Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

Keep deflecting @soundfield  

you both look like Tooles

@soundfield Where are your speaker measurements? 

@amir_asr Why did you close Erin's thread?

@amir_asr Not really. It seems to be personal annoyance and a vendetta against Erin to be honest.

Why are other YouTube reviews and comparisons allowed? This one being a prime example. It’s a top list and still remains. How many discussions in the speaker category are one product against another? I am going to venture and say it’s a large percentage. People want to compare. Top lists exist for a reason. I gleaned new information from that video as Erin talked about dispersion et al.

I do however give you credit for calling out @soundfield because they really wont put up any measurements, which is what you said. 

@amir_asr between this and the 5128 discussion you must be drinking coffee and wearing a diaper.

You really can't take any criticism. You are spending so much time on this. And yes that post about only revel products does call your ethics into question. 

Show me where you promote other products you don't rep. Also you never answered why Erin's video for speakers was taken down but other top videos were not. 

@amir_asr Amazing how @j_livingston points out a thread you created to promote products you sell and are a dealer for, but this is not a way to promote a product and how does it increase the science of your website. You are full of it. 

@soundfield you folded quickly. I thought you were standing up to Amir? 

Amir can use this thread to promote his bs all he wants, but I think the true believers see two sides to this. Can't wait to see 1,000 posts.

@amir_asr between this and the 5128 conversation on ASR you sound like an elitest out of touch petulant child. Now I see what @soundfield is saying. If you have family or hobbies outside of this there is no way you’re tending to it. You seem consumed and unhappy with the narrative. You can’t play god here and it’s driving you mad. Seriously take a walk. Get a massage. You are only bound to get more curmudgeonly from here.

@amir_asr How much money do you make from donations to your site or donations you request on every review you post? Interesting you leave that out. You won’t answer because you don’t monetize anything and you don’t need money living in a multimillion dollar waterfront home. 

@soundfield why won’t you show your measurements?

I can demonstrate how he is wrong. Again I go back to food. Namely donuts. Let’s say all donuts that are perceived as good follow a basic recipe and ratio of ingredients. This can be verified by a scientific test in a lab. One place sells donuts that don’t follow that tried and true recipe but everyone flocks to buy some. That to me is what audio is like. I actually believe a lot of what Amir is saying but you can’t test food without the eating and enjoyment. There will always be a subjective component to reviewing restaurants if we want to go with the food analogy. 
 

Initially I liked Amir and found the website good. All of my interactions with him were pleasant. But now I see a lot more of his personality and how if he doesn’t agree with a line of discussion he shuts it down. Then people get mad and leave or he turns off the spigot of information because his feelings got hurt. Then he claims he doesn’t care when he does. Talk about subjective! 

@mahgister calling everyone idiots isn’t helping get people to listen to your repeated long winded exclamations. You aren’t listening to why people are tuning you out. 
 

I already explained with my donut analogy. You can look at and test food for composition all you want but taste will always be subjective. And tasting food is the whole reason it’s made. We don’t make donuts to watch them and study them. 

@mapman No one is putting down his hard work. What isn’t okay to is to point the finger and say hey you’re wrong I’m right. He does it in a condescending, rude, and yes sometimes uninformed way. We’re all human here, I think. Amir cherry picks people to attack and remove from his website if they don’t agree or bow down to him. How is that objectivity in the name of science?!

Fortunately Amir doesn’t run this forum and can’t play the almighty. There is no way this discussion could take place on his ASR. Isn’t that interesting? I would’ve been banned already.

@amir_asr Then what do you say to @soundfield who pointed out your old post where you did not level match?

@mahgister your points are valid to state. I’m not as savvy on audio science. I admit that. I also admit that science is really important with audio gear. Just as it is with medicine and improving peoples vision for example. 

My analogy isn’t scientific but is based in fact. You cannot strip out the subjectivity of audio. Just like you can’t do it with food or anything to do with taste. You can’t measure taste. You can’t quantify it but it is there. And in some cases it doesn’t translate from culture to culture. One dish might be revered in some culture and detested in another. The environment the experience and the way the food is prepared all matters. Same goes for audio. It doesn’t occur in a vacuum.  

Would love to see what @soundfield has to say about that last post. Wow is all I can say. Forget making love to a sine wave, you guys need to box it out in the ring. Though I think it's safe to say AJ would handily win. 

