I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.

@russ69

Can anybody provide some insight to why some people are stuck on audio measurements?

Because this is the way that the equipment we all love so much has been designed and built for decades and decades now.

We can trace this lineage way back to the likes of the great Peter Walker (legendary Quad designer) who claimed he didn’t need to listen to an amp to guage how it sounded if he could just see how it measured.

This was over 60 years ago.

So as far as the designer is concerned, the listening part is almost academic nowadays.

Quality control, when it’s actually done, is carried out by measurements and not by listening.

I hope this goes some way towards answering your question.

No one is saying that the consumer cannot make their buying decision on listening alone, certainly not Amir of ASR, but subjective listening is a completely different thing from objectively building something to perform as accurately as possible.

Unless accuracy is important to you, you can simply ignore factual data as you wish. That’s your choice.

It certainly would be a shame if your previous enjoyment of the Rogue Sphinx V3 is spoilt by factual data, but unfortunately that’s how many of us tend to behave that way.

I used to mainly buy equipment based on largely subjective reviews and that hardly ever worked out either.

This is the risk you took by heading over to the ASR website review. Amir is in the business of telling it like he sees it, based on concrete measurement far more than opinionated listening, and many of us are grateful for that.

In any case, here is a link for anyone who wants to read the original review.

@mahgister

"The ears are not a PASSIVE detector system but an ACTIVE non linear one able to amplify"

So far so good, just like the human eye is not a passive organ of perception. It is understood that the brain contributes as much to the interpretation of the images detected as the eye itself.

There is no reason to not assume that the ear/brain operates in a similar fashion.

"...Then his ability to resolve information exceed many hundredth of times any passive system..."

Now this is contentious.

For example, does this include the Klippel software and measuring systems as used by some of the most advanced audio labs today?

If not, then the following assumption cannot possibly hold any water, can it?

"It is the reason why electrical partial set of measures ALONE cannot determine out of listening experiments what will be the sound quality of gear...Like some few deluded ASR disciples falsely claim..."

I’m all in favour of upholding the sovereignty of the human mind and perceptual system, but isn’t this just wishful thinking as we enter the age of AI?

@djones51 

ABX and blind tests are the platinum standard. Sighted tests are dismissed as irrelevant, no way to have a control for bias. I fail to understand this idiotic aversion to science.  

This aversion to science seems to be endemic amongst throughout history.

Let's not forget that Galileo, Darwin and Freud have all been vilified for daring to even suggest that mankind is perhaps not the God created centre of the known universe.

As you might expect, most of the anger came from those that had a vested interest in denying the evidence that was presented, namely certain powers in the church.

With audio, you could argue that the reasons for denying science are somewhat less principled.

Here, amongst certain unscrupulous corners of the industry, it's not a question of a possible theological or even philosophical belief, but merely an attempt of sheer greed by deception.

As we already know, not even scientists and engineers can live in a world free of outside political and economic influence and temptation. Some can be easily bought and sold all too easily in this age of pragmatism.

Now as to the reasons why some consumers would reject scientific data, perhaps it's just a question of pigheadedness?

@deludedaudiophile 

"I had my own revelations many years ago now, thinking that I could easily hear differences between amplifiers, speaker cables, and yes CD players. Then someone forced me to do a listening test without knowing what I was listening to. All those changes I thought I heard disappeared. As opposed to dismissing the tests, I delved into the technical details and realized there was little reason I should hear a difference. I just had not really given it enough thought before."

The first time I compared my Sony MP3 player (an NWZ E585 or something similar) to my super duper Marantz CD6000 KI CD player, volume matched of course, just to see what I was losing when plugging it in to my system for convenience, I was in for a rude shock.

I couldn't hear any difference.

No, really, I could not hear any difference?!

Not on U2s Achtung Baby, or the Doors LA Woman. 

Now had I been an optimist I might have rejoiced in the knowledge that I wasn't losing anything at all.

However, all I could feel was a sense of disappointment that my CD player had, in some way, let me down.

So much so that I didn't even consider that the fact the Marantz was connected to the amp via some fancy IXOS cables as opposed to the cheap proprietary Sony cable that connected the MP3 player to spare RCAs on the back of the Creek amp.

That would have just rubbed salt into the wound.

I'm not a great believer in the sonic differences that cables can make, but that was ridiculous.

Surely there should have been SOME difference?

Just even a little bit?

Anyway, if I have some time to kill, I might repeat that same experiment with my phone next time just to see if O can hear any differences there.

To protect my sanity, I might also need to draft in some volunteers to a t as witnesses.

This kind of thing can sure be a little disturbing.

@mahgister

My main interest is how do we hear and tune in and interpret sound with this spiral-like and non linear structure of the cochlea, my Ariane thread is the non commutativity of the tone scale ...What is music?

Yes, it’s an interesting phenomena indeed. It’s probably one that will never be fully understood either. How can it be, seeing as how we’re all the result of quite different life experiences? Not to mention different listening environments and apparatus.

On the other hand, playback equipment is nothing like us. No amount anthropomorphism can change the fact that it has no feelings, no emotions, no moods and no memory of what it did yesterday or yesteryear.

Its sole function is to react to whatever signal that is passed through it whilst contributing as little as possible of its own character. Take the example of the infamous Linn LP12 and ask yourself which version is more neutral, the original or the current one? Or perhaps we could ask why Rega titled their book, A Vibration Measuring Machine?

I’m pretty sure that neither of these companies, both steeped in engineering, would want their products described has having ’character’ or ’colour’.

If some folks do want to play with the speakers and amps and what have you that audibly deviate from the ideal of neutrality, then that’s their choice. They are free to indulge themselves in the same way that an impressionist artist is wont to do.

A life through a distortion lens can certainly have its tinted appeal.

The rest of us might instead prefer playback equipment that seeks to emulate a clear glass window into the recording studio, warts and all.

There’s a good summing up of how the industry cold bloodedly approaches these issues of high fidelity that matter so much to some of us here courtesy of the audiophilliac himself, Steve Guttenberg.