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. 

128x128russ69

This one jumped the shark and missed the mark. Have fun. Cheers!

We need a shark with better timing, like this one.

All the best,
Nonoise

In another thread, perhaps this thread, @prof clearly differentiates between subjective preferences and subjective impressions.

In a nutshell subjective impressions AND preferences need to be educated in a listening learning acoustic process becoming then a set of educated positively biased impressions like any musician or trained acoustician exhibit ...

Opposing electrical measures about a piece of gear over listening impression or even over listening preference is a dead horse useless beating...

Entertaining for our own narrowing motives two opposing groups of people is trivial business......

I prefer to think in a larger way and in a larger context.... A too larger one for some here sometimes, i plaid guilty, but at least i am not boring nor trivial...

😁😊

There must be some kind of way out of here...

The way out is a dialogue out of the narrow mind set of few fetichist subjective people and also especially out of the objective obsession about electrical measures of few zealots, in a discussion appealing to more rigorous acoustic and psycho-acoustic concept and experience and experiments... After all the correlation between objective and subjective attitude must be a learned experience in an ongoing process in an experimental listening  history proper to each of us...

Then calling people "deluded audiophile" or throwing appeal to ban objectivist is not a sane mental behaviour...

Seem to me that if a product measure worse in a parameter than another its objectively worse based on that parameter.

But as I suggested before if one posits a given level of distortion is inaudible 

reducing that level of distortion a hundredfold cannot affect the audible experience

The measurement it important from the marketing and quality control standpoint of course.

To suggest a piece that measures worse cant sound good isnt sustainable after a minimum standard is met,

If you cd establish  level of distortion that is audible that might be helpful but wdnt necessarily mean the piece wd not sound  good

You wd need to be able to prove that an audible level of distortion was detectable to a large number of folk who wd independently agree it sounded bad to make the point 

And then you are back to listening test vs measurement no?