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


"Audiophiles are Snobs"  Youtube features an idiot!  He states, with no equivocation,  that $5,000 and $10,000 speakers sound equally good and a $500 and $5,000 integrated amp sound equally good.  He is either deaf or a liar or both! 

There is a site filled with posters like him called Audio Science Review.  If a reasonable person posts, they immediately tear him down, using selected words and/or sentences from the reasonable poster as100% proof that the audiophile is dumb and stupid with his money. They also occasionally state that the high end audio equipment/cable/tweak sellers are criminals who commit fraud on the public.  They often state that if something scientifically measures better, then it sounds better.   They give no credence to unmeasurable sound factors like PRAT and Ambiance.   Some of the posters music choices range from rap to hip hop and anything pop oriented created in the past from 1995.  

Have any of audiogon (or any other reasonable audio forum site) posters encountered this horrible group of miscreants?  

fleschler

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.

 

 

@djones51 

I have seen this stated more than once "Science is observation then measurement". It's not really how it works,  it would be "verifiable observation". Science has no interest in measuring every non verified observation. ...

Verifying observations a priori isn't scientific though. We develop theoretical knowledge by observation, hypothesis and experimentation in that order.

Initial observation is how we come up with hypothesis in the first place. If you filter observation based on pre-existing theory you can't form new hypotheses. The science is in comparing the prediction of the hypothesis to the result of the experiment.

Of course, myths survive partly because falsifying non-existent things is tricky. I'm not going too far down that rabbit hole this morning.