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

@prof

Why wouldn't Amir defend himself?

If someone was defaming you on another public forum, wouldn't you think it reasonable to defend yourself?  It makes sense to defend yourself directly to the criticisms in said forum ...

The problem with ASR as of late is that such opportunity is not always given. A loud member, or a moderator, or a whole pack of them, publicly accuse an "inconvenient" member of disingenuity, of lack of knowledge, or of low intelligence, and then said member is immediately banned, with no way to defend himself there.

Do you expect to just be able to publicly  criticize anyone you want, and with any level of misrepresentation, without any consequence or pushback?

As far as I can tell, this is absolutely the expectation of certain ASR moderators, and also of certain ASR members whose opinions are considered as the only valid ones by some moderators. That's the crux of the issue the OP raised.

As a medical analogy, this resembles an autoimmune disease. A healthy, balanced moderation serves a function similar to the one served by immune system. A hyperactive censorship, on the other hand, may be gradually killing ASR organism. 

noske

Plus if I don’t like it. refund that bad boy.

That policy must be particular to America. In my country, there are conditions on the reasons you may wish for and be provided a refund - not liking it is not one of them.

That’s interesting. "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" is a common guarantee in the US, although often with a time limit.

The topic about whether or not a vendor should offer refunds is up to them. They have to weigh if the additional sales they make because of the policy outweighs the number of refunds they get. It is a strategy known as "risk reversal". The vendor takes the risk instead of the customer. Let them run their company as they see fit and the customer shops as they see fit. See:

https://ezinearticles.com/?Risk-Reversal---A-Strategy-I-Learnt-From-Jay-Abraham&id=1009021

@fair +1 

A loud member, or a moderator, or a whole pack of them, publicly accuse an "inconvenient" member of disingenuity, of lack of knowledge, or of low intelligence, and then said member is immediately banned, with no way to defend himself there.

@fair

The problem with ASR as of late is that such opportunity is not always given. A loud member, or a moderator, or a whole pack of them, publicly accuse an "inconvenient" member of disingenuity, of lack of knowledge, or of low intelligence, and then said member is immediately banned, with no way to defend himself there.

I don’t have the lengthy experience posting on ASR that you have, but I’ve certainly seen new members of subjectivist bent banned very quickly. And to put things in perspective, I’ve seen that many more times than I’ve seen an actual single- or double-blind test performed for or by ASR.

@amir_asr

There are very frequent blind tests posted by members. Here is a very recent one:

Amir uses a different dictionary from others "frequent" here means "every now and then".

That aside, I am NOT a scientist. Never claimed to be. Never want to be. I follow science just like your doctor does.

Perhaps the site would be better named Audio Medicine Review? 😊

@laoman

Here is the thing. A while ago I was looking around for a new DAC. I listened to about 8 and in no case was the cost of the DAC mentioned. I just sat in a chair and listened to the same music. One that I disregarded very quickly was the Topping.

While ASR-ers don’t actually perform DBT or similar nearly as often as they demand it of others, it is useful to consider what it is and why we should do them sometimes. If we take the DAC example, imagine if I were to do comparative listening test for DACs including a Topping? Now I’ve read ASR for a good while and watched enough of the videos so when I think of Topping I think of Amir. So how can I listen to a Topping knowingly and enjoy it? To give it a fair audition, I’ll need to disguise the brand.