I am really tired of reading criticism of Amir who very capably and generously reviews audio equipment. Basically his detractors are saying that they like various types of distortion. There is nothing wrong with enjoying what appeals to you, but it is absurd to find fault with scientific objectivity. Yes, your $1,000 USB cable is very cool, but admit that there isn’t any scientific evidence that it sounds audibly better than Amazon’s $5 cable. All these savants lining up against Amir reminds me of Mussolini’s famous quote, “Many enemies, much honor.”
Amir and Blind Testing
Let me start by saying I like watching Amir from ASR, so please let’s not get harsh or the thread will be deleted. Many times, Amir has noted that when we’re inserting a new component in our system, our brains go into (to paraphrase) “analytical mode” and we start hearing imaginary improvements. He has reiterated this many times, saying that when he switched to an expensive cable he heard improvements, but when he switched back to the cheap one, he also heard improvements because the brain switches from “music enjoyment mode” to “analytical mode.” Following this logic, which I agree with, wouldn’t blind testing, or any A/B testing be compromised because our brains are always in analytical mode and therefore feeding us inaccurate data? Seems to me you need to relax for a few hours at least and listen to a variety of music before your brain can accurately assess whether something is an actual improvement. Perhaps A/B testing is a strawman argument, because the human brain is not a spectrum analyzer. We are too affected by our biases to come up with any valid data. Maybe.
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- 355 posts total
- 355 posts total