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

@cleeds

As for "outlandish claims," it’s hard top your claim that you’ve "reviewed" components that you haven’t ever heard. You may be the only "reviewer" with that level of confidence. Truly odd.

Amir will measure the actual signal output when testing things like cables, and show that they either do not change the signal at all, or that the changes are so extraordinarily low they are well in to the realm we need instruments like a Precision Analyzer to detect them. Remember: instruments are typically devised to extend our limited senses, to reliably detect what we can not detect using our senses alone.

And yet audiophiles will still claim to hear sonic differences with such products, and simply dismiss this evidence. This is akin to dismissing the scientific evidence for the limits of human hearing and claiming "I don’t care what the objective data say, I can hear up to 30 kHz!" While also refusing to take an audiogram with a professional audiologist because "I reject the use of such blind tests to tell me the limits of my hearing."

And you want to talk about "outlandish claims?"

In many such cases...even though Amir actually will include listening tests...he doesn’t need to. Based on plenty of research in to the limits of human hearing, distortion levels, masking thresholds etc, he can say "This is inaudible" from the measurements. To say it IS audible is going against most of the science and engineering theory. So Amir is not making the outlandish or extraordinary claim, the audiophile who claims to hear differences is doing so. So IF you are going to reject the measurements and the inferences from those measurements, these audiophiles could step up and show, in tests where they aren’t peeking at the gear, they can actually reliably identify the differences they claim.

Unsurprisingly, this virtually never happens. But...they’ll just continue to throw darts at Amir and ASR, and continue to brag about having "more capable hearing" than poor Amir and the ASR crowd, without ever putting this to a test.

How convenient.

Those who clamor most loudly for blind testing rarely undertake such evaluations themselves.

@cleeds , I have seen 3 people most loudly clamor for blind testing in this discussion. Amir, who stated he has done many many blind tests. Prof, who has done at least several blind tests, which he described in this thread, and me, who has also done blind tests, which I noted.  How do you think I reached this spot?  I used to believe I could hear differences until it was shown to me I could not. I also did medical research and lived blind testing.

Thomas Edison did blind testing using whole audiences in the 1900’s to show off his new phonograph.  He had an opera singer and his phonograph behind a thin curtain on stage.  The audience was asked to guess if the singing was live or a recording.  The audience couldn’t tell the difference. 
‘Now, do you really believe his 1908 phonograph was as realistic sounding as a live human voice?  It did have something like 110 dB dynamic range. 
Test conditions make all the difference in blind testing.  

@kota1

You control everyone at ASR and we have a consensus of members here who feel you heavily censor your site and bannish contributors on a whim.

ASR has possibly hundreds of active members and dozens of threads, without checking. Such power of control that you attribute to Amir! The bloke must never sleep.

There are here a few disgruntled folk here who feel entitled to have their say on a forum about which they are shocked, horrified and mortified.

I’d bannish myself on a whim were I to insist on pushing the general guidelines to such a point that I became the antipathy of what the spirit of the forum is intended to convey.

I made an innocent mistake on an unrelated forum a while ago and was banished for making light of a certain person in high office. I was unaware of certain strict protocols.

I own my mistake, however innocent it may have been.