The Audio Science Review (ASR) approach to reviewing wines.

Guys, I think we need to all take a step back and realize 1 EXTREMELY IMPORTANT DISTINCTION.

ASR DOES NOT represent nor speak for all of the audio science community.

ASR = ASR

ASR ≠ Measurement crowd

An extremely important distinction. There are many people, both enthusiasts, and electrical engineers that do not align with how ASR do things and how ASR conclude data. 

You can still agree with science and measurement and still disagree with ASR. Sometimes we miss the too obvious.

@chenry 

Thanks for your response, but I'm aware that he's using Spinorama.  My question isn't HOW he produces the pretty pictures, it's how he decides what is important.

Forgive me if I'm incorrect in assuming your response is out of ignorance, but all of the speakers you listed are boxes.  I'd say traditional, but Klipsch (horns, founded 1946), Magnepan (planars, original design 1969), and MartinLogan (electrostats, founded 1979) are all US companies with very high profiles in the audiophile community for 46-79 years, long enough to considered traditional in their own right.

There are also newer designs, many using the sort of drivers you would recognize, that are configured to produce dipolar or bipolar radiation patterns.  There are even omnidirectional speakers on the market now.  All of these designs have advantages & disadvantages, proponents & detractors, and will measure very different "on paper".  It may well be that Amir avoids all of these issues by sticking to domes & cones in a box, though.

I did find a thread on ASR entitled "Dipole vs Box speakers" - 5 pages long, nothing from Amir, some skeptics, some converts.  I'm not suggesting any one design concept is superior, but if this is all new to you, you might want to explore listening "out of the box".  It could change your life (or at least, sound system)!

I say what I said above because I see too many people equate

ASR = Data & Science & Facts.

Sinad and THD do not represent the entirety of science nor audio.

ASR most praised products do not sound good.

I can tell you exactly why the Topping D90SE is a mediocre product. Clearly distinguishable in a blind test.

Keep in mind the D90SE is the best measurement DAC of all time. There’s a clear disconnect here.

While on the topic of the best measured dac ever. Benchmark designer made the Benchmark Dac 1 and for years he insisted it's the best dac. It cannot be improved further.

But people did not like the Dac 1. Some years later, the Dac 2 was released.

While on the topic of the best measured dac ever. Benchmark designer made the Benchmark Dac 1 and for years he insisted it’s the best dac. It cannot be improved further.

But people did not like the Dac 1. Some years later, the Dac 2 was released.

Been there, done that. Had DAC3B. One of the least engaging DACs I’ve owned. My prior two dacs and subsequent two dacs after the Benchmark DAC3B all measured worse, and they all sounded more engaging, more fun to listen to. What’s being measured and what is being suppressed and filtered out does not always correlate for me in translation to good sound,

@decooney 

👍👍👍👍👍

petaluman:

I am aware the small list of speakers I mentioned are "box" designs (stretching the definition for the Genelecs and the Dutch&Dutch) and am well aware of the several categories of speakers that are not of a box design. My comment was specific to Amir's own "reference" speaker--his Revels, and my general observation of the preferences of commenters on the ASR site appear to be. I do not believe I wrote anything to suggest I was unaware of the alternatives to box design speakers, planars, planar-hybrid, horn, horn-hybrid, open baffle, never mind the variants of box designs, transmission line, or for that matter transducer variations with ribbon tweeters, long-stroke woofers, field coil transducers, too many to list.The ASR site seems to sample whatever the readership sends for testing, and most appear to be monitor-size boxes, which is to be expected at those dominate the market. Occasionally a product from an audiophile brand is sent in only to be tested and found wanting, which then excites contentious responses.

I am sure if you were willing to ship Amir a pair of Magnepans for testing, he would oblige.

If you ship a non-traditional item to ASR for review, no matter how good. Amir will absolutely destroy that product in his measurements. This I can guarantee you.

He absolutely obliterated, massacred the Chord Dave he reviewed. There is no shortage of great and beloved products that he had destroyed with his reviews. But strangely no products he endorsed are beloved.

I read ASR, but don't agree with the attitude that measurements are all you need.  My biggest problem are the members who can ONLY see the audio world through their own narrow vision.  Every time someone seeks advice, it's the same routine of "it doesn't matter," rather than having any REAL input/advice.

