Because you "have been measuring" while Nelson and Viktor built tons of gear people love, buy and keep for years. For some reason I trust their engineering chops more than yours. Why is that?

Why do you trust anyone?  You are buying a product, not the person.  It is not like Nelson is going to come to your house with that amplifier.  He has built a product that competes with thousands of others.  He doesn't provide an ounce of reliable information as to why his amplifiers are better sounding.  He wants you to believe that they do and you do.  Countless fellow audiophiles are yours who read ASR want reliable information and measurements give that to them.  They also want to learn the underlying science and engineering which again, ASR provides.

In contrast, you seem to be wanting people to buy products just because of someone's reputation.  Which you are welcome to do but then don't ask me to tell you who you are.

Why are you even here?

You are in a thread that is specifically about ASR and how a company attempted to shut down my evaluation of their product and that of another reviewer.  Instead of commenting on that and defending the right of free press, some of you have drifted into misinformation and insults about me and work I do.  So once in a while I answer when I get a notification about this thread and me being mentioned. 

BTW, in your personal gear you list Levinson and not your "top measuring" gear. Why is that? How do they say at MSFT? Eat your own dogfood? Oh and what were great achievement of "Digital Media" at Microsoft? Like... none? Refusal to support lossless perhaps? Inability to even make a decent media player? 

On your first question, I bought a great system some 15 years ago before I started measuring anything.  The most important part of my system is Revel Salon 2 speakers.  When John Atkinson of Stereophile was asked which speaker he likes after hundreds he had tested, he said Revel Salon 2, mentioning that "he almost cried when he had to return them."

My DAC has since been upgraded from Mark Levinson to Topping.

The amplifiers remain Mark Levinson. They produce 500 watts into 8 ohm and nearly twice as much into 4 ohm.  I need the power to drive the rather insensitive Salon 2 and other speakers I test.  Had I not own them, I would not buy them however and instead, would get a Hypex based amplifier.

Finally, on Microsoft, products my team designed have shipped in billions of products and I don't just mean Windows.  Whenever you watch video and your bandwidth drops and so does the fidelity of the stream, that is technology we invented in the company we sold to Microsoft to adapt stream quality to bandwidth.  We were pioneers in streaming, for which, I was proud to receive the 3rd Emmy award for technologies developed in my team:

 

 

Any more off-topic comments you have that you want me to address?

I don’t doubt someone enjoyed it and, as I said, I thought the SMSL DACs were just fine, but the D90 III sounded like poo to me. I compared the D90 III directly against the SMSL SU-9 Pro, VWV D1se2 and even a Yamaha RX-A8A. In theory, they should have all sounded exactly alike, but they were only ’similar’ with their own noticeable faults.

No. In theory and practice, you are assured to perceive differences between them! This is the nature of sighted testing where your brain is working differently in such comparisons.

They would sound the same, gosh I can’t believe I have to keep saying this, if you matched levels, conducted the test blind, and repeated. Until you do this, you are going to produce random outcomes. Measurements can never predict what your eyes and brain are doing. Only what your ear will capture. Until you focus the comparison to your ears alone, that is the outcome you are going to get.

I can tell you story after story of thinking two things were different when it turned out to be identical.

On AVS Forum, some post a test of lossy audio and original CD. Test was blind. Everyone voted privately to the person organizing it. I listened and found two files to sound the same so voted that way. Results were posted later indicating I was "wrong." And a famous "engineer" who mixed movie soundtracks had gotten it right.

Puzzled, I go and do a binary comparison between the files. I find them to be identical to the last bit! I go to the test organizer and tell him this. He can’t believe it and not accepting it. I explain the results and he goes and checks. And finds out that he had mistakenly uploaded the same file twice! He declared the test invalid.

Meanwhile the "engineer" is furious and insisting that this can’t be. He was so sure of his golden ear abilities. Yet he had voted two identical files differently. Why? Because he was told they were different.

Here it is if you want to check (post #3):

"Thus, I’ve had to re-render the files from the compressed versions back out to 16bit .wav. Doing that, it appears the Tracks 1 and 2 are BOTH the 192Kbps encoded files. Track 3 is correct in that it is the 320Kbps encode, and Track 4 is correctly labeled as the 192Kbps & compressed/boosted track.

[...]

Specific thanks to Amir for speaking up to make sure accuracy prevailed, even though my bad results actually tended to make his company’s codec look even better than it was.

Again with sincere apologies, thanks everybody for your efforts thus far. Sorry to have blown it after the anticipation build up."

I am not posting this to brag about my ability to detect the duplicate. I too could have picked them as different. The main point is that no amount of self-qualification means anything until you are formally tested where we can check answers. Your experience is just an anecdote. If you want it to be a reliable outcome to use as an argument here, you must follow proper procedure to make it so.

Finally, if everyone’s listening tests results are right, my experience with Topping DACs is that they sound superb and transparent. No way, no how would I remotely agree with your assessment. My experience can be backed with measurement and audio science. Yours are easily invalidates using the same.

So I beg you to conduct a blind test and determine for real how those products sound.

 

I'm happy to call out Apos, an authorized seller for those DACs.  Nowhere on their sales pages nor listings do they mention their refurbs are "final sale items." 

Refurbished?  Why are we talking about refurbished products?

Here is their FAQ on returns of new products:

"We recognize the importance of a customer-friendly return policy for audio products. We want to make sure you have plenty of time to test the equipment in a comfortable environment with music that you love before making the commitment.

If you are not satisfied with your purchase, feel free to request RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) within 45 days of the delivery of the order."

That is darn good return policy, better than Amazon.

Compare that to a power cable I bought from GR Research:

"Company advertising says that you can try the cable out and if you don't like it, you can return it and "get your money back." Close look shows that you are responsible for shipping it back, the cost of shipping it to you and unknown credit card charges. I paid $40 for shipping for 2-day service ($25 for standard ground). So if I ship it back the same way, I will likely incur some $80. For this much money, could have bought a dozen ordinary AC cables. So much for money back guarantee. "

Indeed I got hit with those fees.  Worse yet, company no longer accepts returns on these products:

"

Custom Orders (Finished cables, cabinets, and speakers)

(Applies to all orders placed on or after August 11)

All fully completed cables, finished cabinets, and speakers are all custom built to order.

• Full-refunds are only possible if cancelled within 24- hours.  (standard 3% cancellation fee still applies)
• Partial Refund: Once assembly has begun on your order, only a partial refund is possible up, to the remaining cost of labor and materials at time of cancellation.
• No refunds OR cancellations at, or after, the time of completion/delivery."

 

What happens if the unit dies after the return window?

A few choices. Post on ASR Forum as reps from all of these companies are active there.  And members may have experiences of the same.  Due to large volume of products shipped from these companies, you will get far more relevant answers than some boutique company that sells 100 DACs a year.

Second choice is to buy a replacement for $200 or even less if you just need unbalanced.

Third option is to send it back to the reseller for repair.  Yes, in some cases this will take a long time as the product would have to go to China.  But again, note that there is essentially no repair of any high-end audio product outside of the country that it is sold.  

Sterile shrill class D + sterile Revel could launch you into a whole new level of sterile...you could quickly become a sterile ASR necromonger.

