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.
@mahgister +1 There is one thing i like about Amir investigation... It debunk the myth and magic marketing LINEAR link between S.Q. and price tag...There is none... For example in dac... Dac is a mature technology, and we can now afford a very good one at relatively low price. |
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I think a member who isn’t pleased with a post can just report it, which usually results in the post being quickly deleted. Seems like it can be a petty "I’ll show them" response. So it’s not necessarily that mods are scouring the thread looking to delete. I’ve had plenty of bafflingly benign posts deleted via, I believe, this route. |
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There is one thing i like about Amir investigation... It debunk the myth and magic marketing LINEAR link between S.Q. and price tag...There is none... For example in dac... Dac is a mature technology, and we can now afford a very good one at relatively low price... And in my acoustic experiments i discovered that improving acoustic is way more powerful than upgrading cables or dac or amplifier and sometimes even speakers...( if you have basic good one to begin with for sure) By the way i am neither objectivist or subjectivist, no more than Gulliver was egg small ender or big ender... Acoustic is key for me...But how can we criticize someone giving to us more information to digest ? I will not...
«I measure temperature in my ears before listening»--Groucho Marx audiophile 🤓 |
"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." Nothing remotely like this is true. Every review I post gets criticism from membership on ASR forum. This is almost without exception! Members are highly knowledgeable and critique any and all aspects of the review. I feel like I am taking a final exam in college and getting graded on every review I do! That is what objective data allows people to do: they can examine the information the same way I would. This is quite different than a subjectivist reviewer claiming this and that track sounded good on this and that device. You do not share that experience so no way to challenge the reviewer on any basis. Not so when I post a measurement. Members also are also free to challenge me with their own testing as happened recently over of all things, a $35 dongle that converted XLR to RCA. Another engineer bought a unit and has created his own tests. Members also bring their own criteria for whether a unit is recommended or not. There is a multi-choice poll for every review where members opine whether they agree or not with my final conclusion. Finally, it strains credibility that hundreds of thousands of your peers are dumb and blindly follow something. It actually takes a lot to convince them of anything. Really, spend a few minutes on the site before forming these blind conclusions and talking points. |
Wholeheartedly agree on those two.
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@ahofer My question was directed to Amir. And I appreciate his post answering my questions. But I don’t remember asking you a thing. |
"YouTubers need to differentiate themselves from the crowd of competing YouTubers. (The cost of entry is so low, that anyone can become a YouTube influencer!) The smart ones, such as Amir, find a "hook" and then cultivate the audience that follows it." Your argument doesn't hold water about me because I am not a typical youtuber. Despite having 40,000 subscribes and qualifying long time ago for monetization, I don't do such. There are no ads, no sponsorships, no patreon requirement to see, no nothing. Neither do I beg for "likes and subscriptions" as youtubers do. So please don't put me in that bucket. I create youtube videos when explaining the same thing in text requires writing a book. I also highlight a product review here and there when it is notable. These are the things that differentiate me from other youtubers. "Amir argues:That premise allows him to be the savior. It’s the, "Only I can fix it" canard." You keep creating these talking points while missing core points I have made. That this is a community effort. My voice would be completely lost on the Internet if people didn't see value in my work and didn't talk about it. And continue to support the activity by sending me huge volume of audio gear to test. I am motivated by curiosity of how something performs much more than thinking I can solve the audio problem at large. Yes, that change is coming slowly and very heartwarming to see. More and more companies are investing in proper measurement gear to test their design. That way, the first time they see an issue, it wont be in my testing. They also see value in a very large group of audiophiles who now value measurements as a purchase criteria. This is what keeps me going. |
No doubt Amir and ASR have done some great work in shedding more light at the science of testing audio equipment but they are not the only ones. 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. Audioholics website is yet another example of where the science of audio testing is being increasingly pushed to the forefront.
Amir has certainly changed my outlook in the same way that the likes of Peter Aczel and Alan Shaw did before him.
