Audio Science Review Review

Discussion in 'Audio Science' started by purr1n, Aug 30, 2020.

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  1. Elmer Danilovich

    Elmer Danilovich MOT:Earmen, HeadAmp, Bricasti; AKA:MShenay

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    Totally hit the nail on the head there,

    An honestly yea, and what sucks is there aren't an abundance of shows any more people can attend to they can actually hear things for themselvs. Nor can we advise people to venture out to local shops to hear things... Sweden in particular is seeing a second spike, upwards of 6,000 cases per day now on average according to Google

    So more and more folks are stuck only having online reviews and impressions to rely on... still ASR seems to be losing ground with the established base of reviewers and even Reddit seems to be moving out of their Fan Club...

    https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/moapci/audio_the_rise_and_fall_of_rheadphones_favorite/

    Hopefully the entirety of the online community will continue to hold ASR Amir accountable and pull people out from under their sphere of influence... An yea that mindset is sad to see and I can't image how many others are also stuck in that thinking
     
  2. Pancakes

    Pancakes Friend

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    The idea that Amir has hearing issues/damage/loss has been bandied about various forums. If you take that into account as a strong possibility, it explains pretty much everything. Including shitty testing methodology - if he can't hear properly he likely has a complex and is incapable of dealing with any criticism, constructive or otherwise.
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2021
  3. 7seven

    7seven Acquaintance

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    Noticed amir claiming to have heard distortion artifacts on the Yggydrasil, presumably with sighted listening, at 'very high playback levels':
    ''You can't waive your hands and declare some artifact as inaudible. You need to prove that. I tested the Yggdrasil at low amplitude and then turned the volume up. There was definitely audible artifacts but obviously you would not hear them unless you set your reference to very high playback level. so no, it is not guaranteed inaudible. It is only so in "typical" usage scenario. If you want it to be provably inaudible, you need lower distortion than what I measured.''

    I wonder how loud you need to listen to be able to clearly hear distortion components at minimum -85dB,
    or if this claim is just completely ridiculous.
    It seems ridiculous to me, as well as contradictory, but not a single person called him out on it or responded.

    I dont think it's odd at all for most people to be able hear 'artifacts' in low distortion devices (particularly so with some of the low end 0.000001% distortion USB powered chi-fi ) in the form of compression, hardness, smearing etc.... Ironically it is the kind of stuff measurements fail to capture
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2021
  4. GoodEnoughGear

    GoodEnoughGear Evil Dr. Shultz‎

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    Hopefully people just disengaging. There's nothing to quash someone like Amir better than not getting any response.
     
  5. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    Maybe he saw some years-old pictures of the crossover glitch and placebo'd himself into hearing the so called distortion. I remember when that was first discovered, suddenly a bunch of people were hearing things out of nowhere, including those who had revised Yggdrasil's which didn't have the glitch but people believed it was there, thus they heard it.
     
  6. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Ask him how he didn't hear the distortion artifacts from the plate amp on the JBL LSR305 which has 2% THD or 32db SINAD. His hearing is obviously subject to confirmation bias from measurements. He should be doing what he preaches: double blind testing and not rely on sighted tests.

    But thus is the MO for megalomaniacs: double standards - standards apply to others, but not to self.
     
  7. rlow

    rlow A happy woofer

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    I love that this thread now shows up as the 2nd ranked organic search result in Google when I search for Audio Science Review (only behind the ASR site itself).
     
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    Last edited: Apr 13, 2021
  8. Erroneous

    Erroneous Friend

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    I can't wait for this whole ASR thing to gloriously implode. We have a nice audiophile community where I am (real people, not ORFAS, not jerking each other off to $20k DACs) but when talking to someone and they start with the nonsense that lets me know they've been compromised by Amir and his lackeys, I shut it down.
    These people are so confident that their way is the only way. The One True Path.
    Bitch please. There are many paths to the Truth, and let's allow people to enjoy what they enjoy without trying to power trip on being Holier Than Thou because one has somehow Seen The Light and wants to share it with the unwashed masses.

    When the glorious day comes that everyone is allowed to enjoy what they want without some shithead looking down their nose because the THD is more than .0000001, it'll be easier to engage in conversation with other people interested in the hobby - without waiting for the GOTCHA moment that tells me we'll fundamentally never see eye to eye.

    It's like talking to my Jesus relatives. I just don't. It goes nowhere.
     
