Thorsten Loesch vs Amir

My take: both Loesch and Amir are right about certain things and are wrong about others. Like all humans are. Let me highlight things I believe are of interest to audiophiles.

(A) Loesch is wrong about equivalence of SINAD and THD. Amir is right about high SINAD being a more definitive necessary criterium of high audio fidelity than low THD.

(B) Loesch is right about both high SINAD and low THD not being sufficient criteria of high audio fidelity. Amir is wrong about using SINAD and THD as definitive criteria for audio gear recommendations.

The way I see it, we ought to consider at least three participating entities:

(1) Concrete music fragment

(2) Sound reproduction chain

(3) Particular listener

The implicit question the objectivists are trying to answer: is the sound reproduction chain A going to be statistically meaningfully perceived as providing higher sound fidelity than audio chain B, for all practical music fragments and all practical listeners.

The precise answer to this question requires averaging of experimental results over all music fragments and all listeners - clearly a task impossible for mere mortals. So, an approximate answer is sought instead.

Nature of approximation strongly influences the answer. Objective measurements narrow down the probabilities of the true answer being yes, no, unknown. Yet they inherently, by their very nature, can’t give absolutely accurate true answer.

Thinking probabilistically, SINAD narrows the answer stronger for more music fragments than THD, because instead of one sinusoid it uses a mix of several sinusoids, which is statistically closer to average of all music fragments.

Yet neither SINAD nor THD can be a sufficient criterium for narrowing the answer to the absolute certainty. One can always imagine a music fragment and a listener for which the ranking by SINAD and THD would be opposite to the subjective one.

My take on the objective measurements is this: take them as mere input parameters into process of your own narrowing of the answer, based on characteristics of music genres you are going to listen to.

@fair - As the first post in this thread, your reasoned response just sucked the tailwind out of the expected pile-on.

I find ASR helpful as a data point.    My one comment is that for many people high fidelity does not mean highly accurate or low distortion.  Quiet a lot of people like distortion (warmth or some other adjective/adverb) in their signal path.   IMO, it would be more accurate to try to use measurements to define distortion characteristics and then people can determine what distortion characteristics they like in their music, and then shop from those classifications.  We do that already to some degree by saying a speaker or amp is warm or precise.  

I believe DACs must have excellent benchmark results as a starting point since they are likely to produce the best results.

For example:

The Musetec Audio (LKS Audio) MH-DA005 has a headless Pink Panther.

The Topping D90SE has a sweet spot Pink Panther.

What even you have, always provide the cleanest possible AC (a conditioner with a shielded cable) and cover the unused sockets with caps to block contamination entry points.

I was on ASR a while back, just to see what the fuss was about. And I lost interest in the reviews (and the support of its members) in a short amount of time. Bought quite a few top-performing units based on the master table, didn’t like them, sold them. End of story.

I can understand what Amir is trying to do: become a popular/credible source on the internet among audiophiles, audio enthusiasts, and audio professionals. Being "the" faultless" source of information to others who share his interest in audio gear. Furthermore, he went out of his way to purchase costly measurement systems: Audio precision measurement system, speaker measurement rig, and even a headphone measurement rig! Could have spent that money on audio gear!!

Not to bash Amir or ASR, but he has been kicked off/deleted/banned from nearly every audio forum on the internet. Some years ago, this was visible on a bunch of forums (as him being a banned member) but now, I think we can only see his 15k plus posts on Whats Best Forum.

One of which that makes me laugh is him talking about being a subjectivist and "battling" objectivists; then somehow becoming an "objectivist" and going against the grain, in other words: listening and ignoring measurements vs not. There is a nearly infinite number of his posts I’ve read whereby his constant misunderstandings and drivel is enough to make even the most balanced forum members furious.

I think Amir is a reasonable guy, intelligent, yet is investing his time, money, and energy in the wrong places. His community is always quick to mention that a $100 DAC that measures well will sound identical; not volume matching, higher THD levels, and not taking blind tests are the only retorts they can fathom. Rather then, say: audio components "are different’ at the fundamental level, and therefore, will sound different as a result, which they do - it becomes: measurements are everything.

