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Old 06-12-2019, 02:53 PM   #22
JamesPeters
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Near a big lake
Posts: 3,943
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The issues with trying to call out something like this as "snake oil" are:

1) Everything distorts your source signal. Any change is a distortion. Plus what a person will appreciate for distortion will be different for different situations, and a matter of personal taste. You've probably heard dozens of people saying that differences in A/D and D/A converters these days don't matter, but sometimes they do, even something relatively subtle like that.

2) Measuring it means knowing what to measure. We look at 2D graphs to represent 3D things, "frozen in time" at that. So then we have to extrapolate what that means based on our understanding of the data. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who can look at some graphs and say "I know what that preamp sounds like".

3) There are different circumstances under which the hardware is used, such that doing tests is that much more problematic. I've heard comparisons of preamps recording the same source (with variables eliminated as much as possible) and thought "these all sound virtually identical", but when I've tried the preamps I could hear differences right away. So some of it is about how you use the gear. Good luck getting that on a graph, in a way that makes intuitive sense to anyone.

You owe it to yourself to try some different preamps, converters and so on. My takeaway: some of it matters to me, for how I work. So I focus on that. I can also go "bargain basement" on recording gear and know exactly what I'm sacrificing (usually not enough that it would stop me from getting a good recording for my own standards). I also know that I could do tests on my preamps for comparison (to some cheap ones) and most people wouldn't think the "better" preamps would sound any different or better based on those tests. See point #2.

If it were so easy to just "put it all on paper for everyone to see", it probably would've been done by now. You can do it if you like, but I suspect the results won't seem worthwhile to you.
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