Earwicker7, your very own question is the answer to your query. People that normally bash Stereophile for their reviews of expensive ultra high-end components, are now happy to see the Editor in Chief and two major reviewers some raving and others recognizing the high-end sonic virtues of an inexpensive component. I guess it is easy to miss the point of the PlayStation. It is a low price item, but is it low-fi? Evidently, to a lot of respectable reviewers, speaker designers, audiophiles all over the world, it is not. I know, in fact, of many discriminating audiophiles in the US and Germany that are using the PlayStation 1 as their preferred CD playback unit in their $50,000+ systems (I am one of them, and I definitely preferred it over my last high end $5500 transport/DAC update). The PlayStation has a permanent seat in those systems (since 2004 in some cases). Hardly a temporary whim or a weekend audio experiment of temporary delusion.
Yes, it does not measure well but that is the same case as with single ended tube amps. Since earwicker7 claims being a reader of Stereophile since the late 80’s, he certainly should remember a few years back when John Atkinson measured one of Sam Telling’s favorite single ended tube amps and, since it measured so poorly (in comparison to “true” high end amps), to explain the positive and evident audible qualities of the amp, John Atkinson pronounced that amp to be more a tube tone control device than an amp (a generator of pleasant euphonic colorations). Sounds familiar? Following the same logic of labeling a product low-fi because the way it measures, not for the way it sounds, I would say that to equate the thousands of well respected and credited people that can hear and appreciate the evident sonic virtues of single ended tube amps with people that prefer AM radio and 8 channel tape would really be totally disingenuous (to use earwicker7’s own word). The fact is, and John Atkinson knows it, what he measures not necessarily accounts for how a component sounds. There are many factors or variables representing audible qualities for which there are not correlating objective measures.
Now, onto the analogy of a photographer slapping Vaseline on his lens to hide the wrinkles on a vain 60 year old…well, that analogy is both simplistic and severely flawed. Audio reproduction of a musical event is not a simple two-dimensional static endeavor like photography. It is a three-dimensional dynamic event with multiple characteristics determining its quality or appeal. Not even a movie analogy gets close. Perhaps, only three-dimensional image holography may be a fitting analogy. When John Atkinson says that perhaps the sound of the PlayStation is due to distortion that blurs the nasty artifacts of digital audio, he is just surmising. He actually has no clue… he cannot identified what type of distortion (earwicker7’s Vaseline) is the culprit—wouldn’t it be actually more appropriate to say "the benefactor"? In physics and statistics compensating errors or phenomena are not negative factors but positive ones.
