Great post! thanks very much...
In conclusion, how can what we hear be measured? In medieval times the minor chords were knows as the Devils Chord because of the feeling it evoked. How can the feelings of emotion that music brings that be measured?
I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.
I just can't clear my head of this. I don't want to start a measurements vs listening war and I'd appreciate it if you guys don't, but I bought a Rogue Sphinx V3 as some of you may remember and have been enjoying it quite a bit. So, I head over to AVS and read Amir's review and he just rips it apart. But that's OK, measurements are measurements, that is not what bugs me. I learned in the early 70s that distortion numbers, etc, may not be that important to me. Then I read that he didn't even bother listening to the darn thing. That is what really bugs me. If something measures so poorly, wouldn't you want to correlate the measurements with what you hear? Do people still buy gear on measurements alone? I learned that can be a big mistake. I just don't get it, never have. Can anybody provide some insight to why some people are stuck on audio measurements? Help me package that so I can at least understand what they are thinking without dismissing them completely as a bunch of mislead sheep.
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May have to rename the site Audiokarens. It's a measurement. It has no emotion. Amir didn't call your favorite piece of audio equipment ugly, the measurement did. I ordered a pair of the Fiio 5 IEMs that he reviewed with very low distortion. So far I am impressed. I have also owned tube amps. I liked them too. I am not emotionally attached to any of it. The acoustic engineer who did my listening room took a ton of measurements. It sounds fantastic. Well worth the money. His measurements seem competent. Not scientific lab quality but competent. It's unemotional. It just is. I am sure many of you have been in a room where the person said "this sounds great" and you were thinking "this sounds awful". Do you need another person's opinion that is not your own? Why does Amir's opinion matter so much? Let it go. I personally find some of the measurements fascinating on speakers and headphones/IEMs. It is interesting to see the measurements and try to relate that to what I hear. They got me into equalizing headphones and IEMs too. What a difference! |
It's a human thing: when it's written in stone, it becomes objective and sacred. It needs no further validation... (who cares about listening.) Judgements can be made, and people will fall in line. Who cares about the art, beauty, music, humanity.... let's turn our fascination of art to a fascination with number-crunching. Sadly, people often neglect the fact that the EASIEST THING ON THE PLANET FOR _ANY_ even HALF-WAY COMPETENT ENGINEER is to design and build a product that produces stellar measurement on the LIMITED SET OF MEASUREMENTS USED TO TEST AUDIO GEAR. Great measurements will only establish 1 thing: The product was designed to be a mainstream poster-child, most likely without any respect on how it sounds. If it measures absolutely perfectly: RED LIGHT, RUN AWAY! Every amplifier and loudspeaker designer (worth his salt) will agree with the words above...
These measurements tell us these two things, and absolutely nothing more: 1. The equipment is functioning according to design parameters. 2. The equipment has been SPECIAL TUNED TO EXCEL AT THESE MEASUREMENTS. Excelling at certain measurements is EASY with certain tricks (eg loops of feedback). Yet, using such tricks skews other performance parameters, that ARE NOT MEASURED as pat of the standard measurement sets, yet still COUNT. We are routinely testing maybe 1-5% of all the parameters that are needed for accurate sound reproduction, and eve those measurements are MASSIVELY FLAWED. For example, we test how an amplifier drives a resistor, which has very little to nothing to do with how it drives a loudspeaker! If an amplifier measures perfectly it means that the product is a PERFECT PRECISION HEATER. However, tells next to NOTHING about its sonic virtues.
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@realworldaudio , I feel most of what you wrote is made up. I don't think you will be able to clearly articulate what is missing from the measurements and certainly not 95% of the things that are missing. Perhaps this is the issue. This sounds more like outrage mob mentality that reasonsed criticism. I am welcome to be proven wrong. |
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