Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

Recording with microphones choices and locations is an acoustic problem with INEVITABLE trade-off choices ( bad recordings exist)  .... Transfering acoustic recording choices of the recording engineer trade-off art into ANOTHER acoustic environment : our room; is another problem in acoustic ...( bad room acoustic exist)

The fact that  the gear components, digital as analogue, work, conveying recorded information ( recorded as a SPECIFIC set of choices) between this translation of one set of acoustic choices by the recording engineer and the other set of acoustic choices  in my room; in this acoustic translation the end results  has not so much to do with the gear choice alone , as subjectivist or objectivist think in their opinionated focus on gear, but has way much to do with acoustic control over speakers/ears/room ...( i supposed the components are relatively well match and good for sure)

That is my experience...

Saying that dac choice matter or amplifier or speakers choice matter is only spewing common place evidence that cannot nullify my observation but displacing the main problem of audio, room acoustic,  to a secondary one : which gear to purchase... Because nothing can replace acoustic disposition of the room... Except Dr. Choueri filters... That is my opinion...

«In acoustic if the timbre perceiving experience is not good, nothing is good. Spatial soundfield localization is second .» anonymus acoustician

I think one has to separate out Amir’s approach from some diatribe one receives from others on that website.

To be fair to Amir: he has never recommended a measurements-only approach. If anything, he espouses that (properly conducted, level-matched) listening tests are more important. It is just that they are difficult to conduct for a casual listener in the manner he suggests.

He does weed out badly constructed snake oil in many occasions. 

However, after studying electronics engineering for 4 years and later working in a ‘measurements and calculations are everything’ world for a few decades, I still feel that they are necessary but not sufficient.

ASR asks to prove it. As a hobbyist who likes to listen to music to relax, I’m not interested in the effort.

I can make out differences between *certain* speaker cables though they measure identically (with our current measurement set), for example. Or, prefer the Holo May DAC to the beater measuring Topping D90SE.

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.

+1 @reg19

However, after studying electronics engineering for 4 years and later working in a ‘measurements and calculations are everything’ world for a few decades, I still feel that they are necessary but not sufficient. ASR asks to prove it. As a hobbyist who likes to listen to music to relax, I’m not interested in the effort.

Well said -- and I agree. Necessary but not sufficient.

I can make out differences between *certain* speaker cables though they measure identically (with our current measurement set), for example. 

The Achilles' heel of their approach; well said.

There are several possibilities which might be responsible for identically-measuring things sounding differently:

(a) User error (lack of careful testing, distraction, bias, etc.)

(b) Inadequate measurement metric (we don't yet have measurements for the experiences heard). Umami was tasted before it was measured and classified. People tasting umami didn't have subjective bias; they had an experience for which there was not yet a scientific description or analysis. Happens all the time.

+1 @reg19, hilde45