Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?


It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.”  And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything?  For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think. 
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is. 

chayro

Showing 1 response by recherche

Hi Chayro,

Sensory Evaluation classes in the Wine Industry teach us that the olfactory sense of smell is interpreted; the only one of our senses that is not 'technically' hard-wired.

Some humans can be 'trained' to distinguish up to 1,000 different smells.

Each humans mouth, nose etc. are different.  For example when we would place and old 3-ring binder life-saver on our tongues and place a small drop of blue dye in the middle hole we could count the taste buds in the center of the life-saver-shaped hole.  Those who had lots of little taste buds were 'super tasters' and medium amounts 'tasters' and those with few big blotchy ones were called 'non-tasters'.  Each of them totally valid for the person whose tongue we were looking at.

We tried different taste sensation like bitterness from caffeine, or sweetness from sugar.  Each taste was sensed from a different area of our mouth.

The lesson we learned was we are all physiologically different.  What tastes good to you may not taste good to me; so make sure you put at least 3-different wines on the table to try and please everyone!

You can see where this is going, if you like a wine reviewers taste then you will like his wines, no matter how he measures his taste in the wine, you both have a similar set of physiological taste buds and olfactory sensory apparatus.

So it's not too hard to understand that audio senses are also interpreted to some degree based on lots of physical inputs and from most importantly life experiences.  We could never understand why the teachers promoted the old school European wines over the fruit forward California ones, until we had enough tastes under our belts to gain a base-line of understanding from which our sensory evaluation could take place.

Thus no matter how many types of audio equipment one may listen to or measure, if you don't have the same taste in sound as the reviewer then it matters not because like it or not sound is an interpreted experience.

Trust me we put super expensive, super highly revered wines next to those that were not, and it was always the same thing, 30% liked, 30% did not like, %40 didn't care that much.

If you put 30 people in a sound testing environment, good math and statistics will tell you the same spread will recur over and over, cost is irrelevant, and personal choice is all that matters.

So, find a reviewer that has your taste in sound and follow them.

 

Cheers Mate