@laoman, thanks for posting that note, I had no idea the word is out about those members at ASR losing all that money for nothing but a crappy name tag on their avatar, just terrible. Hopefully a few of them read this thread and save some bank from the claws of ASR.
Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy
"Audiophiles are Snobs" Youtube features an idiot! He states, with no equivocation, that $5,000 and $10,000 speakers sound equally good and a $500 and $5,000 integrated amp sound equally good. He is either deaf or a liar or both!
There is a site filled with posters like him called Audio Science Review. If a reasonable person posts, they immediately tear him down, using selected words and/or sentences from the reasonable poster as100% proof that the audiophile is dumb and stupid with his money. They also occasionally state that the high end audio equipment/cable/tweak sellers are criminals who commit fraud on the public. They often state that if something scientifically measures better, then it sounds better. They give no credence to unmeasurable sound factors like PRAT and Ambiance. Some of the posters music choices range from rap to hip hop and anything pop oriented created in the past from 1995.
Have any of audiogon (or any other reasonable audio forum site) posters encountered this horrible group of miscreants?
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Says he who has posted 14 comments here bagging ASR. It was huge news, recently. My advice - rule number one - before you attack, know your enemy. Just the basics is necessary, but to do so this is not sufficient. You didn't know. Children don’t understand the strategy and logistics of war. |
I disagree about truth bombs being activated. There is a great deal of second hand womens kinda gossip - hence my surprise when you admitted that you did not know about the PA5 debacle. |
@kota1 Of course it is sexist. Get over it. In my current occupation I work with 40 women and 4 men. Women are light years ahead of us naive blokes being able to get away with un-corroborated gossip. True by definition. I log on to AG and see, oh, I’m back at work. More women pretending to be men. |
Admittedly hip-hop sounds terrible played over high end equipment, need a ghetto blaster for that. A $5000 wrist watch doesn’t show better time than a $5 one. Still they are sold. So yes ... some people are snobs, and over spenders. But hey ... if someone likes to buy it and is happy with his purchase all is well, isn’t it. And if there are people who like to warn that some ’high end’ audio equipment have false (marketing) claims and some is 100x higher priced than the net worth of the components used, than that’s OK too, isn’t it? |
OK, time for a question: Suppose we have an amplifier that measures absolutely perfect, never seen better:
Will it sound good? Well ... it has to be the best, cleanest, absolute neutral sounding equipment we ever heard. But will we like it? Probably some will, but others may not, because:
Conclusion: perfect measurement results not necessarily mean it sounds pleasing. And, ’pleasing’ is very subjective. Yet, equipment designers will use measurements and will strive for good numbers first ... from there the tweaking may start. And, if a manufacturer promises improved jitter but measurements show nothing has improved, than that’s a scam.
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@rudyb +1
To your questions - yes! and yes! but apparently not with some or there wouldn't be any reason for this thread. No sacred cows were harmed during the writing of this post 🐄🐮 |
@invalid Yes, this is how science works. ASR and followers write off observations phase by the claim our senses faulty. Which means present measurement protocol is end game. Don't expect ASR to come up with new measurement protocols, this will come from manufacturers who listen (observe) to their equipment and ask themselves how can I make this better. |
Thanks for the link. Yes, it was an interesting read. No doubt there is a crossover of readership between the 2 sites and why not? Amir himself has stated that measurements currently only account for 70% in predicting how a loudspeaker sounds.
