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

@fleschler

ASR "militia" cannot differentiate the difference between biographical summary of one’s music expertise versus self-aggrandizement I am no more important than any other audiophile; however, music experience as an amateur recording engineer in major orchestral halls of well over 250 recordings and for the Erich Zeisl (brother in law of Schoenberg) centenary collection of 11 CDs for Vienna, UCLA and USC establish some credentials that my opinion in how vocal, chamber and orchestral music can (not should) sound is evident. I do not have a "golden ear." I just have a lifetime of experience performing and recording/mastering music.

This is a common retort.  That you have been either producing music for many years or an audiophile for the same and hence your impressions are correct.  Fact is that none of this trains you to a) be a critical listener and b) make your listening tests reliable.  This is not only position of audio research but also my personal professional experience.  In my last corporate job, we performed controlled listening tests of hundreds of audiophiles and sadly, they way underperformed our trained testers in hearing compression artifacts.

Research work would be so much easier if we could just recruit people like you and render an opinion about sound fidelity with no controls. But it is not. The only way we know you speak the "truth" about fidelity is to block all other stimulus than the sound arriving at your ear.  And further, repeat observations many times to rule out chance. Nothing replaces this.  Every shortcut to that is prone to serious faults.

This is an uncomfortable truth for many of us. After all, we call ourselves audiophiles with the intent of saying we know what good sound is like. But it is the nature of how we behave as humans.

You can argue with this and create your own domain of audio not based on realities of decades of research. That is fine. But please don't throw rocks at me at ASR or the membership for using proper science and research as compass of what is right.

Adding on to above, post, I have zero skills in recording, mixing and mastering music. In those domains, your experience blows me out of water.  So there is no attempt to put that experience down in the slightest. It is just that it doesn't apply to the topic at hand (reproducing of recorded music as opposed to creating it).

@td_dayton

@amir_asr cool of you to show up. i have a question - would you say that "if

[insert audiophile claim] can't be measured by my tests, it doesn't exist" is a fair description of your view? why or why not? 

Let me first tell you that there is far more to conclusions we draw than measurements. Myself and many members of the forum are engineers and understand how your audio devices operate.  We then combine this with careful measurements.  And then look at what audio research (published) tells us.  If all three arrows point the same way across testing multiple categories of products, then we have very high confidence in our conclusions as to efficacy of such claims.

As an example of above, we know how power supplies work in audio products. So when someone says this power cable "filters" noise that then does the same in your audio output, we can analyze this on all fronts. We know that there are multiple filters working far more effectively in your audio gear than anything a power cable (or conditioner) can do.  We then combine that knowledge by showing that said power cable provided no filtering. And even the company itself showed no such evidence. We then go further and produce highly distorted AC waveform and show that the audio gear did its job and nothing changed in its output.  After testing a number of such products with the same outcome, we then have a very high confidence answer with strong data to back it.

Please note that this is VERY different than what other objectivists do. I put in tons and tons of effort in testing these audiophile claims. I have tested more interconnects and power conditioners than I can keep track of. And when a new one is offered to me, I test it again in the thought that it may be the one that shows a difference. This should show you the openness I bring to this field. There is nothing "cult-like" about what we do.

Note that there situations where measurements provide part of the answer but not all. Speaker and headphone measurements are very powerful in their predictive power but not sufficient. We don't for example fully know the effect of radiation patter for a speaker in different rooms and for different people. Measurements do however rule out the poor designs and do so with authority. Maybe some of those are still good but there are so many good choices with good engineering so why take a chance?

I recently recommended an IEM. A bunch of people purchased it. About 70% love it and can't imagine how great this $50 IEM is. 10% to 15% say it sounds good but better with EQ. 10 to 15% say it is not for them.  This shows how powerful imperfect or incomplete measurements can still be. 

@fleschler 

@invalid BINGO!!!

I was a commercial property appraiser (to be distinguished from residential) for 32 years, constructed apartment buildings and single family tract homes.  I chose/use higher quality materials in low income housing to prevent future repair expenses and the safety of my tenants.  I use higher quality all brass plumbing fixtures and fittings,  only schedule L US or Mexican manufactured copper plumbing and best quality fittings, Bradford-White water heaters, Wilkins water pressure regulators, etc. as an example.  Sure, Loews has cheaper plumbing items, but you get what you pay for-expect plumbing failures sooner (a few years) rather than in decades later (w.h. exceptions since they only last 6 years now).  

If plumbing was judged like how audio is, you would be using paper for pipes, candles to heat water, little dots around water heater to increase its efficiency, magic tablets to add to water to cure every disease made to man. And have even a simple pipe coupling cost $2,000 because it was made out of this or that metal with cryogenic treatment!

My wish is that audiophiles bring the common sense and logic they use in other fields to their hobby. If the above sounds absurd in plumbing, similar talk for audio should do the same.

Okay Amir (if that's ASR's Amir), I also happen to be a beta tester of audio cables for a boutique manufacturer (GroverHuffman.com) for over two decades.  No, it is a subjective test after burning in cables and hearing other manufacturers high end/expensive cables (some, not all obviously).  No, we do not use controlled listening rooms or test equipment.  So, his business model is based on his electrical engineering experience of almost 60 years.  He is also successful with world wide distribution.  His problem is that he charges too little to satisfy many high end audio equipment owners as his cables lack the prestige of ownership (versus Nordost, Transparent, Siltech, Synergistic Research, Shunyata, etc).  I find fault with many "high end" equipment owners who base purchases on price rather than value (musical).   He has loaned cables for use at audio shows in high end systems where they just trounced the other known high end cables (High Fidelity cables being the absolute worst-luckily now defunct).   I've heard many cables which sound great in high end systems as well, with very high price tags (such as Masterbuilt cables used to demonstrate Von Schweikert speakers).  I've even chosen a Synergistic Research high end digital cable over his ($200-great value) but at substantially higher price after auditioning half a dozen.   

So, I don't have the hubris of being a golden eared reviewer of equipment or tweaks but I do have ample experience in listening/experiencing sound (and music) to be considered a critical listener.  I have friends who are superior to me in their critical listening capabilities who are well known (one a producer, another a producer/remastering engineer and lastly my electrical engineer friend who built every type of cable as a business and many types of tube equipment that measures closer to solid state than old tube sounding gear (he also owns a patent he wrote/submitted himself) on cable manufacturing.   

In other words, I trust what I hear more than I trust measurements.  Measurements are helpful, hearing is believing (and everyone hears differently).