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In Reply to: RE: December Stereophile - Allnic D-5000 DHT posted by FSonicSmith on November 19, 2014 at 14:15:26
I would tend to think that some company that has the smarts to create a digital product that measures/performs well mathematically, would not defeat that science by tying it to a poor performing analog output stage. That would be hardly a smart thing to do.
I just can't believe that anyone would send a digital device into to Stereophile for review not having done the same measurements that JA does prior. THAT makes no sense to me. Manufacturers know what JA does. There are no secrets.
But ultimately that doesn't matter either if you like the sound of a piece of gear. Just like it and don't fret about the measurements. Considering the poor state of the digital recording art over the past 40 years, clarity may not be a virtue.
Jim Tavegia
Follow Ups:
Why assume that JA is even measuring the right things? JA is a digital and measurement wonk, pure and simple. Proof is in the pudding-look at his system. No tubed equipment and until recently, he never had a turntable-he only does now to give himself a little cred and it's what all the cool kids are doing. JA completely ignores the fact that there is no such thing as perfect clocking or jitter elimination and no such thing as a perfect filter. He ignores the fact that no DAC or digital player known to mankind can reproduce a simple waveform perfectly. He is an engineer and his real hobby is not listening to music but recording it. I know that sounds harsh, but I believe it to be true; he would rather be recording musicians than listening to them. I am not pulling that out of thin air-it is evident in his writing. At every opportunity he would rather discuss a recording experience than a listening experience. And how does he record? Wait for it. Digitally. Every recording tool in his vast recording toolbox is digital. Digital is his entire world. And then let's talk about his writing. He writes well in terms of syntax and grammar (exceedingly rare for an engineer), but there is ZERO imagination or creativity in his writing of the type we see regularly from Art or Mikey. Larry Archibald (anyone remember him?) was an engineer too (I believe), but he could be creative. He could write an op-ed piece. He could think with the portions of the brain responsible for imagination and creativity whereas JA seemingly has no active circuitry at those parts of the brain. JA couldn't write a provocative thought provoking op-ed piece to save his life. 't THAT is why we have to put up with JA's silly measurements.
Edits: 11/22/14
"Why assume that JA is even measuring the right things?"
He certainly does measure the right things. Just not enough of them...
Basically those sorts of measurements largely just confirm that the units aren't "broken" although in the case of really poorly performing stuff, like most tube designs, they have more significance. And that's quite appropriate for a review magazine since it would be a waste for everyone if the test unit was overtly malfunctioning and that's more likely to happen with very early production units which are the usually the ones that get reviewed since everyone involved, including me, wants to know about new stuff while it's still "new stuff".
Now don't get your panties in a wad about my characterization of tube designs as poorly performing. It's sort of ironic, but logical if you ponder it... tubes were our first active devices and the measurements we devised to test and characterize designs using them were oriented to detecting the sorts of problems that they were prone to, largely non-linear transconductance. Since they didn't have a lot of gain-bandwidth they were usually ran open loop making their transfer function a significant part of the unit's. The next worse thing was the transformers.
OK, so we needed someway to work on these designs and someone, I know not whom but it might have been at Hewlett Packard, devised a "distortion analyzer". What they do is just notch out the fundamental on the premise that what's left is distortion. Well distortion and noise but noise is sort-of a form of distortion. The result was a measurement that had a good corrolation with perception. It was felt that the higher orders of distortion weren't as important as the second and third harmonics because our hearing tapers off and the slugish tubes and leaky transformers attenuated them anyway.
Well, that was then... Today it's another story, but still we cling to the old paradigms. Solid state devics are way faster but have hideous transfer functions compared to tubes. BUT they are orders of magnitude more efficient and reliable. There's no free lunch.
I don't know of any measurement schemes in common use that reliably correlate well with our perceptions and sensitivities of the higher order and temporal issues that readily arise with the newer components and circuit topologies. I do believe that work has been done in those areas but...
So back to Stereophile, decades ago I raised the issue of them not measuring PSRR (how well power supply anomolies are ignored) during a panel at one of their shows. JA was there but the chap who answered (don't recall his name) said that the problem was that there wasn't a standardized methodology or tolerance level. Well, that makes a certain amount of sense, but later JA didn't let that stop him when helping to bring jitter to the table as a significant new problem.