  9. scblock

    scblock Friend

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    I have a good friend, a music lover and musician, who has fully bought into the numbers game for audio gear. I don't know whether he reads ASR or just buys into the same philosophy, but it's all about bit rates, THD, etc with him. No discussion of how it sounds, the assumption is more zeroes or more kbps or more kHz then it will be better. He'll buy a new DAC and tell me excitedly that it supports 768 kHz as though that was the most important thing. I suppose it gives more options for oversampling on a PC, but there's little to no music even recorded at that resolution in the first place.

    I don't really know what to do about it any more other than hope he's happy with his gear. Years of mostly civil discussion between us haven't moved either of our positions (mine is measurements tell you if it's bad or broken, but not a whole lot more).
     
  10. iFi audio

    iFi audio MOT iFi Audio

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    You can always ask him how much of that material he has on his playlist :D
     
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  11. 7seven

    7seven Acquaintance

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    Do they have an explanation for being able to hear any differences at all when transducer distortion would almost always be many times higher than the amp or DAC, especially at amir levels?
     
  12. Pancakes

    Pancakes Friend

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    No. That would be questioning the genius.
     
  13. Huhnkopf

    Huhnkopf Friend

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    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  14. Yethal

    Yethal Facebook Friend

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    Amir does not use transducers, he plugs the output of the dac directly to his ears
     
  15. mk801

    mk801 Almost "Made"

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    Umm, shouldn't somebody let this person know about the shenanigans going on at ASR?

    Anyways, this person has a major hate boner for Hifiman over at HF and obviously has an axe to grind with them beyond the well-deserved criticism of their build quality. It must have killed his soul a little bit when Amir gushed over the HE-6.
     
  16. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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  17. iFi audio

    iFi audio MOT iFi Audio

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    Although I had to google what this means, I'm so glad that I did :cool:
     
  18. gepardcv

    gepardcv Almost "Made"

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    Is the tldr on the loudness question that ASR's stated sound level (94dB or whatever) is for peaks?
     
  19. Brad358

    Brad358 New

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    I think the attitude to active speakers sums up what is wrong with the ASR approach to assessing audio equipment.

    Quite a few active speakers I've tried have had low level hiss, in most cases this hiss is only noticeable if listening up close and it hasn't been noticeable at a normal listening position and certainly not once music starts playing. This includes some rather expensive system speakers which have had truly glowing reviews.

    I think there are several ways to view such hiss. My own personal opinion is that it was a minor issue and wouldn't stop me buying such speakers if I liked the sound signature, features, build quality and style (maybe I'm shallow but since speakers are effectively a form of furniture too I like them to be pleasing to look at). I tend to agree with the argument that the advantages of a simple, well integrated package and where applicable trick DSP and room correction functionality outweighs a bit of hiss that won't be noticed in normal use even when music is not playing and certainly not when listening to music.

    However, audible hiss is indicative of an amplifier module that is anything but state of the art and delivering tip top measured performance. I don't know, but I'd suspect that the DACs in active speaker amplifier/conversion modules are anything but state of the art. If people are going to obsess over measurements in amplifiers and DACs and chase incremental improvements that are way beyond the range of audibility then it is at best disingenuous and more likely complete hypocrisy for the same people to claim that lousy measurements don't matter in active speaker amplifiers.

    It really is a binary decision to me, I can respect (even if I disagree with) those who are chasing measured performance, and I can also respect (and in this case agree with) those who say measured performance isn't important if they like the sound of an active speaker. What I can't respect if the duplicity of deriding good equipment because of a SINAD value that isn't state of the art (or may even be rather poor) when it won't actually affect audible performance at the same time as denying that this matters in the case of active speakers.
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    ^ It's double or varying / ever-changing standards.

    The very evident hiss on the JBL LSR305 (Amir's integration company sells JBL) was completely ignored by Amir until someone else called it out. We are talking about levels of hiss which would have completely borked the SN measurement on any of his other measurements. In addition, I keep stressing this: the distortion of the plate amps in the LSR305 is near 2% or a little bit worse than 35db SINAD. That would make it the worse amp ever measured at ASR sing ASR standard of 5W into 4-ohms.

    [​IMG]

    In Amir's own subjective terms: The JBL 305P Mark ii is a delightful little speaker. It gives a smooth, very realistic sound impression, beating many "hi-fi" speakers... It is hard to believe such great performance can be had for so little money in the form of JBL 305P Mark ii. We get it because of research and measurements like I have been showing ...

    How is this possible when amps with 75db SINAD receive interpretive comments such as this: It won't get my recommendation with this type of performance.

    There seems to a HUGE disconnect here.
     
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    Last edited: Apr 18, 2021
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