Audio Science Review Review

Vista also killed DirectSound3D and set back 3D game audio for years.. I'm more salty about that than anything else because playing something like UT2004 on an old XP machine with a Soundblaster card is truly an amazing experience. Even now games are barely getting back up to that level of sound processing.

 

Yeah, quite a few things I didn't list, but yeah, seems like you all agree and the list could go on. Wonder if any of this has to do with him leaving MS, etc.

I agree that Apple made mistakes too, but I suspect they got away with it when they broke out in the mid-late 2000's b/c so many parts of Windows were so bad at this time that people just wanted "anywhere but here", which included overpriced but legitimately good (or good enough) for most people Apple stuff.

 

Makes sense.

I get that "corporate" is hard, politics is hard, all the finagling is hard, a lot of bs'ing/schmozing/perception management is involved and is also hard, and it's not always the best product from a technical standpoint that wins, but regardless things were still quite a mess with most MS products I can think of from this era/time. Even if was only perception and MS products were actually technically superior, I'd be way less inclined to adopt "apparent mess and every other MS product I use has problems every day" than "not an apparent mess".

 

1. @ultrabike for his digital reviews, he didn’t use asio drivers, had weird grounding, didn’t use the products in their sweet spots and level match them, and openly ignored truncation distortion and massive imd in treble. Instead he complained about a ridiculous, inaudible “sabre hump” that’s present in the cleanest and most reliable gear with the ESS DACs. Gear that’s in use every day and is judged to sound good enough, far better than the RME and Chinese hardware he recommends, and stable enough. Universal Audio (made in China now!), MOTU, and Apogee. Apogee is the least reliable of those due to the fans in the symphonies but they sound good He also shat on the Central European Pro-ject DAC, measured the gear with the best blend of sound, electrical, and driver reliability, Lynx, and doesn’t talk about because they’re one of those expensive brands that don’t give hookups. Ever. A lot of expensive pro audio company’s idea of a hookup is pointing you to used unit north of 1000 dollars and giving you the opportunity to send it in for refurbishment at your own cost similar to Schiit’s garage Yggdrasils. Amir has done none of this and frequently measures older gear that there is no way some audiophile maintains. Those switching supplies go bad. All of them. When they go bad, they can hurt the gear. They need to be replaced every once in a while. That’s 100-200 dollars down the drain and more if anything else is broken.

 

Well, I was JUST banned from that forum after ONLY about four (4) posts-- a new record for me. That said, I never used a profanity or slur.
WOW. I'm POWERFUL! "Kneel before Zod."
That crowd is EXTREMELY sensitive to anything other than the Topping-SMSL continuum. But I swear to dog I never mentioned I owned a Schiit Modi Multi.
Anyway, I've been tryin' to break in to jail again. But no luck -- registrant account keeps gettin' rejected. Man do they have some tight filters. I used a diff. IP (VPN), completely diff. email, and a way different username.
To quote Flynn (TRON, 1982): "Busted again. And that was my best program."
"Now that is a big door"
"Can't quite get the connection with that sucker. Now if I hit a direct terminal ...."

 

This thread is getting weird with the randos.

 

I have this weird hunch you're not going to last very long here, either.

 

Interesting discussion on the flaming bag of dog shit that so much of ASR is made of. I actually came across this discussion as I was looking for the proper place to read and post LRS impressions... I received a pair of LRSs on Sept 25th. (took 15 weeks to get them).Currently, I've got them in my living room paired with Bifrost 2 and Ragnarok 2.

They are a pretty awesome pair of speakers, and I say that with too short of cables, a bad room, and poor placement (cable length issue).

I only have em about 30 ish inches from the wall at this point.

Running some tone test tracks on low gain (about 65 db - 70 db listening average), you can hear/feel bass at 30hz, down about 10-15 db. and at 40hz its pretty decent. I know the speakers are rated for
50 hz, but 40hz wasnt bad, only a few db lower then 50hz, and im testing at late night volumes.

takes high gain to hear anything at 20hz, and even then its not much.

I should have em in my basement next week, once my 10 ft Zu Libtec cables with bananas arrive. Looking to post proper thoughts then (better room), but so far I love the LRS.

 

I don't suggest you read this recent thread on ASR (unless you're a glutton for punishment), but just the title says it all:

Why aren't there more honest and objective reviewers like ASR and Amir?​

 

Thats just par for the course there. Also if you read alot of the posts, there is one writing style thats seems to come through fairly often.

Makes me wonder how many accounts Amir has made on both ASR and Head Fi.

 

I had a bit of a giggle on the LCD-X review that got posted today.. he has the gear but has no clue how to use it.

His idea of measuring distortion is... his usual dashboard view of a single 40hz tone. Yep. We've got SINAD for headphones now.

He also measures IMD while pushing the headphone as loud as it will go, all the way to 132dB (?!?) in this case. Multitone data is good, but *not like that*.

So his entire headphone measurement criteria at this point are a) 40hz distortion b) how loud it goes and c) how harman the FR is. Has he never looked at innerfidelity or any other website with headphone measurements, ever?

Edit: I also just noticed he hasn't even calibrated the levels of his measurement rig yet. Amazing.

 

Heh. Also, if its FR doesn't match the Harman target, into the trash it goes, lol.

 

I suppose he enjoys listening to jackhammers up close.

 

I find it hard to imagine a neutral sound lover listening to the LCD-X and thinking they were bass shy.

 

I was going to suggest that he's more interested in old fishing-boat engines than music.