Class D has never been sterile.  That reputation came from people judging products with their eyes and lack of engineering background than proper sound evaluation.

Class D amps have to have a post filter to get rid of the carrier frequency.  That filter will have a rising impedance with respect to frequency, causing it to interact with the speaker's impedance.  Result is that the high frequency response of the speaker would change, either tilted up or down, together with potential for ringing.  Note that tube amps that have high output impedance do the same thing except they do so across the spectrum. 

There were also non-linearities in class D amps due to dead time in switching transistors.

Then comes the genius Bruno Putzeys who designed the Hypex amplifiers some 10 to 15 years ago.  He put the output post filter into the feedback loop, and thereby nullifying its effect.  He also added more gain which allowed it to in turn have more feedback, linearizing the response to near state of the art.

Fast forward a decade and he partnered with Lars Risbo and Peter Lyngdorf and created Purifi amplifiers.  These worked to push distortion and noise even lower, bringing them very close to Benchmark AHB2 class G amplifier.

Purifi folks were kind enough to send me their very first review sample, the Purifi 1ET400A amplifier. 

This thing is compact and weighs like it too.  You can easily pick it up with one hand.  Check out how low the distortion is:

 

It is also incredibly quiet although there are a couple of other amps that are even better:

 

It is not super powerful but still:

 

I know, I know... You don't care about measurements.  So let's look at reviews of this amplifier covered by a site that caters to you all: Soundstage Hifi: 

"I began evaluating the Eigentakt when I used it in May to review the Magico A1 minimonitors ($7400/pair). Before hooking up the Eigentakt, I’d been using a pair of Constellation Audio Revelation Taurus monoblocks -- massive amps that cost $40,000/pair, are specified to each output up to 500W into 8 ohms or 1000W into 4 ohms, and sound outstanding. "

[...]

"I found that the Eigentakt was not only powerful enough to drive the A1s -- it sounded as good as the Constellations. As I wrote in my review, “almost nothing about the A1s’ sound had changed -- the tonal balance was the same, the highs were just as extended and the midrange just as pure, voices were equally robust, bass just as extended, and the soundstaging and imaging were exactly as before.” What’s more, I also thought that if there were any differences in the sounds, they “were at best slight and, surprisingly, favored the Purifi.” 

On noise level he says:

"Nor did the Eigentakt functionally disappoint. When I first turned it on, by flicking the main power switch on its backside and pressing Standby on the front panel, I heard no trace of noise or hum from the speakers. The ring around the Standby button glowed red, but still I wondered if the power was on. I held one ear close to the tweeter of one A1 and heard only a faint hiss. At that point, the EMM Labs DAC and preamp were also in circuit and powered up -- when I turned them off, the hiss got even fainter. I had to put my ear almost on the tweeter to hear anything at all. The Eigentakt is one quiet amp."

Precisely as measurements predicted.

He gets a second opinion:

"

After completing my review of the Magico A1, I traveled to the UK to shoot some videos for our YouTube channel, and lent the review sample of the Eigentakt to fellow reviewer Diego Estan, who hooked it up to his McIntosh Laboratory C47 preamp-DAC ($4500). Diego had exactly the same experience I had. When he first powered up the Purifi and Mac, he was startled to hear only a faint hiss from the tweeter of one of his Focal Sopra No1 speakers -- a hiss that grew fainter still when he switched off the preamp. Diego admires superquiet components -- he really liked that aspect of the Eigentakt.

He then compared the Eigentakt to his McIntosh MC302 stereo power amp ($5500, 300Wpc into 8, 4, or 2 ohms), and found them sonically indistinguishable -- their tonal balances were identical, and he didn’t think he heard any more or less detail with either."

He concludes thusly:

"I was bowled over by the Purifi Eigentakt’s sound and operation. It turned on silently, made almost no noise, provided more than enough power while generating hardly any heat, and passed music through so transparently, at volume levels from low to high, that it left me in near disbelief that so small a box could accomplish so much. Diego Estan had the same experience. In fact, I like the Eigentakt so much that I want to keep it here permanently, to review speakers with and to compare with other amps, particularly those based on Purifi 1ET400A modules. It will be interesting to hear if any of the latter improve on the Eigentakt’s sound."

So objective and subjectively your comments are wrong.  Class D amplifiers that I recommend are superb.  Absolutely superb.  They not only sound great, they don't heat up your house, don't break your back carrying them, and don't take much space in your system.  With a number of companies packaging them in nice boxes and selling direct, they easily put many high-end amplifiers to shame across the board.

Macro/micro? You ignored this last time? 

There is no such thing.  These are made up terms by audiophiles with zero knowledge of audio science and engineering.  No different than PRAT and other nonsense terms like it.  So don't ask me about it. 

Please show us the hundreds of double blind tests done over a long time with hundreds of subjects that prove this....please...please....please. 

That is like you claiming aliens landing in your backyard every night and when I say that can't be true, you want testimonials from "hundreds" of people to prove they can't see them!

Instead of asking for hundreds of tests, you should do one test to prove you can hear the difference in a proper way where only your ears are involved.  Here is an example of ASR member doing a blind test of DACs :

"I am sharing my experience with my first ABX testing. Last Friday me, together with a friend performed a double blind test on this systems:

1) Chord Dave + Upscaller from Chord2Go+2U - headphone output
2) Topping D90 + A90 from a laptop
3) Chord Mojo headphone output from Iphone.
4) Apple lightning 3.5mm adapter, output from Iphone.

[...]

Result.. We could not tell the difference reliably between the systems. Which is.. proving either that we are both deaf or audio fools. We are repeating the test this Friday, I will post update if I can still type though my tears. Silly enough I can 100% reliably say which one is better when I see what system is connected."

Who was the member here that said Topping sounds terrible?  

For a fraction of time it takes to keep posting here, you could transform your knowledge of audio fidelity by conducting one controlled blind test.  Many have and enjoyed the benefits.  

I get that living in the Matrix can be nice. But ultimately it is not real...

 

The fact is.....we have not figured out how to measure what the ear hears.

How do you know that?  List all the literature/books you have read on the topic.

 

I’ve briefly taken a look at some online reviews for budget Tekton speakers from ASR and Youtube. Both are based on Klippel quasi-anechoic measurements to achieve "in-room" simulations.

Your intro is incorrect. Klippel Near-field scanner produces full anechoic measurements of the speaker. It is not at all "quasi." In my testing, it uses over 1000 measurement points to then solve the radiation patter of the speaker. In addition, it makes a secondary set of scans which using phase analysis, allows it to extract all effects of the room reflections. The output then is fully anechoic down to lowest frequencies -- something you can’t even do with any realistic anechoic chamber (most stop being anechoic below 80 Hz or so). There is a reason the equipment costs $100K.

 

b - Baffle step - As popularized and researched by the late, great Jeff Bagby, the effects of the baffle on the output need to be included in any whole speaker/room simulation, which of course also means the speaker should have this built in when it is not a near-wall speaker. I don’t know enough about the Klippel simulation, but if this is not included you’ll get a bass-lite expereinced compared to real life. The effects of baffle compensation is to have more bass, but an overall lower sensitivity rating.

