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

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.

@tonywinga 

Amir says, "When it comes to non-linear distortions, audiophiles are notoriously poor at hearing those artifacts.  It is for this reason that even poor measuring gear is praised as sounding good."

Tsk Tsk, another generalization without supporting data- bad science.  Actually, everyone is poor at hearing non-linear distortions because they occur naturally around us and even in our heads, inside our ears to be specific.  That is one reason tube amps without negative feedback sound better but SS amps without negative feedback can sound good too but look worse on paper.  

You complain about my statement not being scientific and general and proceed to give me the very definition of those in your response!  :)

I am happy to back my statement with proper research and references.  To hear small impairments you need to know what to listen for.  And for that, you need to understand the underlying system.  Audiophiles tend to be poor at both even though some walk around thinking they are very gifted on that front.

For above, reason, when we care about reliable data, we use trained listeners.  Earlier I showed research by Dr. Sean Olive on reliability of different groups of listeners when testing speakers:

Notice how poorly audio reviewers did which audiophiles tend to regard to have superior ability to evaluate other gear.  Harman research showed that you need to have 10X more trials or number of testers to create the same set of reliable data as their trained listeners.

Trained listeners are extensively used in other domains such as hearing compression artifacts. When at Microsoft, and without that knowledge initially, I suggested to my manager of signal processing group that we recruit the hundreds of audiophiles we had at the company to identify impairments in codec. Blind test was created and distributed to them.  A while later my manager came back telling me how poorly they had done.  And that they were essentially no better than general public, and far worse than our trained listeners.  I asked him to give me an example.  He gave me one of the tests where I easily found the artifact.  I apologized for wasting his time and from then on, we continued to use our trained listeners (of which I was one).

It took me about 6 months of intensive training to learn to find small non-linear artifacts.  Those skills now allow me to hear them in broad set of tests which most audiophiles would not dare to take let alone pass.  I gave an example of this in video I post on blind testing (I think).

Back to your comment, I have tested a ton of tube gear.  I find their distortion to either not be audible or simply manifest in brightness, lack of clarify and edginess.  Yet audiophiles make the claims you repeat.  There is not one publish controlled test which backs their or your position.  None.  So if you are a fan of "science," I suggest not repeating folklore like that which can't be proven. At least not on the same breath as telling me I was unscientific.