Good read: why comparing specifications is pointless
“ … Bitrates, sampling rates, bit sizes, wattages, amplifier classes…. as an audio enthusiast, there are countless specifications to compare. But it is – virtually – all meaningless. Why? Because the specifications that matter are not reported ánd because every manufacturer measures differently. let’s explain that...”
I should also add, I recently purchased a set of 802d4 speakers. I have heard the 802d3, which measure similarly, and felt there was a "harshess" at the top end. I chose to stick with my 20+ year old electrostatics at the time. After hearing the 802d4 I was immediately sold on the sound. I like them more than speakers I've listened to that measure better on your site. They also look amazing in walnut, which won't show up in acoustic measurements. 😉
Reprodicible measurements that can be compared are important, but more important is giving the consumer tools to figure out what measurable aspects are important to them. Is there something in the 802d3 vs d4 measurements that would have told me I would like one more rham the other (all other factors being equal)? If not, the value of measurements goes down.
Amir_asr, thank you for posting on this forum. I've never posted before. However, I think raising the profile of reproducible quantitative measurements in the audiophile world is worth supporting. I love the audiophile world because of it's confluence of science, art and what it means to perceive as a human.
“The hope of film buffs and makers alike is an experience that fully transports the audience into the world of the characters,” said Auro Technologies CEO Wilfried Van Baelen. “Having major releases from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment incorporating Auro-3D helps provide this immersive experience, with sound design unlike anything audiences have heard before, to ensure they are able to enjoy films how the creator intended—with full impact.”:
Auro-3D filed for bankruptcy back in June of this year.
You are the one that decided to brand your website as "science". You admittedly are neither a scientist nor have a "lab"/studio/listening room that follows well established specs (see Toole, Kota1, Abbey Road, Sony, and Dolby Institute in the above posts).
The website is not called "science." It is Audio Science Review. Audio Science and engineering is our guiding light, not what random poster says on a website. We review and digest audio science and use it to our advantage to build superbly sounding systems without wasting on nonsense that does nothing for the performance of your system.
We can see the sharp difference in the way you blindly ran an automated EQ system that butchered the bass response in room. Every frequent reader of ASR forum would have been able to school you on proper target to say nothing of the formal study by Dr. Toole. These are mistakes that readers of ASR either don't make or are given immediate help to fix.
Good luck with your website and I am taking the good counsel of my fellow members, no more feeding your trolls, bye!
I didn't think that would ever happen! Thank you for finally letting go of my pant legs. 😀 As for luck, thankfully we don't need at ASR as there is strong appeal to both audiophiles and members of the industry to read and view objective and science based information about audio. We have more reach than this site and stereophile combined. You should wonder what the rest of the world knows that you don't.....
You are the one that decided to brand your website as "science". You admittedly are neither a scientist nor have a "lab"/studio/listening room that follows well established specs (see Toole, Kota1, Abbey Road, Sony, and Dolby Institute in the above posts).
At this point you have two choices. Align yourself with the "science"/specs like the Toole, the Kota, et al. or make a very simple change to your brand acronym.
Currently you are branded ASR
Just change the first letter (A) to the very next letter in the alphabet and I think you’ll nail it.
Good luck with your website and I am taking the good counsel of my fellow members, no more feeding your trolls, bye!
Almost all reviews include a list of the writers reference system components, the test conditions the equipment was used in, the content played during the review, comparisons to equipment from competitors, and possibly measurements.
When it matters, I do the same:
The Lyngdorf is the black box sitting on my (unused currently) Mark Levinson No 532 power amplifier. For those of you complaining about the cost of the Lyngdorf TDAI-3400, the 523 costs $20,000 by itself! Admittedly it has 400 watts using 8 ohm and probably twice as much over 4 ohm so much more powerful than the Lyngdorf. Still, it is just an amplifier.
