Agree with everything you say in the immediately preceding post. If I wanted to write a scientific paper for publication, I would proceed differently. As it is, I am retired and interested in how my friends and I hear music, and design and fabricate accordingly. I’m willing to share, but not to go to Herculean lengths to convince. YMMV
Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews
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.
As an amateur speaker designer, and lover of graphs and data I have some thoughts. I mostly hope this helps the entire A’gon community get a little more perspective into how a speaker builder would think about the data.
Of course, I’ve only skimmed the data I’ve seen, I’m no expert, and have no eyes or ears on actual Tekton speakers. Please take this as purely an academic exercise based on limited and incomplete knowledge.
1. Speaker pricing.
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.
2. Measuring mid-woofers is hard.
The standard practice for analyzing speakers is called "quasi-anechoic." That is, we pretend to do so in a room free of reflections or boundaries. You do this with very close measurements (within 1/2") of the components, blended together. There are a couple of ways this can be incomplete though.
a - Midwoofers measure much worse this way than in a truly anechoic room. The 7" Scanspeak Revelators are good examples of this. The close mic response is deceptively bad but the 1m in-room measurements smooth out a lot of problems. If you took the close-mic measurements (as seen in the spec sheet) as correct you’d make the wrong crossover.
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.
For both of those reasons, an actual in-room measurement is critical to assessing actual speaker behavior. We may not all have the same room, but this is a great way to see the actual mid-woofer response as well as the effects of any baffle step compensation.
Looking at the quasi anechoic measurements done by ASR and Erin it _seems_ that these speakers are not compensated, which may be OK if close-wall placement is expected.
In either event, you really want to see the actual in-room response, not just the simulated response before passing judgement. If I had to critique based strictly on the measurements and simulations, I’d 100% wonder if a better design wouldn’t be to trade sensitivity for more bass, and the in-room response would tell me that.
3. Crossover point and dispersion
One of the most important choices a speaker designer has is picking the -3 or -6 dB point for the high and low pass filters. A lot of things have to be balanced and traded off, including cost of crossover parts.
Both of the reviews, above, seem to imply a crossover point that is too high for a smooth transition from the woofer to the tweeters. No speaker can avoid rolling off the treble as you go off-axis, but the best at this do so very evenly. This gives the best off-axis performance and offers up great imaging and wide sweet spots. You’d think this was a budget speaker problem, but it is not. Look at reviews for B&W’s D series speakers, and many Focal models as examples of expensive, well received speakers that don’t excel at this.
Speakers which DO typically excel here include Revel and Magico. This is by no means a story that you should buy Revel because B&W sucks, at all. Buy what you like. I’m just pointing out that this limited dispersion problem is not at all unique to Tekton. And in fact many other Tekton speakers don’t suffer this particular set of challenges.
In the case of the M-Lore, the tweeter has really amazingly good dynamic range. If I was the designer I’d definitely want to ask if I could lower the crossover 1 kHz, which would give up a little power handling but improve the off-axis response. One big reason not to is crossover costs. I may have to add more parts to flatten the tweeter response well enough to extend it's useful range. In other words, a higher crossover point may hide tweeter deficiencies. Again, Tekton is NOT alone if they did this calculus.
I’ve probably made a lot of omissions here, but I hope this helps readers think about speaker performance and costs in a more complete manner. The listening tests always matter more than the measurements, so finding reviewers with trustworthy ears is really more important than taste-makers who let the tools, which may not be properly used, judge the experience.
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The perception of timbre is not a deluded perception of some subjective coloration or the extraction of a ratio from a pure Fourier map... It is the recognition of a physical set of invariants in the vibrating sound source or affecting it ... ( Pythagorean purely mathematical description of acoustic information as ratio is debunked by late science and the new ecological theory of acoustic) A qualia it is was we detected...Something Galilee exclude from science 5 centuries ago because it is not easily reducible to the primary qualities..But science progress.. 😊
For the simplest example of a perceived physical invariant from the vibrating sound source : you tap a fruit to inform yourself if this vibrating source will communicate to you one of these two information by some physical invariant : is the fruit ripe or not ...
