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

@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

@juanmanuelfangioii 

I think @amir_asr ​​​​@crymeanaudioriver should get tossed. Pure spam.

Toss this @axo1989 too!

I’d be interested to know what I’ve posted here that you are objecting to, specifically.

@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

I find that characterization quite misleading.  It isn't just because "he said something different" it's that he's making dubious yet-very-confident claims, and providing poor arguments for those claims!

OldHvyMec is frankly being treated mostly with kid-gloves in that thread!  Almost all (or all) the replies are quite civil and are simply pointing out the flaws in his argument.  One person asked OldHvyMec if he's sure he'll be happy at the ASR forum, but I didn't see a single person saying he was "unworthy of remaining."

(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.

The question is always "are the changes audible?"   There are good arguments, it seems, for why even speaker break in is over-hyped (e.g. most of the breaking in of driver surrounds etc typically occur rapidly, not over great lengths of time, though there seem to be *some* data suggesting *some* drivers can take longer to break in.  But this hardly supports the common audiophile assumption that virtually every speaker sounds different after some extended break in period.

As for the other mechanical devices, I'm not sufficiently expert myself to rule it out, but do you have any measurements showing changes in the signal after time? 

If it's based only on the "I Swear I Heard A Difference" method of vetting such "break in" that's not too compelling.  I've seen audiophiles literally claim everything breaks in sonically, even their AV racks!  

And remember OldHvyMec was making claims about cables.