What I DO value it for is the measurements (sans "recommendations") because MANY internet reviews these days ONLY speak about sound with no hard measurements - the exact opposite - and where I do believe sound is the ultimate arbiter, I feel modern equipment should at least measure reasonably.

“My biggest problem are the members who can ONLY see the audio world through their own narrow vision.  Every time someone seeks advice, it's the same routine of "it doesn't matter," rather than having any REAL input/advice.

What I DO value it for is the measurements…”

@wtyamamoto - Well said. The enormous chasm between the ASR faithful on one side,

• i.e., routinely displayed disdain and skepticism for expensive gear and those who own expensive gear, intolerance and frequent pile-ons when something doesn’t measure as well as a Topping, Gustard, etc., and banishment of those with dissenting viewpoints,

and the listening-over-measurements crowd,

• i.e., everything can’t be measured, human hearing is more advanced than any current measurement equipment, the wrong things are being measured, science cannot explain everything in the wide universe, etc.

has created a sort of ASR Derangement Syndrome where the mere mention of ASR results in a basic war of words.  It seems the delivery style by the ASR members and, in some cases Amir himself, could be a bit more insightful and understanding of other viewpoints, while the listen-only crowd might open their minds to the possibility that occasionally, certain sacred cows aren’t worth defending.  There is probably room for compromise on both sides.

I find ASR a refreshing, fact-based antidote to the florid nonsense hyperbole in traditional audio reviews.

Take Fremer who argued in a TT review in TAS last year that one arc second is audible with respect to wow&flutter. That is physics nonsense*. And the editor didn't catch that either. So I cancelled my TAS subscription again.

I also appreciate Amir's firm grasp of engineering, for instance that a USB reclocker is pointless (one of the latest videos). Plus emphasis of psychoacoustics, e.g. second one is better, as demonstrated by listening test of the USB reclocker, where it sounded better after the $4K reclocker was taken out. Plus the emphasis that objective testing of subjective listening test IS possible.

* for those who don't see it immediately, one arc second is an angular measurement, whereas speed stability if expressed as change of velocity over time (dv/dt). Even as a marine biologist I notice this. For fun, one can calculate the acceleration required to make audible changes in speed over 1 arc second, taking threshold of hearing for frequency (~2–3¢ on a good day) and time changes into account, and then it becomes even more ridiculous.

This is indeed a false dilemma. Telling me I like something because it measures well makes little sense...but telling me that measuring something has no place in a selection process is equally senseless. These are just data points.

On the OP's analogy, there is science and engineering behind 99% of product development and manufacturing these days.  That includes wine. 

My negative thoughts on ASR relate mostly to his lack of tact (see how nasty his debates got on the Roon forum) and how that fosters ASR culture, and the absolutely dogmatic nature of how they interpret the results relative to the probability that something will sound better to the majority. Because that’s really all it is...probability...because of the number of factors not considered (which would be impossible to consider given that many of the factors don’t exist in Amir’s lab...i.e. the listener and the listener’s room and other gear).

A few random observations about this debate:

• I suggest that assembling a good system is as much about the assembling as it in any individual piece of gear. The synergy is key...much of this is scientific/electrical in matching output/input properties and the like. Then there is the room and the source material. Some of these variables are impossible to keep constant. Probability, not certainty there.
• ASR mostly ignores the synergies and relationships. I imagine this makes more sense to headphone users where variables can be greatly reduced. My buddy who is an ASR cultist is a cans guy and his POV makes more sense in that context.
• ASR provides an invaluable service in debunking total snake oil, and there is a lot of it, especially now on the digital and network side. But their 150% dismissive attitude actually robs it of the credibility it otherwise deserves.
• That Panther junk is dumb...people should have to have listened to the gear to vote.

Thanks for an entertaining Saturday morning folks!

Not an accurate analogy. If you want to be accurate you would have hundreds of blind reviewers and take the aggregate like Harmon-Karden and Floyd Toole did. Only then can you know the "probabilities" of someone liking something. ASR is using the measurements defined by studies such as this.

I have several problems with the site and with Amir, but mainly it is the name “Audio Science Review”.  Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe.  What hypothesis is Amir testing about the universe, the designer’s hypothesis that their device sounds good when listened to with our ears only tested through, say, an APx555?

I suggest “ASR” is not pushing the boundaries of “knowledge” or “science”, but is applying engineering principles that are 50 or more years old as a proxy to “review” audio gear in isolation and in place of careful listening.  This is not “science”, and it is barely a “review”.  It is “measurement”, or “testing” or “applied engineering”, but it is not “science”, and labeling it as such should be an embarrassment.

