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Has anyone bought a product because of a recommendation on ASR?

Tony L said:
My disappointment with the current obsessive measurements thing is the lack of useful correlation between measured evidence and user-perception. If one takes a look at post #144 upthread, a subjective end-user appraisal of some very well reviewed and well measuring DACs, until we get to the point where the raw data can be interpreted to predict such subjective findings it is IMHO next to useless.
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The best and most likely explanation for this is of course that the subjective end user appraisals have very little to do with actual differences in audible output and everything to do with psychological phenomena. No measurements can ever correlate with those.
 
camverton said:
Yes, measurements are essential when designing equipment but when it comes to listening we all have ears with very different frequency responses, all but inevitable with aging and that’s before we add in damage due to loud sounds or arthritis affecting the tiny connecting bones in the middle ear etc. Unless we know how particular measurements correlate to our individual hearing then the measurements are a moot point and there is no ideal measurement for all listeners. To laud or dismiss equipment purely on measurements ignore the las, and arguably most important, part of the reproduction chain - the listener.
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I do not think that is the point of measurements - or the point of hifi in general. Measurements attempt to determine how badly the signal is corrupted when it flows through thr system. They do not attempt to predict what the listener personally likes. How could it?

Quite a few audiophiles seem to fundamentally misunderstand the point of good sound reproduction. The point is not to map the reproduction qualities to one's preferences or one's hearing - hifi is not meant to be a hearing aid, The point is to map the qualities of the reproduction to the qualities of the original sound. And that is where measurements are invaluable.
 
Del monaco said:
Because of ASR you have a host of Dac makers, obvious when you look at his list, tuning their Dacs to satisfy Amir and his equipment. Not sure that’s a great way to develop new gear. I may be wrong.
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How do you know this?
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
To my mind, measurements are an essential part of product development and QC, but a less essential part of comparative evaluation. The thing is, we don’t really have a firm grip on what factors matter most, in affecting our perception. We don’t have science (as far as I’m aware) that understands how our ear/brain responds to sensory input, at least not down to the sort of levels we measure with the Klippel stuff. So we don’t have correlation between measurements and subjective experience beyond a fairly gross generalisation that ‘X tends to be perceived as’ whatever.

So my take is that ASR is probably fine for discovering the badly designed or poorly executed products, but not reliable for ranking products in terms of how well they convey the musical experience.
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I look at it from the totally opposite direction. For me if a speaker (or system as a whole) were to be able to perfectly reproduce the sound of a musical instrument (the huge caveat here being that the musical intrument was perfectly faithfully recorded in the first place), then measurements would be able to prove that the speaker/system were doing so. Then how humans perceive sound becomes irrelevant because the output of the speaker would be literally identical to that of the recorded instrument itself. If the waveforms from the speaker and the instrument itself were identical then it they would be indistinguishable from each other by any human listener.

Now of course I know i'm massively oversimplifying the reality because I'm ignoring things such as, the original violin would have been recorded within it's own acoustic and that acoustic response would also have been recorded and then reproduced from the speaker, whereas the real instrument would only have the acoustic of your living room. So there would be a way to hear a difference even if the violin was perfectly recorded and then perfectly reproduced.

Also of course the reality is, what is on the CD/Record/file is the result of much manipulation, including the preferences of the engineer etc, the studio replay equipment (particularly the speakers) plus the acoustics of the studio.

What I'm trying to say is that, (leaving aside the arguments about "are we measuring the right things"), if the measurements show the replay system is as accurate as is needed to be beyond the known limits of human perception of air vibrations then how humans perceive that vibration is irrelevant as the system has done the best job it possibly can do of reproducing those vibrations.
 
Imagine a crowd of forum members who subscribe to the measurement philosophy and who begin to buy your products due to the measurements. That’s a great captive audience.
 
gez said:
I look at it from the totally opposite direction. For me if a speaker (or system as a whole) were to be able to perfectly reproduce the sound of a musical instrument (the huge caveat here being that the musical intrument was perfectly faithfully recorded in the first place), then measurements would be able to prove that the speaker/system were doing so. Then how humans perceive sound becomes irrelevant because the output of the speaker would be literally identical to that of the recorded instrument itself. If the waveforms from the speaker and the instrument itself were identical then it they would be indistinguishable from each other by any human listener.

Now of course I know i'm massively oversimplifying the reality because I'm ignoring things such as, the original violin would have been recorded within it's own acoustic and that acoustic response would also have been recorded and then reproduced from the speaker, whereas the real instrument would only have the acoustic of your living room. So there would be a way to hear a difference even if the violin was perfectly recorded and then perfectly reproduced.

Also of course the reality is, what is on the CD/Record/file is the result of much manipulation, including the preferences of the engineer etc, the studio replay equipment (particularly the speakers) plus the acoustics of the studio.