As I explained above, Klippel NFS fully computes the 3-D sounfield of a speaker.  It does NOT suffer from baffle step issues you mention.  Stereophile measurements though, have this error and hence the reason you routinely see a false bass hump in their frequency response graphs.

Please watch this tutorial video to get proper understanding of ASR speaker measurements:

 

The ASR crowd was probably never much of a market for his speakers, and as we can see here, lots of people are not very impressed with the way ASR does reviews.

That is a misstatement.  Tekton advertises the M-Lore has having very linear (flat) response which would definitely appeal to ASR membership:

 

Problem is that it doesn't deliver on that:

 

But you are right that if Eric Alexander had stuck to the story that measurements don't matter, all would be well. Instead, he complained about the measurements so here we are.

One ASR review spends an amazing amount of time and effort analyzing the ~$800 US Tekton M-Lore. That price compares very favorably with a full Seas A26 kit from Madisound, around $1,700. I mean, not sure these inexpensive speakers deserve quite the nit-picking done here.

There is no attempt at "nit-picking."  You can't analyze a speaker properly without the full suite of measurements I show from various frequency responses to distortion and directivity.  Only then you have a picture of a speaker performance and can compare it to others.

Believe me, I would love to take shortcuts given how much work it is to test a speaker but I can't.

Running the same set of measurements also eliminates the accusation of bias.  Everything is tested the same way regardless of who makes it, how much it costs, etc.

Finally, $800 is fair bit of money for a speaker.  Even if i were inclined to reduce the number of test, it would be for something far cheaper.

But I agree regarding the culture over at ASR and Amir.  He came into the Roon forum to debate Michal Jurewicz from Mytek.  Some of the other members became involved and Amir was quite arrogant and condescending.

Far more people appreciated my posts than anything from Michal.  He would keep repeating the same marketing stories without a single fact backing them.  I was impressed to see Roon members not appreciate that and valuing specific data, references, etc. that demonstrated his claims to be wrong. 

"Arrogance" in my view is claiming something and demanding to be believed.  I never do that.

I just don’t see the value in a site that constantly throws shade on high end gear. IMHO

I have no such position on high-end gear. My speakers alone cost $25,000 a pair. Give me the performance and you can charge whatever you want. Give me poor performance and charge a lot of money and we show data to demonstrate that. The choice is that of manufacturer.

Now, if you value status and marketing of audio products more than fidelity, then sure, we are at odds with your goals.

I think that ASR has chosen an extreme stance not for any particular reason except to incite an even greater amount of tribalism in this hobby.

Nope.  The "stance" I have taken is follow proper science and engineering.  This uses to be the norm in 1970s and 1980s.  Sometime later, folks started to abandoned this and instead, started to tell stories about products.  Audiophiles bought them and this allowed the market to deliver all manner of products that when tested, don't seem to perform.  Instead of doing their best to produce high fidelity gear, a lot of audio companies rely completely on marketing and informercials pretending to be reviews.

As consumers, you need to be more critical and ask for proof.  Don't equate expense with fidelity.  That equation has long been thrown out the door.

 

1. How does a given measurement translate into something I might be able to hear (or perceive), and what words would I use for the subjective experience?

At the risk of stating the obvious, frequency response variations of a speaker are pretty audible.  Too much bass would bring boominess.  Too much treble would sound bright.  Midrange can cause vocals to become forward or recessed.

Traditional frequency response measurements only showed direct/on-axis sound.  Across some 40 years of research, we have learned that reflections (off-axis) sounds contribute to the tonality that we hear and hence, also help set preference.  As such, we want to see speakers that have off-axis response that is similar to on axis.  A standardized set of measurement axis exist that makes such analysis easier (so called CEA/CTA-2034). 

Measurements can also tell you optimal listening angles, both vertically and horizontally.

Further, the beam width or amount of spread you get at mid to high frequencies can predict whether the soundstage will be more diffused and wider, or more pinpoint.  

Harder to assess are distortion measurements although all else being equal, you do want a speaker with less distortion.  Ultimately though, I use my ear to determine the level of impairment here with specialized music tracks that stress speakers, especially in bass and sub-bass where they have most distortion.

Finally, things like impedance measurement together with speaker sensitivity tell us how easy it is to drive the speaker, how much power you may need, etc.

All in all, speaker measurements are about 70 to 80% instructive.  As such, I recommend using them to weed out the bad products and create a short list to listen and select from.  We do however have many who buy by measurements alone and have had great success.

The problem I have with ASR and its followers is the routine contempt heaped on anyone with a different POV from ASR gospel. 

We are not a church and don't have gospel.  We follow establish audio science and engineering.  And rely on what we can prove.

If you say there are qualities in a speaker wire that can't be measured, then we are at odds with each other.  This violates both factors above.

Contrary to claims of people, we hugely value listening tests.  We just ask that they be bias controlled for the same reasons.  This means anecdotal statements that this and that sounds better to your "ear" while you had your eyes wide open, don't get a positive reception.

Mind you, you can have all of these views and be just fine in ASR.  We have plenty of subjectivists that way.  The issue comes up is when you take on the membership and try to tell them how it is done.  Naturally you get strong pushback. But that is something you are bringing onto yourself.

For one ASR imo has no credibility ,there are tons of youngsters that know -0 about real time experiences ,and the way they measure.

I suspect the feeling is mutual.  BTW, I am older than many of you .  While I appreciate being called "youngster," I got my degree in early 1980s....

a perfect example I had mentioned for the money how good the Denafrips Terminator 2 dac was for the money ,and they are giving a comparison just how much better the $800 Topping measured , sonically the Denafrips is light years better sounding, and I ripped into them and all their childish antics . Myself have been an Audiophile-over 40 years and travel and listen to a lot-of gear ,and having-owned a audio store for a decade I have a pretty good grasp on sonics and reality .

If in all of those 40 years, you had spent just one day doing a listening test blind, you would have been so much better off from that moment on.  But no, you allowed your eyes and brain to interfere.  And with it, arrived at the wrong conclusion, leading to wasting money left and right on things like that Denafrips DAC.

As to having an audio store, a friend of mine (older than you) co-founded *the* high-end audio store(s) in this area.  He sold his shares all of a sudden and I asked why.  He said his conscious wouldn't allow him to keep selling things that he knew had no merit audibly.  

I used to buy gear from their stores.  They would always try to sell me cables at the end of the transaction.  I would always tell them that I would take the cables if they were free.  They would immediately discount the cost of the equipment by that amount and give me the cables then for nothing!  That is how I have collected a full suite of Transparent Audio Cables.

Don't get me started on ASR...

Just as one example of their flawed way of evaluating gear:

They reviewed one GR Research's budget stand mount speakers, but all they did was measure it and listen to one speaker.

Oh you mean this "giant" disaster of a speaker?  

That little 4 inch surplus woofer Danny is using produced the most horrible sound possible.  Naturally due to its extremely small size and lack of excursion.  To call that a hi-fi speaker would be a huge stretch.  To call it Little Giant Killer is science fiction.

As to mono listening you better start doing that as that is the most sensitive type of speaker testing you can do.  I have a video on that:

 

As if things like: imaging, soundstage, ambience retrieval don't exist. 

