"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?
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.
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He just confirmed what I already thought. I’ve been away from a Audio for a long time and could not believe what was going on when I got back. He does it as a public service. There’s nothing in it for him. He reviews equipment that people sent him and he takes donations to buy more equipment to review. He certainly is not getting rich doing what he’s doing. I am absolutely sure that the amount of aggravation is not worth the amount of money that people send him. |
You are right and it is pretty evident, especially because he can do very well paid job with his experience... Measuring is his hobby.. i dont like objectivist at all... But it is useless to be mean... As i said, subjectivist and objectivist do the same mistake focussing on gear, as if the most important factor was secondary : ACOUSTIC...
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thyname2,881 posts Got it. Understand. Perfectly clear now. Carry on. Keep on fighting 💪
Fighting? I’m not fighting but it seems like you want to. I just relayed my experience with a poor cable that I found by measuring. How is that fighting? Do you think I am lying? What is your problem? You could have responded something like this " Yeah it makes sense that a brass connection plug could tarnish causing poor connectivity/conductivity" But instead it seems that you just want to bicker. Too bad that there is no ignore function on this site.... |
This is a general response to the initial question, which was an excellent one. ASR provides objective information that I can use to narrow the field of options when shopping; that appeals to my decision-making process. It won't to everyone. There are simply too many options out there promoted by those in the industry, and those whose pocketbooks permit ego-driven extravagances, and become defensive about justifying them. And if you're satisfied, good for you. But I'm just as skeptical of the "If it sounds good to you" school of thought as I am of religious devotion to data. The fact is, there are better ears than mine, and far worse. I can learn from both those better ears, usually musicians, as well as Amir. Here's a parallel circumstance currently in the news. It occurs to me that the owner and passengers of the ill-fated submersible would be alive today if they had demanded objective evidence of the vessel's safety, rather than relying on the owner's sales pitch. Fortunately, no one's life is at risk making audiophile decisions. |
@ossicle2brain : You sound offended. Deeply touched. I am sorry to cause that to you. I meant no harm. What I meant to say is your story: you bought two cables from Amazon which you don't even have a name or a brand. Then you determined which is of the two is best by measuring them. Kudos to you for coming to a conclusion, but I must say, what made you think that another generic cable bought in Amazon would perform any better than the stock cables that come with the equipment? |
The site doesn't seem objective to me at all. Amir seems to have some very strong biases, to the extent that he doesn't even bother to listen to everything he measures. |
Did ASR change my opinions? It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference. I did some prikitive blind-testing at home and can't hear differences. I never had the feeling of audible differences between cables and solid-state amplifiers. There are exceptions (TotalDAC and Devialet Class-D sounded strange and ASR measurements afterwards confirm it). What disturbs me at ASR (mostly the users not Amir only): SINAD as a fetish, not looking at other measurements more. Anything above 90dB is inaudible. Benchmarking on 120dB or more is theoretical. Even the low performance of 60dB of record players is irrelevant for sound differences.
Loudspeaker measurements on Klippel is an important source. It should be mandatory for high end speakers, because in demo rooms one can't discern well the room from the speaker and they sound different at home. Why don't Magico and Wilson disclose their data?
I prefer ASR over the always positive reviews of Guttenberg, absolute sound, Stereophile. And finally: ASR gets facts back in HiFi, which was lost for more than 25 years. The ears are very bad sensors compared to the eyes and other senses, it's the brain which extracts the sound using imagination and other senses. That's why it can be easily fooled. Everybody can see differences between TV screens side by side, audio is harder.
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@tosch : Wow! It took you 23 years since joining Audiogon in 2000 to make your very first post ever here in Audiogon forums! Amazing! |
He's only changed my mind about some power conditioning products but never about actual stereo products! I think measurements are important up to a certain point. This is one reason I read Stereophile to read the measurement section of their reviews! So many amplifiers (especially tube amps) not even coming close to their specified power claims! They measure distortion at 1% and it appears the manufacturers measure it at 10%. Why don't we have a standard for this with tube amps? The same goes with speaker sensitivity. I have seen so many speakers that were several dB lower than their claimed sensitivity specifications. I truly believe some things in audio can't be measured yet and the final judge is my ears. With this being said measurements are important and keep manufacturers honest about their published claims! |
I like your post..because of these points in your post :
--Dac is a mature technology now and it made no sense to pay too much for a dac relatively to the other components...It is my opinion and experience...
