Personally, I think it’s a balancing act. High Fidelity Audio is based on engineering and science. However engineering and science don’t make product sound good. That jobs left to the passionate designers to listen and voice a product.
@Paul’s story of the BBC Dip is a great example of designers going beyond the measurements.
I read that review not too long ago as well. While they didn’t test all the inputs, I think their measurements track - at least in the overall sense - with Stereophile’s measurements of the original Sprout. Stereophile hasn’t yet measured the new Sprout 100. But as you and others have surmised, there is a lot going on in that small box, so it’s not surprising that some of the more rote measurements would be “off” or “less than great” - which in a lifestyle product (as you also rightfully note) really shouldn’t matter a whole lot. In a product costing this amount with this much functionality, as an engineer I expect tradeoffs. It’s not possible to think otherwise. The other thing is try to find a product with the same feature set and power at the same price and if you can, then compare them.
Regarding Audio Science Review - I don’t even think of what they do as “reviews.” They measure equipment that falls below a certain price point and report on the results. Then there is a forum in which those interested can discuss the product and test measurements. That’s it. They don’t do “negative reviews” as some here have accused them, but when they encounter a piece of equipment that tests well, they sometimes offer recommendations.
And in my experience that ends up playing out in real life. For example based on their T&M report of a certain Behringer MIDI mixer/DAC console, I spent the $90 or so, and gosh darn it they were right! This is a <$100 USB powered (!) DAC that measures and sounds about as well as my $6900 DSD Sr. Of course it doesn’t have anywhere near the feature set, there is no DSD input and it’s not MQA compatible or, more importantly a streamer.
Off on a tangent - if it could easily be arranged I’d happily set up a blind A-B listening test between the Behringer and the DSD DAC with my somewhat high resolving system and I promise that most people would be floored. There’s a reason for this - Behringer does pro sound. Pros don’t screw with ridiculous power cables or mega-expensive interconnects. They use what sounds good, what works and what is durable. In the studio, their concerns are virtually the same as the average “audiophile” - namely, low noise and accurate reproduction. Period. In the field, I guess things like “noise floor” and “resolving ability” are much less important. Live music doesn’t sound like what most “audiophile” recordings sound like because they’re mostly amplified all to hell so that people not sitting right by the stage can hear the performance. Point being two-fold: pro audio shops generally have years of experience, expertise, and a solid engineering group, not to mention global supply chains, economies of scale and all of that - and - I almost never look for a system that makes recordings sound “live” - I prefer the sound of a studio.
In any case, back on topic, ASR is perfectly legit when you’re looking at less than high-end equipment. Kind of the same thing for that guy who calls himself “No Audiophile” on Reddit and his own blog. He intentionally won’t review anything over a certain price point.
At the end of the day I don’t think that, regardless of the unflattering measurements for the Sprout 100 (or regular Sprout) you’d find anything with that feature set for anywhere near the price.
What particular measurements over at ASR are you alleging to be 1) useless or 2) just for measurement’s sake?
Just think if we had that same ethos in washing machines or cellular/mobile phones or automobiles or space shuttles or any of the sub-systems that make up such things. As long as they ______ good everything is A-OK! That’s not realistic for those things OR audio equipment - especially beyond a certain price point. Otherwise why even hire engineers or get an engineering degree in the first place? PS Audio, I’m more than sure, has invested a ton of money in test and measurement equipment and they employ actual degreed engineers who know how and why to use it.
Your take on this, to me is the opposite (and equally wrong) to the take of “the Sprout measures horribly so don’t buy it!” Both of those miss the point. Everything ever designed involved compromises off some kind, no matter the cost. The Sprout is a very small component with lots packed into it so it’s totally rational to assume that those measurements are accurate. It’s also totally rational to buy a Sprout anyway because as others say, it sounds just fine - in fact better than anything else at that price point with that feature set. In fact I don’t recall the test exactly but I’d wager a decent sum of money that at no point did the writer of the test report say it was not a good piece of equipment much less NOT to buy the Sprout under ANY circumstances. Sheesh.
But to totally diss on test and measurements by grouping them all into the “____ for _____'s sake” is disingenuous and a disservice to the actual good work that ASR does, which if taken for what it’s worth should serve as a motivator for other affordable equipment manufacturers to up their respective game.
Not really - there’s the Linn Akurate DAC at $10k. There’s more expensive stuff in the list that I can’t remember but that one came from the top of my head.
Master Index for Audio Hardware Reviews | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum
Unlike Stereophile, manufacturers aren’t that keen to send him stuff. A few have in the past but I don’t think Paul is in a rush…
ASR relies mostly on loans of gear from members, and some stuff that shops are willing to loan him.
If he was down the road from me, I would have gladly loaned him heaps of stuff I’ve had but logistics often makes loaning difficult.
There’s no price point for his measurements… if someone were willing to loan him the upcoming Ted Smith Signature DAC (after it’s released) I’m sure he’d be happy to measure it. I’m sure we’ll get measurements from John Atkinson on that at some point though.
