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.
@nyev there is a pretty significant difference between saying that one topic is fully understood and saying that there is nothing new that can come up. To make it more simple for you, the topic of a chair is fully understood, yet, there are new models of chairs using what is understood differently coming out every year. |
Right on. ✔ Also testing just one speaker at a time; not both. Driving them to Nabraska. Then saying they don’t produce a linear response. Also, like @kota1 said, and he’s right; Amir’s room is untreated. I mean, if you have non-ported speakers (small) that are right infront of you - in a nearfield setting; room treatment is not nearly as important. For floor standing speakers; which he also measures, room treatments are signficantly more important. Especially since those speakers are meant to fill a room with sound and have way more potential/reflection points. One could suggest the machine alone negates all of this, but that is unlikely. Since of course, those machines for measurements may have also been made with human error and engineering choices that the owner is unware of, which adversely impact the results. I could go further, but this wack-a-mole is so bruised I almost feel bad. |
Currently, in physics, "spooky action from a distance" is not understood. Until very recently, very smart people did not have a possible explanation regarding the existance of dark matter/dark energy. We now have a possible (and controversial) explanation for dark matter/dark energy. In audio, there are things we simply do not understand or do not fully understand. What do I not fully understand? Why a cable made a difference in what I was hearing. While it is certainly possible I may never understand, I think it’s silly to say I never will. Knowing what isn’t going on? I think that’s important too.
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