Of course, for entertainment purposes I will still read non science based reviews in future, but only as works of pure fiction or clever marketing. |
"@amir_asr Amir…how about incorporating listening tests and publishing those results along with the measurements. As most reviewers do, list your reference system so that your subscribers can see in what context a component was reviewed and how it performed using your ears as a measurement tool. Don’t use a $99 dac to test a $1700 usb cable. " As I mentioned, I perform huge number of listening tests in my reviews. So much so that it dwarfs what other reviewers do. Just look at my reviews for headphones, speakers, headphone amps, etc. Here is the latest example of the former: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/monoprice-m1570c-headphone-review.45837/ I do these because differences are large so we are not asking if something makes a difference at all. I suspect that is where you are going with the rest of your comment. In that class of device, it is critical to perform controlled, blind tests as otherwise results are dominated by improper testing, bias, etc. To be sure, I also do such listening tests from time to time but I put no value on them, and neither should you. Here is an example, the iconoclast cable review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/belden-iconoclast-xlr-cable-review.33929/ "Iconoclast CLR Cable Listening Tests As you see, the rest of the system was specified and it was anything but a "$99 DAC." The DAC costs $2,000. My Revel Salon 2 speakers retail for $23,000 a pair. And as noted, my headphones along cost $4,000. I put all that info in there to impress folks like you, not that they matter much. :) If they did, then the manufacturer should have put in as precondition of purchase. Which they never do. Plenty of people buy these things and hook them up to modest systems and claim improvements. Don't see anyone telling them their system is too cheap for the difference they heard to be real. The argument is only used when results don't show a difference. By the way, above review also included proper null tests in addition to measurements. That testing showed beyond any doubt, with real music, that there is no difference due to this cable: A review doesn't get more comprehensive than this. |
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.
And that is the same on steroids. Congratulations on a pile of useless invective. |
YouTubers need to differentiate themselves from the crowd of competing YouTubers. (The cost of entry is so low, that anyone can become a YouTube influencer!) The smart ones, such as Amir, find a "hook" and then cultivate the audience that follows it. Amir argues:
That premise allows him to be the savior. It’s the, "Only I can fix it" canard. |
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If someone has designed something in a way that suggests they don’t know what they are doing, or measures something in a way that suggests they don’t know what they are doing, that is worth pointing out by Amir...or anyone else with the knowledge to do so. Funny how many ASR-averse audiophiles jump on Amir claiming "he doesn’t know what he’s doing" but...no hint of criticism about that, right?
Amir’s youtube videos are hugely popular and he generally does provide data that can stand on it’s own. IF the viewer/reader is technically literate enough. However...the point is that Amir is aware that most of his audience does NOT have the technical knowledge and gear to vet these claims, which is why Amir spends time explaining what the measurements mean, and when something isn’t doing what it claims to do.
That seems to make a lot of golden eared audiophiles salty. That’s mostly their problem IMO.
Amir and ASR get slagged on forums like this, where strawmen accusations and inaccurate claims are made about him and the site. It’s completely his right, and certainly worthwhile, for him to engage with some of this criticism to correct some of the misinformation. The thing is his critics will never cut him slack. They generally won’t show up on ASR to challenge Amir’s reviews with objective evidence. Instead you see people in forums like this sniping and criticizing, and if Amir ignores it then "Amir just ignores all the critiques of his approach and reviews!" But if Amir actually makes the effort to show up and address the critiques then it’s "Amir is so obnoxious and evangelical, he can’t just leave other audiophiles alone..." Yeesh. |
Post that testing, people gained general knowledge about the issues here and they will spread the word. This is why ASR is a team effort. Members enable testing of a ton of gear. Measurements provide very reliable facts. And knowledge gets discussed and disseminated. Any followers measurements done on samples of one, alligator clip leads, and un calibrated measuring devices, for a start. Remember, hundreds of gear gets measured every year on ASR. With very, very rare exceptions, no manufacturer has disputed them! How many other reviewers measurements or opinions are disputed by manufacturers? No disputes can easily be interpreted that manufacturers simply don't care. As a corollary to above, no audio reviewer’s work gets scrutinized remotely like mine. I publish a new review almost every day, subjecting my testing and opinion to verification/rejection by industry and membership at large. ASR would have thrived if the work we were doing was bad as you claim. Your work is scrutinized partially because you relish in promoting superior knowledge, e.g. "I am the smartest person in the room". You also relish in accusing others of not knowing what they are doing. Post your data, let it stand on its own, no need to engage in arguments to prove you are right. Unfortunately, that behavior would not generate publicity for ASR. The major reason for scrutiny and criticism is an issue you refuse to acknowledge or take any responsibility for, the hostile and snarky tone of too many of your followers. Dozens of times arrogant followers accuse others of being too stupid to ask questions, e.g. "read this list of publications or technical papers before returning". Your long replies, like many at ASR, are full of self promotion deflection. Again, let your work stand on its own merits. It is valuable. All the ASR self created drama is NOT. He doth protest too much.