My point is that measurements are, in general, a force for good, but how effective of a force they are depends on their corrolation with the mechanisms affecting final outcome. So I DO understand why many audiophiles believe them to be garbage, but they are wrong...
Rick
Great post. Of course, saying "measuring the wrong things" has tons of past context/baggage associated with it and should be interpreted in that context. I was not referring to broad and general utility of measurements but to the matter at hand; measuring DAC's. There are thirty or so DAC's that JA has given straight-A report cards to and maybe five that he has given gifted-child status to, and not one of them can render digital music perfectly fatigue-free and "natural" to those of us who are sensitive to digital artifacts and dislike digital sound. The Benchmark DAC's are a great example of what gets my goat. They measure quite well and yet it seems that the majority of buyers who drink JA's Koolaid buy the product for the report card and then discover that there is nothing to love when the rubber hits the road. Just once, I would like to see a review in which the measurements are beyond reproach but the reviewer says, "this product left me cold and ambivalent, look elsewhere". We see these kinds of assessements occasionally with solid state amps-Bryston comes to mind.
Just to tack on a few more thoughts as to my own post, show me a DAC-and there are a lot of 'em-that sports a wall wart and/or switching power supply and an op-amp-only or skimpy output stage and I can pretty much predict (reliably IMHO), that boring sound will be coming out no matter how well the thing measures. There are only a finite number of off-the--shelf processors being made and only a finite number of implementations and far too many manufacturers who encase the same basic products in different cases with cost-cutting where it is most needed-the power supplies and the output stages. I will take a DAC that features a linear power supply and a robust top flight pre-amp worthy output stage bookending a DAC circuit that has been designed and tested by ear first and test-bench second any day. And have with my Abbingdon.
The after-market powersupply business is pretty large.
Jim Tavegia
"those of us who are sensitive to digital artifacts and dislike digital sound"
That's a tricky one allright. Without a live source at hand how the heck do you sift out analog "sweetening" from digital "destruction"?
Since nothing's perfect I just go with what I like which, overall, is digital. But it's a complex decision which includes factors beyond just SQ such as reliability and convenience and ease of backup. I don't think there IS a "digital sound" or an "analog sound", it's really quite a bit more complex than that and towards the limits both can suck or thrill, depending... But analog can never match digital for long-term reliability and there is no fundamental limit to how good digital can get.
I guess we could get performers out of the loop and just play MIDI files... Would that be digital, analog or live?
Regards, Rick
"But analog can never match digital for long-term reliability and there is no fundamental limit to how good digital can get."
Until your hard drive fails and your cheap plastic laminated over aluminum seedies oxidize. I have records from my high school days (forty years ago) that still play fine and sound great. Long-term reliability? Doesn't that concept assume compatibility? Redbook, SACD, PCM, bitstream, DSD, DXD, and there is no telling what the flavor of the five-year-period will be ten years from now, and during all that time past, present, and future, there are no issues with setting diamond to groove and converting physical motion to electrical signal in exact reverse fashion to my and your loudspeaker's conversion of electrical signal to physical motion.
From the very beginning, JA has had a Linn turntable. Regarding the tubes/SS issue, ne of his repeated stories is that he once went with some SS equipment (Quad?), found that he wasn't listening to music nearly as much as he did earlier, replaced it with tube gear and all was well. He's a musician, has engineered some terrific disks (LP as well as CD) and is not nearly as close-minded as your post suggests.
Now, of course, I'll be tagged as a JA/Stereophile fanboy. So it goes.
IIRC, for many years, JA no longer listed his Linn in his "Associated Equipment" box when doing reviews and only in the last few years has he put it back in. Hence my reference to "doing what the cool kids are doing". Do you really think it sees much use? I think JA is a great managing editor and general "man at the tiller" for the ship that is S'Phile and I admire him for many things. His measurements of digital equipment and his opinions about the relative merits of DACs are not among them. On a separate but related topic, disparaging AD for being fond of distortion is classic and demonstrates the level of ignorance here. There's distortion everywhere-in the recording, in digital reproduction, in the transducers we call loudspeakers, in solid state and tubed amps. It's a matter of which distortion is truly doing a disservice to our enjoyment of music. Accuracy is not just a holy grail, it is an illusion, literally and figuratively.
Or. that his measurements actually tell us something. Tests are silly and not going to the doctor could save a great deal of money.
Jim Tavegia
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