Then now suppose in an experiment where i put quartz piece on a cable... And suppose that i put a shungite piece after on this cable in a second experiment ... Is it possible that my Ears/brain could detect something affecting one of the vibrating sound source (the cables with or without the minerals on it ) ? 😋
As you can see i can propose one of the hundred of experiments i devised for myself ... I can predict that the shungite will compress the sound and the quartz will not... 😊 Is it measurable? Probably but not by Amir tools...With your ears you could do it ...
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I agree that properly done single blind tests CAN be informative.
Ok. That's fine. But unless you produce results for others to analyze, you understand why one needn't take your claims on faith, right?
Which doesn't remotely validate all the things audiophiles claim to hear...any more than the discovery that certain "traditional" medicines have some effect validates all the claims of traditional medicines. Therefore, the mere fact someone perceives something doesn't entail "this is something true that one day we'll validate scientifically."
Of course not. But it has to be done in a coherent, cogent manner. If you don't acknowledge that various bias effects influence our perception, then you aren't grappling with well known scientifically validated phenomena. But if you DO acknowledge the variable of bias, then it makes sense to account for this in your method of investigating a claim. Otherwise you are being irresponsible in your conclusions. You can't just drop the bar to let your pet beliefs or perceptions step over.
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You are so enthralled with your techno-cultist ideology that you dont even see my point... Sounds are acoustics meanings not bits. ( the set of bits only CONVEY acoustics meanings from a recording room to another listening room) The ears-brain is tuned to recognize concrete acoustics meanings..In speech and in my room listening music.. The numbers of factors implied is huge... You cannot predict with few electrical measurements what i will hear... You then call what i will hear "illusions" forgetting that the acoustics meanings perceived vary much with the training... You can fool someone blind about a bit of sound taken out of his usual acoustic environment and calling all human perceptions delusion if something is not measured BEFORE and AFTER...
But here it is you who put the sophism and put the cart before the horse... In acoustics we trust hearing and measure it to refine hearing aids for example. To do so we need to trust that musicians for example are able to detect really a piece of information that Fourier uncertainty principle will deem impossible to perceive... ( This trust is born not from a debunking circus of ASR but from real statistical studies to probe the limits of hearing and acousticians were astounded by our own ability) Then instead of suspecting any individual to be deluded, acousticians discovered the opposite of your ideological watchword guru selling point about ASR ideology : namely human hearing has his own non linear way to extract meaningful acoustic information in his own time domain ... Have you even read the article above ? it is not about astrology or ASR ideology and cultist tool debunking, by the way , but about pure science ... You are in a techno-cultist religion it seems... I prefer science... 😊 You make me smile because i remember you can have opinion about what you had never studied (astrology) ... To resume my acoustics opinion: i am not a subjectivist because i believe in acoustic training and measurements and i am not an objectivist because accusing people of being deluded if they dont put all their faith in few electrical measures, is not my business as ASR Amir... ( i dont do business i set my room😁 ) «I am always between you brothers because science exist between fields too »-- Groucho Marx christian epistemology 🤓 | |
@prof No, I don’t think so. Single blind tends to not lie, and I’ve done enough of those.to convince me. And, of course, THD captured everything in distortion - until IM and TIM were discovered. Also, you might recall that observation informs hypothesis just as much as theory informs observation. It’s not heresy to question your assumptions - or your instruments. | |
You miss the point. Everything you wrote is moot unless it is the case, for any example, that we really are able to detect a sonic difference. The most reliable method of doing this is listening tests controlling for biases. And we have learned a lot about thresholds in human hearing. There are measurable levels of differences and distortions that you will not detect, just as you will not detect with your senses X-rays. See above. In scientific terms you are putting the cart before the horse: assuming your sighted impressions to have delivered The Truth, and then inferring from that, well if it's not showing up in measurements then it's the measurements that are inaccurate or incomplete...rather than the possibility it is your perception that is inaccurate.
