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Thorsten Loesch vs Amir

Let the games begin!

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/is-the-ifi-audio-zen-one-signature-dac-a-waste-of-money.36833/

 

An interesting conversation should be developing concerning the credibility of  the numbers race by the measurement is everything crowd and the rest of us out here in the real world.

 

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.

Now, if you were to choose any amplifier (especially any Class D) test on the site with a favorable sinad value and recommended by Amir the majority of them would show that amp operating within its linear range with a thd+n level approaching -80db or more so often from tests other than sinad Loesch's opinion that performance on a level far, far less than the cult at ASR drool over ( sans any personal experience) is audibly unimpeachable.

The question of equating accuracy of reproduction to measurements will go on forever, no doubt. My question is, will it be answered over at ASR.

If Amir is dumb enough to go up against Loesch what will soon happen is that  Amir will get frustrated and Loesch will be banned from the site.

larabee
fair
51 posts
 

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.

mitch2
3,694 posts
 

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

12many
223 posts
 

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.  

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