I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.

That quote you made from Stereophile is from the 2014 review not what ASR reviewed.

The first quote is the V1 version which supports the second quote for the V3 version. Both experts measured the Spinx V3 and I think got comparable results.

Stereophile tests appear to show high noise one phono input...

Yes, it is highlighted that the MM phono output was noisy. The MC output was not. Probably still has more channel separation and dynamic range than the record you are playing. 

Stereophile tests appear to show ... high power supply noise...

Also mentioned but it's 80 and 90 db down, you are not going to hear it. 

... and does not meet 4 ohm power spec. 

Rogue does not specify a 4ohm power spec. They say 100wpc minimum and don't specify the impedance. Atkinson measured 96watts at 8 ohms and 150watts at 4 ohms. You wont miss the 4db since it would take 200 watts to raise the sound level 3db.  

This is why you need to listen to gear. A few db may be important or they may not depending on what you are measuring. With noise levels down 80 and 90 db, you are not going to hear it. Sure 120 db is better but it's only a better measurement number not something that will ruin playback. That's why Atkinson explains what the numbers mean and their effect on sound quality. ASR skips that step. 

The main issue I took from Goldensound's review that I posted above is that Amir tests all AES/EBU outputs at 4v.

This this ridiculous because all outputs should be measured at their normal output levels, not attenuated.

Amir is a clown and anyone that gives him the time of day is a bigger clown.

When I performed the measurements of the original Rogue Sphinx integrated amplifier to accompany Herb Reichert's review in the August 2014 issue of Stereophile, I was impressed by what I found. "Even without taking into account its affordable price, Rogue Audio's Sphinx offers excellent measured performance with little sign of the usual compromises made in class-D designs,"

@russ69 

That quote you made from Stereophile is from the 2014 review not what ASR reviewed. Stereophile tests appear to show high noise one phono input, high power supply noise, and does not meet 4 ohm power spec. Did ASR note any different?

How good feeling it is to read a wise articulated post!

hilde45 thanks  from us all...

+ @jjss49
+ @sns
+ @ghdprentice
+ @nonoise

@russ69

If something measures so poorly, wouldn’t you want to correlate the measurements with what you hear?

Good posts. Here’s how I see it.

There are several components involved in judging how something sounds:

1. How it measures
2. Personal perceptual equipment (your ears, your brain)
3. Personal expectations (your taste, sonically and in musical content)
4. Associated equipment
5. Room acoustics

ASR likely looks at this and thinks, the only one of these which can be measured and quantified in our lab is #1, how it measures.

If ASR did measurements and only reported the facts about what they measured, no one would care. Because measurements HAVE to be related to judgments about how things sound, aesthetically, or no one would read the site.

Thus, ASR derives it’s credibility from doing (1) but it drives interest in the site by claiming that (1) correlates with (2) and (3).

This results in two related ironies.

First, ASR’s claim to correlate (1, measurement) with (2, 3 subjective sound) abandons the sites’ main claim to validity.

Second, by reaching beyond measurement, ASR repudiates it’s own purpose as a website.

Here’s a guess on my part. Most gear is made well enough that it should not matter how it measures. Something would have to distort really really badly to correlate with nearly everyone’s personal taste.

Imagine a cup of coffee -- some like it with no sugar, and some like it with up to 4 Tb of sugar. Almost no likes it with more than 4 Tb of sugar. So, if I had a website measuring sugar in coffee, I’d only start to be useful to readers if I told them that this cup of coffee had more than 4 Tb of sugar. But coffee makers already figured *that* out. So, there’d be not much to measure.

What's the solution? Have a variety of subjective reviewers who declare their taste up front. Then, readers can decide if their own tastes are similar enough to a certain reviewer in order to accept their judgments as a helpful guide (not as rule of law). This is how I choose TV or movie reviewers. I find those whose observations and judgments are motivated in ways similar to my own. Then, their additional experience and finer perceptual abilities are helpful in pushing me toward new experiences that I can estimate might be pleasing.

@russ69   Yup.  I find it incredible how many people here don't listen before laying down their bread.  But these days many people order a car without driving it.  However modern cars are mostly all the same.  Unlike hi-fi components.

Who's Amir?

