Amir and Blind Testing

It comes down to one thing, Trust your own ears and stop dwelling on Magazine Reviews which by itself is a paid advertisement industry.

Reviewers make money from the industry to review products, this also helps them to fund their hobby by gaining products at distributor pricing or even lower. If reviewers kept giving honest reviews about products being over priced and under performing no audiophile manufacture would ever give them a product to review again.

The same can be said about the Uber expensive audio products which constantly are supposed to be the best of the best.

Not all reviewers are dishonest people but they are foced to always write faviourable reviews. If they dont they loose out on further products to review which in turn results for them less work and earnings.

@rixthetrick 

+1000

Man, you nailed it. Couldn't have said it better...

@bruce19 But much of the audiophile pursuit is just pushing boundaries a few percent or less at a time. That is where the really big money gets spent and ironically that is where data is almost never presented.

Yes - step outside the echo chamber that is so entrenched by decades of big money, deflection, dishonesty, manipulation and other unethical norms of behavior.   It won't hurt very much :-)

I’m relatively new to high end audio after listen to Spotify on an Amazon echo speaker for many years. I recently got a space where I could pull out my 30 year old college system - haffler amp, nad pre, and definitive tech speakers. I got tidal plugged in my iPhone and was very happy. Then I got tired of not having a volume remote and replaced the preamp with a new one (tube preamp from audio van alstine). The immediate difference was gigantic and I was shocked a pre amp made such as difference. I’ve since replaced all my gear…node streamer, Pontus DAC, van alsten amp, and audio physic speakers. 
 

here is my opinion on the matter (just my simple one man’s world view…):

there are 3 kinds of system “improvements” or “investments”

1. Something that clearly makes a difference and you can A/b test all you like yo prove it but any rational person will hear it. This was the case of my pre-amp. It’s also the difference between echo speaker and my 5k speakers! These are rare examples probably only for those who are starting out in this hobby. 
 

2. something that sounds better but is subtle and hard to distinguish when doing some basic A/B testing. But over weeks and doing lots of listening you get there. This is real but it’s subtle and it comes down to hearing same source differently on the different devices. When i added a DAC to replace my node internal DAC (originally with denafrips ares) this happened. Immediately the sounds wasn’t that different. But over time I could hear it. Could still be bias or whatever but to me I can hear things better than before. 
 

3. the last category is things that make us “feel better” but have no sound quality improvement. This is most controversial but it shouldn’t be. When I replaced my radio shack speaker cables with BlueJeans custom made/welded cables I felt better but nothing sounded better. Same for the 100 dollar power cord I got for my amp. Does anything sound better because if this - hell no. But I have a 10k stereo system and I feel better with using quality cables. Nothing wrong with that. For instance - if someone wants to spend 5k on a PS audio power conditioner or whatever that’s their business. It won’t do anything for sound quality at all. But having clean power feeding a very expensive and special system isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It would certainly make me feel better about my system. 
 

I enjoy reading ASR and then then reactions at the other forums about this topic of measurement and A/B testing. Been thinking and reflecting a lot about it myself and therefore wantEd to put my thoughts down. Thank you for listening.