My everyday amplifiers are the two Mark Levinson No 53 monoblocks flanking the Revel Salon 2 speakers which were used for this testing. Those beasts have 500 watts into 8 ohm and 1000 watts into 4 ohm. In listening tests, the Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 got plenty loud although I had it pretty close to 0 dB at times. Again, this is a huge space so it takes fair bit of power to fill it and shake my seat.
I test my near-field/desktop products and there, equipment is listed as well:
Iconoclast CLR Cable Listening Tests
I used two setups for listening tests: headphone and main 2-channel system:
Headphone Listening: source was a computer as the streamer using Roon player to RME ADI-2 Pro ($2K) acting as a DAC & headphone amplifier, driving my Dan Clark Stealth headphone ($4K). I started listening with Iconoclast cable. Everything sounded the same as I was used to. I then switched to WBC cable. Immediately I "heard" more air, more detail and better fidelity. This faded in a few seconds though and the sound was just as it was with the Iconoclast.
For my main system, I used a Topping D90SE driving the Topping LA90 which in turn drove my Revel Salon 2 speakers. I picked tracks with superb spatial qualities to judge the usual "soundstage." I again started with Iconoclast XLR TPC cable. I was once again blown away how good my system sounds.
I don't get to enjoy it often enough given how much time I spend working at my desk. Anyway, after a while I switched to WBC cable. Once again, immediate reaction was that the sound was more open, bass was a bit more tight, etc. This too passed after a few seconds and everything sounded the same again.
Really, all of these protests could be avoided if you had spent just a few minutes reading how and why I test things. There is incredibly scrutiny of what I do by members at ASR and industry at large. You have to be far more prepared to find a criticism that can stick.
@ghdprentice ..."I would not begin to consider evaluating a single new component without listening to it for a couple months. This would be only after being completely familiar with my system without change for months… many months. ...
You are acting like a petulant child. Go away, I'm not buying your BS, and no how many times you feel the need to get the last word, I don’t agree with you.”
No, I am a private person and don’t want to walk around bragging about my own system. I only post it out of necessity where a test requires it as it did here:
Almost all reviews include a list of the writers reference system components, the test conditions the equipment was used in, the content played during the review, comparisons to equipment from competitors, and possibly measurements.
No one would consider you listing and posting the above bragging, it is generally required if you check around.
If you need help setting up the proper test conditions in your room check with The Dolby Institute:
Bryan states there are many DIY sources for treating your room. The specs I followed are laid out by Anthony Grimani and then I tailored them for my room with the help of Wilfried Van Baelen. The specs for Anthony’s DIY acoustic treatment recipe is laid out in the diagram below. Bass traps in the corners and then combo panels on the front wall. The side walls alternate with diffusors and absorbers but do NOT mirror each other. You’ll notice if you have a diffusor on the left wall there will be an absorber on the opposite wall. 2D diffusors in the front of the room, 3D diffusors in back. Anthony recommends absorbers in the front half of the ceiling and 3D diffusors on the ceiling in back. Wilfried felt you should include bass traps on the ceiling. I found the Auralex Geofusors a perfect workaround. It is a 3D diffusor that can be back filled with absorption and double as a bass trap. I placed the Geofusors above the MLP. I hung an acoustic cloud of the Auralex Sustain Lens diffusors where you see the 3D ceiling diffusors in the diagram below. The cloud hangs perfectly beneath my PJ. Here is a diagram of Anthony’s specs for room treatment that I used for my room. IMO these are the specs that matter because unless you get them right the specs of your gear don’t matter, just like the title of this thread:
These specs for setting up your room vary slightly between Dolby and Auro 3D. All of the rooms I have posted use a setup that work with both, a "universal" setup.