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The problem is not Amir dedication, it is as someone just said above some"evangelists" attitude and character ... Stupid people and opinionated one exist in subjectivist crowd too not only with objectivist despising audiophiles... I did not understand why people are so focussed on one aspect of audio forgetting the other... Psycho-acoustic is the heart of audio, here subjective hearing is correlated with objective acoustic disposition .... Nothing else is...Not branded name, not price tag, not electrical measurements, PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC is the heart ... Learn its basic or be fooled... It is the ONLY thing i learned in audio... The rest is secondary details in electrical, mechanical and acoustical embeddings of the system ... |
fredapplegate said
Genius Fred! I believe David Manley once said that 1% THD in a tube amp is meaningless--amps can sound good or bad with that level. Now that we are in the territory of .00000X% THD, we are in the land of silly. Amir's tests show us what sounds great to his test equipment--not the human ear.
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fittebd said,
Wow! This is exactly my view! I started off with an open mind about the site and that was extinguished. Folks get nasty over there. They are evangelists for sure. So rigid, closed minded, and essentially a feedback loop. My opinion, above, does not affect my opinion on the usefulness of measurements in general or in design. The problem with Amir is not that he's always wrong, it's that his site and his views are always right--in the mind of the evangelists. That's no way going to be part of my audio journey. |
I interpreted these two point differently than you... It does not invalidate your points for sure, but it reveal other perspective... For me the "working conditions" are not ONLY the electrical context of a house and a room , or the electrical characteristics of complementary coupled components but the more important and underestimated acoustic and psycho-acoustic context of a specific room/speakers relation , being it a living room or a dedicated acoustic room with all the variations between these two... I interpret the second point as meaning that the human hearing process "qualitative recognized wholes" in the time domain in a way that some electrical tools are not designed to receive and decipher as the ears/brain...We do not listen to speakers, dac or amplifier but to musical chords in a room... The way human ears decipher an orchestral melody in a room is not measurable by simple electric tools as you know...
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.4611.pdf
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"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. |
@amir_asr Amir…how about incorporating listening tests and publishing those results along with the measurements. As most reviewers do, list your reference system so that your subscribers can see in what context a component was reviewed and how it performed using your ears as a measurement tool. Don’t use a $99 dac to test a $1700 usb cable. That’s as far from a real world use case as you could possibly get. So do that for high end components that either are or pretend to be reference level (i.e. audioquest and nordost cables, chord dacs, marantz sacd player, etc) |
Setting price aside, you actually seem much less critical to me than the typical audiophile. You do seem very sensitive and critical to price, though.
Audio marketing "broken to the core"? I guess you need to exert that kind dramatic flair to support your narrative. |
Ironically, I think ASR changed my mind about the importance of measurements as an arbiter of good sound. It seems that we've reached a point where distortion products are so vanishingly small that even bad measurements don't mean much. But my jury is still out on DAC filters. There's a black art. Correlation is not causation and it's very true with measurements, too. |
"I was happy to see that Amir visited many rooms at Pacific Audiofest and declared them to sound good… no measurements needed!" Indeed. I can walk around and enjoy sound like everyone else. OK, I am more critical but still, good sound is good sound. What I bring back though is more than what sounded good and what didn't. I also bring back data like this:
We have arrived in a world where the speaker cable costs more than the amplifier it is connected to! The world of audio marketing is broken to the core with little checks and balances. So I bring that to the table with the help of your fellow audiophiles. Maybe that cable does improve audio. So I test them as they arrive. I don't dismiss them out of hand as many do (and rightly so). It is that data that is damning, not what I think. Ditto for what I say I heard at a show. It is a casual observation subject to proper verification in formal testing. |
