Do you own a Power Plant? I’m curious to learn your motivation.
Welcome to the forum.
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Interesting…if he only had a little less money and time on hand from his previous working life for this part time hobby, flooding folks with meaningless and misleading pure measurement based reviews, the audio world would be a better one for those who want to be informed about what’s really relevant it seems.
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No don’t own one.
But have seen them used when I lived in India.
There it was really needed 
Now I live in the Netherlands where power is really good.
My motivation:
Maybe I would like to see the two ‘camps’ come closer together.
Its sad to see over the top name calling each other from both sides.
Looks like a lot of folks try to find/focus on their differences.
Measurements don’t say everything but can tell a lot.
Listening only can be quite flawed by our ‘variable’ ears but we are also very capable of hearing if it sounds good or not.
So we need both.
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I just flicked through your posts.
The real problem with ASR is that consumers like to try a product, whether a suit or an audio amplifier, and see if it fits. We know what we see in the mirror and what we like and don’t.
Amir thinks otherwise. He thinks he knows better. He thinks we should all make all decisions based on measurements. He does not say: “If you believe only measurements count, I would buy this or not buy that”.
It’s his condescension that really gets up people’s noses. He demonstrates it in his final words of his review: “Save your money and put it toward a better cause”. What gives him the right to tell audio-hobbyists, or anyone really, how to spend their money?
I bought a product last week for which there are no published measurements, because it clearly sounded better than three alternative products. How would an ASR-groupie cope with that?
Amir is on a Crusade and has the accompanying “holier-than-thou” attitude, he can only see his way and is blind to other people’s value systems. He is totally convinced and has his acolytes. Rarely in history do crusades have any lasting or positive impact.
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Paul, this Amir actually replied directly to your post:
I am not going anywhere Paul. Assuming you are not, I suggest starting to take these reviews seriously. Your potential customers are.
WOW! Last time someone spoke to me like that I was about 9 years old, in the school playground. Now we’re back at school, hands up all those customers who are taking ASR seriously.
In the UK the expression we use is he’s pissing into the wind. Has that crossed the Atlantic?
Keep up the good work.
As a dedicated ‘measurementalist’ I applaud your actions. We listen to music for pleasure and so the critical decisions about kit have to be whether it sounds good to us. In my case I would add the provision that I would never say “This is a good unit” but rather “This is a unit which sounds good to me”. That way I can reconcile my objectivist mindset with my subjectivist soul.
I have never plunged deeply into the ASR forums as such but I do find Amir’s posts interesting; he seems to use reputable equipment, The measurements he posts are interesting. He seems to test on a conveyor belt approach and there have been a couple of occasions (one where he tested a Devialet unit) where I thought his experimental procedure was flawed. I just like the measurements themselves, and don’t pay too much attention to his conclusions. I regard Amir as being a little like Wikipedia; informative but not authoritative.
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My first comment here was that the issue was impedance. ASR reported a dramatic increase in impedance. Turns out the measurement was wrong. So he goes into sledging mode: Paul’s no engineer, just the PR guy. Sweet!
Who knows what is going on. I suspect Paul is not the designer anyway so wouldn’t know this level of detail and is just creating PR responses. The right answer would be to show the impedance for all the outputs, explain why the one port is designated as high current and the others not, update the manual, etc. They refuse to produce any objective measurements we could examine and attempt to verify.
Why can’t we just enjoy our little hobby with a bit of civility?
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A high percentage of reviews in magazines close with a recommendation for purchase. The only difference here is that the advice is to abstain. Do you object when Stereophile says go buy ____ because it is great?
Congrats on your civil approach. I have been reading ASR recently and there is a lot, I mean a lot, of very useful technical information. If only the two camps would come a bit closer and quit the name calling the discussions would be so much more enjoyable.
The difference is that a good audio review provides a so much more complete description and personal impression of a product, often including measurements, that the final recommendation is largely irrelevant and I invariably ignore it.
ASR provides a tunnel vision perspective and absolute statements as quoted above.
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And it’s a gentle recommendation by a stereo reviewer not “you are stupid if you buy this” or “you are stupid if you don’t buy this”.
Treating consumers of high performance audio, cars, snowmobiles, motorcycles, etc. like they are uninformed idiots raises the instant fight reflex towards the accuser.
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Sure, but that’s really just the “listening is necessary” argument, which I agree with.
It’s a group that believes what they believe (measurements rule). That’s fine. Some of the products they praise (e.g., Benchmark) have just as good a reputation among listening audiophiles as do PSA. That’s a subjective statement by me (and by it I mean a similar level of following and fervor, I’d submit) and of course open to debate but my point is there is room for those following that line of thinking to arrive at good gear as well.