He's just a guy. Maybe knowledgeable, maybe he has an agenda. He may have a YouTube channel ... I have too. Why trust the opinion of just one guy? Look broader. What do other reviews say? I bet there are more? Are they positive? If a majority is so-so then I'd have my doubts ... if almost everyone likes the product it'll be fine. Thoughts on build quality, components used, functionality, specifications, measurements ... those can be objective but if it comes down to how a products sounds it's only my own ears I'd trust.

ASR usually listens; it provided a reason for not listening in this case.  ASR provides objective measurements of equipment  It subscribes to the theory that good equipment should measure well.  It does not claim that equipment that does not measure well will not sound good to you.  There is a lot of equipment that measures well *and* sounds good.  For example, ASR raved about the measurements of the Benchmark AHB2 power amplifier and both The Absolute Sound and Stereophile raved about how it sounded.  

Measurements are the first thing.

But listening for yourself is the final thing.

The best is when A.S.R. jukes the stats on a product. A.S.R. gets called out on juking the stats. A.S.R.then ignores getting called out for juking said stats. For example, instead of measuring an item with a 2 volt input signal, fairly common, they throw a 14 volt signal at it. Good stuff! The devil is in the details. Also the Chinese brands “always” seem to be the best of the best on that site.

Just for entertainment purposes, here are two opinions of measurements with different conclusions.  

John Atkinson: Rogue Audio's Sphinx offers excellent measured performance with little sign of the usual compromises made in class-D designs. 

As a line-level integrated amplifier and headphone amplifier, the Sphinx V3 continues the high standard set by the original. 

And From Amir at ASR: Perfect marketing, poor engineering. Story of high-end audio.

Needless to say, I can NOT recommend the Rogue Audio Sphinx V3.

@realworldaudio I will interpret your response to indicate my post was correct.

@russ69  thank you. Some seem pretty worked up here.  I cannot speak for Amir and he does come across to me as unjustifiably arrogant, but I expect most who use measurements in audio use them more for relative comparisons than absolutes. It's why I tried the IEMs though I didn't know if I would be happy. I do expect there is more truth to DAC measurements than many audiophiles want to accept, but human interpretation of say a tube amp is also part of the science so to ignore that is not "audio science" either. There needs to be more acceptance and less animosity on both sides.

The people who measure and explain are a dime a dozen. Those that see the artfulness and beauty to life are a very different crowd. It’s unlikely that either group will end up in your living room spinning records so just realize the camp you’re in and channel the information to develop your mojo. 

Why does Amir's opinion matter so much?

Trust me when I say Amir's opinion does not matter to me at all, it carries zero weight for me. What this thread is about is trying to understand the mind set of people that only rely on measurements and not the sound of audio gear. However, thanx for posting and stimulating the conversation. I welcome all input.

I thought it was well understood that measurements are a valid place to start from, but by no means the be-all-end-all.  Ears are.

People sometimes prefer the sound of things that are measurably “worse” than other things, i.e. analog vs. digital, tubes vs. solid state, etc.

I feel to keep oneself sane in pursuit of great sound, measurements provide consistent repeatable parameters, but not necessarily the final word, though perhaps sometimes they do.

It is a public thread discussion... And you accuse him of mob mentality...

You cannot accuse me of that mob mentality no?

I presented arguments... You dont want articulated arguments ?... You prefer mob mentality discussion with deluded audiophiles?

i apologize in this case...

In a discussion logic is a large two-way road that MANY people can take at the same time if it is not a mob mentality discussion for sure... i take the road...I apologize to you also for that anyway and to realworldaudio too ...But i am sure you like logic and he surely like logic too... We all hate mob mentality...

I am certain I asked the question of @realworldaudio . Would it not be appropriate to let him/her answer?

I am certain I asked the question of @realworldaudio . Would it not be appropriate to let him/her answer?

@realworldaudio , I feel most of what you wrote is made up. I don’t think you will be able to clearly articulate what is missing from the measurements and certainly not 95% of the things that are missing. Perhaps this is the issue. This sounds more like outrage mob mentality that reasonsed criticism. I am welcome to be proven wrong.

What is missing from the meassurements is the way the gear will interact with the other piece of gear in a specific room for specific ears...Listening is mandatory here...And what is missing are the unknown or/and   the non selected possible measures too...No one selected ALL POSSIBLE measures...Which one set matter is not absolute certainty in all case...

 The "Selected"  by Amir  isolated measures from a single piece of gear means not much for the final listening test...Save for the designer itself going on with his engineering designing standards confronting them to Amir own results.....

