Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy

Simply do not believe a thing from Amir and his minions. No I do not own AQ speaker cables.

ASR is a clown car posse. 

"Some people want to see where the state of the art is, and it is amazing how quiet and distortion free they can make equipment even at very moderate prices these days.

If anyone can show new measurements that reveal how the expensive equipment is really outperforming the moderately priced stuff I'm very open to it."

You put the finger on the problem with Hi-Fi: Big claims. Big Expectations. Uncertain Results. High costs. What are you even trying to accomplish throwing dollar dollar bills around? Sting isn't going to personally travel to your house and perform while you're eating your nightly bowl of spaghetti. 

As long as you have that mindset of "pursuing the best", you'll always be looking at the flaws first and spinning that hamster wheel continuously earning money and spending that on gear you don't need. 

With the ASR mindset, everything is put on a test bench. If that item doesn't score highly on the test bench, it is trash. Buy the top-rated product, then buy the next top-rated product the month after.  

I'm all for calling out BS whenever a manufacturer makes big claims, charges high prices and fails to deliver. 

But at the same time everything is becoming a contest and hype is inevitable.

So I'm utterly confused. Because ASR makes sense at the low end where most products are bad and some stand out. But then there's the obligatory hype of "this speaker punches way above its weight". So you buy that, and it sounds just like a cheap speaker. And you had this fancy pair of speakers in the living room this whole time. 

So my conclusion is: Perfection is the enemy of good (and your wallet). You could just invite your buddy over to smash some beers and listen to tunes. They don't give a flying care if "The treble is a little tinny on that specific track" or "The vocals are a bit nasal with THAT amp". 

I am not one who goes for the hype.  I test our tweaks before buying them.  As to my equipment, I have custom built 22 year old amps, pre-amp and phono pre-amp.  My speakers are 28 years old.  My modified SME IV is 33 years old.  My VPI TNT VI is 16 years old.  Yet I still purchased a new SUT last year, Zesto Allesso and a new digital cable, SR Atmosphere Euphoria.  So, I have a higher end system as an audiophile but am not into changing equipment without a significant improvement.  

As to flat frequency speaker response, I think there is a problem with that statement.  One needs a neutral speaker to start with.  The better and best speakers have off axis results in a room which tend to boost bass and roll off highs.  Reviews of high end speakers show this.   Speakers are not heard both on axis in pairs but in a central location in a room.  I am not explaining this sufficiently accurately but the gist is that listeners receive a sound like the Fletcher-Munson curve and not a truly linear, flat frequency response.  "We are not equally sensitive to sounds of all frequencies so perceived loudness of a tone in fact depends on frequency as well as intensity. Two sounds can have the same physical sound pressure levels but if they are of different frequencies, they are often perceived as having different loudness."  

Certainly, every listener has a preference and mostly different preferences for the sound they prefer.  That's another reason why there are so many choices in audio equipment.  Equipment though, should maintain consistent, neutral character unless the designer wants a colored, less faithful to the recording/mastering engineer reproduction.  That's the purpose of neutrality.

@jtgofish 

If you want to really get under the skin of the ASR thought police bring up the years of Hi Fi Choice unsighted group test reviews which consistently described significant differences between the sound of components and ranked them accordingly.

Yes, I used to feel the same way about Hi-Fi Choice's so called blind listening tests.

That is until I realised that they hardly ever had a consistently unanimous result.

Sometimes a group winner would be someone's least preferred choice.

As was stated earlier, this rendered the group tests as mere opinion.

Even worse, they hardly ever subject an item to a repeat test as subsequent tests can contradict earlier ones.

This month's group test winner would be next month's old news.

I remember a group test of valve amplifiers where the group test went totally against the verdict of an earlier highly favourable review in the same magazine by long time reviewer, the one and only Malcolm Steward.

I was saddened to learn of Malcolm's death in 2020. He seemed to be one of those likeable people you thought that would be around forever.

As far as reviewers go, and that's usually not very far, he was one of the best.

Perfection is the enemy of good

Hmmmmm…. I am not sure this is how the society and humanity works, and has worked over the millennia to get us where we are today