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

Sloop John B said:
From a position of absolute ignorance so forgive me if I’m talking rubbish but would active monitors (in general) give quite a different presentation than the vintage gear you own?
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Not the better ones. I specifically mentioned MEG (Musikelectronic Geithain) as they are a point-source, have a very natural balance and are voiced for sensible listening levels rather than ’deaf rock star’. I like them a lot. I’d only do this post catastrophe, e.g. my house collapses or burns down, but if I was starting again from scratch I’d almost certainly end up with a good streamer/DAC-preamp and a pair of MEG RL901Ks. I’d likely not miss the giant Lockwoods too much in that scenario. I’d certainly not try to get back to where I am now. That would be way too much effort!
 
Del monaco said:
As I am a classical lover, my first focus is on the performance rather than the recording or sound. For Beethoven’s 7th I’d choose Kleiber. Not a great recording despite several clean ups over the years. But what an enthralling, immersive performance. For Butterfly, I might choose the 70s Karajan which is a great performance and good recording. For Tchaikovsky’s shattering Pathetique, Mravinsky is my go to. The point is is it firstly the performance that pulls me. There are many very well recorded versions of these pieces but performances are often pedestrian. I don’t choose the best recorded. So the system balance is important as it has to ameliorate the edges of some of these historic or indifferently recorded performances, not enhance them.I know people who buy music based on the magnificence of the production. Kondrashin’s Dvorak 9 was a great showpiece recording at one time but performance wise I preferred Macal or Kubelik. I’m emesched in performance. The conductor, the orchestra, the venue all play a part but it’s the music and performance first. So measurements are much further down the list. I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left on this earth under the hood of a Dac trying to squeeze a 0.0002 reduction in some form of noise that is unlikely to register given my listening priorities. It seems such a waste of valuable listening time. Is the equipment doing its job?Does it allow me a gateway into the performance? Those are my main questions. It does and it has done for a while now.
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Great post and wonderful to read about the music which is surely what hifi is for. I completely agree about Mravinksky although in the sixth it is Giulini who brings a tear to my eye. Perhaps ASR could include that in their suite of measurement, a weteyeomometer!
 
camverton said:
Great post and wonderful to read about the music which is surely what hifi is for. I completely agree about Mravinksky although in the sixth it is Giulini who brings a tear to my eye. Perhaps ASR could include that in their suite of measurement, a weteyeomometer!
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Giulini floats my boat in Bruckner. One of the few who could hold a measured pace without the line collapsing. Haitink and Klemperer were also masters of this approach. But Mravinsky made his players dance.They wanted to dance for him. A master marionette.
 
Just looking at Amir's objective speaker ranking table again:
www.audiosciencereview.com

Master Audio Review Index

www.audiosciencereview.com www.audiosciencereview.com

It is wrong!

Nearly all of the top rated speakers are ported. If he bothered to measure just how bad these are at reproducing accurate low frequencies instead of assuming frequency response and distortion are the only thing that matters, his list would be very different.

If we look at DACs - all his SINAD winners are ESM based. I've yet to hear an ESM DAC that I like, all hifi and no music IME (although I've not heard one since the de-humping).

I think the DAC and amp measurements are only useful for finding if something is wrong. The speaker measurements are more useful but still of limited use.
 
Is it fair to say that on this thread that there is broad agreement that if the spectrum is of -50 to +50 between

A) measurements tell us everything we need to know and
B) measurements tell us nothing

that most of us are probably more in the middle cohort of -20 to +20 rather than at either extremes?



.sjb
 
I just checked the review of the WiiM Amp (one of which I recently bought) and I'd have to say the review is pretty much devoid of any useful content.

I'm not in the "measurements tell us nothing" camp however I review has to also at least consider stuff like how it sounds as well as the ergonomics of a components function to be of use (to me anyway). At least Stereophile have a subjective test as well as an objective test - although you can sometimes see with them cases where the objective reviewer thought a component was poor based on his test results, when the subjective reviewed liked the way it sounded.
 
