.

Amir is a troll 

By the way, Amir owns a Mark Levinson No 532 power amplifier that costs $20,000. I find it strange that Amir couldn’t find a much cheaper well designed amp. 

Why would he, when he gets dealer pricing and MLs spank any AB type amps he's "listened" to? https://www.madronadigital.com/mark-levinson-53

But How Does it Sound
OK, lots of technical talk but does any of this impact the sound? You may know that there are two schools of thought here. One that says all amplifiers more or less sound the same. The other says the exact opposite with each sounding different like the smell of two different flowers. I won’t take a position in that food fight :). But instead, speak of a much less controversial issue of pure power delivery.

As I noted earlier, with the trend of less of efficient speakers and somewhat limited power available from our wall sockets, the amplifier can run out of steam before your desire for dynamics does. This usually translates into the amplifier sound becoming leaner at higher volumes, together with increased high frequency distortion, and less than impactful bass.

In comparison testing I have done, switching amplifiers using the classic class D configuration always sport incredible low frequency control and power. They beat out linear class AB amplifiers almost regardless of price. What they give up though is high frequency fidelity which I find somewhat harsh. The distortion is highly non-linear and challenging to spot but it is there. The Mark Levinson No 53 is the first switching amplifier I have heard which does not have this compromise. Its bass is amazingly authoritative: tight and powerful. Yet the rest of the response is absolutely neutral and pleasant.

If you have not heard these unique amplifiers, I highly encourage you to come into our showroom for a listen. 

I think you guys are being too hard on Amir, he's a lot more like you than you think.

The reformed new Amir does do some nice measurements occasionally though.

@tjag said

Do you people ever do listening comparisons?

First of all, how dare you classify me as "you people"? You know nothing about me, you merely make yourself look small and mean.

Secondly - I do listening comparisons. I've also worked on thousands of different bits of audio kit using measuring tools - because it was my job! You cannot return a bit of repaired audio kit without first proving you've eliminated the reported problem and ears+brain are insufficient for that task, you have to use signal generators, meters and audio analysis kit. I also used to play some music to check all was OK.

I've encountered a great deal of genuinely faulty kit which still sounds OK-ish, ears+brain are a very low grade mechanism for checking things are not broken...

@maxwellseq ​​​​​​

First of all, how dare you classify me as "you people"? 

????

Never mind. 

You cannot return a bit of repaired audio kit without first proving you've eliminated the reported problem and ears+brain are insufficient

It's not about repearing faulty components and listening to them afterwards. That mean's nothing here. 

1- Have you compared quality components and speaker/interconnect/power cables from known brandd in AB tests and what were your findings? 

2- What if a product promoted by Amir or by you doesn’t sound good, should I base my desicision on my ears or your measurements?

3- Do you believe that components/cables with identical measurements sound the same? 

 

maxwellseq

25 posts

05-21-2022 at 04:25am 

1. SPDIF must use a coaxial cable.
2. SPDIF characteristic impedance of the cable must be 75 Ohm
3. SPDIF cables are often orange
4. It's a digital signal and as long as the cable is well made, there should be no difference in errors and so no difference in sound

I personally like #3 😉

maxwellseq

25 posts

05-21-2022 at 04:25am 

1. SPDIF must use a coaxial cable.
2. SPDIF characteristic impedance of the cable must be 75 Ohm
3. SPDIF cables are often orange
4. It's a digital signal and as long as the cable is well made, there should be no difference in errors and so no difference in sound

I personally like #3 😉

As long as 1 and 2 are observed the colour is irrelevant, of course, But some manufacturers seem to colour code them so people don't accidentally plug them in the wrong hole. It's not the case for all kit I've seen, but I've bought three digital products which were shipped with an orange cable for S/PDIF in the box. Perhaps it's an EU thing?

It's a real pity S/PDIF uses Cinch/RCA, since BNC would have been better and less prone to mistakes.

maxwellseq

It's a real pity S/PDIF uses Cinch/RCA, since BNC would have been better and less prone to mistakes.

S/PDIF is just a protocol. It can be used with RCA, BNC, or optical connectors.

