Michael Fremer's system

Please bear with me a second. Not only is it bad for the sound to have SO MANY records in the room - or CDs, or books, any media - but it has NOTHING to do with absorption of Acoustic Waves or any such thing. The odd thing is that some of us have known about this for a very long time, at least 20 years, yet the average Joe Audiophile never heard of it. That’s probably why I have Advanced Audio Concepts in my name. 😃 It’s a Peter Belt (RIP) thing. Stereophile magazine even has two of Peter Belt’s products on their recommended components list. Come on, people! Wake up and smell the coffee! ☕️

“The great sound was in the room the whole time. You just couldn’t hear it properly.”

Machina Dynamica
Advanced Audio Concepts

Odd that MF ears are so golden he can hear huge differences in gear and even ordinary bits of wire but the clutter in his room apparently doesn’t matter. I guess he hears only what he believes. Perhaps there is no money in promoting room acoustics so it isnt a focus?

I hear he does all his listening with headphones...

Fremer addresses the replies he has gotten to this video in the Jan. Stereophile. He mainly talks about people criticizing him and Stereophile because they don’t do blind listening tests, but there is something he says that is applicable here:

"When I review a speaker I put my listening skills on the line in describing the sound I hear. The measurements come afterward and then I get to see them in print in the magazine. Do you want to try that?"

No one here gets their opinions tested by actual measurements. Fremer does and usually passes the test. So that gives him credibility, more credibility than anonymous posters who opine that they get way better sound quality for a fraction of the price without ever having heard Fremer’s system. So, I just have to say that I find it hard to believe that Fremer spends more money, lots more money, for worse sound. Especially when he has audio professionals in his room from time to time. I think someone would have told him by now that his speakers are too big for his room and brought by a pair of smaller speakers and demonstrated that they sound better.

So, as long as we are all just speculating, I have to give Fremer the benefit of the doubt. I say if his system was not working in that room and he could get better sound at a fraction of the price, he would do it. So until someone produces evidence to the contrary, I believe that Fremer has that system because it sounds the best of the options he has tried.  Sounds best to him, of course.

I do not follow Fremer all the way to his conclusions about wires and tweaks.

But he is for me one of the most trustworthy pair of ears when it comes to describing the sound of a speaker.   Over and over through the years I've found his descriptions of the sound of a speaker I have heard to be extremely accurate. 

And given that he does all his reviews in his room, that would seem to say something to me about his ability to get a good indication of the qualities of a speaker in that room.