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

@fleschler

I’m sure that I’m not the only one here who feels your frustration but that’s a little disappointing.

What need is there for this kind of bad blood letting here?

@djones51

"My only "belief" is I don’t want to alter the signal I’m given, to me measurements will tell me more about whether that is happening than a hearing mechanism cobbled together by evolution."

"Speakers and room I can adjust to what I like..."

In a nutshell, exactly. Replay equipment needs to be sufficiently accurate to the signal it’s given, otherwise it’s likely to be adding audible distortion.

Some might even prefer that added distortion but that’s not really the point of ASR.

When those who follow such a different opposing philosophy it often seems unlikely the two opposing sides can ever be reconciled on such a divisive matter of faith.

This schism between the objectivists on one hand and the subjectivists (+ a few ’high end dealers?) on the other is probably the biggest one there is in audio.

However it’s fairly obvious which side ASR falls on, isn’t it, and that’s hardly likely to change anytime soon, is it?

What I hear is pointless, just as what you hear is pointless. We hear what we think we hear, what we want to hear, what we need to hear"

IMO The first sentence is about personal experience . " I claim to hear no distortion in my digital setup."   What does anyone gain from that? It's really pointless to anyone but me as your experience is to you. I might be glad you enjoy your setup but your impressions of what you hear doesn't impact anything useful to me as mine doesn't to you.

Second sentence is how our hearing evolved. How our ears and brain work. 

So it's not anything weird or controversial as far as I'm concerned. 

I like the guys that have stated that science is observation and measurement. Someday maybe we will have the tools that allow our observations to be measured in a reliable and repeatable way. 

@cd13 Note what @crymeanaudioriver imbecilic statement that "have heard awful classical recordings, and jazz and much big band is old and mono." Why would I or anyone else use awful classical or jazz or big band recordings to evaluate audio equipment? It is obvious that I ONLY meant high quality recorded and engineered/mastered recordings. Funny, I’d say 80% of my 500+ post 1950s jazz CDs are of high end recording and mastered qualities and maybe 20% of my classical orchestral. I have over 28,500 LPs and 7,000 CDs and recorded and mastered about 250+ classical orchestral, chamber and choral recordings, including major venues.

@prof I was only pointing out a prior Audiogon contributor who I found interesting who has been an avid ASR contributor but now is ridiculed and deemed unworthy of remaining because he said something different (which most manufacturers of quality audio equipment believe is true, and I believe true of inexpensive equipment as well). Tell me a speaker or cartridge, very mechanical devices, don’t break-in.

Robin_L at ASR has contributed interesting knowledge concerning early recordings such as 

Had a job for a year at Ray Avery's Rare Records in Glendale. (PS-I went there for LPs many times)  There were lots of 78's there. The fairly large stack of Enrico Caruso 78's went for $10 a pop in 1977. I don't know if you've ever heard an acoustically recorded 78 played back on a properly functioning player of quality, but the results are uncanny. Yes, frequency response is a disaster but the sense of the musician being in the room is greater than I have heard with any other record/play system.

And Caruso was about dynamics and presence above all. It was the nature of his art, a vocal artist who could fill a large hall with sound before amplifiers.

I'd say there're no "Witches" (in the old pejorative sense, not in the more recent neopagan "Oh lookee, there's Aunt Connie with the kush!" sense) but the practice of different forms of audio magic. It's hard to assign a numeric scale of "quality" to music and the quality of its sound. The range of musical soundscapes is far too varied for that.

Mercury was the one company most famous for recording on that media, there were early Everest recordings and issues on the Command Performance label sourced from 35 mm tape as well. Apparently 35 mm tape recordings did not store as well as regular tape so that when the Mercury Living Presence series was carefully reissued on CDs, sometimes the back-up tapes---three channels on 1/2" tape---were used instead. During the late fifties/early sixties, when these sorts of recordings were being made, there was a push to make three-channel recordings and getting that format accessible to the public. RCA's three channel recordings were eventually issued as three-channel SACDs, and Mercury did the same, if I recall correctly. I remember much improved lateral stereo imaging playing the 3-channel sourced material back when I had a 5.1 system. Still have the SACDs.

Think of it---took 40 years and the development of high-resolution audio media to reproduce the sound the audio engineers were hearing back in 1960.   

I note that most of the vinyl site regards it as inferior and many say it's not worth listening to.   

I will also note that Ward Marston has remastered the entire Caruso catalog on 12 CDs in superb sound, so playing the original 78s is next to unnecessary (I have about 80 of his recordings on 78 and many on LP).  Big as life sound in digital as well now.