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

ASR uses science in the title but really reflects an engineering culture. Amir himself says they (generally) don’t do science, but measurements, which is correct.

My day job is in ecology, so I work with scientists, engineers, comms people, policy and legal and so on. In my experience science and engineering cultures differ: scientists observe reality, form hypotheses and test them via experimentation; engineers learn complex rule systems and solve problems by applying those rules. I think that’s why the core ASR dialectic is so linear-mechanistic. It’s all about the rules. Curiosity, less so.

I also like the old saying "in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they aren't". The interesting people at ASR are these with enough experience and intelligence to see (and see the humour in) this.

Wow, I haven’t dropped by in a couple of days.  Still going, I see.

”The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

As I cannot claim to have absolute hearing, another one cannot not claim that my observations are 'wrong' from the start because my observations are not significant enough  (just anecdotal 'evidence'). I A/B a lot, but don't tell me from the start that my observations are delusional. It always comes down to cables because of the tiny advantages there are to gain in contrast with components. Let's asume that I might be right (huh no, the horror), are you willing to learn from my experiences and try to examine and study the differences. Or better, to learn from people like Galen Gareis, Garth Powell or Max Townshend. People that say I am rejecting science are incorrect. I combine technical information and measurement reports with common sense and good hearing/golden ears :)

@tonywinga

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

The best humour, so many layers!

@axo1989

Nice post of yours directly above this one.

Re the quoted one, thanks. I think I first posted there around Christmas time. I read reviews a few years prior. Didn’t find your user name but give me a clue and I’ll follow up :-) Best to avoid heavy baggage I agree.

I’ve often been treated like a "subjectivist-in-wolf’s-clothing" on ASR. But that’s usually from the small cadre of "the usual suspects. " So there is certainly some inflexible thinking going on, and some are triggered by any appeal to subjectivity or subjective descriptions.   (In fact at one point it was suggested that I should continually declare that I reviewed speakers for a little while, 20 years ago, so that everyone could view my arguments with the proper amount of suspicion and by association with the reviewer crowd my honesty should be suspect...)

As I think you've seen I am often arguing against that type of mindset just as I do about a "purely subjectivist" mindset here.

But there is a lot of common ground and agreement with many others and on the whole I find the forum agreeable.   Same with people here.