It’s that remaining 30% that should keep us all going for a few years yet. |
@laoman Yes, you reiterated my reason for creating this forum. My wife said i shouldn’t have called @quiiet a troll, but it there some other word for someone who signs up to Audiogon and denounces the rest of us? Now there is a 5 page 95 replies to ASRs Audiogon thread critical of ASR. They’re so stupid that they don’t recognize the person (me) who got banned after reading this forum. I really can’t be nicer to them. I note that the two ASR members who wrote about vibration isolation for amps and Von Schwiekert speakers did not chime in. Some respectful and logical ASR members there. Your comment about @noske is appropriate. He started character assassination of @jerryg123 Now after @kota1 Not Nice! Apparently has his own character problems wherein he is obsessed with demeaning others to assert his superiority. |
By coincidence, I came upon this while reading up on new reviews by the designer of Soulnote products. All the best,
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sam_adams of ASR finally figured it out it was me. Of course he took what I posted there out of context. Shaving CDs, tried it and don't use it. Paid $150, now selling above $1000. Destat CDs, every time. Synergistic Research cables-I never said they had magical properties but ASR members think that the company is committing fraud on the public and Ted Denney has committed a crime and should be imprisoned. And tmtmoh states that someone on this forum said that $500 and $1000 speakers sound the same (NOT). That we believe in audio myths. How many times did I post that measurements are important and can reveal a significant amount of the performance of equipment? Yet, this counter forum states that we at Audiogon don't believe in measurements. Ha Ha. I'm getting a little thrill at poking fun at the miscreants of ASR (they hate that word-sorry). Plus, they don't read all of this forum, just a few posts. |
@fleschler : please give this whole thing up. This entire thing is not worth your time, and mental well-being. Engaging with the ASR militia is not only unproductive, but also outright dangerous. Trust me |
@nonoise : +1. Fantastic article. Things we all know, but unable to articulate so decisively and eloquently, albeit still in down to earth, common folks speak |
@nonoise very good article and I am also intrigued by the Soulnote product. Very relatable article, thank you for posting the link. |
@nonoise superb read, appreciate you posting that |
Interesting. From the SOULNOTE site, a little more on their philosophy. Some of them apparently came from the original Marantz crew, quote -
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Hey guys, I'm just happy I came across that article demonstrating the fallacy of believing static measurements is all there is to know, and needed. Kind of reminds me of when Apple came out with those "moving" still images taken on an iPhone. When you took a photo, it was actually a very short video and when viewed, gave life to that photo that it never really could capture as a still image. All the best, |
Three things: 1. The stimulus is not static. A sine wave is time varying. A multitone is time varying and complex. Jitter signal (J-test) is also complex and time varying. Only DC signals are static which we don't use for audio testing. 2. For the most part, audio gear is state and memory less. The system performance doesn't change or rely on what came 1 second before current time. In that regard, "static" testing of this sort is quite appropriate. When testing systems that do have memory such as lossy audio compression (e.g. MP3), we cannot use this type of testing because they do have memory and adapt to signal to being encoded. There, we rely on controlled/blind listening tests. 3. I also using music files for such things as null tests of power cables and such. This is more done to do away with objections like yours more than being a need. |
Someone claimed that on ASR the more you donate, the higher your status. No such thing exists. Members can donate any amount of money they like. They will all get the same title. This is on purpose as to make sure you can't buy your way into have more privileges. Unlike other forums, donating to ASR doesn't get you anything extra *. You don't get exclusive or early access to content. Everyone sees the same information regardless of whether they have donated or not. Donations are entirely voluntary. * The only exception to above is that forum donors get to have longer edit time to their threads. This is because we trust them to not be destructive. It is not done to give them a benefit. |
@thyname Thank you for your concern. I haven’t spent much time on this forum and my metal well-being isn’t being threatened. I am a very stable 66 year old music lover. I’ve been a member since 2001.However, your warning that ASR militia can be possibly dangerous, does that mean physically violent? That means that this bear (ASR) is a radical leftist or rightist group who political affiliation is measurement audiophilia uber alles? Wow!Now I remember that one member had claimed in another ASR forum that he wanted to go next door and burn his neighbor. I assumed that burning one's neighbor is a violent act. He is a well known member. I also just noticed that someone just signed up to audiogon posting as amir_asr. Could that be the owner of ASR? That is scary! |
By now I hope everyone fully understands that OP got me confused with another youtuber (John Darko). He is the one that produced the video with that clickbait title, I did NOT. As to the rest, price has no impact on whether something "sounds good" or not. As the risk of stating the obvious, I can make a speaker out of gold and charge a million dollars for it. It doesn't mean it will sound better. So the example of $5000 speaker vs $10,000 is without meaning in audio. Products in that price range start to get into luxury range and are often priced to what the market will accept, not what it costs to produce, etc. A speaker will sound better than another if in controlled testing it shows that advantage, i.e. when you don't know the brand, make, history, looks, etc. Just the sound. Failing that, we can use measurements to rule out broken designs and praise the well engineered ones based on latest science of sound reproduction in rooms. As a general statement though, a speaker that goes lower and plays louder will be more expensive. So all else being equal, a $10,000 will be better than a $5,000 speaker in this regard. This is why I own a pair of speakers that cost $23,000. It plays extremely low and dynamic in addition to being excellent in other respects.
