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Topic: Another Rant against Measurements (Read 4711 times) previous topic - next topic
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Another Rant against Measurements

Another Rant against Measurements

Yet again, another blog that gets so many things wrong. But the link was from 6 moons, so what else should we expect.

"What do measurements really tell us?"

KIH #25 –
Srajan Ebaen
22.08.2015

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2015/08/...really-tell-us/
Kevin Graf :: aka Speedskater

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Speedskater on
"What do measurements really tell us?"


"Everything that can be objectively measured and isn't simply happening inside some deluded audiophile's head"

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #2 –
In the days of high priced USB or ethernet cables, software player addons and other joke articles you can't discredit measurements often enough when you want to be part of the business.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #3 –
Software player addons?

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #4 –
About Author
Srajan Ebaen

Srajan is the owner and publisher of 6moons.

I really don't need to say more. If you like 6moons, you will like Srajan's work.

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #5 –
Bad measurements don't always correlate with what the reviewer hears, therefore all measurements are meaningless. Of course....


I love how he absolutely ignores the fact that reviewers can hear what they want to hear, the influence of a plethora of biases and the limitations of human hearing.
Of course if you are ignorant about all those points then the aforementioned conclusion seems reasonable.
"I hear it when I see it."

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #6 –
Quote from: xnor on
Bad measurements don't always correlate with what the reviewer hears, therefore all measurements are meaningless. Of course....


If the subtext there was not all "bad" measurements are audible," then I suppose (or at least technical people tell me) that is true, but, I guess that the subtext is actually, "Anything that threatens my completely subjective world, not to mention my business model, must be wrong."

As for 6-moons: the photography is great, but I gave up waiting for an English-language version of the site. 
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #7 –
Quote from: Speedskater on
"What do measurements really tell us?"

KIH #25 –
Srajan Ebaen
22.08.2015

I was walking in the park the other day and came across a raccoon.
I asked it what do measurements really tell us?
It said nothing.

cheers,

AJ
Loudspeaker manufacturer

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Speedskater on
Another Rant against Measurements

Yet again, another blog that gets so many things wrong. But the link was from 6 moons, so what else should we expect.

"What do measurements really tell us?"

KIH #25 –
Srajan Ebaen
22.08.2015

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2015/08/...really-tell-us/


Classic case of moving goalposts.  The author writes:

"For example, the typical nearfield speaker measurement is done at 1m/1w. That’s to simulate anechoic conditions and to not capture room effects which, obviously, would differ from room to room. The irony is that without room effects, measurements won’t tell us what this speaker will sound like in our room. In fact, the most useless and abstract thing about expensive anechoic speaker measurements from the consumer perspective is that they show premature roll-off in the bass. This isn’t at all representative of what that speaker will actually do in a reflective real-world environment. The anechoic measurement will show a steep roll-off at 100Hz. In room, that speaker might do solid bass to 40Hz. That’s a huge difference. Without proper interpolation from knowing how to read an anechoic result, the measurement itself remains grossly deceptive.
"

From this we see that the author believes that since anechoic chamber speaker measurements aren't being used easily and routinely to predict how a speaker will sound in an arbitrary audiophile's listening room, all measurements must be useless.

The most obvious evident fallacy is that all measurements aren't the same. Speaker measurements are not the same as amplifier measurements are not the same as DAC measurements.

Another fallacy is that the author seems to be claiming that since the relationship between anechoic measurements and in-room performance is not an equal identity, one or both must be wrong.  The idea of the room as being a separate component as the loudspeaker seems to have escaped him.  This is kind of irritating because we have some useful wisdom about how to model the performance of a speaker in a given room, and the author even seems to be alluding to it whether he knows it or not.

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #9 –
It's particularly stupid that he shows a picture of an anechoic chamber with the question "Does your room like this? If not, should you care what a speaker measures like in a room like this?", following by a picture of a random living room with the text "Does your listening room look anything like this? If so, wouldn’t you want to know what a speaker sounds like here?".

It's just so dumb, as there are probably no two completely acoustically identical living rooms anywhere in the world. It's a complete fallacy to argue like that.

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #10 –
It's stupid, yes. It also works for his audience.
"I hear it when I see it."

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #11 –
I wonder why he felt the need to write that? The truth can be very inconvenient for someone working in the high-end audio or herbal remedy industries.

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #12 –
Measurements tell us a lot, of course. About why snake oil will still be snake oil and scammers gotta scam.

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Palladium on
Measurements tell us a lot, of course. About why snake oil will still be snake oil and scammers gotta scam.



Measurements can tell us a lot or very little, depending on the context.

There's another flavor of golden ear who wants a boatload of leading zeroes on everything.

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #14 –
Gearslutz has a 7 million page thread of people gushing about amphion speakers and not one waterfall graph (apart from one that someone with a vintage 40 dollar mic took that showed massive decay times in mid range in his bedroom etc - not even pseudo anechoic).  Anyway when I suggested I would like to see a waterfall graph made in anechoic conditions I nearly got lynched.
 

Another Rant against Measurements

Reply #15 –
Quote from: augustine on
Gearslutz has a 7 million page thread of people gushing about amphion speakers and not one waterfall graph (apart from one that someone with a vintage 40 dollar mic took that showed massive decay times in mid range in his bedroom etc - not even pseudo anechoic).  Anyway when I suggested I would like to see a waterfall graph made in anechoic conditions I nearly got lynched.



These are passive loudspeakers right, even with passive radiators, so I highly doubt that they'd achieve significantly better time domain performance than other passive speakers.
"I hear it when I see it."