SwampYankee
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- Joined
- Mar 2, 2021
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It's great if you have equipment you enjoy. This forum shouldn't diminish your satisfaction. I find value in objective measurements and it sounds like you do, as well.If I can't trust my own ears why am I spending a small fortune on a system? ... As long as we keep asking questions products will keep improving, at least I hope so.
The points of contention swirl around why you or others enjoy what you enjoy. There's an expectation at ASR that differences in perceived sound attributed to equipment should be measurable. If they aren't, the working assumption is that the perceived difference is attributable to perceptual bias and not an actual difference in the fidelity of music reproduced by the component or system. I am generally in this camp.
"Component matching" carries some baggage in the subjective vs. objective debates among audio clans. Though outside the range of this thread, double blind testing would be one way of assessing whether the improvements you perceive through component matching are consistently discernible in un-sighted listening conditions. The same is true for objectivists/subjectivists who perceive differences in sound based any other factors, such as interconnect cables, crossover component choices, or minor differences in SINAD, impulse response, etc. The reality is that DBT is a major pain in the butt to execute and is very labor intensive. There's a lot of data available from the folks who have done DBT, but its not a practical tool to assess all components...much less the myriad potential combinations of those components.
As I stated earlier in the thread, I don't believe I can personally hear the differences among properly functioning, competently designed amps, DACs, etc. I haven't done DBT to verify that, but my confidence is enough for me to make audio decisions that scratch my personal itches. That's enough for me.