S/PDIF is just a protocol. It can be used with RCA, BNC, or optical connectors.

Absolutely, but most manufacturers have utilised RCA, and there is always a problem if a manufacturer does use BNC: people would complain that their other kit is RCA and they have to use an adaptor. So marketing would wonder why the engineers have picked a technology that annoys customers!

Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle

It seems Amir nor Prof read the article i posted twice...Not one proved to me that they read it and UNDERSTAND IT...Here i put it, in an easy and clear way to read vulgarized, for the third time with my helping comments...Are they not scientist ?

Or they did not understand it to begin with ?

Too much techno babble ideology biases instead of psycho-acoustic science in their mind ?😊

SCIENCE IS NOT TECHNOLOGY...This article is psycho-acoustic pure science, not debunking propaganda from objectivist claiming what is impossible : deducing from their time symmetrical linear electrical modeling tools how the human ears works, and what we WILL HEAR and what we can never hear by simply adding measured decibels levels or substracting them , and what information the ears will catch or not ... 😊

First: repairing or falsifying designed components to verify or put back the components to their their standards norms is one thing...

Assuming that ALL of what human may be able to hear between components coupled together in a room will be COMPLETELY determined by these electrical standards for each separate component, and claiming that, is missing the fact that they must be COUPLED together and their audible sums cannot be predicted COMPLETELY in each room for all human ears,...

Why ?

Because hearing dont live only and merely in the time symmetric linear frequencies range kingdom of the electrical gear measuring tools modeling ...Ears/brain works non linearly...

Our brain beat the Fourier uncertainty barrier up to 13 times in one case of psycho-acoustic experience in a laboratory...

We extract information in one privileged direction of time , because of the brain habit with the sound of the natural world.

As the two physicist in this article put it said it : « Many sounds in nature are produced by an abrupt transfer of energy followed by slow, damped decay, and hence have broken time-reversal symmetry.»

«There’s a theorem that asserts uncertainty is only obeyed by linear operators (like the linear operators of quantum mechanics). Now there’s five decades of careful documentation of just how nastily nonlinear the cochlea is, but it is not evident how any of the cochlea’s nonlinearities contributes to enhancing time-frequency acuity. We now know our results imply that some of those nonlinearities have the purpose of sharpening acuity beyond the naïve linear limits.»

You begin to catch why the ears/brain HEAR something extracting it from the time domain which cannot be there in your linear symmetrical modeling electrical measures of gear design ?

All your electrical measures refer to hearing models which are obsolete anyway... And anyway electrical measures of gear has nothing to do with psycho-acoustic measures in a laboratory able to test hearing information extracting abilities in the time domain ...

«The results have implications for how we understand the way that the brain processes sound, a question that has interested scientists for a long time. In the early 1970s, scientists found hints that human hearing could violate the uncertainty principle, but the scientific understanding and technical capabilities were not advanced enough to enable a thorough investigation. As a result, most of today’s sound analysis models are based on old theories that may now be revisited in order to capture the precision of human hearing.»

now try to imagine the wealth of information which is extracted from simple speech (or from musical event coupled to acoustic soundfield) and try to imagine HOW THIS INFORMATION EXTRACTED BY THE HUMAN EARS/BRAIN CANNOT BE PREDICTED BY ELECTRICAL LINEAR SIMPLE GEAR DESIGN TOOLS ; listen this two physicists :

«"In seminars, I like demonstrating how much information is conveyed in sound by playing the sound from the scene in Casablanca where Ilsa pleads, "Play it once, Sam," Sam feigns ignorance, Ilsa insists," Magnasco said. "You can recognize the text being spoken, but you can also recognize the volume of the utterance, the emotional stance of both speakers, the identity of the speakers including the speaker’s accent (Ingrid’s faint Swedish, though her character is Norwegian, which I am told Norwegians can distinguish; Sam’s AAVE [African American Vernacular English]), the distance to the speaker (Ilsa whispers but she’s closer, Sam loudly feigns ignorance but he’s in the back), the position of the speaker (in your house you know when someone’s calling you from another room, in which room they are!), the orientation of the speaker (looking at you or away from you), an impression of the room (large, small, carpeted).

