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Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy

"Audiophiles are Snobs"  Youtube features an idiot!  He states, with no equivocation,  that $5,000 and $10,000 speakers sound equally good and a $500 and $5,000 integrated amp sound equally good.  He is either deaf or a liar or both! 

There is a site filled with posters like him called Audio Science Review.  If a reasonable person posts, they immediately tear him down, using selected words and/or sentences from the reasonable poster as100% proof that the audiophile is dumb and stupid with his money. They also occasionally state that the high end audio equipment/cable/tweak sellers are criminals who commit fraud on the public.  They often state that if something scientifically measures better, then it sounds better.   They give no credence to unmeasurable sound factors like PRAT and Ambiance.   Some of the posters music choices range from rap to hip hop and anything pop oriented created in the past from 1995.  

Have any of audiogon (or any other reasonable audio forum site) posters encountered this horrible group of miscreants?  

fleschler

Showing 2 responses by gxalan

gxalan
5 posts
 

Take a look at this post on sound signature of amplifiers

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/measuring-the-sound-signature-of-two-different-integrated-amplifiers.37963/

 

ASR is like Audiogon.  There is a wide range of opinions on Audiogon the same way there is a wide range of opinions on ASR.  Amir pays for the website and offers his opinions.  Other readers like me can provide my opinions too, and it’s not deleted or censored and can be put up to the front page too.

What makes ASR different is that opinions should be backed by something that is not purely subjective nor purely relying on the trust of the an expert opinion.  Amir’s standard test set might not capture every last bit of potential for audio performance, but it is reliable and reproducible and FREE. Ground loops can be a real difference in home environments and there are times that I can get product A to perform just as well as product A in Amir’s lab, but product B in my home measures worse (and potentially sounds worse).  This is where testing at home is important.

30 years ago, we said that it was impossible to measure certain things we can hear.  The software and hardware has gotten better.  We can measure differences.

gxalan
5 posts
 

@kota1 I am a long time user of Audiogon to buy and sell gear and have a nice collection of vintage and contemporary gear.  The beauty of measurements is that you don’t need to rely on taste or my gear list. :)

I enjoy a lot of different types of music and enjoy different systems depending on my mood.  I have owned Proceed/Levinson gear, contemporary and vintage McIntosh solid state and tubes, Pure Class A Accuphase, PS Audio, Nelson Pass era Adcom, Primare, NAD, Sony ES, Denon, Marantz, etc.  I have had planars, ribbons, omnipolars, soft dome tweeters, metal tweeters, compression drivers, etc.

I find that the most accurate sounding systems are the best for well recorded classical music but are too unforgiving for good but not great singers or good but not great recordings.  (Examples of a good but not great singers are Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling from the La La Land Soundtrack, and a great singer with a poor recording, Joyce Jonathan’s Sur Mes Gardes.)

As a music lover, I have achieved everything I need for great sound and enough experience to pick the system that gives me the most enjoyment for any individual piece of music.  As a hobbyist, and why I spend time on ASR, is that I hope to show everyone that everything that can be heard can be measured, it’s OK to prefer coloration, and there are a lot of tweaks that are just sighted bias/snake oil.

Anyone who is serious about the hobby of wanting to know why something sounds good (or bad) should invest in their own test gear.  Compared to what some are charging for cables or line conditioners, it’s pretty cheap. 

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