Altmann Tera Player - Page 70  

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Edited by KraftD1 - 1/10/13 at 6:17am

I trust that you feel the same about mega-priced cables, pre-amps, amplifiers and speakers and are willing to also dismiss them out of hand without audition????
In other words, are the owners of $50K+ audio gear all fools?

So there it is in black and white, you've deemed us Tera Player owners to be gullible chumps (paraphrasing) for purchasing our devices on the basis of exceptional sound quality and not superfluous features that we can do without.   

 

To opine about the sound of a DAP that you've not even listened to does your credibility a great disservice, as how is this being remotely objective in your critique? 

 

Andy.

 

skamp,

 

I'm corresponding with my contact at ARCAM about sending my Tera Player to him for comprehensive measurement analysis. I'm just awaiting reassurance that it won't be opened up voiding the warranty. More news soon...

 

Andy.

 

skamp,

 

It is interesting discussing the purported merits of the Tera Player with someone so obviously fixated with objective measurements and obtaining what I'd term `diaphanous' sound. My own sonic preference is for a more beguilingly musical representation and if this encompasses a bit of harmonic distortion, tube bloom or a `coloured' presentation then so be it, as ultimately it's what gets my toes tapping that counts!  

 

Andy.

 

I agree with you wholeheartedly and think that a DAP should be promoted solely on it's sonic merits and not by marketing puffery nor by defaming other audio kit/components.

I knew that we'd eventually agree on something!

Andy.

Edited by smial1966 - 1/10/13 at 7:53am

Haha, I believe you must be correct. :-D

This thread is getting rather too argumentative for my liking, probably going to stay away for a while.

I like how my Tera Player sounds. I don't really feel like proving it to anyone else or the need to justify it. I've owned enough hi end stuff for enough decades to know when I see (hear!) a good thing. For those that need logic and scientific proof to enjoy music, I wish you luck in your journey. For others that wonder about the Tera Player, try it out and hear for yourself. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. You can't smell it or measure it and make conclusions, you've got to eat it! If it tastes good, it's good. No difference with hearing.

Oh, one other thing, there's a superior test to a double blind, ABX with statistically high confidence levels. I once needed to verify if a particular component in my HiFi was setup properly. With no one around to offer assistance, I asked my mother who knew nothing about hifi to come for a listen. She sat down and after a while declared that there was indeed something wrong with the setup. On asking what it was that she heard, she replied "There's no sound coming from your speakers, is it broken? Where is the sound coming from?" You know you've got it right with a totally transparent, out of box system when you hear this kind of comment from a non-audiophile.

Moral of the story, need to check if it sounds good? Don't measure it, go ask your mom. :-)

I dub it, "The Mom Test"

 

I agree with you. Lots of stuff going on these days, I just get to kick back with my Tera Player while it all happens. The fact is it may not be the best thing ever in existence, but it's a really great player that many enjoy, isn't that enough? I've seen the same type of nitpicking from other on these forums when it comes to expensive gear. It's like they haven't been reminded of the motto around here. Personally I'm okay for price where there is value. When I did really hear a bad word about it from owners and figured it'd be able to fit my lifestyle well, I jumped at the opportunity to get it. No regrets. Eventually a happy owner will get bored enough and have the right knowhow to test this great player. As I've said, I don't really care what results come out, If the best sounding thing in the world was 50 pounds  and used 14 batteries and what have you, I wouldn't use it. performance to size ratio I can't think of another thing thats comparable unless you throw in performance vs price and then the Sansa Clip+ might have it beat in that respect. 

I might just add a few comments of my own here regarding measurements. It is clearly evident from reading the myriads of measurements that have been made on all sorts of gear, from the very expensive boutiques to the humble Clip, that the audio performance of today's equipment is orders of magnitude greater than that of equipment built just a few years back.

Regardless of cost, nearly all equipment today exhibits very similar measurements, with levels of distortion, channel imbalance, frequency response etc. that are far lower than than the vast majority of human ears can discriminate. About the only components that doesn't reach these vanishing low levels of unwanted artifacts are speakers and headphones.

Given that the measurements are all extremely close regardless of price, one would expect all of these components to sound at least fairly similar, but clearly we all know that is not the case. Perhaps this difference is some intangible that as yet has not been measured. As the old saying goes, "If it measures good and sounds good, it must be good, but if it sounds good and measures poorly, we must be measuring the wrong thing!)

On a more practical aspect, much has been said about the desirability for absolute neutrality, components that function as a "wire with gain". Some years back I decided to equalize my home system, (which at that time was quite top-of-the-line). I used lab quality mikes and a high quality decibel meter while feeding my system inputs with a series of closely spaced sine waves. Using a parametric equalizer, I was able to achieve perfectly flat frequency response from 20hz to 20khz at my usual listening location. I was very disappointed when I played back some of my favorite music...the sound was terrible, very bass light and overly bright and piercing highs. This failed experiment really brought home to me how very important the environmental acoustics are to enjoyable listening.

Closely related to this, about 20 years ago, there was a published article which I saved for years in which the frequency responses of the 10 most highly-regarded concert halls in the world (at that time) were carefully measured at various points in the hall. What was especially interesting is that they all had very similar responses and, if the same results were obtained when measuring, for example, an audio amplifier, most would scorn the amp as being totally "colored" with extremely none-neutral characteristics. All of the halls measured exhibited extreme roll-off of the higher frequencies, with the 4khz point being down about 6db and the 8 khz point down about 10db!! Does this mean that folks who enjoy hearing classical orchestras in the world's best venues have tin ears????

Just a little food for thought!
Edited by HiFlight - 1/10/13 at 1:26pm

As always HiFlight, and interesting read. That's part of the reason I don't care about the measurements. What do they really prove anyways

I concur, a very erudite submission. One that gives us serious food for thought about what factors influence our enjoyment of music reproduction. 

 

Andy.