"The issue is that many fields, both basic and commercial, in sound analysis try to reconstruct only one of these, and for that they may use crude models of early hearing that transmit enough information for their purposes. But the problem is that when your analysis is a pipeline, whatever information is lost on a given stage can never be recovered later. So if you try to do very fancy analysis of, let’s say, vocal inflections of a lyric soprano, you just cannot do it with cruder models."

By ruling out many of the simpler models of auditory processing, the new results may help guide researchers to identify the true mechanism that underlies human auditory hyperacuity. Understanding this mechanism could have wide-ranging applications in areas such as speech recognition; sound analysis and processing; and radar, sonar, and radio astronomy.

"You could use fancier methods in radar or sonar to try to analyze details beyond uncertainty, since you control the pinging waveform; in fact, bats do," Magnasco said.»

Do you catch now why it is impossible to predict ,with linear modeling electrical tools designed for measuring circuits performance , what humans will hear from audio system parts coupled together in different acoustic settings environment ?

now read that ATTENTIVELY :

«Building on the current results, the researchers are now investigating how human hearing is more finely tuned toward natural sounds, and also studying the temporal factor in hearing.

"Such increases in performance cannot occur in general without some assumptions," Magnasco said. "For instance, if you’re testing accuracy vs. resolution, you need to assume all signals are well separated. We have indications that the hearing system is highly attuned to the sounds you actually hear in nature, as opposed to abstract time-series; this comes under the rubric of ’ecological theories of perception’ in which you try to understand the space of natural objects being analyzed in an ecologically relevant setting, and has been hugely successful in vision. Many sounds in nature are produced by an abrupt transfer of energy followed by slow, damped decay, and hence have broken time-reversal symmetry. We just tested that subjects do much better in discriminating timing and frequency in the forward version than in the time-reversed version (manuscript submitted). Therefore the nervous system uses specific information on the physics of sound production to extract information from the sensory stream.

"We are also studying with these same methods the notion of simultaneity of sounds. If we’re listening to a flute-piano piece, we will have a distinct perception if the flute ’arrives late’ into a phrase and lags the piano, even though flute and piano produce extended sounds, much longer than the accuracy with which we perceive their alignment. In general, for many sounds we have a clear idea of one single ’time’ associated to the sound, many times, in our minds, having to do with what action we would take to generate the sound ourselves (strike, blow, etc)."»

is this article have been read by Amir or prof?

Are they able to understand why their simplistic assumptions about hearing PREDICTED on the basis of verified gear electrical standards cannot be used to predict how, and why, and when , a musician or an acoustician or any ordinary people will hear in some determined room acoustic environment coupled to an audio system ?

It is not a question about an alleged claim they accuse audiophiles to assert: their "golden ears"... A description used as an insult is not a scientific claim...

Here two physicist explain from their psycho-acoustic experiments conclusions how the human ears extract information from the time region where and WHEN there is, as in natural sounds environment, a broken time symmetry dimnension, and then why the human ears/brain BEAT THE FOURIER UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE UP TO 13 TIMES...

It is important to observe here that this fact about the symmetry breaking et the perception in the time domain is also related to the way human are able to PRODUCE sound sources vibration and not only perceive them...

Simplified version:

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html

Unsimplified original version:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.4611

As i said : thanks Amir to debunk gear specs claims, but do not pretend to do MORE...Insulting people even uneducated one is not a sign of high education, as demonstrated by those who you provoked because of the mortal sin of using their ears  and who insult you in return...Insults beget insults...

As i said objectivist and subjectivist are twin brothers born from the same gear market conditioning mass publicity claims focussing on the gear piece...

Psycho-acoustic and room acoustic experiments is the heart of audio...

The heart of audio is not tasted "branded name" gear for "golden ears" or measured numbers verified at specs gear for pretended to be " unbiased" objectivist ears reading electrical graphs ...

Will it be necessary to have an answer to post these articles a fourth time ?

«Science is what you eat, technology is what you shit, the balanced  recycling is called knowledge»--Groucho Marx 🤓

@maxwellseq Just curious what point you are trying to make.

