Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?

[JustJones]

 

[blackdiamond]

I've heard the saying before that music is art. Audio is engineering.

The people who are in the middle of this are in the recording studios. Some believe like audiophiles, some are more like engineers. Nearly all are in the business of altering, coloring and giving the recordings a particular character. It is a combination of art and engineering. Most of the similar thinking on the playback end is myth. Taking the approach that putting together a satisfying home music system is an art can be entertaining and more satisfying to some people than just buying based upon sound principles. The magazines have cultivated this approach since at least the 1980's. If someone enjoys that then fine. It can however lead to a tremendous amount of wasted money and products that make no sense. A perpetual hunger to upgrade and improve. I'll avoid the temptation to go thru why it can be more satisfying to more people than a hard nosed approach, but I was that way for quite some time. There still plenty of interest regarding speakers, and rooms etc. It is a different perspective. My advice on system building is find a speaker you like or love and work backwards from there. Everything after the speaker in your room is easy.

Making audio components is engineering, but it's the listeners that judge the result of the engineering.

I absolutely agree that any two components that measure identically will sound identically, but I am not absolutely convinced that we know how to measure everything. I believe that the vast majority of engineering is focused on data transfer and not audio reproduction.

If two otherwise identical tube amplifiers can sound vastly different after changing the tubes (clearly tubes do not all measure identically), it seems that it's unlikely that any two amplifiers of different design could truly measure identically.

Because the differences are not always significant, I think that expectation bias can go both ways. I have no doubt that some audiophiles believe that they hear things that are simply ridiculous (e.g. directional preference for fancy fuses being an extreme example), but I my experience does not align with what I'm understanding from the ASR perspective.

To be completely honest, when I joined the forum to better understand a different perspective, I thought the discussion was going to be focused on things like fuses, cables, and other items that where the differences (if they exist) are expected to be very small. I am surprised that it's really at the true component level.

Well, time to get my mind back on work. Another week with stress levels being the highest in my nearly 22 year career awaits...

 

[SIY]

A wise man once (or a lot more than once) said, "If you can hear a difference without peeking, you can hear it. If you can't hear a difference without peeking you can't hear it."

I'd also add that, "99% of the time when someone says, 'I trust my ears,' what they really mean is, 'I need to peek.'"

None of this is complicated or needs thousand word essays.

 

[blackdiamond]

Is anyone willing to list the components in their system for my general reference? I'm curious to see what type of systems ASR members.

I'll go first...

APC H15 Power Conditioner (for power protection since we have a lot of flickers and outages)
Bluesound Node 2i Streamer (with NAS)
Audioquest Cinnamon Digital Coax
Denafrips Ares II DAC (Pangea AC-XL14 power cord)
Morrow Audio MA4 balanced interconnect
Pathos Classic One MkIII (1960s Mullard Tubes and Waudio power cord)
Blue Jeans Cable 10AWG (via custom switch to allow my home theater setup to share my speakers)
Focal 836V speakers

 

[Ken1951]

Is anyone willing to list the components in their system for my general reference? I'm curious to see what type of systems ASR members.

I'll go first...

APC H15 Power Conditioner (for power protection since we have a lot of flickers and outages)
Bluesound Node 2i Streamer (with NAS)
Audioquest Cinnamon Digital Coax
Denafrips Ares II DAC (Pangea AC-XL14 power cord)
Morrow Audio MA4 balanced interconnect
Pathos Classic One MkIII (1960s Mullard Tubes and Waudio power cord)
Blue Jeans Cable 10AWG (via custom switch to allow my home theater setup to share my speakers)
Focal 836V speakers

There's a whole thread in Member's Area on that very subject.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

Is anyone willing to list the components in their system for my general reference? I'm curious to see what type of systems ASR members.

I'll go first...

APC H15 Power Conditioner (for power protection since we have a lot of flickers and outages)
Bluesound Node 2i Streamer (with NAS)
Audioquest Cinnamon Digital Coax
Denafrips Ares II DAC (Pangea AC-XL14 power cord)
Morrow Audio MA4 balanced interconnect
Pathos Classic One MkIII (1960s Mullard Tubes and Waudio power cord)
Blue Jeans Cable 10AWG (via custom switch to allow my home theater setup to share my speakers)
Focal 836V speakers

That explains a lot.

What do all these cables sound like?