The furore over the WiiM Amp appears to have died down a little now. More power would help I think and this will likely happen. I can imagine it as a good digital hub. I like the Pro Plus very much.
 
Del monaco said:
The furore over the WiiM Amp appears to have died down a little now. More power would help I think and this will likely happen. I can imagine it as a good digital hub. I like the Pro Plus very much.
Click to expand...
The WiiM Amp is a great bit of kit for the money. It sounds fine and the HDMI ARC capabilities mean that, with a decent set of speakers, it's a great alternative to a soundbar for using with a TV.

I'm also running a Pro in another system and it's also great (I went with the Pro rather than the Pro Plus as it'll be getting used with an external DAC although it's not at the moment).
 
SteveG said:
The WiiM Amp is a great bit of kit for the money. It sounds fine and the HDMI ARC capabilities mean that, with a decent set of speakers, it's a great alternative to a soundbar for using with a TV.

I'm also running a Pro in another system and it's also great (I went with the Pro rather than the Pro Plus as it'll be getting used with an external DAC although it's not at the moment).
Click to expand...
I use the Pro Plus’s internal Dac as I prefer it to the thinner sabre I have. It certainly sounds thin against the WiiM Dac.
 
Del monaco said:
Is the equipment doing its job?Does it allow me a gateway into the performance? Those are my main questions. It does and it has done for a while now.
Click to expand...
It may surprise you to know that I ask the same* question. However the conclusion I reached a long time ago is that once I have reached a certain level of performance the equipment makes little difference. I don't thank my stereo at the end of each performance, nor do I blame it. The gateway is always open.

The problem IMHO is over the question- how much responsibility do you think your hifi should have for fluctuations in your musical enjoyment? I think there is an unarticulated assumption around hifi forums that the kit deserves a considerable degree of the credit or blame for musical enjoyment. This is why someone can ask in all honesty whether the equipment is a gateway, without it seeming odd. But it is isn't a bit odd isn't it? is the equipment really blocking access to the performance? Do you need it? How?

It is often remarked on this forum that lots of musos don't care about what they what listen to music on. (Although equally some do). Equally one might often think to read the posts on hifi forums that the posters seem to think they enjoy music more than the poor idiots who listen to MP3s on cheap headphones connected to their phones. And yet the idiots do look kind of happy. Why is it that music often sounds great when you are driving? Or cycling? No doubt we all draw our own conclusions.

For my own part I am inclined to the view that over-associating the equipment with the musical result is unhelpful; it's not that the kit can't make any difference, just that its effect is more on one's mood and ability to marshal one's interest in the component to revive a relative lack of interest in the music. These days I therefore allow my interest in listening to music on my stereo to ebb and flow. When it ebbs, I do not rush out to buy a new component in order to revive my interest in listening to my stereo (or was it music?) .

Paradoxically, this doesn't entirely cure me of my interest in the kit, but it makes me look at it in a different way. Of course I am interested in a really better bit of kit but I'm not auditioning daily, and I won't rush out to fill the vacancy. The bar for doing the job (where there is a job to do) may be low. The bar for a price of kit actually attracting my interest is high. Equally, given my approach, it really does matter rather a lot to me to distinguish information which really is about the kit, from information which is really about people's enjoyment of their hobby in a rather different way.

*sort of; not quite the same.
 
Just about to try a Topping E30 II, against my Caiman SEG with Dorado PSU.

Let’s see which one my quad and Ruark prefer. Could go either way!
 
Sloop John B said:
Is it fair to say that on this thread that there is broad agreement that if the spectrum is of -50 to +50 between

A) measurements tell us everything we need to know and
B) measurements tell us nothing

that most of us are probably more in the middle cohort of -20 to +20 rather than at either extremes?



.sjb
Click to expand...
Kind of, but the issues are different with dacs and preamps (and maybe power amps) on the one hand and speakers on the other.
Equally/consequently the issues are very different between the questions
(a) do two things (really) sound the same;
(b) which of two things sound better.
 
