Why HiFi Gear Measurements Are Misleading (yes ASR talking to you…)

Sensory experience is certainly imperfect; like all human senses. We are only human - not gods. Because we experience music from our audio systems with our senses, that sensory experience is all-important. All of it - sight, hearing, etc.

Hence the requirement for "blind" testing.

 

Blind listening for audio is a flawed practice. I don’t know anyone in pro audio that uses it. For example, at AIR studios in London, a power amplifier for their main control room (I believe) was chosen based on listening sessions. They bought a Class A/B power amp from a UK-based company called ATC.

Well except for probably most professional speaker companies. We use blind testing quite regularly in cross-over development, passive and active. There are a lot of trade-offs around crossover points, and with speakers, artifacts are audible. We used to do more blind testing around the electronics themselves, but we have a good handle on that from a measurement standpoint. We measure, we measure a lot.

 

😂Those who are fond of conducting blind tests for audio believe that a certain number of successful trials is sufficient for proving whether we can hear a difference or not... how did we arrive at this number of successful trials?!

Basic, well understood statistical functions. The more tests you do, the higher the confidence.

 

😅 8/10 or even 10/10 successful trials could be riddled with guesses and inaccurate auditory memory recall. The test subject may not admit they were unsure, because they wanted to be correct and prove their ability to be golden-eared to their peers.

Much of what you wrote is the whole point. If you are unsure and effectively guessing, that will show up in the randomness of the result. If your auditory memory is not good enough for a basic test, explain the high confidence of listening days, weeks, months apart?

 

Wearing a blindfold also creates problems that make an objective listening test more difficult. Blindfolds may hamper with the frequency response characteristics of speakers and headphones.

Um, blind testing has nothing to do with wearing a blind fold.

 

Because blindfolds are made of soft fabric with padding or a sheet of fabric, placing them over the eyes creates a sound-absorbing pocket, whereby the sound waves from speakers would not disperse as evenly with it on.

Blind testing still has nothing to do with blindfolds.

 

A blindfold may interfere with achieving a proper seal with over-the-ear headphones and on-ear headphones.

No one to my knowledge blind tests headphones.The feel of the headphone would be too obvious and you would know which is which. Defeats the purpose.

 

Lastly (for now anyway), you must acknowledge at some point in your subconcious that a "blind test" which you believe is wholly unfallible is being conducted.

Well no. For one, many here are convinced they are totally fallible. Explain why they would fail a blind test? It is really simple. You are listing to something. You don’t know what it is.

 

In case that got lost in the last post, the RF theory, has not been proven. It remains mainly the purvey of amateur scientist. Professional scientists measure the RF, then try to replicate and see if there is any sound. That experimentation has failed. The current theory is that it is light / heat energy. They have been able to simulate using similar light/heat levels and create sound.

https://www.space.com/35908-meteor-sounds-mystery-solved.html

@jssmith , arguably it does especially since after recording the RF radiation and sound at the same time they simulated the RF radiation and no sound was heard. A few tried and no sound was heard. Correlation was assumed to be causation and it turns out that was not the case. The current theory is it is a thermal effect from visible and IR radiation. Scientists have recreated the measured levels and have been able to generate an acoustic effect similar to reported incidents.  I understand one issue with the RF theory was lack of an identified receiver that could generate an acoustic effect, especially true as the effect has been reported for centuries dating back to a time when very little was made of metal.

That’s not how it works. Of course they measure the audio products they build - during and after the design process.The most important things are a waveform of the output stage (null test), measuring with an oscilloscope, and a select few measurements that go beyond just the standard 5 or so. SINAD is an outdated way to measure audio equipment. Yet it is used as a gold-standard on ASR.

Can you tell what those 5 select other measurements? You appear to put yourself forth as an expert, so as opposed to a vague statement, should you not detail that information?  I mainly go to ASR for speaker reviews. Professional interest. SINAD is not even part of those measurements, probably because speakers don't make noise. Because they are using a Klippel system, their measurement suite is far more extensive than say Stereophile. What is published is extensive and is similar to what we would measure internally. We have proprietary weighting functions for some measurements. I would not expect a review site to have that.  I counted 11 graphs on a DAC review, in addition to SINAD. I picked a DAC since that seems to be most discussed here.