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@amir_asr Either you are or are not the owner of ASR. Either way, my conclusion is based on listening results after measurement (if it can be measured-the CD trimmer can measure some characteristics prior to and post trimming by listening to the CD). Since I do not rely on measurements only, I (and all of my many music loving friends) use my listening skills to determine if audio equipment sounds more or less to my liking. Measurements can be very deceiving both in what is and what is not measured as well as the potential synergy with other equipment and listening room. The best test of audio equipment is to place it in the room and with the equipment it is to be used with. Aside from that, measurements and physical inspection of audio equipment can provide a basis for comparison and evaluation (such as will it more or less likely to fail in use). It goes without comment that different power ratings of amps and bass capabilities of speakers vary by design and parts quality which can result in lower or higher cost to manufacture. Unfortunately, just as with so many other products (non-audio) on the market, you don't always receive what one pays for. There are many shoddy expensive goods in many product categories. That does not mean everything deemed "too" expensive is bad. ASR "militia" cannot differentiate the difference between biographical summary of one’s music expertise versus self-aggrandizement I am no more important than any other audiophile; however, music experience as an amateur recording engineer in major orchestral halls of well over 250 recordings and for the Erich Zeisl (brother in law of Schoenberg) centenary collection of 11 CDs for Vienna, UCLA and USC establish some credentials that my opinion in how vocal, chamber and orchestral music can (not should) sound is evident. I do not have a "golden ear." I just have a lifetime of experience performing and recording/mastering music. When I conclude that each individual should not rely on measurements only, I am asserting that each piece of equipment should be tested for it’s musical value (not economic) in a specific room with specific equipment. ASR members laugh at anything outside of their sphere of experience and make derogatory remarks of someone’s character if they disagree with neutral statements concerning equipment or experience. If that is you Amir, owner of ASR, you know this to be true. |
@decooney , I was not even aware of Soulnote. Seems to be focused in Europe. @fleschler sometimes it is better to move on and not have the urge to respond. Hope you are having a great time with your music! |
@invalid BINGO!!! I was a commercial property appraiser (to be distinguished from residential) for 32 years, constructed apartment buildings and single family tract homes. I chose/use higher quality materials in low income housing to prevent future repair expenses and the safety of my tenants. I use higher quality all brass plumbing fixtures and fittings, only schedule L US or Mexican manufactured copper plumbing and best quality fittings, Bradford-White water heaters, Wilkins water pressure regulators, etc. as an example. Sure, Loews has cheaper plumbing items, but you get what you pay for-expect plumbing failures sooner (a few years) rather than in decades later (w.h. exceptions since they only last 6 years now). |
@milpai Every night I get to listen to music for 2 hours prior to bedtime. Yesterday, I listened with friends for 4 hours. My main audio system is so addictive and I have 42,500 LPs/CD/78s that I look forward to listening whenever I have a chance. I am retired from my profession and only work about 20 hours weekly as an investor/manager. I also take care of my family until it's music listening time late at night. I had some time to see my forum posts today so I added rejoiners. My other forums over the past 20+ years only received no or up to four replies. I obviously hit a nerve and this forum is probably the most popular of September. I am concerned that ASR may have a physically violent "militia" although it is more likely that they just have much free time and personal angst they have to relieve themselves by posting on ASR, so often and often negatively. |
@amir_asr cool of you to show up. i have a question - would you say that "if [insert audiophile claim] can't be measured by my tests, it doesn't exist" is a fair description of your view? why or why not? |
This is a common retort. That you have been either producing music for many years or an audiophile for the same and hence your impressions are correct. Fact is that none of this trains you to a) be a critical listener and b) make your listening tests reliable. This is not only position of audio research but also my personal professional experience. In my last corporate job, we performed controlled listening tests of hundreds of audiophiles and sadly, they way underperformed our trained testers in hearing compression artifacts. Research work would be so much easier if we could just recruit people like you and render an opinion about sound fidelity with no controls. But it is not. The only way we know you speak the "truth" about fidelity is to block all other stimulus than the sound arriving at your ear. And further, repeat observations many times to rule out chance. Nothing replaces this. Every shortcut to that is prone to serious faults. This is an uncomfortable truth for many of us. After all, we call ourselves audiophiles with the intent of saying we know what good sound is like. But it is the nature of how we behave as humans. You can argue with this and create your own domain of audio not based on realities of decades of research. That is fine. But please don't throw rocks at me at ASR or the membership for using proper science and research as compass of what is right.