Oh OK so one unit over $600. Are there any more?
BTW I didn’t see that Linn; is Linn a player in the modern DAC market?
Yes there is pricepoint. In fact thanks to the a-holes on this thread and board, I’m going to lend him my DSD DAC…game on I guess. I mean dude look at their main page. There is a whole spectrum of DACs tested and graphed out as such. I’m not sure if you understood my comment about pricepoint or whether I wasn’t clear enough about it. But regardless they are NOT trying to shit on anyone or give “negative reviews” do you agree with that or not.
I shared a link to all the reviews. Without going through the list I can name the Linn DAC, Exasound DAC, Chord Qutest, that are over $600…
I can’t be bothered going through the list but anyone can if they wish… but I can assure you there’s more than 3… so there’s no set pricepoint… it’s just what he can access… it’s not like the Stereophile publication where manufacturers sometimes want to send gear in for review…
With Stereophile there is an incestuous relationship between the mfg. and the publication’s “A-list” where quid pro quo and mutual financial/career benefits proliferate.
There is an entire list of test and measurements. Yes there are a FEW over $600 but you’re now moving the goal posts. The messenger’s looks, connections and all that are irrelevant when he/she is providing measurements. I was talking to the person who questioned ASR’s whole approach. Let them reply please.
Fortunately JA is still doing measurements. At least that is completely separate to the subjective reviews.
Once the measurements stop at Stereophile, so will my subscription. Innerfidelity is a bit of a joke these days since Tyll retired.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I use the objective measurements to narrow the list of gear to demo… then I demo and decide on listening. I couldn’t care about subjective written reviews, for the reason you mention and other reasons.
Totally agree. I’ve used that exact approach since the 80s when, before the Internet in far West Texas subjective reviews were not very readily available. Stereo Review was my first magazine subscription in my early teens. All they did were measurements.
That would be great. I’m not in North America so it’s not practical to lend gear. Stereophile has measured the DS on some old firmware. It would be interesting to see some 3rd party measurements with the APx555 and latest DS firmware.
I had no confidence in ASR measurements for a few years but lately some measurements correlate with Stereophile’s, so it gave me a little more confidence that he may now know what he’s doing, with his relatively new APx555.
@cudfoo you may just buy what your ears like and that is perfectly legitimate.
But it looks like you are on a rampage against people, reviewers and institutes that actually use scientific measures to hold manufacturers accountable for the product specifications and claims they make and that is at least to say not fair.
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Like @retro mentioned a couple of times. In the whole thread I can not read justification made by PS Audio about the fact that the Sprout (that looks astonishing and offers super features) sounds good but measures poorly. US$ 600 is by any means considerable money.
@Schroedster did a good job confirming most measurements were accurate with the exception of one. I appreciate honesty. PS Audio did however not seem to be eager to straighten out that one test where PS Audio data did not match. Neither does PS Audio really manages explain how the Sprout measures poorly while it is claimed that the Sprout sounds so good.
I fully agree with @wobblewobble that I narrow my choices down by features and specifications. Measurements are required as proof that a manufacturer meets it’s published specs and that alone is an important selection criteria. It is good that third party checks all those claims of glory.
But, regardless, the Sprout is indeed a nice compact lifestyle product that offers a lot useful features.
The reason I ordered the Stellar Gain Cell DAC instead of the Sprout is that the claims of glory are generally confirmed by testing and reviews.
The enclosure of a life style product like the Sprout with integrated power amps is just too small. Cross contamination of noise and distortion can not be avoided. For systems like these a volume regulated low power output into active speakers or compact separate power amplifier(s) would be much more preferable.
Respectfully, I’m not sure what “game on” means? Stereophile have measured the DS.
JA’s Stereophile jitter measurements of the DS actually raised my eyebrows…
So I asked @tedsmith about it and he clarified and shared his own measurements. I was happy with that and moved on.
See here: Stereophile's DS jitter measurements
The lesson there is to not take 3rd party measurements as final and absolute, even if the person doing the measurements knows what they are doing…
Fortunately Ted is very approachable here and very transparent. I’m not sure if the Engineer/s of Sprout are as easily reachable and as publicly transparent and would share PS Audio’s internal measurements?
There aren’t many like Ted. I can think of Rob Watts who is similar and maybe just one other. They are a rare breed that are happy to be publicly transparent about almost anything.
At the same time, I would still love to see ASR measure the DS, with latest firmware. It would provide another datapoint and maybe some interesting discussion along with it.
The best one can do is listen to the product. You may agree with others Sprout in fact sounds good. If not, this is fine.
If he buys equipment online just to test and with no intention of keeping it, then he has an integrity problem in my eyes. Use someone else’s money to fund his own activity. Very unethical.
Actually I will remove that comment of mine. I don’t know why I wrote that because I can’t think of or find one example of that being true.
I noticed that you quoted me out of context, which allowed you to leave out my comments about how measurements can be valuable and to focus only on my statements against measurement purely for measurement’s sake. I guess that made it easier for you to make your argument against my post, but I stand by my earlier statements.