 

Common sense tells us that for a hundred bucks, we shouldn’t be able to get a DAC with superlative performance, but ASR (Audio Science Review) tells us of course we can!

Whose common sense?  Asian manufacturing costs, Asian parts costs, a DAC a model or two down from the top, high volume, low margin business model. In our speakers with digital in, the DAC section, with enough performance to have no audible impact, is not expensive. How do we know there is no audible impact? Measurements and blind listening tests.

 

The word "Science" in the website should hint at a hypthosesis for why audio gear meant for the same purpose sounds different; and should welcome 3rd party testing - like other real scientists.

Have you noticed that ASR is publishing reviews including extensive measurements from people other than ones done by Amir. The science in the website would indicate that proving something sounds different would be a necessary first step.

 

However, that is not allowed over there...just try to challenge the results - suggest further measurements.

Here I will agree. Amir can be quite defensive and arrogant. He is not as open minded as he should be.

 

Open the device up. Take a picture of internals and indentify the parts used. Do a reliability test. None of those things are done....not to mention countless errors in testing.

Do reliability testing? Can you name even one review website that does reliability testing? Do you have any idea of the cost and time required?  I saw on several reviews pictures of internals. Not all, but a lot. What percentage of audiophiles are able to accurately assess the internals of a product?

Most of the speaker tests do not have errors. Some of the more esoteric speakers I feel have errors in testing. Some of the claims errors I have seen are more sour grapes. Given the volume of testing, errors are to be expected. Do you think other test sites are perfect? Some of the explanations and tests I see done by others, especially with lesser equipment make me shake my head.

 

Totally different impressions and MEASUREMENTS on Head-Fi for the same product. @amir_asr likes to suggest that his "instrumentation" is so much more accurate than what others are using.

Have you noticed that numerous reviewers are popping up and using guess what, the exact same equipment as ASR. Imitation is the best form of flattery I guess. His equipment does appear superior to most traditional sites. Headphone testing is very hard to do repeatedly to address that specific issue.

 

Well with that logic, upgrade every 3 months or whenever AP releases a new flagship audio analyzer. This means that every former product was substandard or less accurate in some way.

This is not a logical statement. As the test gear currently is accurate enough to identify artifacts we may hear, further accuracy only plays to marketing specifications, not audible artifacts. What is required now, is better tools for interpreting measurements, not better measurements.  For speakers, there is room for improvements for measuring distortion over emission angle, but that applies to everyone.

 

And the way he EQs headphones is painful to see. It makes me furious. He simply drags up/down a line on a log EQ so it inherently influences the frequencies around that octave as well; rather than fine-tune with proper notches in place and compensate with a preamp option in the software so the levels are not compromised. You’re welcome @amir_asr

I will leave it up to others to make their determination if your statement is true of not.

Basic measurements are only a benchmark, an objective standard, but how something SOUNDS is purely subjective and has to take into account intangibles like combined elements in the system, the room acoustics, speaker placement, and the listener, right?

Speakers are my thing so let's talk speakers. A reviewer does a review of a speaker. That review will tell you every piece of audio equipment used in the speaker review, probably what they had for breakfast and if they had a bathroom visit that morning. Most of that information will be useless to determine how that speaker will work for others. Missing from the review will be room dimensions, what specific treatments are in the room, the exact speaker and toe in and listener location though the latter may have some vague description. Also missing is usually the reviewers preference around imaging and soundstage. There are trade offs.  Basically most listener reviews lack all the information you need to understand how that speaker will behave in your chosen listening space.

 

Give me a full test set and I can provide far more useful information about how it will behave in your room, options for toe-in, problem areas for acoustic treatments, options for boundary reinforcement and treatment in small rooms, amplifier compatibility, realistically how loud it can be played. 