A bit of perspective.
My main magazine is Gramophone. It has reviewed audio since the 1920s and all reviews are online. Until around 1970 they were called Technical Reports, prepared by top engineers and the No.1 priority was to check the manufacturer specification, because in those days it really mattered due to the power limitations of valve-based equipment.
Solid state technology made equipment much more accurate and there was less need for measurements, in part because solid state also provided cheap watts.
When CD players came out, the testers could barely tell them apart.
I occasionally skim ASR (I once bought a recommended product and it broke) and there there seems no discrimination between what is audible distortion and what is not.
Where Stereophile often succeeds is relating measured performance to critical listening observations.
Given most products these days would measure so well in relation to audible performance, the critical factor becomes subjective listening preference.
There are lots of rubbish reviews by people with a loan machine for a weekend with no measurements. Easy to spot and ignore. But there are a lot of excellent reviews backed up with measurements that are far more informative than ASR.
The difference is not that the regular audio press ignores measurements. They don’t. It has always used measurements, it’s due to ASR’s insistence that only measurements count and their fictional construct about how audiophiles behave.
Thanks for the post, and I should say that I agree with mostly everything you said.
Two caveats (and I sure would like to know your take):
- ASR does not deny that different measurements lead to difference audible experience. Also they dont deny that some kinds of distortion might be euphonic, and so enjoyable by some. They just go by the dogma that hi-fi equipment should be “transparent”, and once you reach transparency nothing else matters. This seems to me like a dogmatic approach, and I simply ignore it (as I do with almost any dogmatic approach)
- the perspective you brouht forward is very much applicable to “equipment”, so to say. But one of the main battlefields between the camps is when it gets to tweaks and cables and power treatment devices. It is when they raise the question: “please show me the measurable difference on the output of the dac/preamp/amp”. To this question, I have never seen a technical and objective answer which I found conclusive enough. And I find it hard to admit that audible differences at the output of the dac/preamp/amp cannot be measured by available instrumentation.
IIRC from my P20, the high current output does have in-rush protection (as was deduced by a knowledgeable ASR member). This woould explain the higher impedance on power on. On steady state, the impedance should drop back to spec.
See this
It has been said before by great minds (including Galen G. here) that the differences we hear cannot be measured by any test equipment currently available. But with that said the differences in playback SQ from various component quality level (with the same measurements as lower quality pieces) and other tweaks is real and plainly heard if you have a quiet room and a highly resolving system.
“I rest my case”, so to speak. This is my last post to this thread as I don’t want to participate in feeding the trolls.
To mix my metaphors, “I have seen this movie before and I know how it [never] ends.”
Cheers.
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I’m no ASR expert, but I know that a darling brand there is Benchmark, which is also highly acclaimed by traditional reviews.
And I doubt that most Benchmark separates owners would trade their gear for BHK, even with the benefit of A/B listening tests.
Why? Because those people value ultra clarity and transparency (and lack of noise), traits Benchmark is acclaimed for and BHK comparatively is not (and some of which is definitely measurable or measurement-relevant). BHK has other strengths but those aren’t relevant as much to the ultra clarity crowd. So the ultra clarity crowd is definitely one group who may tend to agree with ASR on some things.
So like anything in audio it comes down to personal preferences. Like what you like and don’t be so sensitive if others disagree (directed at nobody in particular just generally). Big hobby, room for all views.
Edit: On other hand, certainly fair to call out perceived ASR mistakes, as Paul does well below in post 227.
Edit x2: But also fair to challenge those criticisms if they are perceived to have holes, as some appear to be doing. As long as respectfully done, all good. Helps to get to the truth.
It is true what you say. But I have also seen the same Galen showing measurable technical aspects for his line levels cable (albeit never measured at the output of the analog device) and also stating that digital and ethernet cables make no difference in sound (And being very reluctant about power cords).
Again, I do believe that there are aspects we do not know how to measure (or simply dont care because they are irrelevant to engineering a device). But no difference whatsoever, inside or outside of the audible zone, in any known measurement (frequency response, distortion, noise, IM distortion, dynamic range), even in those normally used to design and quality test equipment, is a bit tough to accept, aint it?
For the moment, any measurable difference at the output of the dac/preamp/amp would do to defuse a bit of the skpeticism.
I dont want to turn this on a particular argument about cables or any other device or tweak. But just to give my example, for long I believed to hear differences. Then I bought two pairs of BlueJeans balanced cables, and asked my wife to swap them by kubala elation ones. Every Monday she would come and swap the cables (or not). Every Sunday I had to say which pair of cables was on the system. We did this for 6 weeks in a row. Guess what?
And I believe my system is quite resolving.
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