The Dolby specs also include "Room Tuning". Bryan Pennington, Senior Field Applications Engineer at Dolby Institute, discusses the importance of tuning your room. Some general specs he shares is 60/40 to 70/30 is a good rule of thumb to follow when figuring out how much absorptive surfaces to reflective surfaces to use in your room. That includes floor, walls, AND ceilings. Bryan states:
"Money spent on this type of help (room treatments and acoustics) will be more valuable than ANY piece of gear you will ever buy"
That brings us right back to the title of this thread, unless you have the specs of your room setup and tuning right, the specs of any gear you use in that room won’t matter.
More immersive audio specs, here is a room even smaller than mine that Wilfred Van Balen also commented on, the mixing stage at Sony Pictures. It uses the same immersive audio specs that the Toole, the Kota and Abbey Road uses. Matching speakers, same angles, use of center height and VOG channel. This is where specs can be useful, if you are setting up your speakers at home using the same specs that the mixing stage uses it helps reproduce the audio as it was meant to be heard
“The Sony Pictures Post Production mix stage adds to the growing footprint of Dolby Atmos enabled post production facilities and gives the Hollywood creative community the tools they need to deliver an immersive experience to consumers, adding additional depth, detail and clarity to the soundtracks,” said Curt Behlmer, Senior Vice President, Content Solutions and Industry Relations, Dolby Laboratories.
“The hope of film buffs and makers alike is an experience that fully transports the audience into the world of the characters,” said Auro Technologies CEO Wilfried Van Baelen. “Having major releases from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment incorporating Auro-3D helps provide this immersive experience, with sound design unlike anything audiences have heard before, to ensure they are able to enjoy films how the creator intended—with full impact.”:
You are acting like a petulant child. Go away, I'm not buying your BS, and no how many times you feel the need to get the last word, I don’t agree with you.
I think you’d be better served if you packed your carnival up and moved on to the next forum.
The specs that I see that are important in this thread is speaker placement for immersive audio. I have been using the specs for a dolby 9.2.7 setup and then you see Floyd Toole with the same layout using the same specs. We both use matched speakers, bookshelf speakers for front and rear height channels, and we both use center height and VOG speakers. Our rooms are very different obviously but you can see those specs in both setups. Then you take a look at a much bigger room in Abbey Road studios and again, those same specs. Matched speakers, book shelfs as height channels tilted toward the MLP, center heights and VOG channels. The MLP for Toole and Abbey Road is also equidistant from the front and rear speakers like mine is, even though in some Dolby setup diagrams it is toward the rear of the room. Having it equidistant between front and rear channels makes a HUGE difference with the soundstage IMO. See how Abbey Road studios uses the same specs in their immersive setup:
Floyd Toole using the same specs at home:
My room is smaller than either of those, but the specs still fit in a smaller room for the speaker type, the angles and distances:
Most of us can agree that some parameters are vital, how many watts, impedance, speaker sensitivity etc in selecting hifi components. Unfortunately we are bombarded with measurements many of which are really meaningless in predicting how that component will sound. Saying that a THD of 0.005% reading means a product will sound better than one with 0.009% is absolutely ridiculous, you cannot hear such a difference, your speakers THD will be 10 times that maybe a 100. Ranking products on these measurements, or choosing them on such a basis is illogical. The measurement bears no relationship to how they will sound or interact with your system and less to what you will hear and nothing to do with what you will like.
@blacktalon, welcome to the forum. I agree that preferences are going to vary and if you don't deal with the room the rest of the specs really won't matter.
Half of this debate is actually user preferences versus accuracy. 'Musical' to me may mean elevated bass relative the male vocal frequencies. To the next person it may mean elevated mid range and lower high and low frequencies (i.e., 'highlighting the vocals'). One way to achieve user musical preferences is by years of mixing/ matching components, which may or may not get you where you want to be before you go bankrupt. Another way is to assemble a system that is as accurate as possible, and then dial in variances in the frequency response. Of course the room has to be dealt with as well.
Why did you buy it knowing Topping was better according to you?
ow do you know they can't afford it? I recently reviewed a bunch of Chord gear from a member. Cost? Around $30K. He bought a Topping DAC to replace it all and said it sounded just as good. He was so nice about it that felt guilty to sell the Chord gear to someone else. I suspect money is not nearly as valuable to him as his ethics there.