No matter what you believe or what side of the argument you are on, I am quite sure that if all involved stuck purely to facts and what is being discussed, the conversation would be more cordial. Unsubstantiated personal slights, unsubstantiated accusations, and generally nastiness that has nothing to do with audio are not going to resolve anything.

Is there a moderator in the house? @tammyholt?  - These continued childish personal insults @mastering92, which are unfounded, have no place here, or anywhere frankly. You do a disservice to this forum and to others here by acting this way. I will remind you that you though that blind testing involved using a blind fold?  You also didn't understand the basic reason behind the number of test trials.

You are in no position to be taking on this attitude let alone acting superior to someone obviously far far more qualified.

 

Nice graphs. Looks like something from a high school powerpoint presentation in statistics class.

I’m sure that trained experts can do a better job here.

I’m sure Bill Nye the Science Guy could go head to head with you; and emerge as the champion.

 

@milpai ,

I am only advocating that people behave maturely and stick to discussing audio, free from personal insults, lies and libel.

I am not sure what aspect of human hearing we do not understand you are referring to? I did a quick perusal but it is hard to make a detailed search here or at least that is a skill I do not possess yet. For understanding audio, we know a lot. However, we don't know, beyond general statements, what any one person will prefer though there are theories about environmental exposure (what those around you like) and also genetic wiring. It am not sure that is relevant though.

One statement that Amir made, was that a tube amplifier with a non-flat frequency with a particular speaker is a flawed design. I do not agree with that assessment for many reasons. First is that the resultant frequency response, in room, may be preferable, even more accurate. Second is that at an individual level, preference trumps accuracy, so the only person who can state flawed, is the final user. Last is that there are many flawed humans in the chain of musical production that all recordings are inherently flawed. We don't know what the best final playback function is, though Amir could make the argument, that on average, for that case at least, flat is best.

@mastering92 can you name any other review site that provides measurements that does this "auditing"? 

Manufacturers always have the ability to respond and provide high quality measurements to refute the results including testing methodology. 

In the scientific world, publishing is normally the audit process. You publish and encourage others to replicate your results. Contrary to your assumptions I don't participate on ASR though I do read, mainly speaker reviews. As I wrote above ASR publishes reviews from other people. I also see others publishing their results measuring the same products ASR does though obviously a limited subset. ASR is obviously not perfect, but all the arguments I am seeing are sour grapes.

A lot of scientific work revealed to the public is not peer reviewed and all that is reviewed is method. The peer review does not consist of other people replicating the work as you have suggested. You are moving the goal posts. Even with peer review, many poor papers are published and if you are presenting new concepts there may not be any one "better than you".

On correlation between ad hoc consumer reports with little in the way of comparative analysis and measurements, there are many flaws in that statement. The most obvious being what is liked and what is accurate are often different if not almost always different. The other obvious reason is simply that people often assign better to new purchases, whether actually better, or in audio even noticeably different. Many people played the exact same thing twice will be absolutely convinced one is different. Either way, both of these are psychological effects of which measurements are immune.  I would also say using the word "mass" is exaggerated, but if you want to go down that path, there seems to be mass like of some of the inexpensive gear they have measured. 

Audibly transparent is not a catch phrase and needs no further words or explanation. It is a simple concept. When certain products achieve a certain level of technical performance they are audibly transparent.  You could make a product that measures better, but it will sound exactly the same as the one that does not. That is confirmed by the inability of people to hear a difference.  You made a comment about "quality" of parts, but this would be a prime example. An expensive part is often that, an expensive part but offers no benefit in improved sound. The change would be transparent. No audible difference.

Or @andy2 , looks like the vendor got caught making claims that were not all true and a "feature" that was not a feature at all and is now doing damage control.

@thespeakerdude  audibly transparent according to measurements maybe, but not in listening tests. 

 

No, both @invalid ​​​​​​. But a listening test, not just sitting there and saying it's different. Repeating what I said before. I can play the exact thing twice and many audiophiles will claim they are different. Audiophiles like to rage against blind testing but it's the only way possible to remove bias.

