@stevensegal Honestly just read the first page on that link and thought to myself this is why we have this thread going here. The whole thing wreaked of
“ASR is end all be all of all things audio and if you don’t believe you are buying snake oil. We are right you are wrong, and stupid. If you listen to us you will save all your money and only buy the cheapest thing that measures right.”.
Had to stop reading it. Just as about as bad of some of the “other” audiophile sites that insist what they find is right. Only Vinyl sounds good etc… Only Trust your ears. As Ted has stated the best here, its a mix.,
Heck I am not a huge cable guy. #1 I cannot afford to spend $1000 for a USB cable. But I can $100-200. I did some research and found WHY others are saying they make a difference. And like everything in this hobby lives by the law of diminishing returns. EVERYTHING. That graphs takes a big steep curve up as the price goes up with very little improvements. Are there improvements, yes, not always, but there are. I dont have the cash to do them, but I dont sit back and say there are none.
That being said I used to have Blue Heaven speaker wire from Nordost for my VSA VR4 Gen III SE speakers. Had them for 17 years. (not the cables - 10 years for them)…loved the pairing. I got my Sopra 2’s about a year ago. Love them. Sold the BH speaker cables with the VSA. So I got a pair of of Beldon cables from Blue Jeans for like $120. Did my research and for the money I had left from getting the speakers, they were very good. Last week I got another pair of Blue Heaven used. Good deal I think. Hooked them up. Been using for a week and I find them bright. Never thought I would hear such a difference, but I do. And I WANTED them to be great. I BELEIVED them to be great, but I am finding myself wanting to hook back up the others.
Now tell me how to measure that via ASR’s tools? Would his method work? I think all the measuring tools would come up blank, as nobody has been able to show that via measurements or else the great cable debate would be over. I dont think that is the placebo effect or my braining thinking anything as I really thought it would be just as good or better. I was actually thinking to myself am I wasting money. As it turns out I was not wasting money as in zero difference, it made it worse (so far…still more to come on that).
Please someone from the ASR side please explain what I have done wrong except just using my system.
For my digital I hear differences in the DA and AD FILTERS, not my Ethernet, wired, wireless or USB transported. THAT is my stance. Yes, I do listen but when asked what I hear I report just that. I don’t hear what you hear, or the opposite, so no offense can be taken.
The hard data doesn’t disappear between the two camps that defines 1200, 2400, 3600 and 4800 cable specs BW capability, and is repeatable.
The discussion is more on the ACCURACY of what is measured. Not ALL we can measure and not all that COULD be measured, but how good is what we HAVE measured?
I dont see that for I would say 85% of the posts there. Its Yeah he found more snake oil. Now do they all love to listen to music, yes. But most just seem to be out for blood and jump on it when Amir finds something that does not “measure” well.
The P12 looked to meet it’s posted specifications from what I read. It’s a power regenerator and it does that. The argument on ASR against it is that modern amplifiers have good power filtering already built in, as evidenced by measurements of noise, distortion, SINAD, IMD, crosstalk, etc. There are a ton of measurements that will show if power filtering is a problem. To demonstrate an increase in fidelity by adding a power plant into a system the output of a Topping A90 and an Outlaw 2220 amplifiers was measured with and without the P12 in the system. The output didn’t change more than measurement to measurement variation in the normal low impedance outlets. They even used a power generator to feed the A90 with a horrible looking power sine wave and showed that it cleans it up as expected with no impact to output performance. The point is the power plant does what it claims to do, it’s just that what it does doesn’t actually increase fidelity of anything tested so far. If PS Audio can show an amplifier that does benefit from the P12 or define how bad your mains power has to be before you can expect it to make an improvement that would be good data to review. Instead of this what I’ve seen is people relying on anecdotal sighted listening impressions which have already been widely proven in all aspects of scientific research to be biased and unreliable for making accurate judgments for cases like this. People believe what they want to believe.
