JWahl
1000+ Head-Fier
Finally I don't see what is so uncivilized about me suggesting that you man up and send a unit to Amir. RME did and got stellar review. Shiit did and got called out on some off the publicised stats/specs that turned out to be bad upon real testing. They were mature about it. Instead of pretending that it never happened, they revised on the next product and fixed it.
PS. My Beyers final arrived today so I am excited to go home to listen to my IFI Sig after all the waiting
The "uncivilized" part refers to where you insinuated they are "afraid" to send a review unit to ASR, and then double down with the "man up" as if he's not a man unless he send them a review loaner? They likely don't consider the "Measurements first, listening second or optional" crowd to be their target demographic. They're not a lab-equipment manufacturer. I imagine the only reason Schiit finally caved is that they (Jason and Mike) probably got tired of having their professional credibility slandered because they chose not to prioritize infinitesimally small noise and distortion measurements that are of dubious perceptual benefit. The Heresy was just to prove a point that yes, they can in fact throw together some op amps and make an instrumentation amplifier disguised as headphone amplifier. That and Schiit operates on tight margins so they can't necessarily afford to shut out demographics that might otherwise buy their product. I'm guessing that iFi is doing well enough on margins that they don't feel the need to appease the ASR crowd who, like I said, isn't really their target demographic anyways.
Although this sounds a little snarky, I'm not trying to insult objectivists in general; i'm in my senior year of an electrical engineering degree, myself. I'm actually grateful to the people over there who put in the time to measure equipment as it can provide useful insight, if done correctly. I just think the attitudes and philosophies can be a bit toxic at times. Measurements are a useful design tool, but are only relevant in the context of the specific design goal that the measurement applies to. In that context, they're not even really meant to be used by product end users, because the users typically have no context of what design constraint a measurement was used for, if at all. Nobody out in the real world is measuring the RF power density of an iPhone at 10 meters, they're judging if they get dropped calls and subjectively intelligible speech quality.
If one of an engineer's design constraints was to achieve a 0.3% THD on an amplifier, this was measured to be achieved, and then random internet personalities measure it and complain that it's not 0.1% and therefore that engineer failed, you can see where frustration would arise. If a company's target demographic consistently demands 0.1% amplifiers and they don't set their design constraint as such, then yes, that is a design failure. Likewise, if most of your target demographic demands subjectively pleasing listening experiences and not a specific performance metric, then prioritizing infinitesimally small noise and distortion measurements as a design constraint is also a failure of engineering design.
Granted, iFi's marketing can be a little bombastic and over the top sometimes, but I have a deep respect for Thorsten as a designer well before iFi existed, and trust the work he puts into his designs.