I don't get this exclusionary mentality. It does seem to introduce bias to say a speaker measures this way and therefore can proceed with a listening test. in my opinion Amir, shouldn't you do the measurements, not look at the results, do a blind listening test against some other speaker and then determine the conclusion based on that? Seeing the speaker, looking at the results all introduces your thoughts which are clearly heavily weighted towards science good / feeling bad.

@soundfield you look silly. You call out @amir_asr and then don’t answer. smh

@raysmtb1 he is not doing this for free. Laughable. He has a patreon. Every single review asks for donations. He doesn’t disclose how much the website makes but it’s surely not nothing. 

@ghasley what kind of cat? I love cats 

@jasonbourne71 because I like the aesthetic which matters when it’s sitting out on the table. And I said because the benchmark is made in my country. Their customer support is phenomenal and from what I gather sounds incredible. I’ve never had a benchmark Dac fail or not work properly. And they allow you to upgrade certain parts instead of buying a new unit.

@j_livingston you took the thought out of my head. I was going to mention his links to asr. Clearly he is trolling some of these posts.

@soundfield no amount of winking is going to get people to buy your speakers with zero measurements or pictures or info. Amir isn’t doing your listening test. Actually wait I found one source. @amir_asr there is a measurement of his here

A lot of fun to follow. A J you are looking weak! @soundfield are you going to take that!?

@daveyf Clearly he likes it. He has spent so much time its kind if not believable on here. And he is arguing on his site. I like a good debate as much as the next person but at a certain point I want middle ground and a commonality. He is like the Antifa or Maga of audio

@amir_asr gray is everywhere. Space in your head. In outer space. There is color too. Black and white thinking causes racism. It causes wars and intolerance. Which is what you’re propagating. I believe in old audio as I do in new. I heard atc recently. Sounded neutral. It sounded boring compared to the harbeths next to it. Why would I buy something that doesn’t interest me or excite me to look at and play every day. That topping dac is nice in its measurements but the benchmark looks better and is made in the USA so for those reasons I’ll take that over the topping. Why can’t people take measurements into account and spice them up with other variables? The only good black and white I know is in an Oreo cookie. 

@texbychoice Didn’t even really catch that. Good eye. It’s a very subjective statement and one that isn’t even backed by Amir’s precious data. How the heck do you buy a processor and then spend that much money only to brick it? I’ve never heard of a product or company being so crappy. He must really not be hurting if he just doesn’t care about a $15,000 loss. Time to ask for more donations. 
 

@amir_asr so room treatments do nothing? All of the producers and sound engineers who record with them to create less issues and surrounding booths with it so the vocals are clean don’t know what they are doing?? You can hear the difference. It’s night a day. You literally use a tool that mimics an anechoic chamber. You really have your head up your rear end. 

@amir_asr just stop with the holier than thou attitude. You’re not some all knowing savant. 
 

I have a good understanding of acoustic treatments. Like eq they remove the room from the equation. Yes engineers and producers want a dead environment so they can isolate vocals etc. A psi avaa or minidsp or bass traps all have the same goal. They are just different paths to that goal. Room treatments are ugly but they aren’t some snake oil product. They work. I’ve seen them work just like I’ve see room equipment on Dutch and Dutch 7cs work. 

@prof I am not referencing all sorts of places. I am referencing pretty much any recording studio, mastering desk, mixing rooms. They all use treatment. These are the people who edit, produce and fine tune all the audio, vocals and sound effects you’re playing through your system. They arent prone to the same flash of high end stuff. Running commercial cable snakes and generic power cords. They do use room eq in addition to treatment. What youre saying is based on one guy, who has no experience in any of those fields knows better and they are misinformed?

I am trying to find a link but The Disney Concert Hall is a great example of this. They designed the seats to mimic the human body's density so that when the seats are empty it still sounds consistent with a full house. A lot of effort went into the project with materials and wood so that it was acoustically great. I guess you better go tell them with Amir that they made a big mistake. 

@prof They absolutely do dismiss expensive stuff. Here is one. Amir shows it does the same thing as the less expensive versions, and therefore doesnt recommend it. Explain to me how that is not exactly what youre saying???

Here is a comment calling it snake oil

@mapman @prof 

Show me the science where it states that room treatment is bogus, and people dont need it to help with the eq in their room? All they need is a box that does it for them. That does indeed work, but so does acoustic treatment. I agree with Amir that eq software can do wonders. 100% in agreement. I am in complete disagreement that treatment is crap. 

@prof read the review. Amir doesnt recommend it because of the price...

@amir_asr My reputation isnt on the line unlike yours. You have no business calling treaments crap.