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Adding on to above, post, I have zero skills in recording, mixing and mastering music. In those domains, your experience blows me out of water. So there is no attempt to put that experience down in the slightest. It is just that it doesn't apply to the topic at hand (reproducing of recorded music as opposed to creating it). |
Let me first tell you that there is far more to conclusions we draw than measurements. Myself and many members of the forum are engineers and understand how your audio devices operate. We then combine this with careful measurements. And then look at what audio research (published) tells us. If all three arrows point the same way across testing multiple categories of products, then we have very high confidence in our conclusions as to efficacy of such claims. As an example of above, we know how power supplies work in audio products. So when someone says this power cable "filters" noise that then does the same in your audio output, we can analyze this on all fronts. We know that there are multiple filters working far more effectively in your audio gear than anything a power cable (or conditioner) can do. We then combine that knowledge by showing that said power cable provided no filtering. And even the company itself showed no such evidence. We then go further and produce highly distorted AC waveform and show that the audio gear did its job and nothing changed in its output. After testing a number of such products with the same outcome, we then have a very high confidence answer with strong data to back it. Please note that this is VERY different than what other objectivists do. I put in tons and tons of effort in testing these audiophile claims. I have tested more interconnects and power conditioners than I can keep track of. And when a new one is offered to me, I test it again in the thought that it may be the one that shows a difference. This should show you the openness I bring to this field. There is nothing "cult-like" about what we do. Note that there situations where measurements provide part of the answer but not all. Speaker and headphone measurements are very powerful in their predictive power but not sufficient. We don't for example fully know the effect of radiation patter for a speaker in different rooms and for different people. Measurements do however rule out the poor designs and do so with authority. Maybe some of those are still good but there are so many good choices with good engineering so why take a chance? I recently recommended an IEM. A bunch of people purchased it. About 70% love it and can't imagine how great this $50 IEM is. 10% to 15% say it sounds good but better with EQ. 10 to 15% say it is not for them. This shows how powerful imperfect or incomplete measurements can still be.
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If plumbing was judged like how audio is, you would be using paper for pipes, candles to heat water, little dots around water heater to increase its efficiency, magic tablets to add to water to cure every disease made to man. And have even a simple pipe coupling cost $2,000 because it was made out of this or that metal with cryogenic treatment! My wish is that audiophiles bring the common sense and logic they use in other fields to their hobby. If the above sounds absurd in plumbing, similar talk for audio should do the same. |
Okay Amir (if that's ASR's Amir), I also happen to be a beta tester of audio cables for a boutique manufacturer (GroverHuffman.com) for over two decades. No, it is a subjective test after burning in cables and hearing other manufacturers high end/expensive cables (some, not all obviously). No, we do not use controlled listening rooms or test equipment. So, his business model is based on his electrical engineering experience of almost 60 years. He is also successful with world wide distribution. His problem is that he charges too little to satisfy many high end audio equipment owners as his cables lack the prestige of ownership (versus Nordost, Transparent, Siltech, Synergistic Research, Shunyata, etc). I find fault with many "high end" equipment owners who base purchases on price rather than value (musical). He has loaned cables for use at audio shows in high end systems where they just trounced the other known high end cables (High Fidelity cables being the absolute worst-luckily now defunct). I've heard many cables which sound great in high end systems as well, with very high price tags (such as Masterbuilt cables used to demonstrate Von Schweikert speakers). I've even chosen a Synergistic Research high end digital cable over his ($200-great value) but at substantially higher price after auditioning half a dozen. So, I don't have the hubris of being a golden eared reviewer of equipment or tweaks but I do have ample experience in listening/experiencing sound (and music) to be considered a critical listener. I have friends who are superior to me in their critical listening capabilities who are well known (one a producer, another a producer/remastering engineer and lastly my electrical engineer friend who built every type of cable as a business and many types of tube equipment that measures closer to solid state than old tube sounding gear (he also owns a patent he wrote/submitted himself) on cable manufacturing. In other words, I trust what I hear more than I trust measurements. Measurements are helpful, hearing is believing (and everyone hears differently).
