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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: Measurements/Subjective Reviews posted by Jim Austin on May 24, 2004 at 07:49:08:
Question 1: Yes. Its one of the unique features that keeps me reading this magazine.Question 2: (oops, doesn't look like a "yes" or "no" question).
A big disparity between measured performance and subjective comments disturbs me least when it comes to loudspeakers, especially when the speaker is not a moderately small forward-firing box speaker with a couple of cone drivers inside. JA himself is quite candid about the limitations of measuring planar speakers, horn speakers and very large box speakers with many drivers.
With respect to digital players, there seems to be very little correlation between measured differences (which, in all events, seem to be very slight) and subjective reactions. So, I'm not troubled by a disparity here, because the only differences that show up in the measurements seem mostly to be jitter levels, low-level square wave reproduction, very low-level linearity and little glitches in the noise level 80 or more dB down.
With respect to differences between measured performance and subjective reactions to preamplifiers and amplifiers, I am more skeptical of an amp that measures poorly and is said to sound great. Very commonly, some reviewers seem to express a preference for the sound of an amp or preamp that has a fairly high level of measured distortion, declining evenly as the harmonic multiple of the fundamental increases. I'm aware of some papers that claim that this kind of distortion somehow produces a less distorted sound at the ear than a product with a truly low level of measured distortion; but I have a hard time accepting that. That said, I believe, at some low level (maybe .1%), differences between conventionally measured levels of amplifier/preamp distortion are meaningless.
Net-net, if an amp measures really bad, but the reviewer says it sounds great, I begin to wonder if the reviewer just doesn't have a taste for a certain kind of distortion. With other equipment, most of the time, I'll accept the reviewer's conclusion independent of the measurements, although I find the measurements interesting.
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Follow Ups
- answers - Bruce from DC 13:27:41 05/24/04 (0)
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