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@prof A real world example might help. I use Bryston amps for woofers and subs, because I can’t make better for low frequency. Brystons from the early 1980’s measure almost as well as the SST3 series, 4 generations later.. But the sound !!! My new 7BSST3 momoblocks sound clearly better than the 4BSST which they replaced, and the 4BSST was no contest better than the 3B it replaced. Measurements of THD and IM simply don’t capture everything - how could they, when you can hear a clear difference between polypropylene caps and styrene caps in an RIAA circuit, or nude Vishay resistors from anything else in a gain circuit, when you use a breakout box? We have a hobby in which subtlety plays a major role, and the measuring technology is far behind the state of the art. IMO. | |
It's analogous to 'sufficient statistic'. A sufficient statistic is a number, or vector, or tensor, which is adequate to perfectly describe a probability distribution. For example, the vector (mean, variance) is sufficient to perfectly describe a normal distribution, therefore, if a sample is taken from a normal distribution, only the mean and variance need to be considered. In matters of science it's more complex, because not all aspects of reality are known. Physics is the study of what is easy - things like acceleration in response to a field of force, like gravity. Even this is so complex that, four centuries after Galileo, we are still devising new instruments to point at the stars, But psychology is hard. So the measurements are crude and insufficient. Which is why an empiricist should listen first and devise measuring tools second, not the other way around. IMO | |
You are so wrong here ... ( i dont deny the informative value of measurements here but the ideology and ignorance that is implied by what you claimed dogmatically) But i had already a discussion for 7 days here with Amir and he did not understood anything...😁 And i used physicists and acoustician articles...
In a nutshell hearing theories actually pointed toward ecological theory of perception... Why ? Because bits are not meanings for a consciousness... And perceived sound experience is not identical with a Fourier map in the Fourier linear time domain.. The ears/brain create his own meanings in his own non linear time domain... Read about acoustics and replace your electrical techno-cultism tool fetichism with real science ... read at least this article :
There is actually a revolution in acoustics science .. Go to the thread of Bolong "sound is a mystic experience " where i posted in the last few pages all articles describing this acoustic revolution and his meanings ... 😊 No one commented anything there save two idiots trolling me ... Am i the only one interested by real science ? Most confuse tools user manual with science ...it is the actual new techno cultic religion...promoted by corporate powers over Nations... Read about Blackrock total control of money flows by the way and you will understand why Trudeau and Biden or Trump are toys in higher hands ... Myself contrary to subjectivist or objectivist sellers of gear i invite people to read science and experiment ... 😎
By the way it is evident that it is impossible to take into account all variables parameters at play in the system/room/ears-brain-body experience of sound , they are electrical (electrical grid noise floor of the house system room etc) Mechanical (resonances vibrations) acoustical and psychoacoustical... Then to analyse the S.Q. of a piece of gear few electrical measurements are not enough at all ... The ideological claim that a few measures of a certain types are enough is only that : a seller ideology... Amir sell something ... Science is way more complex... | |
I’m with @prof on this one. Emotionally based arguments against things that add value make no sense to me. Nobody is perfect. Live long and prosper! 🖖 | |
Why wouldn't that be the case? Remember why we usually create tools, especially measuring tools? Because of the limitations of our own senses! That's why we build telescopes to see things we can't with our naked eye, microscopes because our vision is limited in acuity, and we have all manner of instruments that can detect differences we ourselves can not. That goes for measuring audio gear with devices that can detect "subtle changes" in the signal that our ears can not detect. And we know enough about human hearing to look at measurements of amps, or speakers, and note which ACTUAL sonic phenomenon our ears are sensitive to or not. All this suggests that of course measurements are a good tool for detecting "subtle differences."
How about the "radical stance" that you can hear things our most sensitive instruments can not? And that no matter how any test fails to demonstrate your claim, we are supposed to just accept that "If You Think You Hear It, It's True" which is a radical rejection of what we know scientifically. | |
Good posts for me prefab Thanks and welcome... And about Amir, i must add that to evaluate really a piece of gear we must do it also by listening for sure but listening in the same acoustic under control conditions and with the same other pieces of gear we already know for a long time because precisely "Golden ears" dont exist save as an insult by ignorant .. If not evaluated in perfectly well known acoustic conditions, how do you for the first time evaluate a piece of gear in unknown acoustic environment resulting from other pieces of gear you do know know much either ?... The music/sound must be evaluated with a dedicated acoustic room, a system we know and a music we know... Measures are welcome, ideology not so welcome... | |
Amir actually believes that all things coming out of your stereo can be measured and even subtle differences will show up in testing. So I am done with this guy and ASR. What he does has merit but only goes so far. To me he represents a radical stance whose basic premise taints everything that follows.