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Oh, of course I have. Problem is that audio marketing has gone so crazy, with people willing to accept any story behind an audio product, that the connection you talk about is long, long gone. It is through objective testing and engineering analysis that we can figure out if you paid for fidelity, or for marketing claims. I wish this was not the case. I wish there was transparency in audio marketing. I wish people spent more time doing controlled listening tests than to believe every random audio test. If that had happened, yes, more money could get you more fidelity. A company recently sent me a $20,000 DAC to test. I was very appreciative that they volunteered to do that. I measure it and easily identify and implementation flaw that has long been fixed by "cheap" (but state of the art) asian audio products. The DAC weighed near 50 pounds! It was a massive beast. But it clearly had flawed engineering that was demonstrable. As a courtesy to the company I returned the product to them and didn't publish the results. My hope is that they revise it and produce a performant product. If so, then $20K is not out of line if someone puts value beyond superb sound reproduction. So no, your experience is not transferable. Any such conclusion means you are paying far more than you should be in audio. The only way to know is to have data otherwise
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Of course it is me. Who can make as many typos as I can in a post??? 😀 As to your point, listening tests are the gold standard in audio and have more power than measurements. To get that though, you need to have your tests fully controlled and documented. Just saying you have run this and that test that runs counter to what research and engineering tells us is of no value. You have to document and fully share the controls used to make sure you are only judging sound and results are not random guesses. If you think measurements can be "deceiving," you have no idea how bad listening tests can be! I can have you listen to two identical audio files and have you tell us they sound different. Indeed that has happened to me! Only when I do a binary compare and realize they are the same that I realize how wrong I was. To be clear, our sense are accurate. It is our brain that plays tricks on us. You have to learn this lesson. There is no better shortcut to audio truth than this. I wish there was. But there isn't. |
@amir_asr, welcome to the forum, will you reciprocate and allow members here to post on your forum without instant bans because we have a wide range of opinions that may not be popular on asr as long as we are respectful? You know, your members simply lose it if anyone likes a component that they have 0 personal experience with, but is simply popular to bash. Is this a dialogue that goes two ways or did you just come here to tell us that you are right and we are all wrong? |
Please forgive me for being blunt but what is this "militia" nonsense? There is no single group in ASR. In every review I post (which is about one every day or so), it doesn’t take but a handful of posts before someone complains about my testing or conclusions. The membership is highly critical and does not at all behave like the caricature you are describing. To be sure, you better expect to get push back when you make outlandish claims without proper evidence. It is no different than going to a Jazz club and insist that the band play country music. And keep getting more and more upset when they don’t and eventually throw you out of the club. This doesn’t make them a "militia" or a cult. We, at ASR, have chosen to have a compass. That compass says we believe what we can prove. That any statement needs to have back up that is reliable. If you don’t believe in that and want to think ever random audiophile observation is as valid as another, then ASR is not a place for you. Don’t go there, get push back and banning only to complain here. It simply is not logical to do. And please consider that my reviews are kept professional. I don’t use terms like snake oil, fraud, etc. I create data and let that speaker powerfully to the conclusions I draw. I don’t see why anyone would want less data about an audio product. Even people who send me gear that doesn’t perform well, like to see the facts. They can still choose to keep the product, or not. None remotely get upset. So how come some of you get that way?
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Okay Amir, obviously you are trying to compare the finite with the infinite. Plumbing equipment can be tested for their intended purchase, absolutely, just as aviation equipment must be tested and retested and hopefully not modified due to in flight failures. So your plumbing analogy is wrong and made to sound stupid as a comparison. Sound and music are infinite. Hence, even the most exacting computer modeling of the most expensive concert halls results in failures. The Elbphilharmonie in Germany is that $850 million hall. The truth is that shoebox configured halls that seat under 2,000 people sound best and used zero computer modeling from the 19th and 20th centuries. I want audiophiles to use common sense and logic by learning to listen to sound and music, not just use measurements as their guide. I have friends with $500k to $1M audio systems. I wouldn't own their systems. They are pleased with them (one I now enjoy listening to). However, the $1M audio system owner is constantly changing equipment because he is unsatisfied with it. There are parts of their high end systems that I like. The $1M system owner dumped $68,000 in High Fidelity cables and purchased GroverHuffman cabling for about $4,000. After hearing the difference of course. The $500K system owner chose to change the 6H30 tubes on his Audio Research SP 28 to 6N6 (6H6) tubes. The result was fantastic. He was also an electrical engineer and thought power cables were all the same despite his higher end ICs , digital and speaker cables. He replaced all six of his Pangea power cables with GroverHuffman power cables after just lending him one power cable for his amp. Since we live a few doors apart and enjoy a wide range of music, we visit each other and can now enjoy music together (but not prior to his major 2 changes in 2022).
This is not an advertisement for GroverHuffman cables. Just, one must listen to alternative equipment in one's own home to make a qualified decision, like an A/B test at a Harman Kardan factory (which is about 5 miles from me).
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