Talking of hifi vs live, does anyone remember those Heathrow shows in the 1970s? I can’t remember if it was Quad or B&W with their electrostatic hybrid DM70, but they had an instrumentalist on stage whose live sound was compared with that from the speaker. There was an element of showmanship but it was very convincing and at that time I was a regular at the three South Bank concert halls so very aware of the sound of live music. At that time the B&W DM70 and Quads led the field in terms of realistic reproduction of acoustic instruments; other types of speaker, whilst good always sounded like music via a speaker rather than the actual thing.
 
Sloop John B said:
Has anyone bought a product because of a recommendation on ASR ?
Click to expand...
No, but I have looked up stuff I bought and found it recommended there; a Topping DX7 Pro DAC being one of them.
Nothing wrong with it - apparently it should be absolutely bloody fantastic though. It's just very good for the £600 quid asking price at the time.
I'd only be interested in ASR measurements if I thought I could hear something that it was doing wrong.
 
Tony L said:
Not the better ones. I specifically mentioned MEG (Musikelectronic Geithain) as they are a point-source, have a very natural balance and are voiced for sensible listening levels rather than ’deaf rock star’. I like them a lot. I’d only do this post catastrophe, e.g. my house collapses or burns down, but if I was starting again from scratch I’d almost certainly end up with a good streamer/DAC-preamp and a pair of MEG RL901Ks. I’d likely not miss the giant Lockwoods too much in that scenario. I’d certainly not try to get back to where I am now. That would be way too much effort!
Click to expand...
Didn't you have a pair of MEGs years ago but moved them on because they excited a room mode too much, or was that a different speaker?
 
adamdea said:
It may surprise you to know that I ask the same* question. However the conclusion I reached a long time ago is that once I have reached a certain level of performance the equipment makes little difference. I don't thank my stereo at the end of each performance, nor do I blame it. The gateway is always open.

The problem IMHO is over the question- how much responsibility do you think your hifi should have for fluctuations in your musical enjoyment? I think there is an unarticulated assumption around hifi forums that the kit deserves a considerable degree of the credit or blame for musical enjoyment. This is why someone can ask in all honesty whether the equipment is a gateway, without it seeming odd. But it is isn't a bit odd isn't it? is the equipment really blocking access to the performance? Do you need it? How?

It is often remarked on this forum that lots of musos don't care about what they what listen to music on. (Although equally some do). Equally one might often think to read the posts on hifi forums that the posters seem to think they enjoy music more than the poor idiots who listen to MP3s on cheap headphones connected to their phones. And yet the idiots do look kind of happy. Why is it that music often sounds great when you are driving? Or cycling? No doubt we all draw our own conclusions.

For my own part I am inclined to the view that over-associating the equipment with the musical result is unhelpful; it's not that the kit can't make any difference, just that its effect is more on one's mood and ability to marshal one's interest in the component to revive a relative lack of interest in the music. These days I therefore allow my interest in listening to music on my stereo to ebb and flow. When it ebbs, I do not rush out to buy a new component in order to revive my interest in listening to my stereo (or was it music?) .

Paradoxically, this doesn't entirely cure me of my interest in the kit, but it makes me look at it in a different way. Of course I am interested in a really better bit of kit but I'm not auditioning daily, and I won't rush out to fill the vacancy. The bar for doing the job (where there is a job to do) may be low. The bar for a price of kit actually attracting my interest is high. Equally, given my approach, it really does matter rather a lot to me to distinguish information which really is about the kit, from information which is really about people's enjoyment of their hobby in a rather different way.

*sort of; not quite the same.
Click to expand...
Very interesting, thanks. Re your first paragraph I don’t thank my hifi either! Mainly because I’ve forgotten all about it - damn it, I sometimes forget to turn it off. Good hifi for me is that which doesn’t get in the way of the music but at the same time gives the visceral thrill that live musicians can give.

You reference to listening to music whilst cycling took me back to 1966 when as a lad I was cycle touring in Bedfordshire with a tiny transistor radio, attached to my handlebars with elastic bands, listening to River Deep Mountain High. Tina Turner never sounded so awful!
 
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