-- Subjectivist or objectivist focussing on gear miss the more powerful impact of acoustuic and psycho-acoustic basic in a room...
But you are wrong here:
Hearing give us insight inside resonant sound sources and information about their composition, even when not visible...( is it metal,copper or iron, or wood, it is empty orc d3ense, is there a hole, is this fruit ripe or not by tapping on it etc) We can replace sight with echolocalization exactly as bat and dolphin do... There is even school that taught this for blind people... Hearing is the FIRST sense which put us in contact with the world through the mother womb, and the LAST sense to disapear... And In coma hearing work not sight ... And about "information processing" : «For the first time, physicists have found that humans can discriminate a sound’s frequency (related to a note’s pitch) and timing (whether a note comes before or after another note) more than 10 times better than the limit imposed by the Fourier uncertainty principle.» https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html Also, " sounds communicate to the brain far more quickly than sights. Light travels faster than sound, but its pathway to the conscious brain is much slower. “While vision maxes out at 15 to 25 events per second, hearing is based on events that occur thousands of times per second.” «Nowhere are the limitations of the eye relative to the ear more apparent than when comparing frame rate, measured in frames per second (FPS), to the precedence effect. If 10 still images were flashed in one second (10 FPS), people can distinguish between the photos. Once a rate of 12 FPS is exceeded, though, it’s more likely the person will perceive motion rather than images. A comparable measure in hearing occurs with the precedence effect. If two sounds occur back to back with a sufficiently small amount of time between them, humans hear a single auditory image. For this to occur, though, the time interval may have to be as low as 10 milliseconds. Additionally, it’s still possible to hear ascension or descension in the sound — it just appears as a single tone.»
About illusion: «Everyone has been fooled by optical illusions. Something similar is possible when listening to audio, but this occurrence is much rarer. In fact, it takes a bit of visual trickery to fool the human ear via the McGurk Effect. To put it simply, the McGurk Effect occurs when a listener hears a word but sees different visual cues. If the word “bar” is spoken while someone’s lips move as if making an “F” sound, for instance, the listener typically will “hear” the word “far” instead. This means that, just like the eye, the human ear can be fooled, but it takes a little visual help to pull it off.» https://backtracks-blog.com/when-hearing-is-better-than-seeing-the-power-of-the-ear-exposed/
Also the short time visual memory is better than hearing short time memory...No comparison here...but it is the reverse completely for long term hearing memory compared to visual long term memory...there is no comparison either here...
It is way better to loose sight than hearing, guess why? You can communicate if you are not deaf and replace sight to some extent with echolocalization, but you cannot replace hearing for communication and navigation... As said the mathematician Euler losing sight, it is a good thing for my concentration...Ask Beethoven his opinion ? Ask Ray Charles who gave his money to a deaf childs , not a blind one; and to the journalist who made the documentary very surprized by this, and who ask WHY ? Ray answered laughing, being blind is no problem at all...
Last thing : Audio people think that to learn how to listen we must change the components and listening to the results... This is very deceptive and push people to meaningless strings of upgrades... and they will NEVER learn how to listen sounds in this exclusive way... We learn to hear when we LISTEN using acoustic concepts in simple basic experiments...No other way... As Musician learn how to listen by playing ... |
I feel like ASR has clarified some things for me. I'm not sure that anybody has changed my opinion about anything in audio. At best I get new perspectives, and sometimes conceptual corrections about various technical subjects. I definitely have some subjective preference differences with Amir about some products. Amir has also prompted me to buy some inexpensive products that I've been very pleased with overall.