@thespeakerdude  how would you know if say an amplifier is audibly transparent in a listening tests when listening through speakers or headphones when no headphones or speakers are transparent?

 

Take this from a different standpoint. If speakers and headphones are so lacking in transparency, how could you ever differentiate two amplifiers that are much more transparent than what they are connected to. Looking at it another way, two amplifiers must be significantly different such that they can be differentiated when connected to a typical loudspeaker.

 

Why then SS amp always has a haze where as tube amps always has a transparent sound but we all know tube always have inferior frequency response vs. ss.

In short you can't measure it.

 

I have never heard a haze when listening to an SS amp, or some startling clarity with tubes. However, one factor that may affect your personal listening experience is most tube amplifiers have high output resistance. Couple that with the right (wrong) speakers and you can accentuate some frequencies by even a few db. Maybe you interpret that as haze, maybe it even compensates for a speaker/room response issue.  Then again, it could just be what Amir stated a biased view.

 

 

 

This effect does not exist in a quiet listening environment. You go to visit an audio shop. Walk up the stairs and they’ve got a listening room. No one else there but you and the sales guy.

Yes this "effect" does happen in quiet room. The ability to pick out relevant details in a noisy environment is just one outcome of how the brain adapts. Our hearing including our ability to extract details, hear artifacts, etc. is not static. It is task dependent. At a lay level, it is called selective attention. At a neural level, our brain rapidly adapts neural weighting to the tasks on hand, which means if you are looking for discrepancies in how you think something should sound, you are far more likely to hear them as opposed to them just being "background" information.

The process whereby you adapt to a new piece of equipment is also related. Initially it is new, so you are looking for artifacts, differences, changes. If there are really changes, you are more likely to find them, because your brain has rewired to actively look for them. It will also find things that were always there that you never noticed. Over time, you/your brain settles, and you are back to listening to the music.

 

mp3s are not great. Sure, you could fool someone in to thinking that 2 files are the same on a smartphone over bluetooth, but upon further inspection; in a more resolving system, you could tell the original .wav file and .mp3 file apart easily, no matter what the kbps was, even 320 kbps.

How confident are you that if presented with only an MP3 file, 320kbps, that you could accurately state that it is MP3?

 

 

@nyev ,

 

You started out with a post asserting that, and I hope I am paraphrasing correctly, that you believe we can have two things that measure identical, or close enough, but hear a difference. First, is that truly what you are asserting? 

I think measurements can provide us with significantly more information about how we will interpret how something sounds than many audiophiles give them credit to do. I think first this belief from audiophiles comes from general lack of understanding of how to interpret measurements or how to apply them. There is a lot of data in a Klippel report for a speaker. It takes some level of training, not extensive, but at least some, and definitely some experience, to read all that data and come up with a fairly good understanding of how that speaker will be perceived by most people, even more so when their room is considered.  Where this data is highly beneficial is where you have the data for the speaker you are currently using, the one you are considering, and know what you like/dislike about your current speaker.  This allows an interpretation of the measurements within a framework of the listener's preferred target sound.

I do think the most contentious thing that ASR does is make the claim for many products that the product is transparent, and not only that it is transparent, but because it is transparent, it will sound the same as this much more expensive product. I would say that question could be easily resolved with a blind format listening test, but I am now quite certain that even if that showed them to be the same, that far too many would not accept the results. I am a bit shocked by the views on blind format listening I have read here.  So I will ask you, what do you thin is an adequate and acceptable way to prove that two products sound the same?

A lot of what you're posting sounds like market research.

 

Considering most of my posts are technical in nature with detailed explanations, I find that conclusion, difficult to arrive at.

Also if you look at a speaker freq. response and distortion, it is an order of magnitude (or even higher) higher than anything audio chain (amp, preamp), so measurement would tell you that it will dominate anything in the upstream components, it is not. You can hear the difference with different amp or preamp.

