JoeKickass
Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2020
- Messages
- 13
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- 19
I've been into audio for a little while now, and it's been a fascinating journey. While I love music, I discovered early on that my critical listening ability is mediocre at best. I might be able to pick one device over another, but it's pretty much at a subconscious level. To me, reading eloquent reviews of audio products was similar to reading reviews about wine, lots of poetry and romance but not much substance I could actually relate to in my own experience.
I am an electrical engineer so I love quantifiable measurements and comparison, they just make life easier! For a long time I just bought what had the best specs I could afford, until I tried a multibit dac by schiit and discovered that somehow something that measured worse and had worse specs, actually sounded better to me... even with my below-average ears!
In science and physics getting unexpected results is actually the most exciting thing because it means there is something new that you still need to understand. I wonder if that's what is happening right now in the audiophile world. We have measurements like THD and freq. response, etc. but they are actually incredibly basic static tests compared to the complexity and dynamics of a music signal...
I think the ultimate quantifiable test would be to feed in a piece of reference music, and then compare and analyze the resulting output waveform with the reference. With the great advancements in CPU power I am hopeful to see that within my lifetime. I suspect until we get to that point where we can actually measure music, there will always be disagreement between the measurements and our own ears.
Here is a good interview that explains it better than me:
I love that there is an audio forum dedicated to the measurements instead of subjective reviews, but I'm curious how many people here really feel that the current measurement test suites are giving a complete picture?
I am an electrical engineer so I love quantifiable measurements and comparison, they just make life easier! For a long time I just bought what had the best specs I could afford, until I tried a multibit dac by schiit and discovered that somehow something that measured worse and had worse specs, actually sounded better to me... even with my below-average ears!
In science and physics getting unexpected results is actually the most exciting thing because it means there is something new that you still need to understand. I wonder if that's what is happening right now in the audiophile world. We have measurements like THD and freq. response, etc. but they are actually incredibly basic static tests compared to the complexity and dynamics of a music signal...
I think the ultimate quantifiable test would be to feed in a piece of reference music, and then compare and analyze the resulting output waveform with the reference. With the great advancements in CPU power I am hopeful to see that within my lifetime. I suspect until we get to that point where we can actually measure music, there will always be disagreement between the measurements and our own ears.
Here is a good interview that explains it better than me:
I love that there is an audio forum dedicated to the measurements instead of subjective reviews, but I'm curious how many people here really feel that the current measurement test suites are giving a complete picture?
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