Topping and SMSL with ASR Punking Us on DACs?

Wait, wasn’t there consensus that spatial qualities/soundstage only comes from recordings, and has nothing to do with the transducer?

It’s like that dude started listening to audio gear when he made the ASR site, and before that only read objective stuff + added his own mantra nonsense as a belief, and only recently discovered that soundstage differs between transducers when he had a little more listening experience.

Maybe when he listens to different dac/amps, he’ll realise they sound different..

 

I get more useful information on head-fi than ASR. Sure there’s a lot of noise and noobs on head-fi, but when you filter through that you can get accurate information on gear.

Where’s ASR is 99,9% pure nonsense.

 

He's punking us on pre-amps too. The difference in measurements with Stereophile on the Freya are criminal




What the hell does 40 Ω output impedance mean? There's two interpretations and they are both bad.

1.) It's the output impedance of the Freya, which is completely wrong because Schiit says the OI is 600 Ω.

2.) it's the test load he's using. Which is the completely wrong way to test a preamp since power amp input impedance is 10kΩ - 200kΩ

I thought maybe this was some sort of test parameter so I searched the entire thread for the stated load and I could not find it.

He picks and chooses when to be a buffoon and when to do 48 amirbits of resolution

 

Its the output impedance of the analyser, there is a large difference in input levels too.

 

thanks!

So I assume the 200k is the test load?

the difference in graphs though it still weird

 

It was the reason why he didn't recommend a product by all objective and technical measurements (and his own criteria) should've been a "must buy". It was clear he had an axe to grind against the Harman group product. In addition, Sean Olive had a strong hand in developing this headphone as well. They love Dr. Olive over there. For Amir to dismiss it for a shit reason speaks all you need to know about his "recommendations".

 

What you mean is that you think that we are letting "our" feelings blah blah vitriol and hate.

Bollocks. I don't think we have sufficient interest in Amir to get that worked up.

I don't. After my first encounter with him years ago, I just wished to avoid another. But while blissful ignorance is nice, he has a large influence, and this site has chosen to take a stand.

That's all.

 

I don’t see anyone “hating” here, literally everyone has in-depth criticisms of that site.

If we were just “hating”, like they say on ASR, we would cuss them out with no arguments.

If anything, it’s them that are hating on SBAF, degrading us as “hating subjectivists” with literally no counter arguments to their claims and our criticisms.

 

ASR deserves some hate for the way they skew perceptions in the industry.

 

He is at limits of AP555x now with latest DACs it looks like, SINAD metric is gonna become pretty redundant when everything starts having the same score... wonder how that is gonna play out.

 

The ironic thing about the objectivism / subjectivism debate is that while objectivists tend to ascribe subjectivists' subjective experiences to bias (for gear one has spent money on, for one's favorite brands, &c), they seem singularly bad at identifying bias in themselves. Obviously, you've got the "poor college student" objectivists...e.g., thinking the Odac is "endgame" because they can't afford anything nicer...but even the well established objectivists seem pretty blind to how bias affects them. E.g., there's a really interesting thread on the headphones subreddit at the moment about the science of technicalities, with some pretty knowledgeable seeming people discussing stuff like nonlinear distortion in full-range drivers and how FR graphs aren't everything, and you've got people feverishly arguing that FR graphs *are* everything without realizing that maybe they're just biased towards FR. Thinking you can reduce a complex device to a few simple graphs gives you a feeling of power, and I can see where someone might be loath to give that up, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

It's absolutely possible to have positive and honest discussions about audio science without writing off listeners' subjective experiences (in my biased opinion, SBAF can be a great example of that), but you've got to look at bias on all sides. Just because you've based your beliefs on objective data doesn't mean you don't have biases towards, e.g., your favorite metrics or the gear you've bought based on those metrics.

 

A whole lot of armchair scientists have way more blind faith in science than most actual scientists.

 

atomicbob is a pro too --- and, iirc, the day job involves stuff that is far more important than how much one gets off on this or that audio box?

Ignoring Bob is like poo-pooing the doctor and relying on some trendy wellness quack to keep one alive!

 

I love to manipulate data personally. Most data is useless to consumers as it is marketing 99% of the time, and definitely misinterpreted.

No standardized scale

Creating a new standard deviation
What true performance metric is within a FFT?
Maybe a wavelet transform, than we can truly determine the performance of a wave

 

Audio Science vs. Audio Scientology
Some more information for consideration.

From Audio Precision's help file about SINAD (underlines are mine):

Audio Precision makes very fine tools and does not limit the operator's ability to misuse the analyzer or misinterpret results.

SINAD is typically associated with communications. Think cockpit pilot communication or space shuttle. Air Force tends to want a minimum of 10 dB SINAD while NASA tends to desire 20 dB SINAD for reliable communications in mission critical flight situations. LOW signal-to-noise as described above. Also note how SINAD is considered the reciprocal of THD+N when the two use the same FFT bandwidth for computations. All the shortcomings of THD+N as a metric of music reproduction sound quality can be also applied to SINAD.

Now consider moment to moment analyzer measurement noise.

This is APx500 family analyzer software in ASIO digital loopback demo mode. Digital signal generator connected directly to analyzer digital inputs. It doesn't get better than this. From the FFT we observe exceptionally pure sine with a low, clean noise floor. Now also note how SINAD is bouncing around in the digits past the decimal point. At least 0.2 dB of variance may be observed. This is common to ALL analyzers. Again, AP makes a fine tool but doesn't restrict tool misuse or result misinterpretation. Attempting to discriminate SINAD performance to 0.1 dB is absurd.

 

^ And that's just moment to moment variation. The measurements in the OP were made on different days/months/years when different environmental conditions might affect the background noise differently.

And calling it Audio "Science" borders on criminal.

 

ahahaha i just find it gets harder and harder to filter data and good stuff there each day

Out of curiosity what happened on your first encounter with him friend?

I really hope we reach that point! then people will start seeing the value of well built rather than well measured

 

Don't worry. There will be a massive pivot and Amir and his disciples will create the new "one true measurement".

He is a master of moving goalposts.