Amir and Blind Testing

I once wasted my time watching a video “review” of some audiophile switches. It was half an hour of blah blah blah about how his measurements demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that there was absolutely no measurable difference between X Y and Z switches therefore it was impossible to hear any difference so it was all in your small “audiophile” brain, his mantra so to speak. Then he went on to briefly demo the switches he had just “measured” in his (joke of a) system. And guess what: he could clearly hear a difference. His wife could hear a difference. According to him the audiophile switches sounded significantly and audibly worse. Without realising he had just contradicted and refuted his half hour case for “it’s in your head”. If he accepts that his experience contradicts his measurements, for better or worse, then his measurements are flawed. For me Amir became irrelevant after that video.

Somebody’s sarcasm detector is badly broken.

Acoustic did not is reducible to psycho-acoustic science...

Psycho-acoustic science dit not reduce itself to acoustic...

Great posts thanks.... Gear fetichist tasting group and measuring tool fetichists perhaps will understand something....

We cannot measure the difference between a middle C, played on a properly tuned clarinet vs. a synthesizer, vs. a trumpet. Your brain knows which is which immediately. Just like humming the note and singing out, wide-mouthed would measure identical, but you know they sound very different.

Nor can we measure the vibrations our body picks up from places other than our tympanic membrane. (bones, hairs, nerves) Spatial awareness in ingrained in us through evolution. A noise, rustling in the grass on the savannah is a matter of life and death. Our ears are only a piece of the "listening" equation.

I’ve played with EQ and a spectrum analyzer to make the response curves of Magnepans and Klipsch horn-loaded box speakers measure the same in my seat ...and they sure don’t sound identical, though no frequencies are missing.

No measurer can ever tell you which one, out of 2 pieces of gear sounds better. (however you define it.

A timbre is not a tone...A playing tone is made of two phenomenon then...

It’s trivially simple to measure the difference between a clarinet and a trumpet.

Amirm is doing a terrific service to the audiophile community.

You don't have to bow to him as a "cult leader" (ridiculous meme going around) or believe everything he says is beyond critique.   His reviews are quite well vetted even on the ASR forum, where his methods and conclusions are examined.

But taking on manufacturers claims and to the extent possible examining what objective evidence can be gleaned or not in terms of measurements is providing one hell of a lot more information than we are finding in most other places (manufacturer's marketing most of all).

There is a part of the Golden Ears crowd who have an almost mystical belief in their own incorruptible, observational powers - "science can't tell me I'm wrong!  I EXPERIENCED IT."    Those people will likely never be reached.  

And of course as I've argued many times, no audiophile has to pay any attention to measurements or science - we can all buy whatever we want, for whatever reason.

But Amirm is providing some extra information for those who seek it, which is great.

You are right....

The problem like i said is not Amir himself, but his disciples crowd... Testing gear by measuring tools is not the same as participating to an ideological cult....The problem was never Christ but his successive fanatical disciples...

Tool testing obsession reductionism  is not better than gear tasting brand name subjectivism...

Reality is not binary game and i know that you know it for sure....

And of course as I’ve argued many times, no audiophile has to pay any attention to measurements or science - we can all buy whatever we want, for whatever reason.

But Amirm is providing some extra information for those who seek it, which is great.

 

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agisthos,

Amir is the high priest of the ASR cult.

^^^ Not a very promising start.

Years ago, they were militantly claiming that changes to the power supply of dvd/blu-ray players could not possibly have any effect on the video output, because bits are bits and the power supply does not effect the bits.

Given HDMI has been the default transmission method for many years, that claim is correct. Luminance information, like color and other picture values, is encoded in the digital signal.

It is NOT determined by the power supply to a blu ray player. A pixel on the display either receives the information or it doesn’t. (And when it doesn’t, artifacts can occur but they are not of the type you are describing - a rise in brightness level or color saturation of the displayed image).

It was a theoretical argument,

LOL, no it wasn’t. It’s literally how digital video information works - which is shown in practice millions of times a day (at least). If it didn’t, we would be having a heck of a lot of image problems that we just aren’t having.

which was easily disproven by doing any changes from SMPS to LPS, which on the meter would measure visible changes in brightness levels, let alone color measurement differences and detail improvements.

I call B.S.

Show me the evidence you are speaking of where (I presume using HDMI) changing the power supply to a blu ray player measurably altered the brightness, color etc of the image.

I’ve been a member over at ASR forum for 20 years, where professionals and dedicated enthusiasts have been exchanging notes on calibration - using all sorts of sensitive equipment - and NO ONE has reported anything like that, nor any measurable changes between two properly functioning HDMI cables. Because....that’s not how it works.

And it’s just this type of nonsense that we can be thankful there are people like Amirm around to test.