Quote from: Yahzi on 2014-07-29 09:45:00

I am of the opinion that AVR designers and manufacturers don't need to place as much emphasis on the audio aspect as do audio only designers/manufacturers.

I once got to assist a tiny but well-regarded high end kit manufacturer for awhile, and it was sort of eye-opening: The boss went on record saying that with his new amplifier, upgrading the power supply capacitors wouldn't make any sonic improvement and that the cheaper solid state power supply rectifiers were best. And guess what happened? Customers insisted on Rubycon Black Gate capacitors (then the audiophile capacitor du jour), while the tube rectifier option proved popular!

And this in a nutshell is what I think has become of the specialist high-end audio market: High end audiophiles want what they want, and if there's sufficient demand, a manufacturer that wants to survive in the business will produce it whether it makes sense to them or not. Prices tend to be high partly because this market is small, but also because the customer base won't take it seriously if it doesn't cost enough.

To more mainstream companies like Denon/Marantz and Yamaha, the challenge of high-quality amplification was solved decades ago, and aside from an occasional boutique product, it's mostly about features and lifestyle marketing these days.

Lemme get this straight.

We have dirt cheap GPS receivers that can get a position lock in like 5 seconds at timekeeping accurate to nanoseconds with GPS signals at a strength of 0.000,000,000,000,00016 W and somebody is telling me a mere AV receiver couldn't be audibly transparent because? 

The best part about the "measurements are useless" crowd is the implication that there are no microphones nor electronics in existence sensitive enough to pick up all the intricacies and nuance of music recorded with microphones and electronics.

Modern technology is so good that a $39 mass market digital music player has performance that is sonically the same or better than a megabuck high end 2 channel system, except that it is based on headphones/earphones instead of loudspeakers, and for most of the market that is a good thing.

I can't imagine somebody in another industry like Asus making $1000+ PC motherboards, make outrageous claims that they make you more skilled at gaming while getting away with it like in placebophilia land. Their reputation will get ripped to shreds in seconds by the PC enthusiast crowd. Even I think their current $200+ offerings are grossly overpriced.

I can't imagine somebody in another industry like Asus making $1000+ PC motherboards, make outrageous claims that they make you more skilled at gaming while getting away with it like in placebophilia land. Their reputation will get ripped to shreds in seconds by the PC enthusiast crowd. Even I think their current $200+ offerings are grossly overpriced.

Does an amplifier need to be able to do speech-to-text recognition to properly reproduce speech?  That is the essence of their argument.

For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter.

[blind] testing does work … it's (still) the only honest kind.

Actually, Holt did come out in favor of more a more scientific approach to audio:

45 Years of Stereophile: As We See It

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For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter.

[blind] testing does work … it's (still) the only honest kind.

Whether he was so vocal about it during his tenure is another matter. They might not have always had the strongest technical skills, but you gotta hand it to these advertising execs and journalists: They could write pretty persuasively.