I personally replaced my $6,000 Mark Levinson DAC (and older multibit one), with a Topping as well. I have more capabilities and have not lost a bit of fidelity. I have however, lost prestige given how small it looks compared the Levinson DAC.
You keep saying you don’t want me here, then throw out fighting words like what I am responding to. Or arguments that can be trivially shown to be wrong.
You have failed to explain why you are championing dry wall.
In the true spirit of geniality I would like to invite you to find out why immersive audio is so enjoyable, not just for the Kota and the Toole, but for everyone.
The Kota and the Toole are "critically listening" in immersive audio, please enjoy listening however you like over at "dry wall studios".
Dr. Toole is using upmixing for enjoyment, not for evaluating performance of any product. For that, he 1000% believes in testing one speaker at a time in double blind setting, not his home.
For your part, you have failed to explain why you are championing his room when it is a normal living room with hard surfaces and no acoustic products. Dr. Toole is no witness for your case:
"Some reflected sound is good. Sometimes a lot of the right kind is even better. Concert halls are deliberately reflective, highly reverberant, spaces. This is my “classical” listening room in our custom-built Canadian home. Conceived as a space for enjoying large, spatially involving, works of music, it was the largest “concert hall” I could afford at the time. The very neutral, essentially omnidirectional, Mirage M1s “became” the orchestra and the room became a seamless extension of the recorded space. It provided a very satisfying, involving, experience. Because of the designed-in irregular scattering surfaces, the heavy carpet and thick felt underlay brought the reverberation time down to under 0.5s so the room sounded much less “live” than one would think. It was a nice-sounding space, pleasant to be in. Late at night I have been known to sit in the dark with a glass of good Scotch and listen to non-classical involving pieces of music like Dire Straits “Brothers in Arms” played at high level. I miss this room. Elsewhere in the house was a 7-channel home theater with very few reflections but a very good multichannel upmixer and spatial synthesizer, a Lexicon CP-1 – this was 1988."
No one should feel obligated to turn their everyday listening rooms into padded cells and ugly acoustic products. Normal furnishings can act as acoustic features to serve similar purpose per above. Now, if you have a dedicated empty room for music/movie listening, then yes, you do want to put treatment there because otherwise its RT60 will be too high although even that can be cool effect for orchestral or big band music.
The key to good sound in such places is a great speaker. Such a speaker will have off-axis response that is similar to on-axis so the mixing of the two does not cause a problem. Reflections laterally will then sound good and add the feeling of spaciousness which many of us crave.
Please, please don't follow videos/articles from companies selling acoustic products, trying to scare you off with "reflections are bad." Per Dr. Toole statement above, and entire chapter in his book, that is absolutely wrong.
He's pandering to people pretending to be audiophiles who are desperate to think their inexpensive gear is "just as good" when it's obvious they simply cannot afford it.
How do you know they can't afford it? I recently reviewed a bunch of Chord gear from a member. Cost? Around $30K. He bought a Topping DAC to replace it all and said it sounded just as good. He was so nice about it that felt guilty to sell the Chord gear to someone else. I suspect money is not nearly as valuable to him as his ethics there.
I personally replaced my $6,000 Mark Levinson DAC (and older multibit one), with a Topping as well. I have more capabilities and have not lost a bit of fidelity. I have however, lost prestige given how small it looks compared the Levinson DAC.
A manufacturer send me a $20,000 DAC recently to test. I measure it and find a very common design flaw that Chinese DAC companies already solved (I call it ESS IMD Hump). Without measurements you would not know there is a problem here. Instead you would trust the price and heavy box this DAC in and rave about how good it is.
This is the problem with you few. Instead of going by performance, you go by price as if there is any correlation between the two in audio electronics anymore. Putting a DAC in a 50 pound box and selling it in specialty dealers will surely add thousands of dollars to the retail price but likely does nothing for performance unless that is demonstrated objectively. Or subjectively with ears only.