 

[Beave]

What do all these cables sound like?

Like the sound of one hand clapping?

 

[blackdiamond]

That explains a lot.

What do all these cables sound like?

They stay pretty quiet most of the time. Every now and then they gang up on me and mock me for my wasteful beliefs.

You'll all laugh at me, but here goes...

I have duped myself into believing that the Waudio power cable made a difference on my Pathos, but I don't believe any any of my other power cables.
I don't believe in the digital coax cables that I've tried; I just had extra money to waste.
I don't know exactly what I believe about my speaker cables, but it seems that twisted conductors seem to feed my placebo compared to parallel conductors.

Honest question: do any of you believe in tube rolling?

 

[Newman]

Too many uses of the phrase "believe in"...

 

[blackdiamond]

Too many uses of the phrase "believe in"...

Question: What's missing?
Answer: A sense of humor.

 

[Newman]

Yes, you are...

 

[Blumlein 88]

They stay pretty quiet most of the time. Every now and then they gang up on me and mock me for my wasteful beliefs.

You'll all laugh at me, but here goes...

I have duped myself into believing that the Waudio power cable made a difference on my Pathos, but I don't believe any any of my other power cables.
I don't believe in the digital coax cables that I've tried; I just had extra money to waste.
I don't know exactly what I believe about my speaker cables, but it seems that twisted conductors seem to feed my placebo compared to parallel conductors.

Honest question: do any of you believe in tube rolling?

Tube rolling can make a difference in the signal. Cables not so much regardless of your belief in them. Wrong size speaker cables can. Others just aren't doing anything. Belief is all you have.

 

[notsodeadlizard]

Banality is always complex.
So this thread will never end.
An another thread about the Topping E30 II has already reached the DAC warming up for three days and the very Soviet conclusion "if you don't like the E30, it means you have stepped on the shaky ground of opportunism subjectivism".
And it happened at the same time

Measurements are a design tool.
Declared technical parameters are a marketing tool.
Honesty of the manufacturer is compliance with the declared technical parameters.
The perception of the user is her purely personal matter.
Dat klopt!

Everything else is empty words, because understanding the conditions and results of measurements requires deep professionalism in the applied field.
At worst, on the basis of this fundamental misunderstanding, something like the Soviet system is being built, in which the only correct thing is what the Party (incomprehensible measurements) said.
And all that a powerless (because Topping's business model backed up by some beautiful graphs made the user so) and ignorant user can do is warm up the DAC for three days. User can also write curse words on any nearby fence (the internet is the closest fence you can write something on).

This is also not new.
In a country with the highest level of education (according to the Party) tens of millions put water cans in front of the TV where the completely insane swindler Alan Chumak was speaking.

 

[Guettel]

The question is wrong. Measurements are neither nothing or everything.

They're only something.

 

[SIY]

The question is wrong. Measurements are neither nothing or everything.

They're only something.

For electronics, they're everything. There is absolutely no audible phenomenon that isn't trivially measurable.

 

[Guettel]

There is absolutely no audible phenomenon that isn't trivially measurable.

What evidence do you have of that?

 

[solderdude]

What evidence do you have of that?

@SIY means for electronics I think.

What evidence would you have for the contrary of that ?

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Is anyone willing to list the components in their system for my general reference? I'm curious to see what type of systems ASR members.

I'll go first...

APC H15 Power Conditioner (for power protection since we have a lot of flickers and outages)
Bluesound Node 2i Streamer (with NAS)
Audioquest Cinnamon Digital Coax
Denafrips Ares II DAC (Pangea AC-XL14 power cord)
Morrow Audio MA4 balanced interconnect
Pathos Classic One MkIII (1960s Mullard Tubes and Waudio power cord)
Blue Jeans Cable 10AWG (via custom switch to allow my home theater setup to share my speakers)
Focal 836V speakers

Wouldn't anti surge protection cover your first item at a reasonable cost?

 

[Guettel]

@SIY means for electronics I think.

What evidence would you have for the contrary of that ?

A person making a claim needs to provide evidence, a person questioning it.

 

[SIY]

What evidence do you have of that?

In over half a century of the existence of faith-based audio, no-one has ever demonstrated the audibility of anything not trivially measurable. Not once. Ever. This despite constant claims of audible differences where none exist and a niche industry catering to this nonsense.