@markwd - thank you for your gracious reply and question. There is actually nothing I criticise regarding the measurements done at asr. It is how those electrical measurements are expressed and used to conflate belief with truth that I object to.
Science has always been about the balance between empiricism and rationalism. In medicine, bloodletting was an accepted practice of belief in good health against all empirical evidence, and carried on unabated for two thousand years, until it was rationally uncovered and proven to be otherwise in the 18th century when the last indoctrinated societies finally found rational evidence to collate the empirical.
This is the issue with asr, and really, amir himself, who often hides behind the emblem of what he has made of asr - asr is still all his and about him, however much he wishes to distance himself from the rational doctrines of belief he has boxed himself into. He will claim he still relies on empiricism, which cannot be trusted, because of the inconsistency with which he claims listening is more vital than measurements, and when he then laughs off all claims to listening. He cannot even trust his own hearing, in multiple posts where he says he heard a difference, and then ceased to hear a difference after a while. And his hearing difference always happens after a measurement, never independently of. He openly admits he cannot trust his own hearing, despite all the tests he has taken, but then goes on to say no one else can, when it is a known fact there is a huge of listening ability in human beings. He makes you believe you cannot trust your hearing, only because he cannot trust his, appealing to your having had similar experiences, when most of us haven’t developed our listening skills to hear the difference. This is the basis of indoctrination.
True scientists work by way of the dialogue empiricism has with rationalism, never just one or the other. Technicians work only one way, using predetermined rationalism for process and arrive at conclusions. And they are not wrong! They are merely there to help us with what is known, not what needs to be discovered.
The problem is that amir positions himself as a scientist, when he’s really a technician.
Ok, that then leaves the empiricism of listening to question. How does one know that what one is hearing is actual, or mere confirmation bias, independently of measurements?
For this, we need to understand what high fidelity actually means. Defined, high fidelity does not refer to the fidelity of the signal, it never has! You can study this or look it up - high fidelity refers to the reproduction by electrical equipment of very high quality sound that is as similar as possible to the original sound.
Based on this, you can see how ludicrous it is to suggest that equipment measured with the best signal integrity equates to that of high fidelity - this is the very reason why so many audiophiles complain about many good measuring equipment sounding bad; measurements have never been the arbiter of fidelity, our ears are.
This is not to say that it is then reduced to a shallow matter of preference, as we all have a very very powerful point of reference - while we each hear differently, the source from which the original sound was emitted is shared by us all, be it a live bird, angry dog, Guarneri violins in general, or the way an old Steinway sounds in a particularly reverberant room. A correct understanding of high fidelity takes a whole lot more effort from each audiophile than merely referencing readouts and graphs from a technician’s monitor - the foundations of high fidelity itself are built on the development and honing of one’s listening abilities, to hear all the nuance and subtlety of the time domain that characterises the realism found in original sound - it is the watchful eye we each have to place on ourselves to detect bias, in placing realism and the truth of one’s perceptions over how much or how little we want to spend on our hobby. No one said it would be cheap, expensive, or easy….and, definitely no where as simple as taking a reading off a monitor.
Markwd, this is why audiophiles do not only rely on measurements, and in fact cannot merely rely on measurements - signal measurements do not and have never been the most vital part of high fidelity.
There are preferences, mind you, but one thing is clear - there is very little argument when a system of true high fidelity is heard. And I do mean in a room or space where the set up has been well judged and tuned to bring out the very best from that system, measurements be damned.
Don’t be misled into thinking, like many audiophiles do, when hearing the simply awful sound of a multi million dollar system in an audio show or at a showroom, that hi-end hifi is all a scam. I have found very few to have been set up well. Most importantly, I always reserve judgement until I can have whatever piece of equipment put into my own system, in the familiarity of my own listening and tuned space, and specifically located and adjusted speakers. If high fidelity is the true objective, there is ultimately only one metric of its final gauge - developed listening ability in the context of an entire system set into the specific context of its listening space.
I hope this has made sense to you.
In friendship - kevin