@prof 

Translation:   We'd like to be able to slag Amir and his site publicly, without any push-back or correction to any nonsense we may be spreading.

Nah.

Neither you or Amir are the arbiters bestowed with any authority to label anything nonsense.  Free exchange of ideas and experience here at Audiogon.  

If you are going to slag someone publicly, don't complain if they show up to set the record straight. 

Amir is the leader of ASR, the unrivaled place for slagging others, and then banning them if any defense is raised.  Amir refuses to do anything about the insults, personal attacks, and slander his followers engage in.  Until he cleans up his own house, Amir is fair game for criticism.

Amir is not setting any record straight.  Instead has turned this thread into a platform to spread his gospel, readily available at ASR for those so inclined. 

When Amir threw the term "fallacious" at @painter24, he revealed himself in full alignment with the disrespectful behavior of his followers.  I will support reviewers like Erin that behave respectfully, do not engage in insults, and do not have an inflated ego.     

I made few posts on his site in the past, but got disinterested very quickly. Good measurements do not always mean good sound, and I chose not argue with his followers proving it. So I never post their again. 

@texbychoice extremely well said 

Amir and prof if you read this article what does it means for the possibility you claimed erroneously as a FACT : the reduction of the non linear non symmetrical time domain ears/brain way to extract information to simple electrical linear modeling tool in the symmetrical physical time domain ?

Do you think it is possible ?

No it is not.... Human ears/brain non linearities structure and internal "tools" beat the Gabor limit if not in resolution in precision in the time domain......

Then why claiming that your tools can decide what is perceived and what is not "a priori" by someone listening chorus music in an acoustically controlled room ?

How can you claim A PRIORI, with your simple measuring specs  tools designed for gear standars verification, that  no change will be perceived at all by changing some materials parameter, some gear component, or some acoustical modifications ?

How can you claim this using electrical tool working in the electrical linear modeling symmetrical domain, if the ears is able to extract "precise tracking" information and change in the non symmetrical time domain ?

Here is the original non vulgarized article beginning :

«Human Time-Frequency Acuity Beats the Fourier Uncertainty Principle
Jacob N. Oppenheim and Marcelo O. Magnasco∗
Laboratory of Mathematical Physics, Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10065
(Dated: March 13, 2015)