Those measurements don’t include: damping factor, wow, flutter, gang errors (between circuits), side-by-side null testing, using an oscilloscope, input/output sensitivity, testing internal parts, or even an indication/certification of quality control. For this reason, quite a few units that measured well fail prematurely, according to ASRs own members. (that’s what you get when cost-savings was the top priority for manufacturers).

Who is Thorsten Loesch ? is this a well-known person in the audio industry/hobby?

The Musetec Audio (LKS Audio) MH-DA005 has a headless Pink Panther.

The Topping D90SE has a sweet spot Pink Panther.

I recently sold a Topping D90LE (the non-MQA version of S90SE). Thank goodness for ASR because they helped me sell the DAC quickly. It is an OK DAC but to my ears it is not comparable to the Musetec 005. Musetec 005 is comparable to DAC’s like my new Lumin X1. All 3 are ESS DACs

The designer of the 005 posted that he could have made the 005 measure better but then it would not sound the way it does. I have 2 005’s and now selling 1 of them.

 

It’s an interesting read so far, the following quote from Loesch in the thread is what I would call as plain as the nose on your face:

“I will not particularly criticise Amir, but I’m looking forward to the day when he finally fixed the groundloops/pin1 problem plaguing his AP2 measurements, something really basic.”

Amir will not address that statement in any credible way since this would be an admission that he is totally incapable of dealing with the intricacies of proper measurement details and would make all of his tests suspect. Even if Loesch’s opinion that maybe Amir was dumb enough to have pin 1 connected to the shell of his xlr connectors when he performs a test there is obviously some reason for the constant apologizing for the ’I tried everything I could to get rid of that 60hz crap but couldn’t do it.’ Not to mention the interference and noise sources common in a residential neighborhood which would negate the chance of any single test results being repeatable.

@larabee

Can you explain it in context of this:

What is Thorston saying?

• Is it to not connect pin1 on XRLs
  or
• Not to connect pin1 to the shell of an RCA?
  or
• Something else?

I think the warning here is to avoid the cult of personality prevalent in consumer audio that is almost completely absent in professional audio. My customers never ask "who" designed a particular speaker. They do ask for particular engineers when it comes to system implementation, integration and tuning, but design? Never.

I don't know why, but I wasted time looking at Thorsten's posts, and some of Amir's replies. I never came across anything on XLR connectors, just one comment about power cables. I did come across Thorsten's strong opinions against ABX while at the same time, I think, putting forth superiority of the ITU methodology. We do extensive formal listening tests so it is something near and dear to my heart. I agree with Thorsten in principle on many areas of testing, differ in some, but also disagree with his fundamental premises on ABX (including that it is discredited, which is not true).

The overall impression I get from both of them is that they are not used to, and certainly do not like being challenged by people who are able to do it effectively and calmly. To me, they both try to browbeat their detractors as a way to avoid addressing the arguments made against their positions. I doubt I would enjoy a spirited discussion with either of them. I am reminded of one of my favorite comedy sketches by George Carlin. I will just say obviously neither of them is stupid, and I don't think either of them is nuts, so that leaves one option.

I am looking to buy a high end DAC.

Does anyone have the link to the manufacturer of the Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC?

• Not to connect pin1 to the shell of an RCA?
  or
• Something else?

@holmz

Something else. There's something called the 'pin1 problem' dealing with balanced lines. Quite often the ground tab of the XLR connector gets tied to pin 1 (they are right beside each other on the connector, contributing to the confusion around this).

You can get into noise problems with this. We avoid that by simply leaving the ground tab alone and only using pin 1.

Another area where this is problematic is trying to get single-ended gear to work with balanced equipment, while also supporting AES48. I'm not going into this in depth, but to give you an idea of the mayhem that can go on let's take the example of a magnetic phono. Its a balanced source, but 99 44/100ths% of the the time is treated as single-ended. But you wind up with the 'ground wire' that other single-ended sources don't seem to need.

(Yet I still run into tonearm manufacturers that are unaware that magnetic phono cartridges are a balanced source!)

You can ground the ground wire to the ground of the RCA and quite often it will work fine. But every now and then it doesn't.

Its that fiddly bit where it doesn't always work that's the problem.