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Also, what's with all the piling on Tekton. The guy has built a business in a very difficult market, from nothing. Businesses like his hang by a thread. He has a right to feel insecure. And responsible reviewers should be sensitive to that. I did not see the blog. But the Internet has some people thinking that they can empower themselves with negativity at the expense of the people who are taking real chances. They deserve to feel the heat of litigation. Tekton makes a budget product with specific goals that cannot be judged by a Klipel. I want them and every company like them to thrive. Because is gives us all more options in whatever direction we want to grow. | |
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I think it is clear that Amir and the culture that he has built has created a lot of anger in the audiophile community. Largely because he and his cult of followers believe that their paradigm of judgement is superior and because they are extremely rude and dismissive of disagreement. And also because ASR has been successful in influencing a lot of less informed audiophiles. Mostly because it is easy to follow (Panther statues) and because he peddles a false sense of superiority as expressed in a language of derision. To people who love the hobby, this kind of pisses on the fun. And it is all a big lie. Measurements are nothing new. Debate on the role of measurements is not new either. ASR offers something different. Because if ASR we are now Audiophiles or Golden Eared Audio Fools. We are either "good" objectivists, or bad "subjectivists". This language is polarizing and invites disrespect. On top of that, I have seen them judge excellent gear that has stood the test of time and market as garbage. Without listening. Without considering that perhaps people are less interested in the measurement than their own perceptions. And this hurts the industry. Because it has trained a legion of audiophiles to hate what they might find to love. The Audio business is a tough one. The survivors are few. There have always been many pathways to audio satisfaction. Many of them, like for example, those who prefer the "British" sound, or those who love vintage 70's style, or those who love SET amplifiers. These are the muses that give the pursuit life and happiness. Not just the ones that measure to ASR standards. I personally have enjoyed all these things. And they have given me joy and pause to consider, while I celebrate and experience the music I love. Amir aims to destroy that possibility. He wants to "set us free" from things that don't measure well. Even if we enjoy those things. I think it is also important to note that in a marketplace of competing audio products, there are many ideals being pursued by many brave, talented and hardworking entrepreneurs. Audio products are designed to sound great, with measurement as a consideration, without it being the end goal. Pass Labs is a famous example of a company who is open about this. This is actually the whole reason for the hobby. We like things that sound the way we like them to sound. We like options. We like to explore different sound approached. We like to hear our favorite music being framed by all these different things because each one lends insight into the music in it's own way. And some of us love shiny things. The world loves shiny things. Fashion and beauty are noble pursuits. My EAR Yoshino gear sounds fantastic to me. And it has a 1/4 inch think aluminum faceplate polished like a mirror. It looks awesome and I am proud to own it. There is nothing foul or unusual about this. It doesn't make me a fool. It makes me happy. If you want to try to make me feel foolish, that makes you an a**hole. It has nothing to do with me.
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@botrytis - My intention wasn't to highlight the subject, but the typical responses. The trajectory of that thread is commonplace across the entire site (as is on r/audiophile on Reddit) and almost encouraged within that community (not by Amir). If you read the thread, there's an actual electrical engineer with subject matter expertise getting berated because he's defending DDCs.