The time-frequency uncertainty principle states that the product of the temporal and frequency
extents of a signal cannot be smaller than 1/(4π). We study human ability to simultaneously
judge the frequency and the timing of a sound. Our subjects often exceeded the uncertainty limit,
sometimes by more than tenfold, mostly through remarkable timing acuity. Our results establish a
lower bound for the nonlinearity and complexity of the algorithms employed by our brains in parsing
transient sounds, rule out simple “linear filter” models of early auditory processing, and highlight
timing acuity as a central feature in auditory object processing.
PACS numbers: 43.60.+d,43.66.+y,87.19.L-
Fourier transformation turns signals “inside out”, in
the sense that low frequencies dictate what happens at
long times, while high frequencies create fine temporal
detail. This property is demonstrated by Fourier’s un-
certainty theorem, which states that considering the ab-
solute value squared of a signal x(t) as a probability dis-
tribution in time,
P (t) = |x(t)|2
∫ ∞
−∞ |x(t′)|2dt′ (1)
and the absolute value squared of its Fourier transform
˜x(f ) as a distribution in frequency,
P (f ) = |˜x(f )|2
∫ ∞
−∞ |˜x(f ′)|2df ′ (2)
then the product of the standard deviations
∆t = √var(t) and ∆f = √var(f ) (3)
is bounded from below [1]:
∆t∆f ≥ 1
4π (4)
whence it is inferred that short signals require many fre-
quencies for their representation.
The theorem refers to the original signal and its Fourier
transform. In time-frequency analysis one attempts to
describe a signal in the two-dimensional time-frequency
plane, akin to a musical score where time is the horizontal
axis and frequency the vertical axis. Here the uncertainty
principle begets the Gabor limit [1, 2]. This remapping
emphasizes the uncertainties as a property of the trans-
form itself, rather than the the signal. In time-frequency
analysis, it has been proven that linear operators can-
not exceed the uncertainty bound [2]. Nonlinearity does
not by itself confer any acuity advantage, and in fact
most nonlinearities are merely distortions and thus dele-
terious. However, by the above theorem, any carefully-
crafted analysis that can beat this limit must necessarily
be nonlinear. For instance, precise frequency informa-
tion can be obtained about a sine wave by measuring
the time between two adjacent zeros of the waveform,
a clearly nonlinear operation. The nonlinear distribu-
tions can be classified in families according to their de-
gree of nonlinearity or history-dependence, such as the
quadratic (Cohen’s class) distributions like Wigner-Ville
[3] and Choi-Williams [4], and higher-order ones, such
as multi-tapered spectral derivatives [5, 6], the Hilbert-
Huang distribution [7], and the reassigned spectrograms
[8–12]. To understand how they differ we need to make
an important distinction between resolution and preci-
sion. Resolution refers to our ability to distinguis two
objects, while precision refers to our ability to track the
parameters of a single object, given prior knowledge it is
only one component. This distinction is well-established
in optics, where it is known the wavelength of light limits
resolution: two glass beads cannot be resolved as different
in a microscope if they are closer together than a wave-
length. Precision is not limited, since a single bead can be
tracked with nanometer accuracy. All the above distribu-
tions achieve higher precision than the Gabor limit when
applied to isolated signal components, yet give interfer-
ing results when two signals are closer together than an
uncertainty envelope. Our experimental test is designed
to directly measure precision, not resolution.
A key goal in neuroscience is to establish which algo-
rithms the brain uses to process perceptual information.
Psychophysics, by establishing tight bounds on the per-
formance of our senses,may rule out entire families of
perceptual algorithms as candidates when they cannot
achieve the expected performance [13, 14].
We shall show below that human subjects can discrim-
inate better, and occasionally much better, than the un-
certainty bounds. This categorically rules out any first
order operators, such as the standard sonogram, from
consideration, and puts a stringent bound on the perfor-
mance of any candidate algorithm, demonstrating that
the nonlinearities in the cochlea constitute are integral
to the precision of auditory processing.»..........

«A key goal in neuroscience is to establish which algo-
rithms the brain uses to process perceptual information.
Psychophysics, by establishing tight bounds on the per-
formance of our senses,may rule out entire families of
perceptual algorithms as candidates when they cannot
achieve the expected performance [13, 14].
We shall show below that human subjects can discrim-
inate better, and occasionally much better, than the un-
certainty bounds. This categorically rules out any first
order operators, such as the standard sonogram, from
consideration, and puts a stringent bound on the perfor-
mance of any candidate algorithm, demonstrating that
the nonlinearities in the cochlea constitute are integral
to the precision of auditory processing.

The conclusion of this article :

«We have conducted the first direct psychoacoustical
test of the Fourier uncertainty principle in human hear-
ing, by measuring simultaneous temporal and Our data indicate that human subjects
often beat the bound prescribed by the uncertainty the-
orem, by factors in excess of 10. This is sometimes ac-
complished by an increase in frequency acuity, but by and
large it is temporal acuity that is increased and largely
responsible for these gains. Our data further indicate
subject acuity is just as good for a note-like amplitude
envelope as for the Gaussian, even though theoretically
the uncertainty product is increased for such waveforms.
Our study directly rules out many of the simpler models
of early auditory processing, often used as input to the
higher-order stages in models of higher auditory function.
Of the plethora of time-frequency distributions and au-
ditory processing models that have been studied, only a
few stand a chance of both matching the perfrequency
discrimination. formance of
human subjects and be plausibly implementable in the
neural hardware of the auditory system(e.g.[6, 7, 12, 28],
with the reassignment method having the best compara-
tive temporal acuity. Elucidation of which mechanism
underlies our subjects auditory hyper acuity is likely
to have wide-ranging applications, both in fields where
matching human performance is an issue, such as speech
recognition, as well as those more removed, such as radar,
sonar and radio astronomy.»

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4611.pdf