If a speaker is colored, or distorts like hell, I wouldn't care about those factors.  That aside, much of what you talk about is in the content and has little to do with the speaker itself.  Pan an instrument to the left.  Even the crappiest speaker will demonstrate that.  Spatial effects are also quite obvious in mono listening.

"I suppose I do not get the point of this thread. Once a speaker is placed and set up in a typical listening room, all bets are off, no matter what measurements were used in the design of them."

Above transition frequencies of a few hundred hertz, speaker dominates.  Yes, there are secondary such as reflections but we have a good model to represent them in measurements as well.  See this standard CEA-2034 measurement in every speaker review I do:

 

 

We can even predict the response with decent accuracy in a room:

In bass domain, the room dominates almost independent of the speaker.  So there, you must have a strategy for dealing with room modes, again, independent of what speaker you use.

"Is the amp class A or A/B, how many watts in class a?

It is well proven that components that have measured bad sound very good and vice versa. This goes for this guys measurements and stereophiles. 
Your ears are the best instruments to use when evaluating audio components."

It doesn't matter what class an amplifier is. It is all in the implemention/engineering.

And no, it is not remotely proven that badly measuring devices sound better.  At best, they sound the same if the impairments are not bad enough for listening to hear.  

Your ears can be very useful in assessing fidelity but not when you involve your other senses such as eyes, and sources of bias.  Even when there are provable, audible differences, these sources of bias dominate outcome of listening tests.  Without controlled testing, you are just generating noise, not data.

And what if you can't listen to the device?  Those of us who know the power of measurements, can easily deal with this.  Those that don't, miss out on great audio gear.

I’m not arguing this at all. I’m just saying that, by definition, it’s quasi. :) The results may be better than anechoic, but the measurements are considered quasi.  We are estimating an anechoic response even though the measurements themselves were not done in an anechoic environment.

Nope.  There is no "estimation" going on.  Klippel NFS makes dual scans separated by fixed distance.  This allows it to then detect the direct sound vs reflected sound due to phase differential.  The reflections are then filtered computationally.  This is what makes it superior to anechoic chambers which lose that characteristics at lower frequencies.  There is nothing "pseudo" about that.

Gated measurements are called "pseudo" because they lack low frequency resolution.  That makes them an estimate that is good at mid to high frequencies but not bass.  Klippel NFS solves this problem (and with higher SNR to boot).

"Fortunately for low frequencies we have ground plane measurements, which I believe are actually anechoic... but I’ll leave that to the scientists to debate. :-)"

Ground plane measurements have sources of error.  And require stitching to the gated measurements which again, can introduce errors. 

To be sure, you can get really good results with ground plane+gated measurements but it is very tedious.  See this post from our resident expert in that field: 

 

Many of us aren’t arguing the measurements. I’m arguing that Amir and ASR have a toxic culture that permeates other audio forums with condescending tones that have been normalized and promoted at ASR.

There is absolutely nothing toxic about ASR culture.  We thrive on information and knowledge about audio products, engineering and research.  If you walk in dismissive of all that, then you will get strong pushback.  It is no different than going to your doctor, claiming to know more than him because you know your body and he doesn't.  Most doctors would throw you out of their office if you said that.  The toxicity then, is yours, not ours or your doctors.

Many days we celebrate on ASR for discovering something new.  Latest example is a DIY speaker that blew us away in its performance despite its very low cost:

The speaker not only measured great, it sounded great in my listening tests.  There is nothing but happiness as a result of this.  Someone like you coming in to pick a fight is not what we are about.  But if you engage us that way, as I mentioned in the above post, we will hand your hat to you.  Not because we shout louder but because we have the research and data on our side. If that is cause for unhappiness, then don't visit ASR.

"Just look at his image on the ASR site. A Geisha with a sneer. His intent is pretty clear with that alone."

That is no geisha.  She is a gorgeous bride getting married at a Shinto shrine in Ueno park in Tokyo:

Different couples get married every half hour there.  They put them through stock poses which is boring.  I waited for the break between pictures to capture this lovely picture of hers.  

There was no intention behind picking this picture for my Avatar other than this being one of the prized images in my photography portfolio.  It shows beauty, culture and tradition.  There is zero negativity in it much less what you are reading into it.

My intent on ASR is to bring reliable facts and data into the conversation about audio fidelity.  Many love that as evidenced by massive growth of ASR in such a short period of time.  Naturally, if your views are based on anecdotes, and stuff you have read online, and you are library of audio research and engineering is empty, you are going to see them opposed.  You are welcome to stick to your opinion but don't go making stuff up like you did above.  You get your hat handed to you that way. 😁

 

Then Amir, please reciprocate.

Amir has an opinion like anyone else.  He wraps that opinion in some pretty paper that he calls science.  His weak minded followers seem to overlook his lack of credentials and his inaccurate metrology methods.

Weak minded?  Is that the level of respect you have for your fellow audiophiles?  They better think like you or they are not worthy?

As to my background, it is in my signature on ASR: 

Pretty sure that makes me qualified to test audio gear.  Go ahead and link to the background of any subjective reviewer who you think a) has designed audio gear and b) is more qualified than me.

 

Go back to your own house and find some peace.

I am at peace.  But seemingly you all are not creating threads like this, specifically discussing ASR: "Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews"

So here I am correcting the incorrect things you say about ASR. Surely I should be able to do that. 

On your way out, tell everybody here why you were banned from every audio forum out there. 

I would if there were any truth to your statement.  Do you not consider this site an "audio forum?"  

 

Amir gets on and takes a somewhat radical position because it is not effective to be balanced. 

There is nothing radical about following science and engineering knowledge and data to determine fidelity of audio gear.  What is radical is throwing all of that out of the window and opining based on anecdotal and inaccurate personal listening tests.

In addition, when I measure something, the data speaks for itself.  There is little of "me" involved in that.

 

 I dont believe that anyone actually believes that all sonic attributes can be measured.

In all cases we can measure what comes out of your audio gear.  What to do with that data depends on what is being tested.  Take cables.  When basic engineering says they don't make a difference, and we measure and show that nothing remotely has changed that is coming out of your amplifier, then that is that.  It is impossible for there to be a sonic effect when the waveforms have not changed. 

When people don't believe that, I have done null tests with music showing that the difference between cables is zero, audibly and objectively.

Change that to speakers and there is room for subjective evaluation.  Same with headphones.  This why I listen to all of these devices when I review them.  The listening tests are formal though and not random audiophile listening.

Put another way, what we do is use multiple vectors to determine fidelity of gear.  We use measurements as data point.  Add to it psychoacoustics and engineering knowledge and if needed listening.  We then combine these to have a high confidence opinion of a product.

In contrast, there is zero value in a reviewer listening to an amplifier and opining about imaging this, tight bass that.  These are all made up notions and believing them is the closest you can come in audio to running with myths.

I truly dont care how others spend their money and certainly dont have the hubris to believe that I could know any motivations.

I don't either. This is why I have tested and recommended very expensive gear such as this Mola Mola DAC:

It costs nearly $12,000.  Doesn't matter to me.  What matters is that it is superbly engineered.

Back to motivation, you seem so comfortable to guess mine per what I quoted above so i suggest you are what you say others should not be.

Measurements will tell you nothing how a speaker will sound in your room, using your equipment, and what kind of music you listen too.