I do believe there is a relationship between measurements and experienced sound of audio gear, but I definitely do not believe the line is linear nor the relationship conservative across all gear and all applications, ESPECIALLY when you place that gear in your system in your room with your ears in your seating position. No way.

I would be a lot more comfortable if the site was called “Audio Measurement Inferred Review”.  See what I did there?

kn

Should "The Absolute Sound" be "The Approximate Sound"?

I see the same mistakes being made again.

Being against ASR is not the equivalent of being against measurement. Hold up a dac in your hand. It is a product of pure science, and engineer. To say that we don't trust science or data is pure nonsense.

I said it in one of my earlier post, everyone at ASR wants data and measurement but then something magical happen, they wait for subjective reviews and user experience.

Let's go back to the extreme basic. In Amir's testings, all cables proved to be the exact same. To be as frank as I possibly can, anyone with a decent system and 2 functioning ears would know this to be false. CABLES DO MATTER and if your test says otherwise, your test is wrong.

If you can't do a cable measurement. What exactly can you reliably measure?

devin I cant remember where I saw a photo of his system. It may have been when Amir was responding to ASR related posts on Audiogon and I may have found it clicking on his monicker and then system specifics.  All I can tell you is that it appeared to me that he placed his system along a long vacant wall, not purposefully, and that he had a big screen TV between the speakers. 

@mitch2 @jji666 @oberoniaomnia 

Thank you for 3 excellent posts in a row!

@audition__audio 

A couple years back, Amir was said to have Mark Levinson monoblocks driving Revel Salon 2s in his personal system.

I haven't seen a picture so I can't comment on positioning etc.

But I wouldn't be ashamed to have that gear in my house :)

The quality of the gear is not in question.

@knownothing Science is about looking at data and making the best possible inference with the least ad hoc assumption (Parsimony, Mach's Principle of Economy, Ockham's Razor). It needs not to be predictive or testing as is shown in e.g. medical diagnostics using adductive inference (see Josephson & Josephson, 1996: Abductive Inference: Computation, Philosophy, Technology). Popperian hypothetico-deductivism is not the only scientific inference. In fact, it is rather limiting, one could even say boring, as it is not ampliative. Popperian approach cannot find anything new, it can only reject something that is already there. I find and describe new species and that is certainly science and definitely not Popperian.

Amir's approach is certainly more scientific than TAS or SPh etc., which is nothing but fanciful storytelling.

I have watched quite a few of Amir's videos, and have also corresponded with him briefly over email. He is a no-nonsense scientist, like myself. One should not mistake clear articulated words as a sign of arrogance. I find him actually quite deferential.

@samureyex Re cables, the biggest difference should be from bargain basement to something better. I have tried that with speaker cables and interconnects, and have not found any difference between a Cardas 101 AWG 14 cable and a PearlAcoustics AWG 5-6 cable. Hooked up at same time on A-B speaker outs, so could switch in an instant. Same with interconnects. Re system, see my virtual system. Based on my personal listening experience, I cannot hear any difference between any cable I ever tried. This fits well with Amir's measurements, as well as Gene with Audioholics for that matter. 

Amir is a modern day Julian Hirsch. Neither did anything to advance the state of the art in audio.

@billsame +1

Love the wine analogy!  I have often said that good HiFi is like good wine – you pay more for what you don’t get.  Nasty sounding distortions and nasty tastes.

The biggest differences are that wine comparison thrives on blind tasting, there is a defined point-scoring system, but there is also no objective standard (comparison with live performance).

Both ‘hobbies’ have had technological breakthroughs like SS.  Stainless steel for wine, solid state for sound.  I would argue wine also has a digital transformation, in the Stelvin cap which converted porous ‘analog’ cork stoppers into binary on-off bottle tops.

Science and technology underpin each!

Australia started with cuttings transported on the First Fleet and established its first wine college in 1897.  Where I live in Canberra there are over 140 vineyards and 40 wineries.  Many are run by scientists including Nobel prize winning physicist Brian Smidt, who now heads our leading university.  Many others are chemists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) which invented WiFi using its expertise in fast Fourier transforms from radio astronomy.

The Canberra District does not even get a mention amongst the 60 designated wine growing regions Australian wine - Wikipedia and we locals hope to keep the secret.

