Terry,
You can find it bizarre, but it happens. Brands have a characteristic sound that we can not explain (and by explained I mean correlated systematically ) using the classical measurements adopted by the industry and reviewers. But the manufacturers develop control systems using their own measurements, in order to keep this line of sound. As they have a deep knowledge of their products they focus on a few aspects that characterize their intentions and listen to randomly selected items.
I have been playing lately with half a dozen amplifiers with good measurements and I maintain that they sound very different in my system. It is only my opinion, and you can doubt on it. I have the same opinion on cables.
Everyone can be fooled. But statistics tells us that if many non connected people are fooled independently in the same sense and come to similar conclusions there is something true on what they are saying. Just for fun (I have to write it, otherwise the audio scientists in this board will not forgive) sometimes I ask opinions of two of my friends that can not separate a battery charging cable from a Valhalla. The only precaution I take in this tests is accurately keeping the levels. Most of the time their general findings agree.
If you believe in that all amplifiers sound similar and the differences between them are too small to be of any real importance you will find thousands of arguments to support you dissecting manufacturers literature - they are most of the time written for non technical people and directed towards marketing. If you want the real truth you have to read a few books of John Le Carre, learn something with the famous 007 and became an audio spy.
Thanks micro
I gave it a while to give people the chance to clarify this point of argument, has not happened. I was kinda expecting anything along the lines of 'Oh yeah, well, it IS marketing and sometimes due to our joy and delight in the hobby we can at times exhibit some exageration and hyperbole'. Instead, we get 'well it is marketing but it does expose an underlying and fundamental fact that things which measure
exactly can sound
completely different'.
I asked you what completely different meant to you, did not get an answer from you or anyone else. There is no getting around it, I expected the clarification which did not come rather the confirmation, but completely different means just that,
completely different. Nothing alike, no similarity.
From the same batch even! Now if a chip from the same batch sounds completely different, what about all the other components in the unit? Man, add in the wiring, the cap tolerances, all the solder joints, the mind boggles.
I suggested before that the implications of this stance be considered. There are many but a few stand out for me as more interesting. Tim has latched on to the more obvious...what unit are you buying? After all, it cannot be the unit you auditioned in the shop or at the show before ordering can it. Unit in the sense of the same sound, it is completely different sound, nothing alike.
One of the logical flaws we need to be on guard against is 'being literal', and hence I did not feel that statement (measures exactly sounds completely different) was worthy of being taken literally. But right here and now you have told me just that, two different chips from the same batch can sound completely different even tho they measure exactly the same. I have no other choice THAN to now take that statement literally, it is exactly what you guys believe.
Well, some of the biggest nastiest catfights I have seen on forums is not between subjectivists and objectivists (and we know how catty THEY can be!
) but rather between subjectivists arguing about dacs say (insert anything else). Well forget it.
You are no longer able to comment on ANY component, at least without the needed caveat. You cannot ever say "I heard the excalibur dac it it sounded bad therefore that unit is no good'. Because the guy who is claiming that the excalibur dac is magnificent has a different unit, maybe even from a different batch (and how different does different different become?) so you two will
never be talking about the same sound. Ever.
You can no longer give a comment about the gear you like, it cuts both ways. Well, you can comment but it has NO validity whatsoever. Because each and every unit sounds completely different.
Look, I gotta be honest, I still cannot believe this is actually what you guys think. I mean, where does it end?
You are in effect claiming that you can 'pass' this little test. Let's set up an specially made immovable board directly in front of your listening position. It cannot move, and has special indentations in it that exactly match your speaker spikes. That allows us to place at random your left and right speaker, each EXACTLY and repeatedly placed in the identical position. You are claiming that you will be able to heard which is the left (or A) and which is the right (or B), and do it blind. After all, they WILL measure differently, I can assure you of that. If we can hear differences when things measure exactly, we can as sure as hell hear differences when they measure differently right?
I am sure YOU would be able to establish a direct line with SF (given your speakers), so I'd love to hear the response to your concerns from the SF engineers and quality control guys.
Now, let's leave one speaker in position...and alternately play the (mono) signal thru the left channel of the amp, and then the right. They will of course sound completely different now matter how close the matching or how close the measurements. You will pick that too? Repeat the same procedure for the channels of the dac, pre, IC's, speaker cables....need I go on?
How can you ever live with your system with that sort of fretting and worry going on? You'd be driven mad with that sort of distraction. The blessing of having golden ears? Sounds like a curse to me, but that is just me.
So, which one of you guys have sorted out your system in that manner? We are told that there is a concept of 'countering or matching colouring', some distortions are more or less pleasant than others. So which one of you has sorted your components (by whatever means) into individual left and rights? And then complemented these different sounding attributes into the most pleasing way? "Left speaker difference needs to be countered by plugging it into the right channel of the amp, then we need to swap left and right out of the dac, making sure that in this case the left of the dac needs to go into the right or the pre....'' yada yada
Put in five components, and by my half forgotten math skills we have 5*4*3*2*2 combinations to try...whatever the real number is it is an awful lot.
God help you when you change a component next year tho.
I could get the shock of my life when someone comes along and says ''yeah I do this to set up my system"!, but for now I am assuming none of you do it.
In that case, I wonder why it is then that *you* argue that this concept is of so much importance that it needs to be done, that we need to acknowledge that even if they measure exactly the same they sound completely different yet none of you even apply the principles you espouse. I mean have the courage of your convictions man!
Heck, I freely admit that (to me) amp differences as but one example are not worth chasing, so that is fully and completely applied in my own system. Amps are only distributed according to power output, most powerful on the bass and so on up. I practice what I 'preach' yet I am sure that no-one hear has applied the above methodology (the logical and inevitable end point of the 'even tho they measure exactly they sound completely different' mindset) to their own system.
If you don't do that, why come on here and tell us all how important this concept is? I don't get it.