Countless formal listening tests looking at correlations between listening tests and specific set of measurements which I perform say you are wrong.

It’s been proven that some of the best sounding gear measures bad and vice versa.

This has been claimed but never shown to be true in any controlled test. Just because people keep repeating this argument doesn’t make it true. In my own experience, I either don’t hear the artifacts from poorly measuring gear or hear them as degrading fidelity. Not one time have I heard distortion and noise to be good.

I attend many audio shows and I get a feel on how the speaker will sound. If I feel these speakers will sound good in my room with my system, then I will work with the dealer or manufacturer for a 30 day trial.

I have listened to hundreds of systems at audio shows. The main thing you can learn there is how dynamic a speaker can play. Otherwise, tonality will be difficult to perceive. Home trials are pain in the neck because of size and heft of speakers to schlep or ship back and forth. Best to look at measurements and rule out the bad designs and then pick from the good ones.

 

 

 

  This Amir person (I have no idea who he is) is a gifted linguist and deploys semantics rather artfully.

No one has ever complimented me on my linguistic skills!  So thank you for that.  As to who I am, it is in my signature on every post at ASR:

Feel free to challenge me on anything science related.  Happy to provide as much detail as you can handle.  :)

Well, I just watched pieces of few ASR videos. Let me tell you, it was not easy for me. The engineer does not how to insert the power cable into the socket (needed "fifty times greater force", must have measured it obviously), doesn't know that ground pin is longer then blades on audio cables.

Nothing wrong with longer ground connection.  Or requiring more force.  The problem is having a jacket around the plug that slides forward as you push it into the socket, making it not possible for all the pins to make a connection.  This caused the cable to not even be functional until I realized what was happening!  It is all explained in my video:

 

 

 

Here is an example Amir doesn’t understand what he is measuring. 

You say that but then post a video from the company and not my review and responses.  If you watch them, you realize it is Paul who a) hasn't properly measured the product to see if it makes any difference in the output of your audio products and b) doesn't know his own product has current limiting so reduces amplifier performance.  I have done no less than three videos on this:

 

 

 

Paul is charismatic on camera and does have good knowledge of audio.  But be careful in believing everything he says.  Above is a great example.

Honest question, couldn’t we say the same about you?

It would be a HUGE compliment to say I am charismatic on camera!!! 😁

Or are there no faults with your history in audio and measurements?

I am nearing 2,000 measurements of audio gear.  Large number of major companies read ASR and participate in it.  The level of scrutiny is off the charts.  Despite all this, the number of times I have had to re-address a review can be counted on one hand.  

The reason is simple: I run the same set of tests on every product category.  The tests have been battle tested and blow away the meager or non-existent measurements from companies.  I have also been measuring audio gear for 30+ years now.  I am an electrical engineer and put myself through college repairing thousands of audio gear.  My professional experience has spanned all aspects of modern audio technologies such as streaming, networking, operating systems, embedded development, chip design, PCB and analog layouts, safety and regulatory issues, user interface, performance, to name just a few.

This doesn't mean I know everything in the world but it does qualify me quite well to be doing what I am doing.  When CEO or a company that has been removed from design for years claims that their product does X, when I measure it and it does Y, compared with my knowledge of the design and technology, then you should pay attention.  Don't be dismissive and say the opposite.

 

He's a YouTuber who uses this site to promote his, just as numerous others have done here before him. 

My youtube channel was started way after I created ASR by user requests.  Like ASR itself, it is not commercial.  Has no monetization, sponsorships or ads of any sort.  In that regard, I am NOT like any other audio youtuber or most youtubers.  Mind you, with nearly 50K subscribers, there is good money to be had but I refuse to go there.  So whether one person views my videos or a million, it doesn't make a difference to me.

They all rely on controversy and drama to whip up enthusiasm and if there's not enough excitement to generate the clicks they'll invent their own conflicts.

A lot of my videos are educational which by definition don't fall in that category.  I actually don't publish many product reviews in youtube but when I do, many are positive and without controversy.  Here is a combination of both where I talk about performance of Genelec 8050B speaker and  how to read and understand speaker measurements:

 

Videos are recorded live and uploaded with no edits.  No fancy purple lighting.  No clickbait titles, etc.

The only reason to dislike them would be because you don't like it when reliable data, science and engineering speak.  

But yes, there are a number of reviews showing poor performing gear.  Compare that to reviews on audio channels which they don't dislike anything they review.  As long as they get free loaner gear to test and drive traffic to their channel, the product is the best they have heard, punches above its weight, has darkest background, widest and deepest soundstage, sound analog, etc.  In other words, you can get an AI to write the reviews!

 

Amir hates tube amps because they measure bad, yet countless audiophiles love tubes, myself included. The guy wouldn’t pass a blind test to save his life. He needs a chart to tell him.

I both own tube amp and have passed countless blind tests:

 

 If I’m watching a magic trick, I don’t want to know how it’s done. 

Neither do I.  I don't care what is inside your gear.  All I care, and so do many of your fellow audiophiles, is that the signal that is sent to it, comes out the other end unmolested and as such, respects the content as authored.  A tube amp that has copious amount of distortion and adds coloration due to its high impedance, doesn't do that.  You can still "love" said tube amp but don't go making an argument out of it.

Does that kind of response sound like you are educating others?

Sure.  The transistor is one of the most critical inventions there is.  This site would not exit, nor the Internet without it.  It drastically reduces power consumption, shrinks the sizes of components and provides incredible fidelity that no tube product ever produced.  As if to try to be hip by being contrarians, some audiophiles have clung to tubes, hypnotized by the glowing filaments, convincing themselves that they are hearing better fidelity. 

So here I come and show how much dirt the tube amp is throwing in the signal.  And that for this privilege, you pay boatload of money to boot.  Any rational person would say what you quoted.  It is like building a car today with a steam engine and claiming it goes faster than a Porsche but when the data comes out that it accelerates at 1/100 of the rate, expect praise to be poured over said steam engine car!

Granted, that example was that of a better designed tube amp:

 

This is how it performed:

 

Why in the heck should anyone buy a tube amp when even a good example has this kind of noise and distortion?  Again, do you not have any respect for the work of the artist and engineers and produced the content?  They didn't use this amp to produce the music, right?  Why do you want to serve their food in such a dirty dish?

You simply refuse to match gear properly.

Oh.  That is like saying this is a great car but you better weigh less than 100 pounds to drive it!  It is not my job to "match" gear when I can buy huge number of other amplifiers that don't need any matching. How would matching reduces its noise and distortion?  How do you know the impedance of the amp and the impedance of the speaker to know how to match them?  Answer: you do that with measurements.  But again, why, oh why?  

There is not one controlled listening test that shows any of these tube amps to sound better.  All of the fans and companies producing tube amps have not had the wherewithal to produce just a single, ears-only test, to show that they sound better. If it is so easy to tell they sound better, why don't you produce this simple test result?

I tell you why: because you won't find the answer you are looking for.  Tube amps at best have harmless distortion.  At worst and in many cases, have clear audible noise and distortion.  In the case of tube amplifiers, that is trivially shown as they run out of power and distortion like hell.  