Australia’s top drop is around $1,000 a bottle and we get peeved when others, flaunting their affluence, mix it with coke.  When it won a prestigious French competition, it was disqualified because it was so good, it just had to be French (in the minds of the judges).  In my opinion, the least good Aussie wines come in half way up the French scale.

While audiophiles debate the effects of room shape, wine sensations are dramatically changed by the shape of the glassware!  Try it!

Australia’s top drop is around $1,000 a bottle and we get peeved when others, flaunting their affluence, mix it with coke.  When it won a prestigious French competition, it was disqualified because it was so good, it just had to be French (in the minds of the judges). 

@richardbrand that's a cute story. Are you making that up? 🤔

@devinplombier 

that's a cute story. Are you making that up?

No, not entirely!  I am not smart enough to make stories up ...

There was a brilliant DVD documentary about how the Australian wine industry got its foot into the European market.  The DVD is unfortunately titled "Chateau Chunder" see Chateau Chunder: A Wine Revolution - The Education Shop.  I leant my copy but never got it back. The story in the DVD is that a couple of Australian winemakers and a marketer organised wine tasting dinners for French wine critics.  The top drop was underrated until it was tasted in a blind comparison, when it won.

It is Penfold's Grange. I quote from the link I gave earlier "The great 1955 vintage was submitted to competitions beginning in 1962 and over the years has won more than 50 gold medals. The vintage of 1971 won first prize in Syrah/Shiraz at the Wine Olympics in Paris. The 1990 vintage was named 'Red Wine of the Year' by the Wine Spectator magazine in 1995, which later rated the 1998 vintage 99 points out of a possible 100".

I accidentally conflated with another wine from earlier days:  "At the 1873 Vienna Exhibition the French judges, tasting blind, praised some wines from Victoria, but withdrew in protest when the provenance of the wine was revealed, on the grounds that wines of that quality must clearly be French."^[15] 

@oberoniaomnia

There are thousands of people like you, Amir & Gene & Erin included, that cannot hear a difference with cables. Doesn’t mean there isn’t. Different metals of cables, purity, capacitance, inductance, quality of connectors, length, geometry, type of shielding, thickness. All of this come together to form a cable. To say cables have no difference is saying all of these aspects don’t matter. Which if you give it 2 minutes to think about, is quite ludicrous. Especially for a "no-nonsense scientist" such as yourself and Amir.

Erin has stated he cannot hear a difference between amplifiers, does not mean there’s no difference.

Leave the idea of cables aside for a minute. I’ve encountered hundreds, and perhaps even thousands of people that have said they cannot hear a difference between DAC, AMP, and pre-amp. These people, like you, truly believe there’s no difference with certain components.

The facts remain. If you cannot measure a cable, what can you really measure?

@oberoniaomnia I respect your opinion.  As a marine biologist do you think that Amir testing commercially available audio gear is in the same category of scientific work as an NSF funded project to understand how physical, chemical and biological processes mediate carbon transfer in and out of the sea surface, or a Sea Grant funded study of how plankton might affect oxygen levels in eutrophic coastal waters?  I suggest that if Amir were to submit a proposal to a competitive science or engineering funding organization claiming what he does on ASR somehow qualifies as “science” he would not get past the first round.

I read Amir’s reviews and look at his charts comparing different components and find it interesting.  But it is not “science”.  I never said that TAS reviews are remotely scientific, or even unbiased.  Stereophile often combines subjective reviews based on listening with independent machine measurements - is that “kinda scientific”?  No, it’s not, it’s just a combination of subjective and objective measurements.  I find the name “Audio Science Review” pretentious, inaccurate and mistakenly bestowing the reviews with the mystique of expanding the boundaries of our understanding when in fact Amir is just functioning as a dude with some measurement devices and a lot of time on his hands.  His professional work for Microsoft and others advancing digitally reproduced sound may more rightly qualify as “science”, I don’t know enough about it. His work at ASR, not so much.

if you tried different cables and they did nothing for you, be happy, you are saving a lot of money.  As for me, I’m going to turn off my phone, open a bottle from the bottom shelf of my wine rack with the sticky note on it that says “ask” and enjoy drinking it while listening to my digital front end without reminding myself that it measured well in Amir’s tests or that the new power cable on my power conditioner is making everything sound better.

kn

The real question is why do the doubters care?  

Amir is not a scientist! Wouldnt make a bit of difference if he was.