By the way you cannot be proven wrong because you COULD not be even wrong ever in this case : if from Amir measures you deduced " an hypothetical sound quality level" which will never be proven to exist IN ITSELF without linking this piece of gear to some other interacting system parts in some controlled or uncontrolled room and to some specific ears in a LISTENING EXPERIMENTS ...

Room are also like headphones, ultimately they can be fit for one pair of specific ears ...Studio acoustic is not Hall acoustic and neither of them is small room acoustic...Why? geometry, size, topology, acoustic content and in the case of a small room ONE listener with specific hearing history and taste not many recording engineers or a crowd...

Yet, using such tricks skews other performance parameters, that ARE NOT MEASURED as pat of the standard measurement sets, yet still COUNT. We are routinely testing maybe 1-5% of all the parameters that are needed for accurate sound reproduction, and eve those measurements are MASSIVELY FLAWED

@realworldaudio , I feel most of what you wrote is made up. I don't think you will be able to clearly articulate what is missing from the measurements and certainly not 95% of the things that are missing. Perhaps this is the issue. This sounds more like outrage mob mentality that reasonsed criticism. I am welcome to be proven wrong.

Well reasoned arguments are countered by the ultimate troll.
Who'da thought?

We've been telling him to "let it go" for ages under all his past incarnations and he has the audacity to take our advice and use it as his own.

All the best,
Nonoise

It's a human thing: when it's written in stone, it becomes objective and sacred. It needs no further validation... (who cares about listening.) Judgements can be made, and people will fall in line. Who cares about the art, beauty, music, humanity.... let's turn our fascination of art to a fascination with number-crunching.

Sadly, people often neglect the fact that the EASIEST THING ON THE PLANET FOR _ANY_ even HALF-WAY COMPETENT ENGINEER is to design and build  a product that produces stellar measurement on the LIMITED SET OF MEASUREMENTS USED TO TEST AUDIO GEAR.

Great measurements will only establish 1 thing:

The product was designed to be a mainstream poster-child, most likely without any respect on how it sounds. If it measures absolutely perfectly: RED LIGHT, RUN AWAY!

Every amplifier and loudspeaker designer (worth his salt) will agree with the words above...

These measurements tell us these two things, and absolutely nothing more:

1. The equipment is functioning according to design parameters.

2. The equipment has been SPECIAL TUNED TO EXCEL AT THESE MEASUREMENTS. Excelling at certain measurements is EASY with certain tricks (eg loops of feedback). Yet, using such tricks skews other performance parameters, that ARE NOT MEASURED as pat of the standard measurement sets, yet still COUNT. We are routinely testing maybe 1-5% of all the parameters that are needed for accurate sound reproduction, and eve those measurements are MASSIVELY FLAWED. For example, we test how an amplifier drives a resistor, which has very little to nothing to do with how it drives a loudspeaker!

If an amplifier measures perfectly it means that the product is a PERFECT PRECISION HEATER. However, tells next to NOTHING about its sonic virtues.

May have to rename the site Audiokarens.

It's a measurement. It has no emotion. Amir didn't call your favorite piece of audio equipment ugly, the measurement did.

I ordered a pair of the Fiio 5 IEMs that he reviewed with very low distortion. So far I am impressed. I have also owned tube amps. I liked them too. I am not emotionally attached to any of it.

The acoustic engineer who did my listening room took a ton of measurements. It sounds fantastic. Well worth the money.

His measurements seem competent. Not scientific lab quality but competent. It's unemotional. It just is. I am sure many of you have been in a room where the person said "this sounds great" and you were thinking "this sounds awful". Do you need another person's opinion that is not your own? Why does Amir's opinion matter so much?

Let it go.

I personally find some of the measurements fascinating on speakers and headphones/IEMs. It is interesting to see the measurements and try to relate that to what I hear. They got me into equalizing headphones and IEMs too. What a difference!

Great post! thanks very much...

In conclusion, how can what we hear be measured? In medieval times the minor chords were knows as the Devils Chord because of the feeling it evoked. How can the feelings of emotion that music brings that be measured?

https://aleteia.org/2018/10/25/a-medieval-forbidden-musical-sequence-the-devil-in-music-or-the-devils-chord/

Making decisions solely on measurements is akin to judging meals only on salt content. If they have to the same salt content they must taste the same right?