You want to believe in fantasies and magic?  Do that. But don't tell me this picture of fidelity:

 

Or you could have this:

 

All of the above are with dead easy to drive resistive loads by the way.  And at just 5 watts.  These tube amps are pure noise and distortion generators.  They are an insult to decades of progress in engineering to resort to them for anything other than nostalgic look.

 

@amir_asr If solid state is so much better than antiquated tube gear then why are so many manufactures still using this old science?

I will give you the answer Bob Carver gave me. As you probably know, he built his career on solid state amplifiers. And even won a challenge organized by Stereophile by making his solid state amplifier sound like a tube amp chosen by stereophile editors.

So naturally I was curious why he has been into tubes. His answer? There was too much competition in solid state space but much less so in tubes! And that tubes were more fun to design. Translation: nothing in there for an audiophile.

Sadly, his tube amps leave a lot to be desired, advertising specs that it cannot meet despite its high cost:

 

As you can see here, it has 3rd order distortion, not the beloved 2nd order:

 

And tons of mains noise for added effect.

Can’t deliver a flat response in audible band which solid state amps do in their sleep:

Worst of all, they advertise 75 watts but the thing can’t go past 29 watts.

 

This is why we measure folks. To get solid information like this as a check on manufacturer claims.

Back to your question, there is no doubt whatsoever that tubes are a marketing tool and differentiation as Bob said. You get underpowered, noisy and high distortion amplifiers and you pay a lot more for it, and have a ton of maintenance to go with it.

Folks see the glowing filaments and confuse that with "warm sound." When I listen to these amps, they are anything but warm. Turn up the volume and they get muddy and routinely bright. Exactly as the measurements predict. See this measurement of the Carver:

 

Notice how it is blowing its brains out at 20 Hz.

This is primitive technology. The fact that folks throw so much good money after bad over them, only works if you convince people to hate measurements and simple engineering explanation.

The only plausible but random benefit would be that if the high impedance of the amplifier modifies the frequency response of the speaker in the way that makes it more pleasing. That is, two bads working together to make good. Again, this is a random coincident. Better get a proper speaker and drive it with a proper solid state amplifier and get the fidelity you want. If something doesn’t sound good then, it is in your content.

Isn't it interesting Amir how you think audiophiles who look at glowing tubes in the dark are delusional, ...

Please don't make up stuff.  I never said anyone is "delusional." 

Everyone is *human.*  Humans use all of their senses and past experiences to arrive at a conclusion.  As such, someone saying this and that sounds better when the science says otherwise, requires controlled testing that isolates the sound alone.  Without it, all of us, me included, could provide totally unreliable and wrong information.  

 yet when you look at graphs, you continually convince yourself you are hearing all sorts of horrible distortion. 

Could be but if you are worried about this, how come you are comfortable making conclusions in your sighted listening?  

I don't believe you even know what you're listening to most of the time assuming you even take the time to listen in the first place. 

I am a professionally trained listener.  I listen to music many hours a day.  I perform a ton of controlled testing.  Countless reviews I do include listening tests.  Here is a recent review with listening tests: 

"ZMF Bokeh Headphone Listening Tests and Equalization
First listen impression was non offensive sound which is good in my book. I started by adding EQ to high frequencies first:

 

That quickly showed that without it, the sound was quite dull with essentially no spatial effects. There was just enough bass but I felt it could have more so put that shelf in there. And added a dip for the extra energy in upper bass. Now the bass was impressive. Note that I deviated from measurements in setting the 6 KHz lower as to avoid extra brightness.

I then sat back and listened. The sound was excellent now on every reference track I have. Bass was thunderous and clean as was the rest of the response. Spatial qualities were improved good bit and I really, really enjoyed the sound. So much so that I am listening to it while typing this."

The equalizations I develop like above routinely get tested and verified by other users and many compliment on how much better their headphones/speakers sound because of them.

I also teach how to become a trained listener as I post earlier.

 

Finally, you all have been tested formally and shown to be incredibly unreliable compared to trained listeners:

 

So if i were you, I would not bring up the topic of who knows how to listen and who doesn't.

I think most of the asr guys live in their grandmas basement and can only afford the “perfectly” measuring 100 buck topping dac so it’s better and anyone who wants more is a Moron. 

We don't think anyone is a moron.  We think they are uninformed about how their hearing really works and trust things that are not real and can be trivially shown to be the case.  Instead of listening to people who know this topic well, they walk around with fingers in the ear and brag about it too. 

Fortunately, huge number of audiophiles have enough common sense to see the value of measurements, and proper analysis of audio gear rather than believing in folklore you can't prove.  This is why ASR has over 2 million visitors a month, dwarfing traditional rags such as stereophile:

 

That aside, you have no idea what you are talking about.  My own system costs $100,000.  Just this week I tested a $12,000 processor from a member: 

I think you measured using a single frequency at steady state response at one 1KHz. 

That would be wrong.  Here is a full frequency sweep of the P12 Powerplant:

 

Full frequency sweep is performed from 20 Hz to 20 KHz.

 It might not reveal the affectiveness or deficiencess of the power plant.  

Seeing how the above measurement showed that the P12 increased noise instead of decrease it, I say your assessment is incorrect.

A better test would be using a square wave input then look at how the output follows the input square wave with different load - using high current and low current load. This would be a more difficult test than steady state.

That is still "steady state" by your definition since there is no discontinuity in the signal.  That aside, you can't have square wave as a valid audio signal since it has infinite bandwidth (Fourier Theorem).

Also make sure the partner amp that you’re using for the test is not the limiting factor. An outlaw amp probably is not really a good candidate. You probably need a better amp.

The amp was not the limiting factor if you read the review of PS Audio P12 Part 2:

Here is the amp by itself, with continuous power and burst:

 

Now see how power lowered while using the P12:

 

Both burst and continuous power reduced.  This was easily explained due to use of current limiting in P12, contrary to company marketing and understanding of their CEO and founder.

We can see this in power sweep as well:

I think the flaw of most of your testing is because they are done in the frequency domain.

Your thinking is wrong.  All testing is done in time domain.  The graphs are shown in frequency domain since it is hard for a human to tease out the noise and distortion from a waveform display in time domain.  Keep in mind again that based on Fourier Theorem, time and frequency domain are interchangeable.  

Frequency domain also has a major advantage in that much of our psychoacoustic knowledge is in frequency domain due to how our ear works with a bank of auditory filters.

Bottom line is that P12 is not a true power regenerator and has current limiting which reduces performance of amplifiers.  Testing clearly showed this.  With non-amplifiers, it simply did nothing useful since those products have their own internal filtering and run on DC, not AC.

Note that company doesn't provide any of the measurements I provided.  Had they done this type of testing, they would have a) seen the degradations P12 introduces and b) realized it makes no difference to output of audio products.

Amir calls himself a professional listener. He sets up "one" Magnepan LRS panel and calls that his listening experiences for the common audience. 

Pretty absurd, isn't it?  Even more absurd is you go to your doctor wondering if you have broken your arm.  He turns on this machine that outputs invisible rays.  Yet he claims he can get a picture out of that showing your arm is broken!!!  They must create these X-ray pictures in photoshop!

Not everything in audio needs to make lay sense to you.  Same as X-ray being able to go through your body and show your bones.  You trust your doctor to know that X-ray can show you that information.  You should trust people who have research single-speaker vs stereo vs multi-channel and found that single speaker is far more revealing of speaker flaws than when you add more channels.

