ACTUAL MUSICAL SOUND VS. MEASUREMENTS

I’m over the whole "Prove it, Bro!" thing. It’s usually based on ignorance and a lack of experience, coupled with an inherent need to try to prove their cheap equipment is just as good as an expensive piece of equipment. Why argue with someone like that?

The second someone uses the term "snake oil", I completely tune out of the conversation and pretty much write off whatever they have to say.

@hilde45 i get what you are saying.  I guess I’m surprised about the intellectual arrogance that some of them have towards folks they don’t know and don’t know the level of experience they have 

@dlevi67 all great points. But what I see is increased nastiness with the arrogance.  I expect today’s young people to not have the level of respect that is expected nowadays.  But some of the older audiophiles are the ones that surprise me. They make personal attacks. I have had them find out what I do as a lawyer and use that. You work for a company and use that. You sell cables and use that.  You paid all that money for an amp or dac or cables when a lot cheaper stuff would have been fine and use that. You allowed a company to sell you snake oil because you are a sucker argument is the one that is used on steroids! 

Beating up on "measurementalists" is one of this site's favorite hobbies.

I agree that when that approach becomes dogmatic and myopic it is not worth reading. But they're also not worth responding to. So, I'm not aggravated by them.

@mahler123 I agree it’s very frustrating. Because you have guys on the internet who have not heard your system in your system in your environment and then spout a bunch psychotic allegedly scientific babble about what you are hearing and not hearing in your system a system that they will never hear and combinations of equipment, components , cables and rooms that they have never heard. 

I’m with Calvin in that I don’t think that measurements tell the whole story, and very annoyed by audiophiles who use them as their defying criteria 

I'm returning to "audio" conversations after a long pause (25 years). If anything, my impression is that the emphasis on measurements in 'professional', published reviews (as opposed to comments/conversations in forums) and in marketing materials is relatively lower now than it was in the late 1990s - with some exceptions (e.g. ASR).

I think this may be due to two factors: 1) the fragmentation of the 'review' market with more and more 'low resource' individuals/influencers/youtubers and whatnot rather than magazines with labs etc; and 2) the fact that component quality and consistency of electronics (particularly digital, but also amps) has improved enormously.

The conversation (or squabble, occasionally) among consumers/aficionados doesn't seem to me to be very different from back then. There are a few 'objectivists' and a few 'feeling-driven' folks, with a large majority that looks at both sides. As usual, the extremes drive most of the noise.

I must be out of the loop but I could not care less.