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A certain parameter measures better, therefore it must sound better. - Well, that is just another form of confirmation bias! Might be helpful for some, but for me that's totally irrelevant. I go by what my experience tells me, so there are different ways to establish why something means a lot or not that much for you. Stepping beyond that, I find it useful that he does lots of measurements. Very informative and dare say educational. I have watched only very few of his videos, and I can say that his measurements are good and it's very refreshing to see someone doing it. I saw logical faults in the measurement analysis that attributed incorrect outcomes to the measurements. That says more about me though, right? |
No. I did peruse the site when I was looking for a DAC and he has SO many listed it became a good starting point from which to search/explore. I'm in the camp with some others that he likely spreads at least as much ignorance as knowledge. Often likely more. I don't buy his testing approach. It's not well designed and I don't believe his equipment and its usage is appropriate to the task. But for some things he does provide useful baselines for consideration. |
Amir has posted a presentation explaining speaker measurements.. "Understanding Speaker Measurements" which I found to be pretty much "matter of fact" presentation, without any obvious bias. Twenty three minutes into his presentation he explains his Klippel Near Field Scanner. https://youtu.be/1lW_QcIlZjY?t=1431
Good link. I'd like to think everyone chiming in here has seen that particular video in full. I'm glad Amir put it out because without it, it can be difficult for some of us to make full sense of his reviews. The level of complexity of such reviews was what put me off ASR initially. I'm always willing to learn new things but my rate of learning is no longer what it was once was. As we know, learning is a little different from remembering.
Also, "sounds communicate to the brain far more quickly than sights. Light travels faster than sound, but its pathway to the conscious brain is much slower. “While vision maxes out at 15 to 25 events per second, hearing is based on events that occur thousands of times per second.”
Fascinating stuff. I learned a long time ago that I could understand a lot more about someone by carefully listening to their voice than by looking at them. There is a certain directness about sound and especially the human voice that can speak volumes.
As Amir and the likes of Floyd Toole readily accept, the science of psycho acoustics, just like the study of the human mind, whilst being fairly accomplished, is still far from being a closed book. |
Amir/ASR never changed my mind about anything because my mind is still open to unexpected audio experiences & observations (or as open as I can make it). That's the opposite of the mindset required by devotees of that website. Audio is a big tent, a lifelong journey. Equipment/gear is obviously a big part of it; but maybe the biggest part of it are all my experiences hearing music performed in the real world (those experiences are rocket fuel for audio, at least in my case). So for me, open-ended audio discussions are catnip. I enjoy and participate in them. But discussions on ASR are anything but open-ended. The regulars drank the Kool Aid long ago and punish anyone who hasn't or won't. Kinda like spirituality. While I'm entirely without religion, I can enjoy and participate in respectful discussions of spirituality. But that's a very different experience than being in a cult where one leader's beliefs are spoon fed to me. I'll do the former sometimes, but the latter--never. |
@tosch " Did ASR change my opinions? It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference. I did some prikitive blind-testing at home and can't hear differences." |
Amir provides data (measurements) that anyone can use. He implemented scoring and his "can recommend" or "can't recommend" verdict. When I am looking for a piece of equipment, I'll review data available online (including ASR), look at what is important to me and note what is good, bad and don't care. Real life makes corrections: sales are tempting ;-) when someone on forums is selling their few months old piece for 40-50% of the new, it is hard to pass.
Several amps were measured fair (average and slightly below). - oh well, they sound well to me and I would put them ahead of several other "well measured" lifeless amps. as others posted, your ears in your space with your setup during extended listening sessions and various material is a way better denominator than "best of the year" or "best measured". |
First, I test plenty of expensive products. At least I think they are. Take these Genelec 8361A speakers for $5,000 each: Are you wealthy enough for these to be too cheap for you? How about this NAD M23 at $3,700? https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/nad-m23-stereo-amplifier-review.45462/ My own amplifiers are $25,000 *each*. So I have no bias toward expensive or cheap gear. I measure them all the same. The measurements have no bias. If an amp has more noise and distortion than another and costs 5X more, then it looks bad. That is not because I did that to it. It is because the designer didn't bother to make the amplifier as performant as he could. Yet the marketing material screams fidelity in exchange for a large check to be written. Give me high performance and great engineering and I don't care how much it costs. I will recommend it. Sure, the membership may want better value but you don't have to join that opinion. And it is not just me. A number of studies have shown that there is no correlation between price and performance. I could build a case out of gold and charge an extra $10K for the equipment. You think that makes it sound better all of a sudden? As to GR research, you have that backward. You are believe the word of someone trying to sell you something (Danny) vs an independent reviewer (me). You have to have very little sensibility to put your trust in a company rep who offers zero proof of efficacy of what he sells. Wires wrapped around a rope to make it look thick? Yep, that is what he has done: |
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. |
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. |
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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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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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 🤓 |
" 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! |
""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. |
"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). |
"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. |
"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. |
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. |
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. |
@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) |
"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. |
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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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. |
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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