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

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 

Well you would not expect consistent unanimous results from blind listening tests involving different listeners  because different people have different sonic preferences.But there is value in what was found to be good on average as that product is most likely to sound good to most people-or at least most experienced listeners because that is what the listeners were[usually a mix of industry designer/engineers and audio journalists].

And Hi Fi Choice did use more than one listening session per product.And all products were level matched.The difference with other unsighted tests being that the room was familiar to the listeners  and I consider that would make a difference in terms of being able to hear more differences between components and something that should be included in any blind listening tests but isn't.

"Sting isn't going to personally travel to your house and perform while you're eating your nightly bowl of spaghetti." 

@kokakolia - This actually makes me very happy 👍