 

I have no doubt with the high output resistance of a tube amplifier that many could tell that apart from a SS amplifier because of the change in the frequency response. There have been many challenges put forth about amplifiers not run into clipping, and I assume of low output resistance sounding the same. Has anyone passed one of those tests? I can only offer my experience with active speakers, that the performance of the amplifier is indeed buried under the speakers performance assuming we are not nearing clipping. Some artifacts like noise are readily evident though, but that is to be expected. This is all determined in listening tests. These would all be SS amps with competent designs, so I don’t feel confident extending that to all amps. If I was making an amp for the high end consumer market, I think I would want to make it sound different. How else do you stand out? Otherwise you are competing with products that are much cheaper that do the same thing.

 

That is because a good tube amp will cost a lot more money compared to a SS amp.  To get the same performance you need to spend quite a bit more.  If money is not an issue, most people would go with tube.

Right now, on Audiogon, there are 113 Solid State amplifiers for sale over $5000, and 74 tube amplifiers over $5,000.

@amir_asr ,

 

I think the test you gave yourself is too easy 😀  Your point is well taken in regards to trained listeners and MP3. I think a better test is to serve up 10 different tracks which may be MP3 or may be wave, and then test how well listeners do at accurately assessing if the track is compressed or not. I wonder if even the trained listeners will be challenged in that case without a reference.

Alright..you can have your cake and eat it too! All I’m saying is....live and let live. Your tone and how you almost bully people into listening to you is rather rude. Hence why virtually every audio forum on the web has labelled you all kinds of silly names.

Uses an OP amp and tons of subtractive distortion limiting - like negative feedback in a circuit. Tons of this, much like dynamic range compression in mastering will limit perceived dynamic range in a track.

 

This is bias likely derived from reading, not knowledge or experience. Your purported expertise is recording? Mixing?  Audiophiles often write about how superior audio recording and mixing used to be, even in the 70's into the 80's. Do you think most mixing consoles used op-amps, or discrete transistors?  

Can you clearly communicate what you think op-amps and negative feedback is doing to the signal, and why this does not show up even in complex distortion measurements?

 

Wanting to be seen as smart and being intelligent are not the same thing folks.

@prof 

I think it is a hard concept (or fact) to accept, that for some, deep in whatever aspect of the technology we may be in (for me speakers), that we can get a lot more useful and unbiased information about how something sounds from a very detailed set of measurements than we can from someone (not us) doing a listening review of a product. I can't speak for others, but I expect in whatever product they are experts in, that they also can get as much or more useful and unbiased information from a detailed set of measurements than they can from a listen only review done by someone else.

@andy2 ,

 

What did you want us to take from that PS video article? One would not measure interconnects by measuring the output of a speaker. Speakers are too sensitive to environmental conditions, prior operation, etc., not to mention that would also introduce an indeterminate error that may also have time effects from the speaker/amplifier interface. Far more accuracy would be achieved by measuring the output of the amplifier without the speaker which is what Bob Carver did when the made the SS amp match the output of the tube amp. A little bit of Paul's bias shining through when he said made the SS amp sound as good as the tube amplifier.

Just to give one recent example to relate to my prior post: Last year I bought a second USB cable (Audioquest Diamond) while I had the original for a few years. The new one sounded inferior. To the degree that I wondered if there was a design change or changes to production. But after a few hundred hours, I could no longer tell them apart. Yet existence of burn-in is endlessly debated.

Did the cable change or did you change?

 

Another recent example is what I found with length of USB cables, where a Nordost Valhalla 2 2m cable sounded superior to the equivalent 1m cable. Intuitively I would have expected the 1m cable to sound better, as I had not at that time read the theories, to my knowledge unproven, that USB cables should be longer than 1.5m to accommodate “reflections”.

>1.5 meters is for SPDIF, not USB.

@thespeakerdude , the cable changed not me. How do I know? Because I had a control (the original cable).

Did you know which cable was in the system, or did you have someone switch it such that you did not know?

 

And actually the >1.5m is the guidance for USB according to some - pretty easy to google. Even Mark Coles of Sablon confirmed to me that he’s heard that as well (he said he hadn’t heard that for AES/ SPDIF). But as I mentioned I don’t believe this is “scientifically proven” anywhere. As a side note I repeated this finding with a .7m Audioquest Diamond USB cable that sounded very compressed and closed in compared to the equivalent 1.5m Diamond. I even preferred a generic USB cable to the .7m version of the Diamond.