I mean which other field is judged like this? Why do you, as consumers, demand that stuff be expensive to be good? With no proof point other than some shill reviews in youtube or otherwise? When did you lose your way like this? Why not say, "show me reliably and repeatedly that this is a better device?"
So we came about to change this atmosphere and change is occurring. More and more people who can easily afford expensive gear are realizing the proper way to test and review products and are changing their way. And becoming much happier for it as well. You want to live in the past and defend manufacturers over consumers, be my guest. But don't post it about me or audio science review.
Please come check out the thread I started on an Atmos build, you NEED it.
Well, looks like no one else needs it as you only have a couple of responses and that is that. I am sure plenty of people here would throw up on the idea of upmixing stereo music to multichannel/atmos. I personally find the effect appealing at first but quickly loose interest. It is cool that others like it as it is a preference thing. But it is not for me so I am not going to engage you there. Best of luck in getting others here to pay attention.
But see folks? How I get asked over and over again to engage with them here?
@kota1 your should know by now, Amir is all knowing and the GOD OF AUDIO.
I am not. I am however great student of audio science, research and engineering. This is why I am able to back everything I say with independent research. And why you or other reviewers like you, cannot. Their opinion is expressed and demanded to be believed. No amount of explaining to them simple things like only using your ears to evaluate audio systems sinks in. They stomp their feet, get angry, demand that the truth not be spoken.
What is really strange is common sense is absent as well. You keep saying you don't want me here, then throw out fighting words like what I am responding to. Or arguments that can be trivially shown to be wrong.
Well Amir, I hadn't expected your arrogance. Your assumptions are unpalatable.
This is what arrogance looks like: that the entire body of audio science, research and engineering doesn't apply to the sound coming out of your audio systems. That objective measurements and controlled testing have no value. That some magical force in the universe is intervening in audio and only in audio to create experiences that cannot be explained by a shred of physics, electronics, psychoacoustics, etc. This, is arrogance to the extreme. Not me explain all of this to you.
And oh, I believe you when you say your system sounds great. The problem is you thinking alternative DACs don't and they are for the reasons you mentioned. This, is the problem.
@amir_asrkeeps coming back because he NEEDS to. If you had to listen to 400 or whatever components over at "dry wall studios" wouldn’t you look for an escape? Audiogon Forum rocks, intelligent members, open minded, genial, phenomenal virtual system area, who can blame the guy for trying to escape from that "other" board, where it seems to be just the opposite.
BTW Amir, you do realize the title of this thread is spot on, whatever specs you measure ARE pointless when you stick your gear in a really bad room.
Please come check out the thread I started on an Atmos build, you NEED it.
Mirrors what I said in the last post that our friend Amir attempted to hijack. He's pandering to people pretending to be audiophiles who are desperate to think their inexpensive gear is "just as good" when it's obvious they simply cannot afford it. I don't have a dog in this fight (I said what I felt in the last thread), but it just makes me shake my head.
Watching this go back and forth reminds me of 2 kids in the backseat on a road trip. "He's touching me!" "He touched me first!" "Did not!" "Did too!"
Perhaps if we ignore him, he'll go back to his little pond where he can continue to get his ego stroked by his audiophile-wannabe followers, while the rest of us get on with our lives.
The room was configured in 2000, as a 7.1 system. The front wall was deliberately constructed as a low-mid frequency sound scattering surface using display niches and other depth variations (including spaces behind the fabric covered doors) to alleviate the boundary effect for that wall.
He has a purpose built room and the treatments aren’t displayed. If you look at the diagram his speaker layout follows dolby specs just like mine does (see the other thread I started about building an atmos room, LOL)
Good luck with your "critical listening" over at "dry wall studios". Complete waste of time, but you refuse to be "schooled by Toole" which makes you a ......
