@amir_asr stop spamming to cover up your lack of accountability. Desperately seeking attention. 

In building my own horn speakers, I had no luck in achieving a satisfying sound until I paid attention to the science Amir is referencing. I should note that I was aware of this science from the beginning of the project and believed in it, but had some conceptual errors about how to get there, so the initial result was way off the mark. I finally realized that there was simply no way to adjust my way out of the physical arrangement choices I had made. I had to choose a different tweeter horn flare and position it differently, and work on the crossover setting until I could get a smooth on and off axis response down to below 600Hz. I didn’t have access to a Spinorama machine so it took a lot of painstaking measurements on and off axis, setting the time window in REW short enough to reasonably simulate an anechoic space, and carefully measuring the placement of the microphone. It’s amazing to hear something finally so satisfying when before I was questioning the capabilities of the drivers, cabinets, room and electronics to have the capability to get there. The science really did lead me much closer to where I wanted to be, although taste still comes in to play. I had to tweak the on-axis measured response slightly by ear but I eventually reached a sound quality that I was starting to believe might be impossible without spending a lot more on electronics and drivers. Even thought I knew it was a problem, the poor off axis response sounded bad enough that it made me doubt the quality of components that weren’t at fault. I can't imagine the rabbit's hole I would have went down trying to correct the issue by trying different amps, DACs, and cables before getting that sorted out. 

It would seem that Amir is in fact a perfect example of the type of hobbyist that you describe here. A pure objectivist, who simply will not trust his ears regardless of what they are telling him, relying instead on what his vaunted measurements are showing. 

No.  Not true at all.  What you describing is a person like @soundfield.  He is the one that will ridicule you at mere mention that anything sounds different in audio.  He has no use for your ears or any possibility that technically something may have an audible effect.

Hey Amir, only one of us is an ex MS millionaire, I won't be able to afford it if you start charging me rent living inside your head!

Ok, so which is it, I have zero knowledge and do no measurements etc,like you claimed before, or all I do is measure and no listening like above??

Is there something called bipolar egomania? So essentially, these were based purely on measurements (which is actually true), but since I don't listen, got lucky that others are gobsmacked by the sound?

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2019/03/17/florida-2019-soundfield-audio-vac-nad-big-sound-or-little-you-decide/

https://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php/shows-events/florida-international-audio-expo-2023-tampa-usa/1060-fiae-2023-soundfield-audio-obelisk-t710-the-most-ambitious-loudspeaker-system-at-the-show

Is it possible that I do know what I'm doing and you have no clue what you're talking about? How many speakers did you measure prior to getting the NFS a year or 2 ago?

Where this distinction between objectivist and subjectivist come from in audio and why there is now a complete DIVISION ?

it come not from science but from the efforts by technology and audio market , divided about the GEAR marketing PUBLICITY complementary strategies: is our piece of gear the best well measured by technology, or is this piece of gear the best loved one by all listeners ?

Well, I have great news for you: we at ASR use science for both because they are actually quite interrelated. Science is our friend and not our enemy as is the case for subjectivsts who care about nothing but "what my ears tell me."

Back in 1967 a PhD graduate of Imperial College in UK with specializing in psychoacoustics named Dr. Floyd Toole joined the new National Research Council in Canada to investigate what made a speaker more appealing to listeners than another. At that time, it was thought that everyone was different in their preference so there was room to build any and all speakers with whatever response.

He organized controlled blind tests and tested multiple speakers against each other. You know what popped out? That there was strong commonality in what listeners preferred. With no reference to what is "real," listeners agreed with what was good sound and what wasn’t. That this was no wild west.

What was even more fascinating was that measurements could, to a high degree explain and predict listener preference! That a speaker which had flat on-axis and smooth off-axis correlated quite well with listener preference.

The above was quite reassuring. That even in absence of a reference, we prefer an uncolored sound. The coloration is obvious when viewed in a special set of measurements called Spinorama. And reflected in US ANSI CEA/CTA-2034 standard.

Dr. Toole has risen to the level of top luminary in audio science for his incredible contribution to the field of sound reproduction rooms. His work (and that of his team) have hugely impacted how speaker are designed. Look at the response of this Genelec 8361A for example:

See the comments about flat on axis and excellent directivity? That is complying with this research. In case you don’t know who Genelec is, they are the top 2 or 3 brands in studio monitors (and likely the largest). Here is their German competitor, Neumann in the form of KH150:

See the similarity in the form of flat on-axis and controlled directivity?

These companies are no joke. The know the science and follow it. They know that a neutral measuring speaker is the right approach.

We are here due to generosity of Dr. Toole and his team in publishing everything they found in peer reviewed journals of ASA and AES. On the latter, AES bestowed the title of AES Fellow upon Dr. Toole. From this bio:

Dr. Toole’s research focused primarily on the acoustics and psychoacoustics of sound reproduction. Most notably, he established methods for subjective and objective evaluations which have been used to clarify the relationships between technical measurements of loudspeakers and listeners’ perceptions. All of this work was directed to improving engineering measurements, objectives for loudspeaker design and production control, and techniques for reducing variability at the loudspeaker/room/listener interface. For a papers on these subjects he received the Audio Engineering Society (AES) Publications Award in 1988 and, with Sean Olive, another in 1990.

So no, there is no dichotomy as you state it: " is our piece of gear the best well measured by technology, or is this piece of gear the best loved one by all listeners." Maybe not "all" but we know how to please vast majority of listeners with speaker measurements as a tool to predict that.

Now, if you haven’t been exposed to this science -- and i take it that you have not with that commentary -- I can see why this would be all a surprise. So I suggest getting started by buying Dr. Toole’s book and really getting educated in science of audio and preference:

Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms (Audio Engineering Society Presents)

It costs only $60 and will give an education that a million forum posts won’t. I suggest you put down those two silly papers on FFT which do nothing but confuse you and start reading this book.

We at ASR follow this science because we not only understand it, but also experienced it. I have attended the double blind test of speakers not once but twice at Harman. Dr. Toole is a personal friend and teacher. People who buy speakers like I show above have incredibly positive experience and satisfaction.

I have concluded from experience that there are things that I cannot hear. I don't hear differences in dacs or digital cables, or power conditioners. I don't hear jitter issues from digital sources, network switches and cables, or streaming devices, or distortion issues associated with feedback in solid state amplifiers. I don't hear the special magic in analog sources such as tape or vinyl, nor do I detect euphoric distortion from tube amplifiers. I don't hear differences from power cables or other expensive cables.

I'm not going to argue about whether other people hear these things or not. I only know with confidence that I can't hear them. 

What I'll claim I can hear clearly is shortcomings with the phantom center image when using only two speakers for stereo playback. Others claim they hear no problem with this in a properly setup system, and feel that it actually sounds superior to multi-channel systems or setups that employ some kind of inter-aural crosstalk reduction. I believe them. It's hard for me to fathom but they say they don't hear a problem even though they can hear all kinds of things I can't hear. 

I've been in a lot of showrooms over the years, several HiFi trade shows, and listened to high end systems in people's homes. To my ears, straight stereo two speaker playback ALWAYS has a particular sound to it, a degradation of the tone of center panned sounds that's unmistakable. It's a particular effect, and like Amir says about dipole planar speakers, I find it tiresome. 

So that's my problem. I have to deal with it. Those who don't hear it as a problem are lucky because they only have to buy two speakers and don't have to find a way to do any up-mixing. On the other hand, I'm lucky because I don't have to fuss over cables, dacs, streamers, power supplies and analog sources.