I have a video on that:

 

My job as a reviewer is to give you accurate assessments of products and single speaker is a critical component of that.  Use stereo for enjoyment but if you are evaluating speaker performance, do it with a single one.

Read the Yamaha white papers and dump the Harman curve. The button pushing, chart generating Harman sinad moron seems to think he understands music better than the guys who made all your musical instruments.

By that notion, those engineers should be creating your music as well.  After all, they know more about those instruments than any musician!  

We trust Harman because they don't make lay claims like that.  They perform controlled studies across different sets of populations.  That testing instructs us what is likely to sound good to majority of people. 

My Kawai digital piano sounds like crap due to poor sound system.  The fact that they create great acoustic pianos didn't at all enable them to produce an electronic one.

To wit, this is the performance of a clone of Yamaha NS-10M one of the most famous monitoring speakers of its era:

This is a highly colored and bright speaker.  No way you want to use this speaker for any use, playback or music creation.  Clearly no one recorded one of their Pianos and then played it back on this speaker and said they sounded the same.

This is what a proper monitoring speaker looks like (the Neumann KH120II):

 

Clearly building musical instruments it not a requirement for building proper speaker.

So please stop appealing to authority this way.  We know how to measure speakers and determine what is or is not a good product.  If a company knows what they are doing, it would be reflected here.  Not in some lay argument as you put forward.

You DO NOT give accurate assessments of products else you would assess the quality of the workmanship, and as we can all see, Topping's quality control is crap.

Your statement is "crap."  No audio reviewer gives you reliability assessments.  We all focus on performance.  Now, I do perform teardowns which they don't do, and provide that information from time to time.  Indeed, we have a completely subforum for that on ASR: 

 

As for topping reliability, they have had some issues with some products.  But countless others have been quite reliable.  But let's say you are right.  Where you get that information about reliability of Topping and other similar brands is ASR! 

Secondly only a half wit assesses speakers by testing only one. Spakers are listened to in pairs.

Just today I post that video that provides multiple research papers on why listening to one speaker is more revealing of their flaws than stereo.  I don't know why you all don't let this concept sink in by spending just a few minutes learning about the topic instead of relying on your lay intuition.

Thirdly you are a hypocrite - you throw people off your own site for expressing contrary opinions yet come here and bleat your opinions like a goat.

If you act this unprofessional on ASR, regardless of whether you are in favor our mission or not, we walk you out.  Period.  ASR is a professional organization.  If you cant keep your emotions in check, I don't care how valid your opinion may be.  We don't want you there.

If you are going to show up expressing opinions like you just did, and insisting to be right even though you are wrong as a matter of science and engineering, you are going to get strong pushback.  Don't go to a Chinese restaurant and demand that they make Pizza for you!  We have a mission of trusting data, repeatability, and science and engineering.  If you all you are after is feeling good about what you think is right without the benefit of those, then you are not going to do well on ASR. 

 

1. Measure the PS12 output with no load.

2. Use a spectrum analyzer to measure the amplitude at several frequency since the output is not a pure sine wave.

What on earth are talking about?  Spectrum analyzer shows the spectrum, not time domain amplitude.  Regardless, that was done in the P12 review:

As show, the P12 actually increases AC noise, not decrease it.  It does so because it is not a true regenerator.

3. Now connect the output to different load such as 2ohm, 4ohm, .... or more.

Looks like you have forgotten about ohm's law.  P12 generates 120 volt RMS AC.  At 2 ohm, you would be asking it to spit out whopping 60 amps!  The could cause it to be damaged at worst, or shut down at best.  That is on top of needing a high voltage dummy load that could dissipate over 7 kilowatts of power!  You seem to be confusing how you measure the output impedance of audio amplifier rather than a high voltage AC generator.

5. With those information, you can use a simple equation to calculate for the output impedance.

Which is what I do when measuring output impedance of headphone amplifiers.  But per above, you are dealing with a completely different beast here with a high voltage AC source.

None of this is necessary anyway as output impedance of AC source only has a loose relationship to what comes out of your audio device as the latter has its own power supply and capacitor bank to provide power for transients.  Measuring an amplifier power is a much better and more clear verdict of whether the P12 is able to do its job transparently or cause performance to be lost.  The latter was clearly shown in my measurements.

I did use an impedance meter to measure  anyway so not sure why you are continuing on.  Here is my AC source impedance:

 

And here it is going through P12:

 

As noted, P12's output impedance is nearly 10 times worse despite company claims of it being better!

No the square wave will test for transient condition. It is like a step response to test how the amp can deliver the current. 

Square wave testing can generate highly misleading information as the signal itself may never be representable with music signals.  To wit, digital audio at 44.1 kHz won't have any components above 22.05 kHz.  Feed it a 10 kHz square wave and what comes out is a pure sine wave!  I have a video on that:

 

Without emotions, there is really no point in music.

If you need a non-performant tube amp to feel that emotion, you have no love for music, nor the talent that created it....

Proves my point exactly. Your mind is so consumed by what you see in measurements and graphs, you’ve actually convinced yourself you are hearing all sorts of terrible distortion. 

No, I am just going by the assumption that you are hearing a different sound with tube amps than transistor.  That coloration is therefore added to every piece of music, making it different than what the artist intended.  Taking a position that this is required to enjoy music, shows completely lack of understanding of how music moves all of us.

There’s even a well known case that you actually had a Mark Levinson 360S DAC for 21 years until January of 2020 and only after you measured it and found out that it was worse than the MEIZU dongle did you decide to say goodbye to it. 

Not at all.  My reason for replacing the the ML DAC was due to the fact that it was limited to 96 kHz sampling.  And no DSD support.  I had purchased a ton of high-res music which I had to resample in Roon to listen to them.  So with much sadness I replaced that workhorse which had served me so well for so long.  Here is my review of Mark Levinson No 360S DAC stating some of this:

 

"Conclusions
No, you would not run out and buy the Mark Levinson No 360S today. Were there cheap choices then that were good? We will never know without a time machine to go back and measure as we do today. I can say that nothing is broken in it. It produces performance above 16 bits resolution without any glaring mistakes or issues as we commonly see in R2R DAC products today.

FYI now that I pulled it out of my system, I will be putting a Matrix Audio DAC in its place. Thank you my old friend for two decades of service. You were expensive to marry to but good mate to have had."

I still have that DAC by the way.  Don't have the heart to sell it.  Since above writing, I have switched to a Topping DAC.  While it is extremely performance and has the functionality I need, it is a tiny device and doesn't bring the pride of ownership that the ML had.

You ignore what you can’t even answer yourself about what I said using a single speaker with my jazz. 

I don't care what genre you listen to.  A single speaker is far easier to analyze than two of them interacting in a different room than what you have, with different music to boot.  

Jazz music by the way, makes for poor speaker test music.  This is the research on that:

As you see, it ranks #8 and #9.  

Measurements are a starting point not the be all end all. 

That's right.  You need to then apply understanding of those measurements, the engineering behind the design and science of hearing.  With all of those factors combined, you can build a high confidence idea of how good a piece of audio gear is vs other choices.

