Audio Science Review = Rebuttal and Further Thoughts

@prof 

thyname

I'm not "teaming up" with anyone.

I am scratching my head… why don’t you participate in forums with like minded people with the same beliefs and ideology like ASR?

I do.  I've been a member quite a while at ASR.

However, I find the direction of interest in gear too constrained for me at ASR, and I enjoy discussing the subjective aspects of they hobby - exchanging notes on what things sound like etc.  That doesn't go down so well over there. (I mentioned that in the other ASR thread).

For instance if you look at my long running (and quite popular) thread on Agon in which I report my impressions of lots of speakers, that would go down mostly with a thud at ASR, because it's all subjective.  No data.

So ASR satisfies one aspect of my approach, places like Agon satisfy another. 

Great answer.

ASR is indeed a specialist site with many knowledgeable posters.

A bit like the Steve Hoffman Music Forum it also seems to antagonise a few people who find some folks on there a bit standoffish or even plain rude. 

Anyway, it's far better I believe to view such forums for what they are, a source of valuable information for interested parties. Such people often do not suffer fools gladly in my opinion, and there's little reason why they should.

As for the Audiogon forum, it was only after reading a post by yourself on instrument timbre and texture that I decided to join. I hadn't encountered anything written by any reviewer like the descriptions of tonal colours you wrote here.

Whilst we also have a fair share of rude people here, I would in no way like to imply that they are experts in anything else. However, as in life, sometimes we must learn to take the rough with the smooth.

Oh the fun we all used to have exchanging witty repartee with geoffkait...

Not.

Blind tests are a hassle, and there’s nothing remotely sexy about them.

The ones I’ve done involved switching between different masterings and bitrates as well as CD v Minidisc v MP3 player have demonstrated just how similar they all were.

My Sony MP3 was indistinguishable from my Marantz CD player.

A shocking discovery!

One that I had to repeat a few times as I could not accept the evidence of my own ears at first. It didn’t make sense then and I’m not sure it makes much sense now.

My mind keeps insisting that the Marantz CD6000ki must outperform a sub £100 Sony MP3 player.

It really should.

But it doesn’t.

Talking of CD, at the last show I went to, a fortnight ago, it was nearly all steaming and vinyl, hardly a CD player in sight.

How times change.

It would now appear that manufacturers and designers no longer see it necessary to use a compact disc player when they want to demonstrate loudspeakers and amplifiers at their best these days.

It takes some getting used to how things change, especially when you recall all of those endless sound quality comparisons between CD players during the 1990s up til around 2010.

Now it would appear as if all of those differences were largely in our imaginations and have now become as irrelevant as the use of leeches has in healing the sick.

@td_dayton 

i'm very impressed with your credentials. but i'm on my own path. you don't need to worry about what i'm doing. we don't even like the same music, why should i care what you think? etc etc

No one is suggesting for one minute that you (or anyone else) has to.

The important thing is that the data is out there and available.

The rest is entirely up to the individual whether they want to make any use of it.

The same goes for published online and magazine reviews.

@holmz

I don’t care how you hear, or what you hear… I just want whatever I play to sound like the recorded sound.

Doesn’t everyone?

Some may feel that they can do this by ear alone. The so called ’golden ear’ brigade who have assurance that their hearing is consistently reliable and trustworthy.

All of this without access to the original source of the recording.

Others might want some measurements as a reassurance that their system will be a well balanced one which can handle all genres, all recordings with equal aplomb.

There are some designers who like to combine the 2 approaches.

Peter Comeau of IAG says that he begins with the science (flat frequency response etc) and then finishes by fine tuning by ear.

@holmz

That seems like a good compromise, check that all the basic measurements are ok and only then fine tune by ear.

For the buyer it’s a case of case of checking the measurements first, then drawing up a shortlist which you can audition and make your selection by listening.

For those of us that are sometimes forced into buying blind, YouTuber Andrew Robinson has produced a helpful 5 step guide.

@prof 

"Notice virtually no manufacturer actually corrects Amir, as in "no, you are measuring the wrong things...HERE is how we measured the phenomenon we claim to have addressed in our product."  

It never moves beyond marketing. 

(The one attempt I've seen was by PS Audio...but their attempt to rebut Amir by showing how they would measure their product flopped pretty badly)."

This is such an important point that it's worth repeating.

No manufacturer would sit idly by and ignore criticism of their products if they believed it was unsupported.

Not a single one.

The financially ruinous consequences for any reviewer, of wrongly criticizing any product shouldn't need explaining here, should they?

There are many good reasons why reviewers so rarely criticize products, but the most important one is that they do not want to get sued.

Without evidence critical reviews are little more than allegations, which if successfully challenged can be financially disastrous to the person making them.

ASR deals in factual evidence as determined by state of the art measuring equipment.

ASR are also not alone in employing this approach and that is something we should be grateful for if we want anything more than watered down flattery that passes for most reviews these days.

The days of entirely subjective, or if you prefer, entirely fictional reviews finally seem to be coming to an end, and it's difficult to ever see them returning.

Oh dear, it would appear that measurements not only matter but are essential when judging loudspeakers.

@noske 

My take was that when auditioning and comparing loudspeakers it's important to have some technical data beforehand.

Otherwise the anomalies of the human hearing system, which is basically always trying to make sense out of sound, can play all kind tricks on you.

As Alan Shaw says, even the order in which you listen to 2 different speakers can make a difference in perception.

I myself have noticed that after prolonged listening to a bright sounding speaker/headphone a more neutral design can, at least initially, sound quite dull.

Measurements on the other hand tend to be rather more consistent.