My favorites are the anti tube guys saying they don’t want distortion in their system. Unless you are listening to a tone generator the distortions are what allow you to determine if the same note is coming from a trumpet or clarinet. Distortions are what cause the tonal differences between the same instruments.

Measurements are guidelines not rules of superiority. Steve Deckert at Decware is designing a new 300b amp. (I guess a two year wait just isn’t enough) He talks about his design process and while a specified circuit provides the proper current and voltage it doesn’t necessarily sound good, There is an art to this that measurements can’t provide.

In conclusion, how can what we hear be measured?  In medieval times the minor chords were knows as the Devils Chord because of the feeling it evoked. How can the feelings of emotion that music brings that be measured?

https://aleteia.org/2018/10/25/a-medieval-forbidden-musical-sequence-the-devil-in-music-or-the-devils-chord/

@russ69 ..."One camp thinks they are finished after the measurements take place and the other camp starts going to work after that point."

Exactly. I too see it as a starting point for the designers with a different passion. Those who design, refine, and iterate until they truly reach engaging sound. Once they get there, it can actually measure a little worse and sound better, or only to those with open minds and ears, setting the graphs aside for a moment to listen more.

Electrical measurements are important for the DESIGNER of the product...Less so for the listener who cannot interpret anyway most electrical measures...

Acoustical measurement are way more important for the LISTENER in his room...Alas! way less important sometimes for many designers...But some designer know acoustic for sure, the best one...

Confusing the two  situations with the same word: " measurement" then means nothing...

One man’s treasure is sometimes trash for everyone else ...

Measurements are certainly important, but I don’t think they tell the entire story.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

But if you’re looking for accuracy in terms of audio fidelity, I think measurements are very important.

Measurements are certainly important, but I don't think they tell the entire story.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

But if you're looking for accuracy in terms of audio fidelity, I think measurements are very important.

So as far as the designer is concerned, the listening part is almost academic nowadays.

I think that is the way mass market audio is designed. It is designed to a cost bracket and a specification requirement. But I understand for quality audio gear that is only the starting point and extensive listening tests are conducted and the component values are changed not to perfect the specifications but to make the product sound right. And that is where the two camps diverge. One camp thinks they are finished after the measurements take place and the other camp starts going to work after that point. 

Let both worlds exist. Let the arguments continue to play out. Hope that laws aren’t passed that make it a crime to submit to one side or the other. I see the bumper stickers now. "Love a tube amp. Go to jail.".

It's hard to imagine Amir grasping the beauties of tube amplification.

Bingo! I would take it a step further. I don’t think we will ever be able to “fully align our perceptions with measured performance”. And, you know what? I like it that way. Notice how there is always one very important word missing from these discussions, particularly on the part of the objectivists: MUSIC.

How does one quantify the reason that one drummer can lay down a fantastic groove; while another sounds accurate, but like a machine? Or, the sense that he and the bass player are in total musical sync, as opposed to in their own musical universes? Or, the subtle, but crucial feeling of tension, like a coiled spring, that an orchestra’s string section brings to the performance of a musical passage when they make a beautiful and seamless crescendo from ppp to fff ? What measurements exist that explain the perception of these very real things? And, aren’t these things what ultimately make the listening experience enjoyable? As in music, those are the things of the ART of audio electronic design; some designers have it and way too many don’t.

Great post  indeed that reflect also my experience...

Thanks

I guess for some folks, having a super-precise instrument/piece of gear is of more importance than how it sounds.

As long as each side respects the other, seems equally valid to me, though I'm into sounds myself, not measurements. 

Acoustic sound experience is subjectively registered FIRST and studied with objective measured implementation only after that...

Musical interpretation CANNOT be tought to an artificial Intelligence why?

Because it take a body rooted in the earth soil to make music meaningful experience...

Without a living heart sound cannot be an emotion... An emotion dont live in time but GENERATE his own time into the body metabolism by the way...

In acoustic and psycho-acoustic we not only try to replicate human hearing up to a point, but we study what make human hearing IRREPRODUCIBLE in the phenomenon called musical interpretation and perception...

Measuring gear and thinking that it is valuable to pick a piece of gear without listening to it is pathetical move...Ignorance to the third power...

😁😊

Physics is born with music and Pythagorean school in Greek time...There is no objective descritption and explanation of tonal playing perception even now...

And the geometer Fields medallist Alain Connes just connected music, primes numbers distributions and the deepest mysteries of quantum physics together...

