"Ian Bell" wrote in message
...
Andy Evans wrote:

Trouble is they are still subjective measurements and therefore of no
value to anyone other than the person who made them

Put it this way - I'd MUCH rather any competent audiophile ranked ten
products in order of preference than gave them arbitrary stars. There's
bad and there's worse.


I would much rather reviwers subjected the kit to some relevant repeatable
tests and published the results. Perhaps then we could avoid the several
thousand pounds power amplifier with several percent distortion receiving
a
rave reviw.

One simple but effective way I have found to test hi-fi is to have it
playing a recording, and then have a microphone positioned in an ideal
location recording the output.

With really high end stuff, the recording will be indistinguishable from the
original, but of course there is degredation directly related to the
speakers/amps, so perhaps a could test would be to record the recording, and
repeat until a blind test reveals the difference between the original and
the recorded, and simply note the number of recordings it took.

Btw - what thousand pound amplifiers have a several percent distortion?

Ian

P.S. Isn't competent audiophile and oxymoron ;-)