@axo1989
All of this stuff provides a wealth of information about speaker behaviour and performance and likely does tells us how they will sound. Except we as humans can’t integrate all of that meaningfully to get all the way there in terms of predictive sonics, so often we have surprises when we listen.
Yes, even very experienced people can be surprised. John Atkinson, as experienced as anyone, often enough notes things like "this measurement looks bad, but surprisingly it was not noticeable in most program material."
In terms of the usefulness of measurements for any particular individual, there are so many variables.
For instance, a real by-the-measurements buyer may be quite satisfied with his "blind" purchase for any number of reasons. Maybe there were subtle differences between that and another speaker, but he decides he doesn’t care that much. Or perhaps he is simply satisfied that the measurements show it to be an accurate speaker and "whatever the source sounds like, it sounds like." So it can be a sort of plug-and-play purchase.
Other people (like me) may be really focused on certain aspects we really are seeking and take notice of. I don’t mean by that being more of a Golden Ear, but simply slightly different taste and goals. If you ask some at the ASR forum "what does your system sound like?" I wouldn’t be surprised to be greeted by numerous shrugs. "Accurate. It doesn’t really sound like anything. I don’t want my system to sound like anything, I just want it to pass along the source accurately and that’s mostly what it does."
So there is at least a sense, in this approach, in which one’s system "doesn’t have a ’sound.’" But if you are someone like me, I will immediately notice the particular "sound" of that person’s system, because I tend to be "chasing a type of sound."
I’m comparing the sound of systems both to live voices and instruments and against different sound systems, and I’m nudging my sound to where I want it. So I’m always aware of "how a system sounds" and don’t just treat it as if "accurate to the signal" was the last word about a system. There will be some in the mostly-measurements crowd who’d dismiss some speakers because they clearly depart in certain ways from "The Goal Of Speaker Design" as they see it. They may even have heard the speaker and declared it "terrible, just like it measures!" Except they may not care that the speaker is doing something I and others might find to be very compelling because of (or in spite of) it’s wonky design. That’s why I can’t just go by the criteria and reports of measurements-or-bust audiophiles. It’s not that I have better ears, it’s just that I may be listening for something they care less about.
One also sees a form of justification at places like ASR that learning more about audio, and then seeking and obtaining "better/more accurate equipment" is a way off the "audiophile merry-go-round" where you are just throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping to see what sticks, in a despairing viscous circle in which you don’t know how to make yourself happy. Some number of ASR members are sort of escapees from this previous audiophile life. And I completely understand that point of view.
But of course the satisfaction with gear is far more centered on the mindset of any individual than it is on the gear. What’s another way of "getting off the audiophile merry-go-round of dissatisfaction?" Well, you could just decide to be less picky. Like most of the world who are not obsessed with the gear. That too will get you off the merry-go-round. So it’s not the gear, it’s the individual. Some "subjectivist" audiophiles will get wrapped up in endless tweaks (which is fine!), some "objectivists" may be more compelled by measurements yet spend their time reading about SINAD measurements, or fiddling with all sorts of gear, measuring it etc. Just another way of obsessing :-)
Further, while the get-off-the-merry-go-round-using-accurate-gear folks may see the alternative as some form of despair and inevitable recipe for dissatisfaction,
if you look at the "subjectivist oriented" audiophiles most seem like they are having a ball, and plenty of them have actually owned speakers or gear they fell in love with, and kept it for long periods, decades even.
So there is some self-confirming rationalization going on at "both ends" of the conversation. It doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth, but good to always look beyond the rationalization to notice how the facts support it or not.
