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

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.  

in my experience, mood and environment and company and context affect enjoyment at least as much the quality (sub- or objective, take your pick) of the playback system. some of the best experiences with recorded music you can have might involve mono, 78rpm, poor/decayed/scratched/noisy/generally subpar recordings, crappy bar speakers, harsh PA's, etc. in other words if you need everything to sound like Aja to really get into it that's fine. i don't.

would also note that if your goal in building a home system is to get the stuff that's best-engineered according to one website's measurements, that's a little different from setting the goal to maximize your enjoyment of music. you very well might love your topping stack and that's great. more power to you! but you also might not. and what then?

from my perspective there's no way around the fact that you have to listen to know whether something is going to work for you. this isn't an argument against measuring equipment, but it is an argument against relying on "the science" instead of your ears