If It Sounds Good....

[jls001]

A short and sweet editorial/article on measured versus listening:

"If it sounds good..." | Stereophile.com

 

[viren bakhshi]

This I like and agree with:

"For the listener's reaction to sound to truly reflect the performance of a component, therefore, he or she must have suitably informed his or her subconscious by becoming a) familiar with the range of performance available at any priceotherwise this phrase degenerates into empty word-spinningand b) as familiar as possible with the real sounds of real musical instruments in real acoustic spaces.

"The latter is an essential part of an audiophile's education:.....
If audiophiles familiarize themselves with the attributes of live sound, they can then grade changes in sound quality accordingly. (I've found this to be true, paradoxically, even if they then use artificial, multi-miked, multi-tracked recordings.) If they don't do this, however, then their value judgments will be as topsy-turvy as in the case of the reviews in other magazines of some of the components we review this month."

Viren

 

[ajinkya]

This (from the article) resonates with me:
"when you read that a component "sounds good but measures bad," you must examine what basis the writer has for determining the meaning of the word "good." To sound good, a product must at least offer competent engineering, I feel, and it may turn out that "sounding good" does not necessarily mean the same to some listeners as "neutral" or "accurate." "

I have been asking on this forum for quite a while for examples of components that measured really badly but sounded excellent to a majority of listeners and reviewers. If I recall, only one member was kind enough to give me an example of such an amplifier, which had, as it turned out, been reviewed with pointers to where discrepancies in the measurements would possibly impact the sound.

The best I got from other members was supercilious advice on the lines of "Oh...you don't really have that much listening experience. Once you listen to a large number of components, you'll agree with our experience...something can sound good but measure horribly."

Using this article as just one reference point, my answer to that has always been: "You're either measuring the wrong thing, don't know how to measure, or don't know how to interpret the measurement."

 

[marsilians]

Whenever I hear the term that someone is building a system to reflect "as true to the source as possible", I feel that they are chasing a holy grail as one has to basically replicate the environment in full including the listening position, which is absolutely impossible.

I encourage everyone to look for the music that impacts their emotions instead of getting into the measurements that are often done in very specific conditions.