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In Reply to: RE: Do measurements matter? - linked article posted by 13th Duke of Wymbourne on January 23, 2015 at 15:39:56
Quote from a John Curl interview.
Also, we couldn’t use mylar capacitors, which are fairly efficient coupling capacitors. While mylars are fairly efficient from a size and costpoint of view, we realized they have problems with dielectric absorption. I didn’t believe it at first. I was working with Noel Lee and a company called Symmetry. We designed this crossover and I specified these one microfarad Mylar caps. Noel kept saying he could 'hear the caps' and I thought he was crazy. Its performance was better than aluminum or tantalum electrolytics, and I couldn’t measure anything wrong with my Sound Technology distortion analyzer. So what was I to complain about? Finally I stopped measuring and started listening, and I realized that the capacitor did have a fundamental flaw. This is where the ear has it all over test equipment. The test equipment is almost always brought on line to actually measure problems the ear hears. So we’re always working in reverse. If we do hear something and we can’t measure it then we try to find ways to measure what we hear. In the end we invariably find a measurement that matches what the ear hears and it becomes very obvious to everybody.
From pages 15/18 and 16/18
Edits: 01/26/15Follow Ups:
Case in point - the Japanese amplifiers of the 70s and 80s that measured vanishingly low Total Harmonic Distortion, you know, on the order of 0.0001%. These amps sounded quite bad relative to many other amps with rather higher THD, notably tube amps with THD circa 0.05%. If you can't go by THD what, pray tell! can you go by? Frequency response? Slew rate? If we all went by measurements we'd all have Kenwoods and Pioneers.
" If we all went by measurements we'd all have Kenwoods and Pioneers. "
Those manufacturers were just such jerks for marketing to irrational customers and giving them exactly what they were looking for.
You can also get air cleaners to put on your 2 liter eco commuter which flow more air than a 747 engine needs during takeoff....
I pretty much stopped looking at specs in the 1980s. I buy audio equipment by how it sounds to my ears, not by how some manufacture says it measures..
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Of course as always, YMMV.
Edits: 01/27/15
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