Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

I’ve spent time here and at ASR since I got back into the hobby. I’ll answer a little more broadly: I’ve learned a ton at ASR, not just from Amir, but people like Floyd Toole, Earl Geddes and JJ Johnson, all of whom participate there. ASR introduced me to a mountain of published research on audiology and audio engineering that served to fill me in on debates that started in my earlier audiophile phase (1980s). Those findings, and insistence on controlled evidence for claims, form the foundation of beliefs on which ASR folks debate. If you don’t think that’s the way to audio satisfaction, it’s fine, but it doesn’t make sense to go over to ASR, make unverifiable claims repeatedly and hope...something happens. I can certainly see how that ends in frustration and hot tempers.

Both places are rough on those who espouse the "wrong" views. If you suggest here that people do controlled, blind tests, you’ll be jumped on. If you go to ASR and say "DACs sound wildly different because I heard it", they will jump on you. Each place has its ethos.

My own beliefs are that more companies should provide a proper suite of measurements. @amir_asr does that, with a lot of effort, and it has value. Much more value in that than a series of opinions about sound in different rooms with different recordings. Amir’s klippel analysis of speakers, and the guidance on EQ available on the site, have made much more difference to my listening than endlessly swapping amps and DACs ever did. And yes, one of my systems has a raspberry pi running ROPIEEXL as a streamer to an RME ADI-2 DAC, feeding a Purifi-based amp. All ASR-endorsed solutions that I have enjoyed long-term and are anything but "sterile", IMO. I also bought a second-hand pair of Revel f228be speakers due to ASR, for a difficult room, and it was a fantastic solution. There are lots of ASR folks with similar stories.

Claims that "ASR only cares about measurements", that they "don’t listen to music", and that the site is full of people disappointed in their sterile/unreliable gear are clearly false, and only serve to demonstrate someone hasn’t bothered to look around the site. That just tells me they made up something that would sound plausible to partisans and ran with it. The longest thread on ASR is "what are you listening to now", and I’ve participated in discussions of 20th century music and jazz history there. I attend live performances about once a week on average, and several of my favorite participants on ASR are professional musicians and audio engineers.

When I was more active here, this place tolerated a few obvious snake-oil merchants, who tend to hang around and crap on people about how their equipment isn’t resolving enough, they haven’t been "in audio" long enough, how they don’t understand the implications of quantum theory on audio (eyeroll), etc. It wasn’t the whole experience, but I found that, in particular, extremely unpleasant, I also found the moderation haphazard at best. so this is my first post here in years, while I’ve been active at ASR since I found it.

It would be really interesting for representatives of the two sites to cooperate on some controlled testing to prove or disprove some of the claims not supported in the literature. But I mostly gave up on that happening ages ago.

There are an awful lot of assertions of poor measuring process in this thread.  Perhaps an example or two with explanations would be useful?  It's always better to debate specifics rather than make broad, unsubstantiated claims.

@hilde45 do you think this new quality would survive null testing?  It's pretty easy with cables.

" We do not measure devices in the working conditions they are to be used"

There’s a lot of discussion to be had about the scope of a standard suite of measurements, such as including ultrasonics to see potential IMD, how long peak power should last, highly variable loads, etc. But generally, the measurements Amir, Erin, and others on the site use are quite a bit more exacting and stressful to the equipment than listening to music, so I don’t think this is a very compelling objection. At any rate, scope of measurements is discussed at length and quite vociferously at ASR, with many differences of opinion.

" we still do not have a "human weighting" for the results"

I’m not sure what this means. Certainly, the human ear cannot detect a vast array of signals that can be detected with even cheap measuring equipment (REW and a $40 microphone). So another topic with a lot of discussion is the "audible threshold" at which signal artifacts can be safely ignored. You’ll find a post at ASR suggesting pretty useful loose and strict thresholds for noise.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/audibility-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/

Both of these dialogues provide examples of concepts I’ve learned more about by reading at ASR. I’m at a loss as to why people here wouldn’t feel the same way. To me it just seems incurious.

Of course, if you believe human hearing goes beyond what has been shown in controlled experiment, that’s your prerogative, but if you espouse that at ASR, it will get unpleasant for you. Usually the invective is directed (appropriately) at the idea, rather than the poster, but alas, not always.

Have fun on the internet!