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@botrytis -- I was responding to a post that was effectively complaining about how much attention ASR was getting. I simply pointed out that ASR’s original review wasn’t the cause of all that attention -- it was Tekton’s response. The original review appeared in October 2023 and drew about 150 comments and went dormant in a few weeks. To my knowledge, no other online audio forum made any comments about the review at that time ONLY when Eric got involved with his threats and allegations months later (Feb 2024) did the subject explode. The ASR thread is now well over 2,500 comments and additional threads have sprung up on other forums. Note this thread on Audiogon -- and other discussions on other forums -- didn’t start until a few weeks ago. I don’t buy that "any publicity is good publicity" as a universal truth. I don’t think its worked much in Tekton’s favor for prospective customers. But, opinions are a dime a dozen. | |
As i said in many posts here for 8 years, i experimented... I described in details my own way to couple/decouple vibrations and decrease resonance in my speakers...It is not transferable for all speakers in all living room ( i had my dedicated room ) but this taught me a lot about mechanical controls of the speakers. The impact of negative resonance and vibrations is staggering and unsuspected by most speakers owners... I will not describe anew here in a longer post what i described elsewhere...😊 Save if you want the details... I did the same for electrical noise floor control in my own way.... It is well known that the house/room electrical noise floor level must be under control ...i created my own "tweaks " too (with shungite and copper and quartz) i dont buy anything that cost more than a peanuts butter pot... i did the same with my two dedicated room... I know basic acoustics by experiments not by buying panels... 😁 In my first room i used a grid of 100 Helmholtz resonators for example mechanically tuned by ears in specific location to modify the pressure zones distribution... The location around listening position and around speaker A and speaker B was important... i did many others things... But i cannot repeat all this in details here...Some will kill me for the post lenght...And some narrow mind will mock my use of other devices...
What i learned is that any relatively low cost system from 1,000 to 20,000 bucks with a minimal synergy quality, then well chosen, when they are embedded in these three working dimensions, mechanical,electrical and acoustical, they can gave their peak optimal working and reach their maximum working point. This is enough to reach what i called : audiophile minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold... Any costlier system if it is not well embedded in these three dimensions will be less interesting at worst or at best will be rivalled in S.Q. by a less refined design or less costly one... Acoustics basic, mechanical and electrical basic knowledge rules audio , not price tags of the gear... Creativity matter more than money... And know that acoustics definitions and parameters controls had nothing to do with placebo and self hypnosis... Timbre is defined by 5 factors at least , modify one in one direction or in the inverse direction and the timbre will change... No placebo here, it is acoustics principles at work... If you modify the reverberation time of your room by modifying the balance between absorption and reflection on some plane you will perceive a change in the experience... If you act in reverse you will perceive another change etc... there is no self hypnosis in experiments... 😊
Last thing : is it easy to do and learn ? No i did it because i am retired... I did it full time for 2 years... Before that i was ignorant and frustrated as many here because i never love any gear system i owned anyway... I modified all my speakers and all my headphones with each time improvement ... But it was not enough ...And i was frustrated by my unability to pay for a very costlier one...I felt my audio system was anything but a stopgap... When all parameters are balanced in a system/room you are no longer in a stopgap system. because the system work optimally... For sure you may upgrade it... But now it will be very costly to really upgrade and it will be less tempting too because when the S.Q. is optimal we listen music and forgot the sound...
All had changed when i learned by experiments how to work in these three dimensions : mechanical,electrical and acoustical... For sure my speakers are low cost, i modified them with Helmholtz principle and now they are metamorphosed in a good piece of gear ( i hated them so much i never used them for music for 10 years) now they are my choice speakers... 😊 for my headphone i was lucky the laso one i bought was the best design and the more complex one ever make... It was my ninth headphone( i dislike all headphones even after my successfull modificatiopns) But this one is so refined one the only hybrid ever made with a grid of tune Helmholtz resonators inside a dual acoustic chamber, i was lucky to buy it... But it takes me 6 months of experiments to optimize it... it is the AKG K340 ... i even read the Dr. Gorike patent to unsderrstand this headphone ... i will not repeat all here ... 😊
The goal of my posts is motivate people to be creative if they had time and room for this... my goal is to inform them that it is not necessary at all to invest ton of money... it is more useful and more fun to study and experiment... Some people with very costly system think i am deluded... but those who are deluded are those ignoring what is acoustics... I am more interested by hearing theory than by reviews of gear ...
my best to you... I apologize if i cannot repeat all i ever wrote here ... but the principle is the more important... Each one will use the same principles in his own way...
