Not to brownnose, but I cancelled my membership to AudioXpress because I found their articles completely useless, however, I re-subscribed to it since @jan.didden took over the technical direction. The only reason I did that is because they now include much more electronic theory and design articles than before, and by great authors. At least for now I think it is the best audio magazine out there for those interested on design, and not about reviews on which audio cable "resolves" better or something like that. But, to be honest, the second they stop publishing technical/electronics articles, I will cancel my subscription again.
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The late Enid Lumley over at TAS. SHe was great, fun (and obtuse) to read and didn't care what others thought. If she heard it, she said so and some of her comments were eons ahead... like cable polarity and controlling the magnetic field about components.
The rest are boring... OK, maybe the guy over at 6moons
The problem, IMHO, is that they all stick to commercial products and ignore the technology and DIY world. Very few of them can tell a resistor from a diode.
Pffft.
Nick Sukhov, ukrainian Radiohobby magazine
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu1Wtw8bW_xjWNlh8FoJh7mfw3hRWOYYY
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu1Wtw8bW_xjWNlh8FoJh7mfw3hRWOYYY
I fell away from Audio Express (AE) because it started having more articles dedicated to professional audio and the industry itself and less on hobbyist home brewed projects, the way its predecessor, The Audio Amateur did. It's still an excellent magazine for those who are into the professional aspects of audio.
I'd trust his measurements before trusting Amir's on ASR. My only gripe with Atkinson is that the AP SYS-2700 series he uses is a bit outdated by now. The good news there is that there's still a lot of gear that doesn't come close to the performance of the SYS-2700 so it's rare that it imposes a limitation.
Atkinson plays with open cards. His part of the review basically reads, "I measured the following under these conditions". You can go and repeat the measurements if you wish and I would be very, very surprised if your results would be significantly different from his.
Can we, though? I would argue that the reporting of multi-tone IMD, specifically the resolution in bits is pessimistic by ~22 dB because Amir uses the peaks of the individual tones in the FFT as the reference rather than the peak of the combined signal. I'd further argue that his measurement of SINAD at 5 W is plucked out of thin air. I've tried bringing this up with him in the past but it only resulted in a shouting match.
I commend Amir's efforts to shine some light into a murky field. I think his measurements add value when they're performed correctly, but sadly there's been too many examples now where he's screwed up some measurement and before anyone has a chance to provide feedback he's shipped the gear back. I recall examples where he used a 2 V signal to test a 900 mV compatible input and another where he had a compressor enabled when testing a sound card. Needless to say those pieces of equipment didn't measure well. Only on page 42 of the thread is it revealed that, oh by the way, there was an error in the measurement. A responsible reviewer would go back and redo the review and make everyone aware of the error in the first post. Maybe wait a week or two before shipping the gear back to allow for feedback.
The culture of ASR has, sadly, also converged in a direction of "dollars per dB SINAD @ 5 W" which I don't think does anybody any favours. It's sad, really. It was better a few years back.
It's my impression that the review industry relies on equipment being put on an "indefinite loan". I.e., the reviewer gets free gear in exchange for a review. Theoretically they're not supposed to sell it after. At least that's one thing that Amir does right. He always ships the gear back. He even pays the return shipping.
Tom
I avoid the audio press these days for the reasons noted in Tom’s observations in his paragraph above and Arthur Salvatore’s writings (see post #9), but there was a time when either I was more gullible or a notable subset of the reviewers were more credible. I do fondly recall Art Dudley, especially during his Listener and TAS years; Art was consistent and struck me as forthright.
Regards.
Regards.
No, and that is also not the way you are supposed to look at measurements to begin with!
Something is only very trustworthy when either multiple sources show the same or similar results.
Or when the measurements in question are done on the most transparant way as well as being constantly updated after feedback and critique.
The measurements at ASR are VERY far from that.
In case of loudspeaker measurements, reviews lack a severe amount of proper explanation and education.
Calling everything single little quirk a "resonance" is just laughable but mostly not helpful.
Often even harmful advice is given, like boosting destructive resonant issues.
In most cases he doesn't even listen to them, yet has some kind of judgement about them (go figure).
Other people with a NFS system, like Erin also weren't able to reproduce certain measurements.
Electronics reviews are even less transparent.
There is very little explanation what is going on and what is tested under what conditions.
There is also very little explanation of the results except for the same silly red arrows left and right.
Most importantly it completely dismisses the so called vision behind a product in my opinion.
In all cases it's just having a total tunnel vision on "raw performance".
Not explaining how that translates into the practical reality.