The 1.5 meter is definitely for SPDIF and there is a good explanation for it. I have a formula written down.  (Rise time)/(1.5 * 3) in feet.  SPDIF rise time first google hit = 25nsec. Cable = (25/4.5) = 5.5 feet = 1.7 meters. USB rise time 0.3nsec first google for 2.0. That is 0.3/(1.5*3) = 0.07 feet.  I think if a cable supplier has not heard of the 1.5 meter thing with SPDIF, you need a new cable supplier. Maybe you were having some noise issues?

https://www.theaudiobeat.com/visits/shunyata_visit_interview.htm

 

All I get from this @andy2 is that you can fool Michael Fremer all of the time. I will defer to @amir_asr who I believe is an EE, but even I can tell that article is just blowing smoke. An honest article would hook up the power cable to an off the shelf unmodified audio product and show the measured waves with AC input not a fake input.

I think Amir needs to test equipment using transient methods.  I think his tests mostly are done using frequency domain which is steady state.  Most of stuffs in music happens in transient.

 

Phase and Magnitude in the frequency domain transforms into the time domain.

@andy2 ,

But jitter is difficult to test in frequency domain, just to name a few. 

 

No it is not.

 

@andy2 

Also to measure phase noise you need a pure sine wave.  But in time domain, you 

could do it using a square wave or some transient waveform, which is more akin to real music.

That will be impossible when you are measuring the output of the DAC and have no access to signals that are hidden inside a box or hidden inside a chip. The only way is to measure the analog output. Fortunately that is something that can and is done with very good accuracy.

 

Here are some comments from a well known audiophile reviewer about a speaker he reviewed. What valuable information do you think you are getting out of this?

 

I heard steady improvements in clarity and a stunningly low noise floor as I moved up.

The reviewer is not talking about powered speakers. He is talking about passive speakers. Noise floor, passive speakers? Not the best thing to say to be credible.

 

In my usual speaker position, which is 2-3 feet from the rear,

He means front and 2-3 feet is not nearly enough to get rid of SBIR effects.

 

This is his listening room.

• I am not sure what those panels will accomplish on the front wall. Too thin to absorb SBIR frequencies, and even if they could, the panels are too small, even at 2-3 feet to be very effective.
• Equipment well placed for early reflections. (to have them)
• Tube amplifier. Its output resistance which will not be the same as most SS amps or even other tube amps will color the sound. YMMV if you are not using the same.

There are transient events that can only be capture in time domain such as overshoot or undershoot or ringing or more .,.. It is fine if you only use frequency domain but it won’t be a complete test.

 

Can you give examples of these transient non periodic events that would occur during playback?

 

but with non-sinusoidal waveform (which is more akin to music), it’s better to use time domain.

 

We use non sinusoidal waveforms all the time, though they may be made up of a multitude of sine waves. I already talked about transient testing.

In my example above, there is little chance I was imagining the longer USB cable sounding better than the shorter one when I was biased to thinking the opposite.

 

Unless your bias against the longer one caused you to listen with more focus that allowed you to hear detail that you missed before?  You cannot say with complete confidence that that was not the case.

I did not note what differences you perceived between the longer and shorter cable. I am not saying this is the case for your test, but it is common that the differences reported between two components are simply impossible with the change that was made. I do understand your point with the meteor, often there are unintended consequences, we see that in product design all the time. But there are some fundamental facts of how things work that cannot be ignored either.

 

@kota1  you posted, in a single topic, no less than 6 links to videos and articles that were either very questionable in content, or outright grossly wrong.  I would appreciate if you stopped your incessant inane attempts to discredit me and worry more about your own credibility.

If you want to make this a faith and religion discussion and talk about proof one point of view will win every honest argument. @prof is attempting to bring a balanced view and he still gets attacked. Don’t try to make it appear like you are the voice of reason when you are not.