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I find this to be sad. Nobody needs to agree with everything Amir has said to be able to recognize how much valuable information Amir has produced, both in explaining some of the principles in audio gear, in having provided measurements for many hundreds of products, in taking a look at all sorts of claims by audio manufacturers and seeing if they stand up to more rigorous scrutiny and measurements etc. It's just sad to be so salty, or incurious, to dismiss Amir and ASR so easily. | |
What is this electromechanical and "acoustical" synthesis/optimization you have done that no one else has been able to do (seemingly)? Can you list the tangible/physical things you did (stuff that went further than the theorycrafting domain)?...I sincerely hope it doesn’t involve a healthy dose of listener self-hypnosis as well! 😬 | |
@mlsstl and yet, here you are, talking about ASR. Must have tweaked something that annoyed you. You know the saying, "any publicity is good publicity". | |
@coralkong -- "Amir and ASR don't deserve this much attention." And they wouldn't have gotten much at all if Eric at Tekton, instead of raising a stink and threatening litigation, had either ignored the review or simply said "we don't care about ASR's review. We don't design for numbers but rather sound that pleases our customers." The odd thing is the original review wasn't all that bad for a reasonably efficient $750 speaker. This whole affair was self-inflicted by Tekton's ham-fisted response. | |
@pynkfloydd As opposed to here on Audiogon, asking about how to ’break in’ speaker wire? They just move electrons, there is nothing to break in. Please stop. Every board has idiotic threads. | |
You do not seems conscious that the choice of tool, the choices of the set of measures, the choice of interpretation among all tools and possible measures, and possible interpretations is "subjective" choice...😊 Techno-cultist act as this confusing scientism with science...but i will no go further about techno-cultism here in audio forum... 😉
What you do Amir is not science, if you dont want to abuse the use of this concept it is verifying with some limited set of measures the specs of a piece of gear...But alas! you go further and claim that this is objective review then "pure science" this is untrue and misleading...Because a piece of gear and an audio system work differently in different mechanical,electrical,and acoustical and psychoacoustical contexts... Nothing of what you do is purely objective... Audiophile gave their subjective impressions and they sell their own gear choice as solution or their upgrade as solutions...This is misleading too ...
These two groups, subjectivist and objectivists, sell gear and sell their products of choice, be it a set of tool or their beloved piece of gear as solutions (outside of any specific under control acoustic context as if this obsession with the gear design will resume audio experience by itself) These 2 groups in fact presented pieces of gear as it could be the solution ,on the contrary they should have presented really any pieces of gear as component for an acoustic problem, a problem that cannot be solved anyway either by mere tools or by adding new components . Acoustics parameters controls matter. They supposed "ears/brain/system/room" existence as one so that experience and experimentation could be possible......
What i do with my pieces of gear linked as one system in my dedicated room, looking for electrical,mechanical and acoustical basic knowledge is creating my own system... I mislead no one recommending at each and everyone to study acoustics then they will understand that "timbre" is not a colored illusion for example and they will understand how to use the electrical,mechanical and acoustics parameters to improve their experience. 😊 I dont sell gear as reviewers and i dont sell my site or my favorite tool...😁 I recommend creativity and acoustics experiments. 😎
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Here's a typical example of "science" on ASR: All-in-One snake oil: Digital to Digital "converter" nonsense
Might I suggest the name be updated to Political Science Review? | |
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.