And someone think that we can reduce sound experience to few measured tools? and what about music experience which even transcend sound itself ? why?

Because say Alain Connes "music"  reflect the non commutative geometry behind TIME experience itself...What is this source of diversities and variations behind time? it is a moving consciousness out of time...Emotion generate his OWN time out of time...

The musical tone scale is non commutative...

Musical time and tempo cannot be measured by a clock BY DEFINITION...

It is the reason by Valery Gergiev say that no one succeeded to imitate Furtwangler tempi...They emerge from music they are not put over the notes externally by a mechanical clock.....These tempi cannot be measured they only can be feeled in a body resonance effect... Call it ectasy or emotions...

Then Amir disciples are deluded crowd to the extreme... They are separed from reality by three qualitative gap: sound experience....music experience.... spiritual experience...When we listen we reunite these three gaps in one body/emotion

Anybody can hear but we must learn to listen....

OP,

Yes, good observation. I have managed technical people all my life. As one example, programmers… they love to program… so if you are not careful… as soon as they hear what is wanted… they happily roll up their sleeves and start programming, only to later find out they really didn’t fully understand what the requirements were. This is one aspect… doing what he likes to do. Well, many engineers love to measure things and make pretty charts. Amir loves this view into the world of electronics. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t reflect how equipment sounds.

Second, I have worked with hundreds of electrical engineers, they tend to think (I’m sorry) they know it all and that the real world conforms to their technical understanding of it. So, they simply refuse to believe the charts do not tell all. Engineers tend to be really stubborn in this.

So, add the two together and you get Amir’s site. It sounds logical, the charts are pretty. He is having a great time showing how full of bunk the audio world is. 

This is one of the reason that good audio designers are fairly rare.

Some engineers don't listen or want to. Many are in it only in it for the specs, not the music. The special designers with golden ears are a rare breed any more.  

@nonoise :

Those of the "measurements are the only thing that matters" crowd have their own agenda

More like a marketing tool, a sales pitch. No different than other sales pitch.

I don't even want to entertain what motivates them

At the top of the list.... money. As with everything in life. Right below, my guess is, things like ego, fame, popularity.

Measurements are for designers to ensure that a component works to specification and to improve on areas where they feel that those degrade audio quality.

All measurements are objective but have credit and a meaning only when comparing apples to apples but even then do not show the whole story.

We the rest judge by experience and that is what drives this hobby since its birth.

John Atkinson measured the Border Patrol dac that Herb Reichert reviewed, who found it to sound magnificent. John found that it did not measure well. I’m not certain if he even gave it a listen. I believe he was bewildered as to what Herb heard. Anyhow, that is just one example. There are countless reviews both individual consumers and pro reviewers that found that the Sphinx integrated V1-V3 sounds terrific. So, unless lots and lots of people have awful hearing or frequently suffer hallucinations, then it must sound pretty darn good. I'm actually contemplating buying a V3, not that I need one. Herb mentions in his review of the V3, that it is destined to be a classic, just like the NAD 3020....

Welcome to the world of "alternative facts" folks. It's been happening for some time now. People with an agenda will resort to all manner of lies and deception to win over the unwashed masses. 

Those of the "measurements are the only thing that matters" crowd have their own agenda  (I don't even want to entertain what motivates them). They claim that measurements are the final arbiter of truth. That there is no higher learning and that it's absolute, nothing higher or better to judge by. Hogwash. 

As time goes on, there will be better ways of measuring and knowing what to measure, instead of relying on some biblical electrical codex, like they were stone tablets brought down from on high. They've framed the argument that way as it's something we can all innately relate to, but it's a very faulty premise. Too bad it's developed as large a cult following as it has but that's human nature: to belong to something larger than yourself, and as we all know, we don't make mistakes, do we? 😄

All the best,
Nonoise

If distortion is < then 1% and signal to noise > 90dB it is worth a listen for me 😀

I don't think anyone gets offended by measurements. I do think people get offended when the measurement crowd poops in their subjective (read: personal preferences) enjoyment of music and good audio by declaring placebo, hallucination, "prove it to me", double blind test, evidence, and that kind of stuff.

People shouldn’t get so offended by measurements. Especially audiophiles who are supposedly more in the know. It makes one sound insecure. Without measurements there would be nothing to judge. Zealots on the other side of the fence would be well advised to take a chill pill too.