What I'm trying to say is that, (leaving aside the arguments about "are we measuring the right things"), if the measurements show the replay system is as accurate as is needed to be beyond the known limits of human perception of air vibrations then how humans perceive that vibration is irrelevant as the system has done the best job it possibly can do of reproducing those vibrations.
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Yes, but have you actually compared a hifi system to the real thing. It’s not even close.
 
camverton said:
Yes, measurements are essential when designing equipment but when it comes to listening we all have ears with very different frequency responses, all but inevitable with aging and that’s before we add in damage due to loud sounds or arthritis affecting the tiny connecting bones in the middle ear etc. Unless we know how particular measurements correlate to our individual hearing then the measurements are a moot point and there is no ideal measurement for all listeners. To laud or dismiss equipment purely on measurements ignore the las, and arguably most important, part of the reproduction chain - the listener.
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But the whole point is: it doesn't matter how your perception differs from mine or anybody elses. When you and I listen to a live violin being played, we will indeed almost certainly perceive it differently from each other. I have no way of knowing how the violin sounds to you, and vice versa. But we are still both listening to that same violin. If a system could reproduce the sound of that violin identically (something that measurements can prove) then both you and I would perceive that reproduction identically to the live violin and exactly like the live violin we would both perceive it differently from each other.

It's no different from knowing that blue light is a given range of wavelengths. If you look up at the sky and see blue, then I will see what I perceive as blue (even if I have some form of eye defect from birth, it'll be what I've always known as being blue). We can measure that exact spectrum of light wavelenths and if we then reproduce those exact wavelengths in the exact same sprectrum, we will both see the exact same colour as we do when we looked up at that blue sky. Acoustics is no different in any way.
 
Sloop John B said:
Has anyone bought a product because of a recommendation on ASR ?

What product?

Did it meet your expectations (from its review)?

Did it replace and outperform a more expensive item?

I’m interested in some real word experience, from people who put their money down.

.sjb
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To quote myself from another thread (how terribly vain)....
Fretbuzz said:
I had a Qutest, and saw a used SMSL DAC for sale that happened to be right next to (IIRC) the Qutest on the ASR SINAD ranking graph. Figured I'd give it a go and if they (theoretically) sounded about the same sell the Chord for quite a big saving. In other words I wanted the SMSL to be as good. It wasn't. Sounded relatively etched and artificial in comparison. So IME the measurements are saying something but not everything.
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Octavian said:
But how do you know the manufacturers on the list act the way you claimed?
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Chinese DAC manufacturers are near perfect on SNR, which is measured by ASR (which their customer base read avidly), but they lag massively behind a number of non-Chinese manufacturers (some named in post #162) on XLR output impedance, which isn't measured by ASR. This is one measurement I can think of, but maybe others exist.
 
Del monaco said:
Because of ASR you have a host of Dac makers, obvious when you look at his list, tuning their Dacs to satisfy Amir and his equipment. Not sure that’s a great way to develop new gear. I may be wrong.
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You'd be wrong, and if I may - the confusion and ignorance expressed regarding well measuring equipment is not a good look. I place very little weight behind subjective reviews of equipment, especially speakers.

\
 
darrenyeats said:
Chinese DAC manufacturers are near perfect on SNR, which is measured by ASR (which their customer base read avidly), but they lag massively behind a number of non-Chinese manufacturers on XLR output impedance, which isn't measured by ASR. This is one measurement I can think of, but maybe others exist.
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And they do it intentionally in order to do well in ASR tests? That was the gist of Del Monaco’s claim.
 
sq225917 said:
I wonder if theres anyone on ASR who bought a piece of gear that measured well, but didn't like the sound, but kept it anyway? I suspect that cohort is non-existant. As a broader group they might all claim to be led by the numbers, even actually buying based on the numbers, but no one keeps shit sounding gear, do they.

In that way I see them as no different to the notional reel to reel ongaku, olympian buyer. Their motivations to select and purchase might be wildly different, but I've never met anyone who kept gear they didn't like.

The sniping at the motivations of those in opposing groups is identical, it's just othering.

Hands up anyone who ever kept gear they didn't like the sound of because they let selection criteria overule what they heard, anyone?
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I'll go as far as admitting that my belief in my system being what I want it to be, i.e. as accurate as I can afford, has led me to on occasion accepting that some recordings don't sound as good as I think they could have. Primarily I know I'd enjoy them more if they were EQ'd differently. But I just put that down to a mixture of a) the producer/engineer/musicians having horrible taste in EQ balance and/or their system was so way out of wack accuracy wise that what they were hearing wasn't exactly what ended up being recorded. So I put up with it. I put up with it because other recordings sound sublimely realistic to my ear etc. Despite knowing that if i were to use speakers that measured a little less accurately in a couple of ways, i'd probably end up with more of my recordings sounding good, different ones potentialy sounding very good and less sounding not so great.

NB: I should add that I i've yet to hear any recording that sounded bad through my system, at worst just certain instruments in the mix may sound "not that great" or "not as good as they could have". If that makes any sense.
 
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