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 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. | |
Amir gets on and takes a somewhat radical position because it is not effective to be balanced. Get people to join a tribe and then watch the sparks fly when they get together. What concerns me about Amir and his people is that they constantly make judgements regarding the purchasing decisions of others. Wasted money, gullibility, bias, blah, blah. I truly dont care how others spend their money and certainly dont have the hubris to believe that I could know any motivations. I dont believe that anyone actually believes that all sonic attributes can be measured. I thought this was a dead issue. | |
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@mahgister I have foibles just like anyone else, but as the old saying goes, "I have no dog in this fight'. I just feel people should listen and discuss rationally. I have issues getting out of hand, just like anyone else. It is easy, when you just have a keyboard and screen in front of you. Hard when it is face to face. @amir_asr is not his forum, he just started it. People can get out of hand, what does he do ban them all? There would be no audiophiles left to discuss things. Cooler heads need to prevail. After all, isn't hobby about enjoyment of art? One of my dearest friends is German, who is married to a wonderful French woman, and they live in France - he is tri-lingual also. I vacationed, last year, with him in Brittany. With him showing us all that makes that part of France so amazing. I would like to go back again. CHEERS! | |
thanks for your kind words... I am glad i am not alone in the cracks where truth wait between the bricks of the jailing house... You are lucky that i never spoke english in my life... I only had read english in science books and philosophy. I know very few concrete words and no slang... In french i would have been much more clear and much more long and proficient with hues of meanings and humor...😊
By the way welcome on audiogon... 😊
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@mahgister Agree partially. I feel there are cultists on both sides and there is trench between them and that is usually where I find myself. They are both right and wrong at the same time. If they would listen to each other instead of talking over each other, they would find the common ground of enjoying music and the hobby Ever been to AudioKarma - where the only good audio is 'Vintage' and everything else is not? One can find the same attitudes and aggressive tendencies there. I think we need to find common ground and move on from there. I understand English is a 2nd language for you. I thank you for expressing yourself as well as you do. Oft times, we write small chunks of ideas that can seem to be more aggressive than they actually are. | |
Arguing is useless When people are bent on hate or had no recognized common ground... -----It appear stupid to my eyes because audio experience is a perception personal subjective experience which must be trained and educated not by gear purchase but by acoustics experiments and concepts... -----It appear stupid to me because audio experience result also from a set of acoustical measurable of parameters between the system /room/ears. This acoustics and psychoacouistics set of measures are so impactful that the electrical specs of the gear even the speakers specs matter less for the qualitative end result ... Then Amir techno-cultist ideology and sarcasms about "golden ears" and the audiogoners hate toward him personnaly is preposterous, as useless, as in politics the hate between Biden or Trump, or left/right, big eggs /small eggs it neglect the hidden cause and real control of the parasitic minds watchwords put on the social fabric and reflecting the techno-cultist control of Finances, medecine,politics, even the lost of science and mind by big corporation criminality. All is very clear since Bernard Mandeville work on social fabric controls and René Girard analysis of violence.
«Brain grow or shrink,they never stay put»--Groucho Marx neurologist🤓 | |
@dwcda Then it is an audiophile forum. It seems that is all audiophiles do, like their life's depend on being right. I get the exact same feeling from this forum, and that is the point. One needs to ignore the yellers and passive-aggressive people in this hobby. There are so many of them. There are absolutists in both sides, and they will NEVER agree. The sad thing is, if they put down the anger, they might learn something. I think @amir_asr stated his idea well, he is giving measurements - what people on his forum do with it, is another thing. It is sad we have to pick through all the junk to find the information we need. But that is what I do.
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I've spent some time on the ASR site & didn't care for it much. Not that I'm against measuring audio equipment, it was the whole feeling of the forum... lots of seemingly aggressive people shouting their opinion, mocking others who disagree. Mind you, I get the same feelings from those that are diehard cable/tweak believers, who belittle those that disagree with them. I keep reading them write the words "believe your own ears" while they completely ignore the concept that if you're watching something, or you're told something, or you're made aware of something while you're listening/comparing then you're not believing your ears... you're permitting your brain to override your ears & tell you that you're hearing something that you're not. Listen to 2 sources of music after being told that A<B and you'll hear a superior B. Listen to 2 sources blindly and suddenly all differences statistically disappear. So I find the two absolutes, listening & measuring, are both outliers that I will read but often categorize as interesting but not necessarily relevant to me. | |
@rankaudio That is nice. Have anything CONSTRUCTIVE to say? | |
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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.
I would if there were any truth to your statement. Do you not consider this site an "audio forum?"
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It’s a free country so anybody who thinks they can do some thing better than someone else is free to do their thing. Otherwise negativity is just counterproductive words that anyone can toss about. I’ve found ASR to be one of the more useful resources out there to help find good value products. I want more of that not less. We all have egos. Keeping that under control is pretty much always a good thing. | |
@tonywinga Actually - I think it is YOU that takes yourself too serious. Amir is doing a service by measuring equipment. He used his own money to buy the equipment. What is wrong with that? I don't go to ASR, maybe once a year or so, but WOW. I mean this is a hobby, it is not to cure cancer or anything else important. It is sad how supposed grownups behave.
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