With regard to my comments about some of the ASR measurements being useless in terms of sound quality, I’ll fill in a little info and quote a few statements from Amir at ASR. As @rkosara mentioned earlier in this thread, ASR changes its measurement methodology periodically without consensus about why the particular measurements matter to the quality of the component being measured. As an example, rkosara mentions “his ‘effective bits’ thing that was based on linearity rather than SINAD or SNR”.
With respect to SINAD (which focuses on signal in relation to noise and distortion), ASR now appears to be using measurement of SINAD as the primary measure of DAC quality. That’s why ASR has a multi-color graph that supposedly identifies the best and worst audio DACs. Interestingly, just below the graph, Amir adds the warning “Please don’t look at this graph too accurately.” As part of other discussions on ASR, Amir makes it clear that SINAD does not actually have predictive power with regard to the sound of a DAC. So why does Amir measure and graph SINAD?
I’ll let Amir speak for himself about SINAD and DACs: “SINAD or THD+N is not perceptually correlated measure. So it is hard to make an argument for audibility of any value regardless of conditions selected. You can have two amps with identical SINAD and one may have audible distortion and the other not. The reason to measure SINAD is to detect engineering excellence as a general measure.”
So, for ASR, the large multi-color graph ranking DACs by SINAD measurements is not a ranking of sound quality at all, which is why several electrical engineers have posted on ASR to raise the question whether this is simply an example of measurement for measurement’s sake.
@Elk Should I ever run across a Sprout in a shop one day, I will certainly take time to listen to it.
I don’t know where you live, but nobody here in Europe offers the good deal like PS Audio does in the US. That one can order a unit on line, listen to it and send it back with money returned, if one does not like it.
Trying to listen to equipment is exactly why we need to narrow our choices down. There are no shops near anybody. Also each shop is located in different cities, sells different brands and hardly has a unit on stock or even ready for listening.
You need to call around to see who has a unit available, drive there for a couple of hours or a day, listen in a room not representative of your own with different speakers and drive home again. Then try to figure all the unknown into the equation or call the shot in the shop.
So, before I take out a day of my schedule for that, I need to narrow my choices down. In case a product receives reviews (ASR in this case) that contradict with what the salesman (Paul in this case) says, people start asking how that difference is possible in this forum.
I have nothing against PS Audio, just ordered a Stellar Gain Cell DAC, but always had my doubts about squeezing a power amplifier together with low power signals into a small enclosure like the Sprout or NAD3020 or any other brand for that matter.
I am not saying Paul is lying, and the Sprout might sound really good, as I think my BlueTooth car audio set sounds good as well.
But whether it sounds exceptionally good or even high end audiophile?
Reviews like ASR do not motivate to go through all the hassle of finding a place to listen to that unit. If somebody like Cudfoo tries to argument that a test report published online is worthless because somebody would try to burn any equipment, I become suspicious. Those are poor arguments, I checked the ASR website myself, as others in this forum did, and it is simply not true.
Measurements do matter to a certain level. Hifi / high end is around long enough that reviewers have a pretty good idea how a piece of audio equipment should perform under certain tests, why else would PS Audio utilize such equipment.
Since a couple of years there are many miniature power amplifiers and rally good active speakers around, like ELAC and KEF. A Sprout with variable line output as option could provide a very attractive solution to the sub optimum measured results of ASR. Putting those little output stages into the PS Audio Sprout speakers could also contribute to synergy. Just a switch such that the owner can decide to use the speakers passive or active with the little class D amp, that has much more space to stay cool and can not influence the low power signals in the little and very good looking Sprout unit.
Not sure what rampage you’re taking about I just said I thought ASR was a Vomit. If it works for you great.
Quoting from various replies here, so bear with me…
Me too. I did some research and the guy who does most (if not all) of the ASR tests isn’t very close to me, so I guess lending them my DSD won’t be an easy proposition. I don’t have the T&M equipment to do the measurements with Snowmass myself, but after allowing myself some time with it, I do think it has surpassed the previous firmware iterations in sound quality.
That’s why ASR has a multi-color graph that supposedly identifies the best and worst audio DACs.
Where on their graphic (technically not a graph) does ASR say that it is meant to identify the “best” or “worst” audio DACs? It’s just a list of DACs according to one of their measurements. As Rudolf_Appel said, some of you guys seem to be on a mission of some kind and it involves mis-characterizing what ASR does, not to mention actually insulting them for no good reason other than that they might have measured one of your favorite components and the results were less than “stellar.”
I should also note that it’s not even up to date, as the Behringer DAC/MIDI console I bought isn’t even on the list even though they claim it measures among the best. Strange. Maybe I’ll create an account and ask about that over there.
In any case they measured more than just the DAC section of the Sprout, IIRC. Supposedly the amplifier didn’t do so well, but as I’ve stated over and over again, for that price with those features, trust your ears over any measurements. Once things get into the thousands of dollars, manufacturers should be able to demonstrate exceptional measurements or they deserve all the potential static (pun intended) the get from the so-called audiophile and audio test and measurement community.