With the immediate verdict that when something has more distortion, it is automatically "bad".
That is far from being very "scientific"
Does that make everything completely useless?
No, we don't live in a black-and-white world.
So it still provides valuable information, but it does require people to be able to read between the lines and understand underlying context that isn't always obvious.
Where it goes wrong, is when people take that as some holy bible.
Oh, I agree. But they are measurements under some conditions. At least the products I shipped him, his results agreed with mine. But that's also relatively easy for amplifiers. Speakers are a completely other matter.
Well, yeah. I've seen him criticize a ±5 dB variation on a speaker's amplitude response as "gross variation". Then on other speakers ±10 dB is "ruler flat". #whatever That's certainly hard to take seriously.
The unfortunate thing is that it turns away reputable manufacturers from sending their gear to him for review. I've heard such mutterings at audio shows. And I can't blame them. It costs a lot of money to develop and launch a product. Then to have some dude with fancy test gear tell everybody that the equipment is performing poorly when in fact it's being tested incorrectly is just too big of a risk.
But what would you honestly get from that if he did? If I want sappy crackpot verbiage I'll just read Fremer's reviews in Stereophile.
That's especially clear for tube amps that are seemingly only measured so they can be ridiculed in public.
In my opinion the manufacturer should be the first source of measurements. If those measurements are then confirmed by reviewers, great. It's still not science, but at least it's a sign of an open and honest manufacturer.
Sorry for chopping up your post. You made some good points and I wanted to address them individually rather than writing a full, all-encompassing chapter. 🙂
Tom
Context.
See Erin's reviews.
He measures after he first did some listening.
Sometimes it happens that things can look bad in measurements, but are not really audible.
Or it's really difficult to pin-point a problem, but measurements show exactly how it correlates.
This combination is absolutely paramount for any serious review in my opinion.
I simply don't take any review serious without.
Also not the ones that only show data.
You can't judge anything without the combination of the two.
One step better is doing it blind.
The immediate problem here is again context.
It's extremely important to know where this variation comes from and at what frequency.
A variant from just the plain frequency response is very different than say some kind of standing wave.
Edge diffraction issues are also not nearly as bad as well, dips are less bad than peaks etc.
Variations from a speaker with a very good directivity are also not nearly as bad, because they can be EQ'ed away.
etc etc etc
Even ruler flat is not always the best approach, in fact sometimes not even in line with the vision of the product or target audience.
That is even a very stupid move to begin with.
People have every right to share and measure whatever they want.
However, if any wrongdoing leads to real (financial) harm by spreading misinformation, it could result in serious legal trouble.
In my opinion, Erin handles this in a much more professional way.
He shares his own opinion, but always lets the viewer make up their own mind.
Now that's what is called good and respectful journalism.
Silly red arrows with words like "horrible", "bad", "ugly" = very poor journalism.
Mostly because those are all judgemental biased words.
They don't belong in a review that tries to be objective.
It's a good example of how some people don't always want the most perfect, flat, or best-performing gear.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, as long as it's clear and understood.
It doesn't suddenly make the product bad, it just means it's not suitable for certain use cases
I agree. I've been in this business for about 15-20 years, and it can be really tough.
When all of your competitors are stretching the truth, and buyers assume that more means better, it’s tough to stay transparent and honest without it impacting your sales
In the end of the day, salaries still have to be paid.
Currently I am working on some products for some clients.
They were asking to what reviewers they could send their products.
I told them which ones they should avoid like the plague, I let you guess which ones 😉
I'll come to Amir's defence on the panthers, actually. I reached out to him one of the times I was in the Seattle area and he hosted me for a nice conversation in his audio/test space. This was a few years back. I forget the exact story behind the panthers, but I seem to recall that his wife collected them and the ones he uses in the reviews were extras. The headless panther was damaged in transit. He didn't intend for the panthers to become a review summary or to be reflective of his opinion of the gear. I think he said he included one as a scale indicator and it just grew legs from there. That said, now that the panther has become basically a star rating, he could be more deliberate in its use. But that's probably more detail than he feels like giving out at that particular moment.
Tom
Tom
Can you please provide an example? "Bad" seems to be such a relative term when it comes to audio and audibility.
Can you provide a few examples? They would no doubt be quite illuminating.
The opposite of the electronics themselves, I guess. 😎
Granting their novel origins and branding, panthers are still a shorthand pass/meh/fail proxy for tested products. The test results and his subjective value conclusion for me are too often at conflict.
Look up bikinipunks posts, he mentioned it a couple of times.
Maybe also on ASR, can't remember