If everything measured the same assuming we could measure everything (cannot) we would just have one speaker to choose from. 

Once you bring in electro-mechanical components like speakers, then what you theorize is impossible.  Heck, a pair of speakers from same company and model will likely measure differently.  So no sense in talking about speakers measuring the same.

In controlled listening tests though, we can get speakers that tie statistically based on listener preference.  In those situations, you can then apply other buying factors such as price, looks, support, etc.  

Above is what we do at ASR.  We narrow down the near-infinite choices down to good number of speakers which you can then select from, knowing with high confidence that you are not buying a dud.

 The china brand dacs they love so much might measure amazing on a 200 buck dac but are they sure don't sound as good subjectively.

Putting aside the fact that those China DACs are part of whole category that includes such companies as Schiit and JDS Labs in US, your claim there is without evidence.  Come back in a controlled test to show that what you say is true and then we stand up and take notice.  Until then, I can put two identical DACs behind a screen and get every one of you to say they sound different.  So forgive us if we don't put much value behind such claims.

Fact is that the best designs in DACs today come from these mass market companies.  They have a closed loop design process where they measure and optimize for transparency.  And since DACs can be highly optimized from manufacturing point of view, you get superb, transparent sound for as low as $80.

That's not to say there is no room for much more expensive DACs.  Some of us, and that includes me, appreciate other things than sound such as looks, features (VU meters, EQ), etc.  The Chinese companies are almost getting there on this front as well, while still charging reasonable prices.  Here is a recent example, the Eversolo DMP-A6:

 

For $850, you not only get an excellent DAC but a full blown streamer running Android as well.

Would love to see more high-end DAC companies produce high performance DACs that also look luxurious.

So the only difference between a $200 topping and a 2k dac with meters is meters? 

No, it could be anything.  I measured a $20,000 DAC last year that a company sent me.  Measurements clearly showed that it had the implementation bug we call "ESS IMD Hump" which every major Chinese company had already solved.  Even outside of that, performance was ordinary.  The DAC had beautiful build, and weight more than any other DAC I have tested.  But failed in delivering what matters: transparency for the input signal as a $100 DAC provides.

It is a sad fact that the more you pay for audio electronics today, the more likely it is that you get worse performance.  Take that Eversolo DAC:

 

Now compare that to Mytek Brooklyn Bridge II Streamer which costs five times more at $5,000:

Look at all that power supply noise and how dirty its spectrum is.  Poor attention was paid to circuit layout and design, causing interference from digital circuits to bleed into the sensitive DAC.  Clearly Eversolo people know how to better do this job than Mytek.

And it is not like you got something prettier:

 

This is the power of what we do at ASR.  Objective analysis that points out who cared to produce a high fidelity product and who did not.

Amir,

Where is your proof that an $80 DAC.....or any DAC for that matter, is transparent? 

There are multiple peer papers I suggest you read on this topic:

“Noise: Methods for Estimating Detectability and Threshold, ” Stuart, J. Robert, JAES Volume 42 Issue 3 pp. 124-140; March 1994
“Dynamic-Range Issues in the Modern Digital Audio Environment, ” Fielder, Louis D., JAES Volume 43 Issue 5 pp. 322-339; May 1995

If you don't have access to AES, you can read my quick write up in this article I published on audibility of small impairments. Or this video starting at 5 minute mark:

 

Once you read/watched those, take a gander at the review of the SMSL SU-1 $80 DAC. Here is its dashboard performance:

 

FFT spectrum shows distortion products way below threshold of hearing.  Even discarding simultaneous masking, those impairments are inaudible.  Dynamic range likewise covers threshold of hearing to playback level of about 115 dBSPL:

 

That is transparency for you, albeit, just at the edge with respect to dynamic range.  This $80 DAC cleans the clocks of many expensive DACs.  

Here is for example PS Audio DirectStream DAC which costs $6,000+

 

Distortion products are now at -80 dB which is a massive 50 dB worse than the $80 SMSL DAC!  It uses an output transformer which saturates and generates these harmonics.  Its noise floor is so high that it can't even clear 16 bit audio:

 

 You have no idea what transparency is since you do not listen.

Well, there are my listening tests of above PS Audio DAC:

Listening Tests
For subjective testing, I chose to use the recently reviewed and superb Monoprice Monolith THX 887 Balance Headphone Amplifier. This headphone amp has vanishingly low distortion and hence is completely transparent to DACs being tested. For the alternative DAC, I used my everyday Topping DX3 Pro 's line out RCA to Monolith. I then used the XLR input to connected the DirectStream DAC. Once there, I played a 1 kHz tone and used my Audio Precision analyzer to match levels using PS Audio's volume control. PS Audio claims perfection there ("bit perfect") so I figured they can't complain about that.  The final matching was 0.3 dB difference between the two.

For headphone I used DROP + MRSPEAKERS ETHER CX with its XLR connection to THX 887 amp.

I started the testing with my audiophile, audio-show, test tracks. You know, the very well recorded track with lucious detail and "black backgrounds." I immediately noticed lack of detail in PerfectWave DS DAC. It was as if someone just put a barrier between you and the source. Mind you, it was subtle but it was there. I repeated this a few times and while it was not always there with all music, I could spot it on some tracks.

Next I played some of my bass heaving tracks i use for headphone testing. Here, it was easy to notice that bass impact was softened. But also, highs were exaggerated due to higher distortion. Despite loss of high frequency hearing, I found that accentuation unpleasant. With tracks that had lisping issues with female vocals for example, the DS DAC made that a lot worse."

You were saying?

 

How about wires? Have you listened to wires? 

Many times.

Can you hear a difference?

Very often.

Have you listened to a ton of amps and premaps and DACs and heard all the difference us serious folks hear?

Sure.

Can you hear what getting the cables off the floor does?

I haven't tried but I imagine electrons move slower the closer they are to the floor.

What if you found out you were wrong all these years and every single brand of wire sounds different from each other (which they do).

Same back to you.

Very few serious audiophiles believe your crap. 

Over 2 million people visit ASR every month.  That is almost an order of magnitude more than people that visit stereophile.com.  So pretty sure your claim is wrong but go ahead and provide data that back it.

 

 

 

 Could you please explain this comment?

Sure.  Often when we measure an audio device and it has high distortion, the objectivists theorize that a) this distortion is audible and b) could be an explanation for why folks who buy these products prefer them.

I don't agree with either one of those.  There has never been any evidence/controlled testing that shows preference for certain distortion profile.  My own listening tests shows that the distortion is either inaudible, or annoying.   I suspect if audiophiles heard the annoying distortion, they would not buy the product.  So the only conclusion is that audiophiles are not hearing any improvement as a result of these impairments.  And hence, the reason they buy them is due to other factors unrelated to the sound the device is producing.  These is especially so when so much folklore is out there to make people believe that "tubes sound warm" or that "R2R DACs sound more analog," etc.

Hearing non-linear distortion that you see in measurements can be quite hard.  It usually requires special training.  In my last job, we performed large scale blind tests of lossy audio codecs with both our trained listeners and audiophiles.  The latter group failed to remotely hear distortions that our trained listeners could instantly recognize.

 

Adding on, if the above is true, then folks are best served by buying performant products which in many cases costs a lot less.