Wondering what you guys think of dac measurement wars going on on ASR forum. The guy measures dacs and their distiortion figures. Two most popular and badly affected companies are schiit and audiogd, both of which highly regarded and considered good. He has placed Google pixel 2 and schiit yggdrassil with almost same distortion. Does measurements dictate an audio hardware quality or to what extent can measurement affect quality.
What do you guys think, should we ever bother with measurements?
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ad-distortion-comparison-graph-for-dacs.4814/
Measurements, measurements, measurements .... Ah the bane of audio industry.
I think I am an objectivitist; being an engineer and all.
But recreating sound is not only about measurements. It is how your target audience receives it.
Some ears are discerning, some are not. To this I say measurements really don't apply.
One can surely make out a bad sounding rig/room as a whole, but one cannot decide X is better then Y based only on measurements.
When listening to music one does not have an "acid trip hallucination" of SNR/THD numbers or rejection ratio or frequency spectrum.
The trip is something else.
OEMs put out some boring designs and some innovative ones. Each have their place in the market.
Today DAC measurements are what used to be Amp measurements yesterday. The same wars are applied and reapplied to newer technology.
It's like comparing 14K, 18K, 22K, 24K gold. They are all yellow (most of the time, some white and pink) and they are all gold.
Each having a price to performance point.
These measurement wars take the issue to the ludicrous sometimes. Like we know it's ~24K gold, but what's the difference.
"Let me see whether it is 99.999 or 99.999999 purity"
So to FMs (specially newcomers) who are reading this, please trust your own ears and wallet.
Use equipment to enjoy music, not the other way around.
Cheers,
Raghu