Of course nothing will change as usual. People love to rant and declare how wrong everyone else is.  That’s it in a nutshell. 

@russ69

Can anybody provide some insight to why some people are stuck on audio measurements?

Because this is the way that the equipment we all love so much has been designed and built for decades and decades now.

We can trace this lineage way back to the likes of the great Peter Walker (legendary Quad designer) who claimed he didn’t need to listen to an amp to guage how it sounded if he could just see how it measured.

This was over 60 years ago.

So as far as the designer is concerned, the listening part is almost academic nowadays.

Quality control, when it’s actually done, is carried out by measurements and not by listening.

I hope this goes some way towards answering your question.

No one is saying that the consumer cannot make their buying decision on listening alone, certainly not Amir of ASR, but subjective listening is a completely different thing from objectively building something to perform as accurately as possible.

Unless accuracy is important to you, you can simply ignore factual data as you wish. That’s your choice.

It certainly would be a shame if your previous enjoyment of the Rogue Sphinx V3 is spoilt by factual data, but unfortunately that’s how many of us tend to behave that way.

I used to mainly buy equipment based on largely subjective reviews and that hardly ever worked out either.

This is the risk you took by heading over to the ASR website review. Amir is in the business of telling it like he sees it, based on concrete measurement far more than opinionated listening, and many of us are grateful for that.

In any case, here is a link for anyone who wants to read the original review.

So, I head over to AVS and read Amir's review

the website known as ASR and Amir himself

My bad, I am referring to ASR not AVS but they are both of the same ilk. 

One theory is as good as the next I guess. You can manufacture conspiracies and ulterior motives in everything if you want to. Personally, I go for the simplest explanation first. All the measurement guys are telling you is that the product has poor measurements. OK. Thanks for the information. I’ll take it from here. 

What the OP is stating is that the website known as ASR and Amir himself, are both severely out of balance. Dangerously out of balance. This was announced via the stated point of Amir ’not actually listening to the given DUT’. (device under test)

There is a chance he did it purposely as a dig, as a poorly veiled spitting upon, as it were. Monkey talk. Purposeful escalation.

Importantly, one who does not use measurements at all, is also ’potentially’ out of balance.

’Potentially’ as they must understand that measurements DO count for something, even if that given gauge (ie, tool) or measurement system is not fully connected to the ear/brain aspects, as it is all currently understood. Ie, that we argue it, meaning it is not at all clear - as question and answer sets may go.

Discussion of realities begets solutions, which, to possibly bother some, via saying it... is why Musk is trying to buy Twitter. To prevent further slide into fascist psychological gaming ideology - being practiced upon us, via the window of Twitter. To enable actual discussion, not the current psychological manipulative directive where social media is being sculpted into being a hammer - by forces not recognized by the masses.

We’ve already seen the response, it is swift and outsized, which denotes panic. Which is inherently dangerous. Those who feel threat will commit to wild dangerous swings.

Didn’t you get the memo?

@rodman99999

Today, if you dare to believe what your eyes, ears, mind and bank account tell you; there MUST be something wrong with YOU!

Those, "authorities" are there to protect you from your faulty senses, broken/misguided mind and the dangers of things like facts, truth and whatever else they might find discomfiting, at the moment (their b_tch de jour).

Just get in line, do and believe what you’re told, like good little sheeple.

An excellent summation as to where we currently in many instances. Many other  terrific and on the bullseye comments here. There's hope after all. 

Charles

Great comments!

**** I think that in the not too distant future we are going to learn that there are many dimensions of our perception that don’t align with current systems of measured performance. ****

Bingo! I would take it a step further. I don’t think we will ever be able to “fully align our perceptions with measured performance”. And, you know what? I like it that way. Notice how there is always one very important word missing from these discussions, particularly on the part of the objectivists: MUSIC.

How does one quantify the reason that one drummer can lay down a fantastic groove; while another sounds accurate, but like a machine? Or, the sense that he and the bass player are in total musical sync, as opposed to in their own musical universes? Or, the subtle, but crucial feeling of tension, like a coiled spring, that an orchestra’s string section brings to the performance of a musical passage when they make a beautiful and seamless crescendo from ppp to fff ? What measurements exist that explain the perception of these very real things? And, aren’t these things what ultimately make the listening experience enjoyable? As in music, those are the things of the ART of audio electronic design; some designers have it and way too many don’t.