"how about incorporating listening tests" he does

"list your reference system" he does

"Don’t use a $99 dac to test a $1700 usb cable." why not, if it is transparent?  Is a more expensive DAC going to break the cable?  Well-designed DACs are insulated from artifacts from USB cables. 

"So do that for high end components that either are or pretend to be reference level "  What is reference level?  A lot of the cheap gear he measures has less noise and distortion than the high end brands. Besides, he uses an Audio Precision system to measure, which is truly "reference level", if anything is.

Sometimes it seems like High End is an ouroboros, eating only itself.

Archimago’s Musings is an interesting site to dip into now and again. Detailed analysis on varied interesting audio topics can regularly be found there.

Then there’s Erin, at Erin’s Audio Corner YouTube channel. Like Amir he also employs a Klippel Near Field Scanner to provide data to back up his reviews. Erin is also not one to hold back from any criticisms if and when he discovers possible issues.

Wholeheartedly agree on those two.

"I wasn’t directing my post to Amir’s proxy by the way. "

That’s the sort of thing that makes each forum’s members feel unwelcome at the other site, isn’t it? This is a forum, not a one-on-one chat.

"if you observe how blindly the minions follow their master and read Amir’s posts on this thread, you will realize that this limited minded group of people for whom using their own head for anything other than eating is too much of a burden, need the Amirs of this world with their oscilloscopes to guide them in their decision making process.

Judging by his responses here, I may have given him too much credit in my original post on this thread. "

And that is the same on steroids.  Congratulations on a pile of useless invective.

It is obvious you are unable to connect the dots. How a musical instrument sounds in a room is everything relative to stereophonic reproduction. 

Another vague and condescending broadside, and a good example of the hostile environment people occasionally encounter here.  I suspect it is deliberately open to many different interpretations from which you may choose later.

The open minded skeptic is the one best equipped to actually see a ghost. 

I wouldn't use ghosts as an example myself, but I agree:

Open-minded: willing to accept you may be wrong

skeptic: demanding reasonable proof and falsifiable claims; pursuing a claim scientifically and in a controlled fashion.

Even something as basic as tuning an instrument by a skilled musician can sound better than just adjusting the strings (or tube length) to a set and measured frequency. Something about the feel of the instrument in a master’s hands that is superior to measurements.

Indeed, piano tuning is a bit of an art, as you have to set the temperance intervals slightly out of tune deliberately, and it will be slightly different for every piano.  Tuning it like open guitar strings with a tuner would sound horrendous.  But all of that is still just physics, and measurable. Pianos are musical instruments, not music reproduction.

I’m at a complete loss as to what the moderator is up to, they are even deleting pleas for civility. It seems like some of you on either side of this debate are having the same problem.

It’s only possible to answer specific claims. Vague broadsides are just that. You have to show how Erin or Amir measured incorrectly, or there’s nothing to discuss.

It’s very similar to the attitude I take towards cables etc., you have to show any difference exists in the first place before it is useful to discuss the character of the difference.

As for group pile-ons, I don't think one site has a lot on the other in that department.

I’ll close with my signature quotes from ASR, which are a good guideline to avoiding a pile-on over there.

• “Beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded." - Philip Tetlock
• "Scientifically improbable claims require scientifically impeccable evidence" - Me.
• ”We have been drawing attention….to the absolute necessity to separate the quantitative judgement of audio from the qualitative judgement by removing loudness as a bias. It has been ignored, and the audiophile business carries on its own merry way. Those who work in sound professionally know that this is lesson 1 semester 1 in audiology: the very core of the science. So we have given up trying to educate on this point, as every audio engineer has eventually done over the last half century, as the usual audiophile has an emotional need which cannot be reached by logic, reasoning and science.” - Alan Shaw

@mahgister i prefer to make everything as accurate as possible in the reproduction chain and THEN EQ (or BACCH, as you’ve mentioned a dozen times) to taste. If your electronics are adding fixed EQ or distortion, if your speakers aren’t flat with even dispersion you are in the circle of confusion. Certainly we can season at the end, but if you don’t start with fidelity to the original, you are nowhere, and varying masters will cause no end of trouble.

I’ve not heard BACCH. I do use convolution filters I created from REW (something I learned at ASR!). They make a huge difference, especially if you start in the right place. You can’t solve for poor dispersion with EQ. You can’t correct distortions, or FR varying with weird loads in the electronics.

I must apologize if I hurt your feelings. I thought this forum was for grown-ups.

No substance, no factual claims, no information. Another great example.