Galen
We veered way off logic when Amir, our measurement hero, right up front, told us that if we hear an improvement from a PS Audio P12, we’re delusional, that PS Audio are selling–in so many words–a lie and Paul can’t deny that via satisfactory measurements, and @Paul is uninformed and cables can’t influence sound quality, picture quality and @tedsmith doesn’t know what he’s talking about–he too in uninformed and if Ted would just listen to glimme and learn from his impeccable knowledge base.
And glimme and Amir and the gang just want to save us if we would just believe in them.This thread was doomed right from the start. And most of us knew that–right from the start.
What silliness.
For PSA there is no longer Camp 3. They are direct sales only.
Many here do camp 3 as well. Also there are many in Camp 3 that say you need to find a dealer that will let you listen to it in YOUR ROOM. aka…back to camp 2. (where PSA is now with free return)
I would argue that Camp 1 is where many here START. Start being the key difference here, whether its via a manufacture web page, mag review, online review or yes even ASR. Many (not all) in ASR start, buy, end and declare victory all while staying in Camp 1. For me its Camp 1 then to camp 3 and then to camp 2. You need to be in all the camps to get the full synergy of a good system. Its not one. Many cases I wanted something I could not find dealer. I find a really good deal used, buy it. Sell it if I dont like. I have made money doing that, lost money doing that but usually its not much. Dealers are harder and harder to find these days. And if you are not a long time customer forget a loaner.
But we know very well whether a measured difference is audible or not. Many are just in denial of that but offering no proof to support their position. Anecdotal is not proof.
If effort wasn’t made to publish manufacturer measured specifications around what the box did and it was sold simply as ‘just plug it in, listen, and evaluate’, then ASR’ing the box would be silly.
It might be silly regardless as the hobby as I see it is to enjoy music but an attempt to understand numerical performance claims - their accuracy or what they could mean for sound quality - shouldn’t seem oddly analytical. I didn’t write the spec sheet after all. An understanding of what you’re getting for a handful of thousands of dollars seems prudent. If folks like ASR are spreading misinformation, it’s worth calling them out.
The specifications in the PS PowerPlants all talk about what to do and what not to do. They tell you right there what to set it to if your power is stable and what to do if its not. They know that, they tell you that. For most of us its just to have a perfect Voltage wave form all the time. Many will get big benefits, many smaller. If you cannot afford it and you get only small increments of improvement, then don’t buy it., Many here have the cash to say I have it in order to make my system perform at 100% peak 100% of the time. It is what it is. Its not a “value” product. if you dont have the cash its better spent in speakers. Paul has stated this is so many of his videos. he knows many cannot afford his stuff. They buy his book and he says get budget, put most in speakers. as the budget gets bigger move it around some. This is not black and white.
Ignore the personal stuff. Just verify what we measure is repeatable as we go. Pretty simple but doesn’t seem to be. Our stuff works the same day to day and it should measure the same day to day with what we can measure. Sure, we can add new measures that help define what it may sound like but only if the new stuff is repeatable.
Snake oil is really just bad measurements after all…not that we can or can’t hear things past a point of current perfection. We all hear differently. If we trust the numbers, we can also trust when we reach the limits of out audible capability.
Since we DO NOT measure everything, we have to listen to add the rest of the story.
Oh man, I was just watching this thread for fun, but I had done theatre installations in the past for customers and also have one in my home. Having in line a Fibre Optic HDMI cable alongside a top end Blue Jeans Cable HDMI even on a 1080P projector( I was converting over to 4K projector) made a remarkable difference in color saturation, contrast and sharpness. This is a 25 foot cable mind you.
Cheers
The Canadian Broadcast Corporation engineering department did test various HDMI cables using high quality broadcast grade monitor calibration tools. In fact the PR650 device is not really a broadcast specific product at all. It’s a very accurate scientific light and coloremitry meter.
They did this for one of their consumer protection shows where Best Buy was telling people they needed $300 six foot HDMI cables to get the best image. And the famous 120hz HDMI cables where the actual frame rate upconversion is done in the TV. The HDMI cables has nothing to do with that.
The results were as expected. No difference in measured light and coloremitry between HDMI cables, cheap and expensive. IOW, nothing changed!