 

@tcotruvo I don’t agree with @nyev but I don’t think your depiction of him is fair. Human experience creates strong convictions. I had to do a lot of unlearning "by fire" 20 some off years ago. I had a lot of preconceived ideas based on my "experience". What someone said to me that stuck is I didn’t have experience, I had experiences. They are not the same. Because we experience something does not mean we are gaining experience. Listening to lots of different systems does not give you experience unless you understand what is different about those system and how that translates into how they sound, and even accepting that some things will make minimal or no sound change.

 

Measurements cannot tell if something sounds warm, bright, musical, organic, analytical, transparent, soundstage width/height/depth ... just to name a few.

 

This was written above. Measurements can tell you most of these things. To understand those measurements and make some conclusions or know how to achieve them takes experience and understanding how things work. Experience also tells us that your interpretation of how something may sound at least for tone is influenced by what you are already listening to as you will adapt to your current system. If you have a "warm" system and listen to another warm system it will sound normal to you. To someone else it may sound overly warm.

In any event, attacks aren’t allowed under the rules here so there’s no need to play the victim card. Just flag the post for the moderators.

 

We are adults. This should not be needed.

+1 @prof 

 

Isn't the point of making these topics to discuss. I hope the op was realistic about what the replies may be. Why even have a forum if it's an echo chamber? 

For developing speakers, today, far more time is spent measuring than listening in professional market speakers. That is because we do know how to translate measurements into what is heard and it is far less variable.  I can't comment on consumer speakers but expect for the big ones with resources that is also the case.

And you, @cleeds why are you here, in this particular topic? What is your reason for participating?   @prof is putting forth very valid arguments that would be accepted by any professional interested in a factual outcome.  You may take issue with his response to other's beliefs as is your right but can you fault his methodology and back that up?

@kota1 for reasons only known to you you have issues with me. Feel free to direct message me and rant all you want. Be respectful and don’t make your issue everyone else’s issue as you are doing. It is disrespectful to everyone else here. Only you can make the actions of not making your beef everyone else's problem.

@prof I think we may have very different view on how science works, If something cant be 'scientifically' proven and yet, 'existst' (at least by testimonials of so many) than perhaps 'the scinece' (or better the people who claim that they are 'scientists') should try to find new methods or tools to examine those 'events'.

 

The first thing science will always do is validate the claim. The claim will never be assumed to be correct without validation. 

Blind testing is used in audio product development to validate results and improve the quality of listening tests.

@nyev ,

 

I think you would have a hard time getting recognized subjective reviewers to participate. This is why I don't participate in arguments about controversial audio products. It makes no sense to argue so hard about something that could be put to rest in a day or two and a couple of plane tickets.

@nyev ,

 

But, for you its not just the cables, there are tubes, vinyl and many other thing that you got issues with. Why is that, only you know. For people who follow your ’lead’, hope one day they will come in situation where they will have a chance to hear a good sounding system.

While I don't agree with some of the conclusion you have reached, you have been respectful, so I will respectfully point something out. You are doing exactly the same thing you have accused Amir of. Your statement, "one day they will come in situation where they will have a chance to hear a good sounding system" is biased and makes a conclusion you have no ability to make. You have no way of knowing they have not heard an exceptionally good system, to them. What they may find good sounding is completely different from what someone else may find good sounding.

 

there are tubes, vinyl and many other thing that you got issues with.

Here we can agree, and I think, but won't put words in his mouth, that @prof would agree too. I accept from a particular technical basis that Amir will rate anything with tubes in it poorly. I think it should also be accepted that not all audio systems have room correction, or acoustic treatments, or perfect speakers. On that basis alone, a tube amplifier could result in a combination that is technically more accurate when the totality of the system is considered. There could also be sonic characteristics that the end user just likes. Distortion, clipping, it really does not matter, just that they like it.  For vinyl, digital sources clearly provide a significant advantage in capability and accuracy. However, we don't just listen to minute details, we listen to the totality of the performance. If a particular vinyl pressing offers a superior performance, for any number of reasons, then that it is the superior format for that particular recording.