@prof HE IS THE EGOIST 

I have never claimed to know more than anyone on here, yet he has never, not one time, admitted to being wrong, or to knowing something to a lesser extent. That is by very definition bloviation. He attacks people by calling them audiophiles or subjectivists without knowing their true opinions. He continually says he answers a question and points to answers that sidestep really responding. That is gaslighting. You are obscuring the truth but omitting a lot of the stuff he does. 

Amir has good ideas some of the time. He has good insight some of the time. He is right some of the time. He is hubristic all of the time. He said this just above "The luminaries not only say what I say, if you knew them personally as I do, but do as I say." WOW cool. He knows people and calls them luminaries. Just say experts in their field. 

If I have learned one thing it's that people who claim to be one thing, and say they are the most of some form, and have the strongest ethics. Are usually the opposite. Look at Bill Cosby, Brian Williams, Ellen. They all portray one thing and do another. I am not saying Amir is a rapist. What I am saying is I do not believe him to be as ethical as he states nor do I think he operates a huge online forum out of the goodness of his nature. He does it for clout and money. 

@prof Pretty sure when they said snake oil they were referring to the price tag and how it probably doesn’t do anything better and the fact that it bricked on a firmware upgrade. I’ve never even had any product do that, and if it did I could revert back to the old FW. Amir states snake oil are cables that claim to improve sound when they cost $1000. Now it's a hard pill to swallow that this eq piece works that much better than say a mini dsp or Dirac unit. Or even a Trinnov which can be had for 1/15th and 1/3 the price respectively. 

Amir saying that room eq is valid but most acoustic treatment isnt is bogus!

Let me ask you, do you think everything he says is gospel? It seems you are up his butt for different reasons.

@amir_asr Seriously why are you still here? Don't you have some donations to pole dance for?

@prof do you run an alt Amir account because you sound rude just like him LOL

Saying "anyone" on this forum needs to do scientific research is baseless and overstated. I do scientific research. I don't do things without research and some sort of basis in reality. 

@prof audioquest usb cables cost many times what Amazon basics do and do the same job so by your logic the audio quest isn’t snake oil???

Yes everyone ask Amir questions. So he can deflect. 

@prof Go on gearspace.com and ask if they use room treatment and to what effect. There are loads of examples of bass traps and treatments flattening out room modes introduced by the room. Same as any eq software. one is physical one is digital. Why is this so hard to prove? Ive see room correction work with my own two eyes with a D&D system and with room treatments 

@amir_asr No it’s not about audio. I will tell, if you do tell why you closed Erin’s thread and allow others to remain up, and why you spam this forum with your ASR forum posts which lead to your "donation" requests. Do tell.

It's truly astonishing you are still here. Since you want to sell ASR and not deal with this, why are you wasting your time on this, unless you want to cross promote. This thread will keep getting longer an longer and people will see more and more of who you truly are. A dbag.

And in a previous post @prof here is Amir calling treatment "crap"

Does this look like it has a bunch of crap acoustic products all over as you claimed people should put in their living spaces? It doesn’t right?It even has a TV in the middle!

Just like my room, standard furnishing is used to provide adequate overall absorption so that the room is not too live. That’s all. He uses multiple subs with advanced DSP (soundfield management) to get excellent bass across multiple seats. This is science. This is science in practice. This is science that doesn’t uglify your room to create great satisfaction.

@amir_asr Pretty sure you explained what ASR does. It's a science like Scientology!

@prof Wait I never called the tact eq box snake oil. The other member of Audiogon did. Then I tried to explain why that argument was somewhat valid but I agree it's not snake oil in the strictest sense. However the jacked up price and added benefit is in fact snake oil. Which you stated. You said this 

 

Great.  So it's not a snake oil product.  And yet you'd quoted Amir saying it wasn't a snake oil product and implied it may as well have been.  That's the sneaky part I was getting at.

Then you said this 

 It's not "snake oil just because it's expensive."  It's snake oil "because they are charging people huge prices on the basis of claiming audibly superior performance" over cheaper cable, and many at ASR are technically proficient enough to explain why the claims are nonsense (and point out how they are virtually never actually demonstrated in any rigorous manner, either by measurements or controlled listening tests...it's all about the usual audiophile anecdotes).

We are saying the same thing. How is the tact $15,000 unit that many times better than any other eq product out there? So amir is touting its greatness which is what was called out as snake oil. He bought into the very products he doesnt recommend. 

@amir_asr You better ban me. Oh wait you can't because this isnt your forum.