"No, you are the one doing the measuring and interpreting the data. Other followers chime in on occasion with their own "measurements" that would receive an F in high school science. " I am indeed doing the measurements. But this nordost speaker cable didn’t just fall in my lap from sky. A member was told by a salesman he better buy these cables or else his system would not sound good. He tried them and it made no difference so he was curious if measurements would show any difference. Well, measurements did show a difference: said Nordost cable picked up far more noise than a generic speaker cable! This was obvious to anyone with engineering knowledge so was trivial for me to create a measurement for it. So next time someone says this cable "removes a veil" due to "reduction of noise," you know that is completely false. You paid more to get a noisy cable! That is the interpretation that you can’t argue with. Post that testing, people gained general knowledge about the issues here and they will spread the word. This is why ASR is a team effort. Members enable testing of a ton of gear. Measurements provide very reliable facts. And knowledge gets discussed and disseminated. As to testing others doing not being any good, claims like yours are easy. Clearly you don’t have any facts to back that or we would already be reading them in your post. Remember, hundreds of gear gets measured every year on ASR. With very, very rare exceptions, no manufacturer has disputed them! As you imagine, no one has higher interest in measurements being correct than manufacturer. Yet we don’t see any counters even though 2/3 of the gear I test doesn’t get a recommendation due to poor performance. As a corollary to above, no audio reviewer’s work gets scrutinized remotely like mine. I publish a new review almost every day, subjecting my testing and opinion to verification/rejection by industry and membership at large. ASR would have thrived if the work we were doing was bad as you claim. |
"You have never explained why you recommend a product whose quality control is crap." If a product fails during testing, it absolutely does NOT get a recommendation. But if it works and performs well, it gets a recommendation. It is beyond the scope of my evaluation to do reliability surveys. No reviewer does this. The forum however, does a fantastic job of bringing out such issues especially since manufacturers are there to respond as well (or at least read what is being post). |
""His does all this pro bono" Are you sure? He does not do it pre bono, he asks for donations. Also what does he do with the equipment that certain companies send to him?" They sit here in an ever growing mountain of gear! Here is a picture of 100+ samples I post a while back when the last guy challenged me this way: It is much taller now and there are other places I stash them. I should do something with them but I have not thought of what yet. Occasionally they come in handy in testing something. Or re-testing the same gear because someone has found an issue. The donations are there for a) members to show their appreciation for the work and b) to cover the expenses of doing all this. With some exceptions, I pay for return shipping of anything I test. This adds up to lots of expense given the hundreds of gear I test per year. Keep in mind that *everyone gets the same information* whether they donate or not. Nothing special is given to that membership class. In that regard, donations are purely optional. This is in sharp contrast to your typical reviewer who begs for money, buying form sponsored links, content behind paywalls, etc. |
" We do not measure devices in the working conditions they are to be used"
" 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. 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! |
As i already said, Objectivist measurements are good for the industry and for the consumer to know, and subjectivist reviews very good and revelatory to analyse... Some in the two group of people quarrel around the same GEAR component, the measurements against subjective listening or subjective listenings against measurements...They all focus on the subjective OR objectively measured properties deemed FOR THEM the more important of THE GEAR components ... BUT Room acoustic and psycho-acoustic disposition or headphone shell acoustic tell the story to be HEARD at the end .... Because no component at any price can do his best in bad acoustic conditions... Period... No speakers can beat his room...The room acoustic constraint and determine the gear potential and optimal S.Q. at the end ... Not the price tag and Brand name, nor the electrical measurements alone... Then it is not the component choice that matter the most AT THE END but their electrical, acoustical and mechanical embeddings, most of the times which are more powerful in impact than any upgrades ... Quarrel reflect futile ignorance and focus on gear choice excluding acoustic ...it is more important the room than the speakers ... Why ? Because we pick the speakers for the specific room needs we already have anyway ...Most of us cannot invest 100,000 bucks in a room acoustically designed for the specfic speakers we want...Then acoustic knowledge matter most for us than dac, amplifier and speakers brand name choice separately or put together... Saying the opposite is marketing by measurements or by subjective listenings...In the two case it is a marketing analysis official or unofficial publicity... Acoustic is science and art, not marketing analysis, be it objectivist or subjectivist... Quarrel is meaningless...