ASR takes an extreme view and attracts the disgruntled along the way.

Erin has stated he cannot hear a difference between amplifiers, does not mean there’s no difference.

@samureyex 

Only an imbecile would state that they cannot hear a difference between amplifiers, and Erin is not an imbecile. It is therefore doubtful that Erin actually said that, unless of course you can provide a link. Thanks

@samureyex I agree with you that there are differences. The question is, do they matter? Are they audible? In any scientific test, the null hypothesis is no difference. So the burden or proof is with those who think there is a difference. If you think there is something to cables that is not measurable, then show it with a controlled double blind test of listeners.My preliminary data with vastly different cables and one listener is that there is no difference. Doing a pilot study with something that should show something is the typical way to start a project. If AWG14 vs 5–6 does not show a difference, that is a good indication that there will be none with other cables either, at least for this listener (inductive reasoning).

@knownothing Re the name, if that is your hangup. As I said ASR is *more* scientific than TAS and SPh etc. combined. ASR certainly provides novel data with measurements that are objective and repeatable. Re NSF, a good chunk of science is done without grant support. Neither of my two NSF grants had anything to do with hypothesis testing (one MRI, one TCN, both in DEB).

@oberoniaomnia Regarding cables, all you need to know is the capacitance, the inductance, the purity, and the quality of the terminal connectors, and the method in which the wire is meld with the connector. You think these things, on an individual level and as a whole don’t matter to the sound? That’s a tough pill to swallow.

Silver is 6% faster than copper, you think that doesn’t change the sound?

@devinplombier I have evidence, straight from Erin’s mouth that clearly stated he cannot hear a difference between any neutral sounding amplifier. Imbecile or not. I am not surprised. At least Erin has the balls to admit it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5KfafDpXvQ&t=5s

It is in this video. Forgive me I forgot the exact timestamp. He stated the only reason he heard a difference between said tube amp vs his neutral amplifier was because the tube amp was not neutral. He also stated he cannot hear a difference between 2 neutral amplifiers. As we all know, an amplifier contributes to the sound much more than how neutral or not neutral it is. And if said reviewer only relies on the neutrality to spot a difference, well that's bad. But at least he admits his limit which I can respect.

It only matters to those who can hear a difference. 

@decooney 

"It only matters to those who can hear a difference. "

This is actually quite profound.

A brain exercise for those who think all cables sound the same because ASR measured them to be the same:

The terminal connector of a cable cannot be pure copper, because copper cannot hold a shape well enough. It's usually a mix different metals along with copper. This will degrade the signal. 

The actual brain exercise, If you have a cable that degrades the signal, some will degrade less, some will degrade more. Assume you have 1 cable of each, you think they would sound the same?

This is just the terminal connector we're talking about, there are a lot more aspects that haven't come into the picture. 

@samureyex

Silver is 6% faster than copper, you think that doesn’t change the sound?

Really? Silver may have 6% lower resistance than copper, when compared by volume, but do you really think that makes the signals it conducts travel 6% faster?

Electrical signals travel at close to the speed of light. Copper is entirely capable of transmitting Giga-Hertz digital signals, for example high speed Ethernet, using thin, unshielded, twisted wire pairs.

Maybe you think that halving the resistance of a copper wire (by doubling its cross-section) doubles the speeds of the signals it carries? No, it doubles the current it can carry for the same voltage drop.

Pure copper, because of its softness or malleability, makes an excellent connector but does tarnish over time.

@richardbrand Are you telling me silver and copper sound the same? They have different electrical properties, different capacitance and inductance, so the question is, do you think they both sound the same?

Also pure copper is far from an "excellent connector". For the same reason you stated, its softness and malleability, the opposite of what a good connector represent.

Pure copper makes an excellent spade connector

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMjBUvEHVdc

Here’s another video of Erin with even more amplifiers. A traditional Mcintosh with a house-sound and piss-poor measurement, vs a pair of Mono class D with "better" measurements with a focus on pure neutrality.

What’s the listening result? He cannot hear a difference. Only past 95 db where he starts to feel the Mctinosh has an edge in power.

Makes you wonder why even bother with Sinads and THD in the first place. Between you and me, I’m willing to bet Amir can’t tell the difference between a tweeter and a bird.

@devinplombier "Pure copper makes an excellent spade connector"

A pure copper spade will have uneven bumps resulting in poor connection.

