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RE: that may well be the case, Dave ...

Posted by Satie (A) on August 14, 2015 at 03:21:31

In Reply to: RE: that may well be the case, Dave ... posted by Davey on August 13, 2015 at 15:01:53:

I am not being "influenced" in making an observation, I am informed as to what item to try out according to the description of its sound. Including "warm" or "cold" - though I do like more specific descriptions than that as to subjective FR. All that considering the system it was playing in and more importantly, in comparison to other pieces of the same type in the same system. The comparisons are the most useful info coming out of a review.

I have found some reviewers to be very good on descriptions of what they hear and others to be uneven while some are nearly unintelligible. In some publications there is a tradition of emotional descriptions that I find useless. Particularly since this is often dedicated to extremely expensive equipment.

The point is that when comparing to a reference most folks will hear the same kinds of differences but react differently according to their preferences. So long as you don't ask them what was :"better" or "preferred" etc. you can get some useful characterization.

I have no problem with measurements and find them informative and very useful in making decisions as to what might work in a particular context. But equipment that measures similarly can sound very different. Your standard SS class A/AB 100 watter comes in a surprisingly wide variety of tonal flavors, imaging ability (placement soundstage width image size depth rendition instrument highlighting) detail retrieval, dynamic capacity, Bass tightness and extension.

I think you are missing out on lots of information available on forums and the review sites and rags. You just need to figure out how to read them and who does a better job in pointing out things you perceive and care about.You might even luck our and find someone with very similar preferences to your own.

The problem with measurements is that things like THD are not psychoacoustically weighted. Nobody has a test for how small signals and transients are handled on top of large ones (particularly when loud bass is playing along with not particularly loud high freq and mid content with lots of small transients). There is no test for soundstage and imaging characteristics at all. So while the tests are useful in that I don't end up having a tube SET amp on a reactive speaker or a 50 watter on a 82 db sensitive speaker. Beyond that the measurements have limited use.

Re THD - if hardly anyone can discern <1% 2nd harmonic distortion but is irritated to no end by less than 0.1% 5th and 7th order HD then what is the point of a THD measurement below 1%? Or a measurement of THD above 0.1% when all of it is odd order.

However flawed, subjective characterization is all we have to communicate info on how products sound. You can discount what someone says about detail retrieval if you see their reference speaker is known to you as very poor in that aspect of performance. You can say that you would rather have someone with electrostats or ribbon speakers comment about sources and preamps but you would take his comments on deep bass performance with quite a bit of salt.

I don't accept your view of subjective evaluation at all. That does not mean I reject measurements.

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Kimber Kable

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