Amir and Blind Testing

djones, I don’t understand why you find it necessary to personalize matters; and in a contentious way. Apparently, my opinion on the subject strikes a chord that causes defensiveness and the use of sarcasm in you. Why does it bother you so that my opinion differs from yours? Defensiveness is usually a sign that on some level a person knows that there is truth in the “objectionable” comment.

Now, please explain where in what I wrote did I say anything about using ONLY one’s ears? Let’s try it again, shall we?

+++. **** We use the tools at our disposal to assess and make decisions. Some do it better than others …… **** - mapman

…. and this includes the best tool of all, our ears. +++

Notice that I wrote “includes”. Inclusion is not exclusionary. However, I do believe that of ALL the tools available our ears are the best guide. Why shouldn’t they be? Ultimately, we LISTEN to the sounds that our gear reproduce, no?  And, yes, some do it better than others.

So, why don’t you take a chill pill and let others have their opinions; and, if you must, debate without sarcasm. Or, is all this a bit of cross-thread grudge?

**** I am always amazed of the hilltop pontificating about use your ears yet nobody seems willing to do so. ****

If you only knew.

Amir was polite and i dont doubt about his honesty and dedication at all....

I am less patient with his many disciples on the site ASR....

Very disagreable experience for me....I am very naive when it comes to discussing our experiments...I supposed that people can forget their opinion for the sake of a discussion... 😁😊 It is not often the case in life....Save among friends...I prefer audiogon with all his defects....Because of a better variety of opinions...

Anyway my own position is hard to figure out by people used to separate subjectivist and objectivist in children like warring camps like in Swift Gulliver big egg end kingdom  and small egg end one...

I am inspired by music field and acoustic and psycho acoustic where this division about a piece of gear which must be "tasted" OR must be "measured" make no sense at all...

In my experience and experiments ONLY correlation between measures and subjectivity which is the ultimate judge make sense....

My best to you....

Mahgister,

Not trying to be sarcastic. Just trying to point out, with a nod to Oscar Wilde, that Amir is earnest and so are you. Maybe two earnest. Two sides of the same coin?

If we happen ramp the volume up to 90dB, does it really matter what goes on below 0dB? Measurements can be irrelevant, especially if you generally don't go much beyond 70dB.

Obsessing with excessively low THD+N etc can mean overlooking excellent sounding equipment.

Everyone has their opinion and that's all it is including mine. The only way to get beyond opinions is with vigorous testing including our ears. You may hear better than I and 90% of the population but that tells us what? When you hear good enough to pick product A from B when they both measure beyond human audibility or measure within .1% variance using only your ears  in a controlled testing regimen then you've told us something useful.

This is true but it doesn't really tell us anything.

Some, because of experience, training, open-mindedness, or simply physiological advantage hear better than others.

The point of Amir's video mentioned in the OP is trying to get us past these notions of sighted listening being all that useful for anything other than personal preferences of the aesthetics of the item. Buy what you want, like what you want but personal preferences tells us nothing about the component only about 1 persons preferences.