«Quarrel make fools » -- Groucho Marx 🤓 |
The beef some of you have with me is misplaced. What you see is not me, it is me and literally tens of thousands of your fellow audiophiles working together to bring more transparency to audio gear. No, you are the one doing the measuring and interpreting the data. Other followers chime in on occasion with their own "measurements" that would receive an F in high school science. Other followers drone on in posts full of random technical jargon claiming vast knowledge and experience. And there is the attack dog crowd ready to pounce with insults and slander toward anyone with differing experience or knowledge. The tens of thousands referenced are a cult that you, Amir, cultivate and allow to fester. Allowing the benefit of doubt that you, Amir, have only pure intentions does not excuse the environment you, Amir, created. ASR could be a much better place for all without the arrogance, condescension, and hostile environment. You, Amir, are responsible to make changes. |
The only "point" Amir made that I need to reject is:
I know what I see. I don't allow others to tell me what I see. That he put this little bit of propaganda in bold face is especially telling. You're right that I ignore Amir's other points. Generally, I ignore him and ASR. I don't object to what he's doing at all - it's the way he portrays it that I find more than a bit misleading. |
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. |
Cleeds, you just re-asserted a bunch of empty-sounding beefs that seem to simply ignore Amirs points. I’m thinking the problem isn’t Amir. as he says: no one needs to buy anything due to ASR. He is providing information for those who want it. I’m glad that alternative view is out there, rather than only having Golden Ear anecdotes to go on. |
No, the issue here is very much you. The tens of thousands of audiophiles that you imagine have joined you in this crusade are, of course, free to comment here as well. But the issue here is you, your self-promotion, your "reviews," and your insistence that you are somehow free from bias, that you have no self-interest, that you are saving us from ourselves.
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You are rude. You throw off people from your site simply because they express an opinion different to yours or the couple of knucklehead moderators you employ. Your minions are rude and do not brook other opinions either. You have never explained why you recommend a product whose quality control is crap. Have you ever looked at the number of ASR posters who purchase equipment recommended by you that fails after a short period of time? There are a lot. |
Let me address the larger point here. The beef some of you have with me is misplaced. What you see is not me, it is me and literally tens of thousands of your fellow audiophiles working together to bring more transparency to audio gear. They send me equipment, I test and publish them. We then collectively discuss the findings. Certain truths pop out of this process. That truth resonates with so many audiophiles who are desperate for reliable facts about audio gear. This is the appeal. This is the reason ASR has grown so much and so fast. It certainly is not because I am good looking or know how to write a sentence without a typo! 😁 Nothing about this stops you from doing what you want to do. If you are able to get that NAD or Genelec amp/speaker I post about first to evaluate, go right ahead. But if you can't, then where are you? We live in a world where everything is going remote and online. Some of you falsely claim that we are all different. If that is the case, then you better not believe anyone's opinion here about any gear then. Ditto for any reviewer out there. The alternative you offer then is not knowing anything. I know some like to make themselves feel good by making stuff up: 1. Better measurements mean better sound. This is sometimes the case, sometimes not. This is how we look at measurements, not what you claim. A low noise amplifier will have less chance of hiss. That is a fact. A low distortion amplifier may sound the same as a high distortion amp if you are not able to hear such non-linearities. What good measurements show is that you can push impairments so low such that they fall below threshold of hearing -- something determined with listening tests. We are fortunately enough that many DACs, some pre-amps and amplifiers now fall in this category. And get there at very reasonable costs. This, we need to celebrate. Not have angst over. I replaced my expensive, many thousand dollar Mark Levinson DAC with a few hundred dollar DAC. The latter is better in every way and costs a lot less due to economy of scale. Great win for us! 2. We don't listen. I listen to a ton. Every speaker, headphone and headphone amplifier for example gets a listening test. This adds up to hundreds of listening tests a year. I listen to these classes of products because they do indeed perform differently from each other. I even listen to stuff that doesn't make a difference as to cover that base as well but obviously don't want to waste time doing it all the time. 3. I must have commercial interest. Well, I don't. I don't need the money. I don't make my living from this effort. I enjoy it as a good hobby that has massively positive reward. 4. I must hate this and that. I can't afford that. But if i did, measurements can be repeated by anyone so can't be gamed that way. 5. We rely on measurements alone. That is just wrong. Measurements are only one aspect of product evaluation. We use engineering, audio science research and understanding of how products work in our total analysis. And I say "we" as there are many technical experts on ASR Forum. It is the totality of this kind of evaluation that damns certain products, not just pure measurements. 6. That we don't value listening tests. We absolutely do. We just want them without bias. This is why you saying this and that sounds better has no value. You have to run a controlled test as we know without it, any outcome can be had. Bottom line, use ASR as an additional source of information. No harm comes out of that. Fighting us as if we are your enemy makes no sense unless you are selling overpriced, non-performant gear. |
