Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Hearing Things M5HP “Review” on YouTube

Haha ha!!! At least 2 weeks!! Good one. Yeh I’m happy with it for now. It’s still pretty unfinished and not really decorated in here. So lots of improvements to be made in the room, I’m looking forward to it.

Still on the hunt for a new one box solution for the bedroom for the M3s.

And need something for the m2s in the office too. All in good time.

Gonna just enjoy the living room setup for now, for at least 2 weeks.

For God's sake don't do anything more to the room. You may end up wrecking the experience you're enjoying. Besides, you can steer the money towards M60HP and ADA-1250 instead of girly-girl stuff like room decor.

Ha! No. I need furniture and a big carpet. It’s pretty barren in here!!! We haven’t even hung up any pictures yet. Too dam busy! But when I do have a few spare minutes and motivation, I play with my stereo. I think a big thick carpet over some of this hard wood will be good.

When it comes time to do it I want to get m60hp and m100 and do a comparison. The curiosity of m100 is still strong.

We desperately need a new couch and big comfy chairs. But I did buy a new amp and pre first!! So at least I got my priorities straight.

That would be a very interesting comparison.

If one was to judge just by the frequency response curves, the M60 is more linear at the tested SPL. That's it. The M60 even goes as low as the M100. The difference is in how loud they can each go and still remain linear. The M100 can hit about 3dB higher.

The science hasn't led me astray yet. There's a lot of things that have become less accessible, but good sound for a reasonable price isn't one of them.

The BS of the subjectivists won't go away, all we can do is educate ourselves of their lack of credibility. That's a lost cause, if this article "Basic issues of equipment reviewing and critical listening", page 25 of the PDF, is any indication. And it was written 32 years ago!

https://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/mags/The_Audio_Critic_16_r.pdf

He claims differences in electronics can't be heard if they are level-matched and played within their specs. Yet he also claims humans can discriminate a level change as miniscule as 0.2dB as a "subtle difference in quality". But one can never level-match gear to within 0.2dB across the entire frequency range. And the frequency response of a lot of electronics has greater than a 0.2dB variance. Ergo, differences in electronics can be heard which is counter to his original claim.

Have I misinterpreted something?

My interpretation of the article is a variation of Richard Feyman's maxim: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." Double blind testing, statistical analyses, and large sample sizes (as much as 5 Sigma for theoretical physics) are just a tool to stop us from fooling ourselves.

Agreed but nonetheless, the author has contradicted himself as I've pointed out.

On the subject of double blind testing, I'd love to know what the protocol is (i.e. international standard), and who follows it for product design.

With regard to electronics, it appears the author has conducted some characterization and managed to convince himself subjectivists are deceiving themselves. I could say the same about objectivists.

First, no two amps will ever measure the same - even ones from the same production line; unless the parts for that line are screened to strict standards.

Second, even if two amps measure the same, the devil is in the details. For example, identical THD+N for two amps does not mean identical harmonic components and magnitudes that comprise the THD+N figure.

Third, the details may matter depending on the system under test. Two competently designed amplifiers, that "measure the same", may sound different because the seemingly trivial details - which may not be well understood or characterized by the designers - heavily influence the sound signature due to their interaction with the specific characteristics of downstream equipment.

That equipment consists of cables and speakers that are a complex load of resistance, capacitance and inductance. Once out in the wild, an amp no longer encounters a resistor that is used for lab testing. To add to the complexity, that resistance, capacitance and inductance is not constant. It is ever-changing as the speaker is playing.

Getting back to my third point, if the amps sound different, one has to probe the system to understand how the amp and downstream equipment influence each other. Measurements have to be taken and then correlated to subjective observations to understand the relationship between system behavior and subjective impression. To my knowledge, this has never been done.

With the above as context, what does the author mean exactly when he writes "...amplifiers must have high input impedance, low output impedance, no frequency response anomalies, and be at all times operated within their voltage and current capabilities in order to sound the same"?

I think there's a lot we still don't understand. For example, what amplifier characteristic causes a lack of transparency in the highs? Could it be high frequency and phase distortion, however slight, that goes unmeasured?

Then there is that which we do understand but ignore either consciously or unconsciously. How many reviewers drive their amp into (slight) distortion but don't know it? How would they know? Slight distortion can be misinterpreted as ill-defined imaging or a reduced soundstage. Perhaps one amp doesn't distort and the other does even though they both have the "same" specs. One might be slightly more performant with the same speakers and cables because it has slightly lower output impedance or open loop gain (which the manufacturers typically don't spec and some may not even measure).

We need more science to appease the objectivists and subjectivists.