@samureyex ​​​I stand corrected

@samureyex

Are you telling me silver and copper sound the same? They have different electrical properties, different capacitance and inductance, so the question is, do you think they both sound the same?

No, I am just suggesting that your assertion that speed is faster in silver is wrong.

Capacitance and inductance are primarily characteristics of the cable construction.

If we narrow the debate to speaker cables (that is high current, low frequency domain), in my opinion there should be an audible difference between cables if they differ in say resistance (as copper and silver cables of the same diameter would).

The primary reason is that loudspeaker impedances vary greatly with frequency, especially in cross-over regions. The impedance of the speaker and the resistance of the wire are in series. Changing the wire resistance means relatively more or less power is delivered to the speaker over different parts of the audible spectrum, changing the tonal balance for those with golden ears.

Also pure copper is far from an "excellent connector". For the same reason you stated, its softness and malleability, the opposite of what a good connector represent.

The malleability of pure copper means that those ’uneven’ bumps present on any surface get squished into the holes, providing more contact area especially in spade configuration. The ideal connector has no discontinuities and no contamination - I am thinking of friction or pressure welds.

Of course it is no good if it breaks!

@richardbrand Ain't no way the binding post will even up your bumps. Even if it did, you still wouldn't want a pure copper spade, the oxygen and humidity will destroy it over time.

So this circles us back to the initial point. A good connector would have a mix of different metals, which will inevitably cause different degree of signal degradation. How much will depend on the technology and alloy involved. 

Now you have 2 cables of varying signal degradation, in which universe would you expect them to measure and sound the same?

@devonplombier

"@richardbrand that's a cute story. Are you making that up? 🤔"
That story is just that - a story. It is not correct.
By the way, even though Grange is the dearest Aust wine it is by far not the best.

@laoman

My original comment was about Penfolds's Grange which was rejected by French critics until it was tasted blind, as related in the DVD.  I accidentally quoted about a second Australian wine because I thought it was the same occasion but sometimes history repeats and I got it wrong!

I tend to agree with you about Grange - it is not a wine I have ever bought, but it sometimes featured in our monthly blind tastings against three similar reds.  Every time, it was ranked bottom, to the chagrin of our host, by all attendees and across two bottles. 

Now I do have a couple of magnums of Henshke Hill of Grace in my basement ...

@samureyex 

I did mention that copper tarnishes.  I also pointed to a reason why speaker cables of different resistance should alter the tonal balance.

So why do you think I deny cables sound different?

I merely pointed out that it is not due to a difference in the signal speed in the cable, which is close to the speed of light for silver and copper.

The terminal connector of a cable cannot be pure copper, because copper cannot hold a shape well enough

I would not be that dogmatic!  Copper wires of high purity hold their shape well, after all.

@oberoniaomnia "So the burden or proof is with those who think there is a difference" 

There should be no "burden of proof" in these matters.  The burden of proof is for the individual to decide.  Not for us to prove to the rest of the community what we can clearly hear.

Luckily for us that can hear the differences, we have gone beyond standard testing and used our own ears to decide what we can hear.  Shocking really!  And when these differences can be repeated numerous times and we hear the same difference when gear is changed.  And when even non "audiophile" friends and family can admit they hear a marked difference when it comes to cabling, power conditioning and amplification, then clearly we don't need empirical data to tell us there is a difference. 

The "burden of proof" is on the engineer to use their technical knowledge to create a product that creates a value added proposition to the end user.  The only burden of proof we need is with our own ears.  

But the reason why we call out establishments like ASR is because some people take their opinion and measurements as reality and as the sole place to make decisions regarding their gear.  When in fact, it is far from the entire understanding of what is happening in an audio system.  Valuable information?  Yes.  Contains every variable to help you decide the right gear for you?  No

To be fair I still can't tell much of a difference in interconnects...

@jrareform 

Well said. 

I'd like to ask the ASR supporters.

1) What has ASR actually done to propel this industry forward?

2) Name a product(s) that has world class measurement from ASR that also happens to be beloved by the experienced audio community.

3) Name a product you absolutely love thanks to ASR recommendations.

@oberoniaomnia You want burden of proof? Ok I will give you burden of proof.

Go measure the capacitance and inductance of cables, they can vary greatly.

Low inductance has a sound profile.

High inductance has a sound profile.

Low/high capacitance each has a different sound.

Of course there are many other things that also affect the sound of a cable, but this is enough for the burden of proof.