Flutter echo? In a room with open floor plan like mine or Dr. Toole's? Do you even know what that is? Clearly not. I have never seen anyone in these argument contradict himself left and right like you do.
I’ve only been in this audio game for 46 years, Amir.
What annoys most are two things:
1. Absolutes, with no tolerance for possibilities. Things are this way, the earth is flat etc.
2. Those who emphatically believe my experience is invalid, and our sanity is questionable at best.
Your sanity is not remotely questioned. You simply have not read and understood what audio research and engineering has been telling us for decades. Instead you trust your gut feeling about technical matters.
As to your 46 years, I am close behind you. Years ago when MP3 came out, I compressed some tracks into it and expected to sound horrible. I was shocked that despite being an audiophile for decades, I could not tell lossy compression from the source. I took months of training for me to be able to do that. Sometime later we used a large group of audiophiles at the company to conduct blind tests of the same. They all did very poorly and lost out easily compared to our trained listeners (including myself) in blind tests.
And it doesn't matter what you hate. Audiophiles routinely hate it when what they think they "heard" is proven to be otherwise. It doesn't make proper analysis that led to that outcome wrong. It shows that you need to dispense with bad protocols used in evaluating audio and learn how your hearing works. I had to do that years ago. That is the difference between us: I accepted science had a lot to offer me and I started over. You are sticking to your beliefs. Why? Because you hate what it says to you? That is not the way to conduct your life....
If you want to get "schooled by Toole", check out his room.
Maybe you should. Earlier you said this:
"You take Revel or some other good measuring speaker, put it in a room with hard flat surfaces and you don’t need a FR chart to know that it ain’t singing like it could."
His room has plenty of hard surfaces, right? And he has the identical Revel Salon 2 speakers I have. First you said such a setup sounds terrible but now put forth his room as an example of good sounding room? You see any "acoustic treatments" there? You don't. Reason is that you don't need it to get superb sound.
I listened to several DACs from $1500 to $6k and guess what? They all sounded different, but they all sounded quite good.
You didn't "listen" to them. You included your eye and the rest of your senses. So yes, we do have to guess what you heard since you didn't know to just uses your ears.
The Lab 12 specs are straight out of the 90's but it has such great tone and lack of glare that you can listen for hours on end.
Maybe. Maybe not. I can and do listen to my systems for hours on end. As do many others here with completely different DACs including the ones you say have glare. See the problem? What you claim something about audio in a public forum and want to be convincing, you need to provide back up. I do that in every one of my posts here as you see.
Not one of my components would pass the ASR litmus test, except my RME adi2 DAC. It tests well but isn't nearly as engaging and musical sounding as my LAB 12 DAC 1 reference. It's not even in my main system anymore. So much for numbers.
I have finally assembled a musically satisfying system, and did so with zero regard for numbers or specs. "How does it sound? " being the only criteria . The gear that stayed did so purely on sound quality and overall enjoyment.
ASR is a joke, anyone who thinks a $500 Chinese DAC destroys all comers is delusional. Amir called the RME the best DAC out there and maybe on paper it is. It's a great DAC but the best? No. That title is reserved for something truly high end like the MSB DACs or dcs, seriously.
I listened to several DACs from $1500 to $6k and guess what? They all sounded different, but they all sounded quite good. I probably would have acclimated to any and have been happy. I bought the Lab 12 , it was right in the middle price wise and I thought it sounded better than some DACs that cost quite a bit more.
The Lab 12 specs are straight out of the 90's but it has such great tone and lack of glare that you can listen for hours on end. It still surprises me with the image it renders. A nice 3D image that extends well beyond the speakers width and height . It's great in my system so keep that in mind, I'm only recommending it if you can home demo.
@amir_asrHow can you listen to anything critically? Casually, sure, but critically? This is your system so you explain it, I see two big speakers in a room with flat surfaces everywhere. was this your intent??? Isn't there a lot of flutter echo?
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