@prof Here is an entire discussion about snake oil and how it’s based on fraud in a lot of peoples minds. Something that essentially doesnt work at all. Not just dubious claims. People in that thread call magico speakers snake oil. I wouldnt say that’s fair. Overpriced maybe. To use Amirs analogy, then an Icon Bronco is snake oil I guess.

This is from that thread and is probably more accurate "Snake-oil: Does none of the things being claimed other than through the powers of suggestion.

Rip-off: Highly expensive but identical in any meaningful way to products with a vanishingly smaller price tag."

@prof Okay your call. I was responding to what you said. My point remains that people on ASR call products snake oil based on their expensive price. All day long. 

They clearly put magico in the rip off snake oil category. I was illustrating to @prof how snake oil isn’t just used with the definition he stated on ASR. That snake oil is at times synonymous with rip off or expensive.

@texbychoice its truly mind boggling. I’m experiencing hive mind not for the first time but with such vigor. I don’t have a dog in this fight. You’re right Amir. I don’t subscribe to any religious view of audio or audio equipment. I use research, data, my ears and instinct. I’m a free thinker and trust audio professionals who make music say in and day out.

I will say it again because it’s worth repeating. Science and religion are two sides of the same outcome. We want to know the unknowable. Science gets it wrong all the time. So does trying to distill the unknown in a church. But what remains important is seeking that out. Learning and remaining interesting in the possibilities. Go look at psychology and how addiction has been treated over the years. They would give opium patients heroin. Doctors did that. Men of science. You have your head in the sand. Being adaptable is important. 

I’ve never seen anyone staple mattresses to the wall 

@mitch2 I have not objected to the science on ASR. It's sound and I find no issue with it. What I take issue with is the interpolation of said aforementioned data as gospel and all that really matters when determining a quality component. It would be like doing a psychological study of medication on the body. Measuring the physical effects and not asking the participants what their experience was like. Or telling people to go buy a Tesla model 3 because it outperforms or matches another car like the m5 in performance and technical specs. The driving experience will be different and just because something is good on paper doesnt mean it translates. 

@prof Show me where you object to anything Amir has said? All I see is soft pedaling and brown nosing.

The snake oil discussion I linked to, in it someone directed peoples attention to a 600 thousand dollar Magico speaker saying it was basically snake oil. Some corrected him, but this is very common. There is another discussion on ASR just about extreme snake oil and someone linked to a million dollar system. More often than not, high prices are synonymous with bad. How can someone afford it? The blame and shame shift to anyone who would be dumb enough to buy such a product. All of this without ever having heard it, and wait for it, or testing it scientifically or otherwise. 

I agree there is a lot of pseudo science out there, and I applaud ASR for helping people sort out what is bogus and what is real. However when that tips the scale where Amir is tipping it, it becomes just as bad as the people who say buy my crystal cable holders to improve your sound. Tossing out the experience of audio, which is what many people want is not productive. Ive had studio engineers in my space, and been to many production facilities. All recommended bass traps as standard basic treatment as most rooms encounter bass bumps. Cardioid and dutch and dutch use their physical designs to avoid room problems and then further smooth it out with eq. 

From the dutch and dutch guide:

"These room resonances can be attenuated by means of acoustical treatment in the form of bass traps. With the 8c, one also has the possibility to do a low-frequency equalization in the 8c to compensate for the effect of the room resonances and obtain an equalized, i.e. “flatter”, low-frequency response in the listening area."

They don't say you dont need bass traps. 

onto themselves 

It's unto themselves. 

If you're going to claim to be exact, might want to get grammarly. And a headshot of yourself on Madrona's website that isn't 40 years old. 

Yeah @amir_asr your posted results for the listening test are meaningless and unverifiable. No way to know you did that unless it was proctored like @soundfield says 

@amir_asr if you were paying attention you would have seen that I said both you and @soundfield were acting like children and I would not buy speakers where pictures arent available as arent measurements. Why would I talk against my own products? You really need to get your head out of...the sand

@amir_asr Yes I am AJ. How did you know? I can prove I am not him. You can’t prove that you didnt run the audio externally through whatever listening device you used through another analyzer. There is no way to verify this, unless someone was watching you do it. You absolutely could cheat that test. Nothing is monitoring the output sound.

@amir_asr I am not AJ. You’re so rude and people come to your defense. Nice of you to be so condescending and sarcastic. That is your science at work? I post on ASR regularly.

Explain to me how a review for a loudspeaker does not entail listening to it. Joke.

Doesnt bother you but you continue to unravel and let this whole conversation frustrate you more and more.