Why HiFi Gear Measurements Are Misleading (yes ASR talking to you…)
About 25 years ago I was inside a large room with an A-frame ceiling and large skylights, during the Perseid Meteor Shower that happens every August. This one time was like no other, for two reasons: 1) There were large, red, fragmenting streaks multiple times a minute with illuminated smoke trails, and 2) I could hear them.
Yes, each meteor produced a sizzling sound, like the sound of a frying pan.
Amazed, I Googled this phenomena and found that many people reported hearing this same sizzling sound associated with meteors streaking across the sky. In response, scientists and astrophysicists said it was all in our heads. That, it was totally impossible. Why? Because of the distance between the meteor and the observer. Physics does not allow sound to travel fast enough to hear the sound at the same time that the meteor streaks across the sky. Case closed.
ASR would have agreed with this sound reasoning based in elementary science.
Fast forward a few decades. The scientists were wrong. Turns out, the sound was caused by radiation emitted by the meteors, traveling at the speed of light, and interacting with metallic objects near the observer, even if the observer is indoors. Producing a sizzling sound. This was actually recorded audibly by researchers along with the recording of the radiation. You can look this up easily and listen to the recordings.
Takeaway - trust your senses! Science doesn’t always measure the right things, in the right ways, to fully explain what we are sensing. Therefore your sensory input comes first. You can try to figure out the science later.
I’m not trying to start an argument or make people upset. Just sharing an experience that reinforces my personal way of thinking. Others of course are free to trust the science over their senses. I know this bothers some but I really couldn’t be bothered by that. The folks at ASR are smart people too.
That is because we do know how to translate measurements into what is heard and it is far less variable. You can’t tell how a speaker sounds simply by how it measures. There is 0 possibility or we would all by buying speakers from mail order catalogs of graphs. More proof you don’t have a system, and are making stuff up ad lib.
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I am not a scientist. +1, I never saw a scientist asking for a donation every time they hit the send button. I applaud your transparency about this. Because we as engineers and people who understand how audio products work, and decades of research into what kind of listening test is valid and what is not, point to generic cables performing their function way beyond call of duty. What we? This is you posting this, not we. You never spent decades of research, you never made a product. As for listening tests yes, there is published info about this, you would hate it though, it takes too much time and effort. The cable is most harmless item in your audio gear. Terrible, the CD is way more harmless. Cables can act as a choke point for the music. Yet folks focus on them and spend thousands of dollars on them. Why? Uhhh, because they felt they were worth it? Amir, don’t you get that every high end cable vendor offers return policies? You are worried about a problem that doesn’t exist, you can refund a cable that fails the pepsi challenge. You gotta make this stuff up to justify what you need to do to drive traffic to your site. Without someone to blame how else can you justify your website? If you were the least bit serious you would avail yourself to the methods you tell everyone else to do. Set up a panel of trained listeners and get on with it.
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The first thing science will always do is validate the claim. This is a step in the right direction, you need to validate your claims. You should start by using links when you make claims as a third party validation. Of course the first step is to validate your claim that you even have a system. Start by listing it in the virtual system. Otherwise you aren't being scientific AND: The claim will never be assumed to be correct without validation. @thespeakerdude , this is the first step to becoming credible, start validating stuff in future posts. I will overlook your previous claims that were never validated.
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there is an opportunity here. What about conducting a blind test by a panel, There are many audio clubs around the country that do this informally. The problem you have with blind listening tests for sites like ASR, Audioholics or Golden Sound is it isn't profitable. These guys are basically peddling information based on their personal opinion. They would need to buy a device like an ABX Comparator, get a panel of trained listeners (not untrained listeners), and follow testing protocols that are accepted by documented standards. The second they get a result that refutes their position they would be out of work. See section 2.2 in this paper:
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Listening to lots of different systems does not give you experience Yes it does, listening to lots of different systems does give you experience. Don’t make this all about you, you want to pretend to have experience and you don’t even have a system. If I’m mistaken please post it and some pics OK? Otherwise go get some EXPERIENCE and try to listen to someone elses system. |
HiFi measurements ARE misleading (or bogus) for many reasons. Every website that measures just for measurements sake (ASR, Audioholics, Golden Sound) needs traffic to generate income. They measure things that don’t matter and talk as if they do (SNR beyond human hearing). Then they don’t measure what DOES matter because they are pretenders ( the room they measure/ listen in impacts the sound of what they measure. What is the FR curve of it? Do they even care?) Doltish amateurs looking to condemn legitimate companies with bogus measurements to generate click bait. Horrible miscreants as some here have noted. When legit measurements don’t support their radical click bait they go into attack mode and blame the messenger. |
