In the view of some of us it isn’t that measurements don’t make a difference in sound quality. It’s that sound quality is the ONLY important consideration.
The designer/manufacturer of this DAC has produced several DACs over the past 12 years or so. They have been sold world-wide, though mostly in Asia, principally in Hong Kong. Over the years this very small producer has gained a following. His following has been uniquely on the basis of his DACs’ sound quality. There is no promotion; there is no hype; there is no advertising. In all the reading I’ve done I have never before come across a set of measurements for the DACs going back to the LKS MH-DA002. Several folks, including me, have had an LKS MH-DA004 and on the basis of listening, basically said to themselves: if this is what he can do for about $1500, I MUST hear what he can do for $3200. I was also influenced by the quality of the parts within, and the overall construction. Others bought this DAC based on the reports only of sound quality. I think it is fair to say that, by and large, they like what they have heard and they are quite satisfied with the purchase. They have written as much. Extensively. Their DACs sound just as fine after the ASR report as before.
The designer has written that he designs by ear and not by measurement. He says designing for measurement is relatively easy for a trained engineer. At various stages he says he made changes that could improve measurements but reversed them if the sound quality, as he heard it, was not as good. If that makes people very uncomfortable, they should probably look elsewhere for a DAC. Over the course of this audio hobby, and some of us have been into it for a long time, that approach to design used to be celebrated. The designer has given an example in the lack of any feedback in his discrete analog stage. A lack of feedback is often advertised, and is generally understood, to yield better sound quality but poorer measurements. Op amp chips with feedback (and better measurements) are thought to yield a kind of clean but sterile sound, well recognized in several popular DACs on the market. In many other areas of audio, decisions are often made in favor of devices with poorer measurements than alternatives. That would include tubes and analog sound generally.
The ASR article certainly has opened up a useful discussion of measurements versus listening as criteria for audio component design and selection. It’s as old as audio. Recall that early solid state electronics were "proven" by measurements to outperform high quality tube units. Modern solid state? Modern tubes? Digital? Analog? Who knows?
Most of these thoughts were expressed (and now buried) in the long Musetec thread.