Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

This is a general response to the initial question, which was an excellent one. ASR provides objective information that I can use to narrow the field of options when shopping; that appeals to my decision-making process. It won't to everyone. There are simply too many options out there promoted by those in the industry, and those whose pocketbooks permit ego-driven extravagances, and become defensive about justifying them. And if you're satisfied, good for you. But I'm just as skeptical of the "If it sounds good to you" school of thought as I am of religious devotion to data. The fact is, there are better ears than mine, and far worse. I can learn from both those better ears, usually musicians, as well as Amir.

Here's a parallel circumstance currently in the news. It occurs to me that the owner and passengers of the ill-fated submersible would be alive today if they had demanded objective evidence of the vessel's safety, rather than relying on the owner's sales pitch. Fortunately, no one's life is at risk making audiophile decisions.

@ossicle2brain : You sound offended. Deeply touched. I am sorry to cause that to you. I meant no harm.

What I meant to say is your story: you bought two cables from Amazon which you don't even have a name or a brand. Then you determined which is of the two is best by measuring them. Kudos to you for coming to a conclusion, but I must say, what made you think that another generic cable bought in Amazon would perform any better than the stock cables that come with the equipment?

richardmathes

... ASR provides objective information ...

The site doesn't seem objective to me at all. Amir seems to have some very strong biases, to the extent that he doesn't even bother to listen to everything he measures.

Did ASR change my opinions?

It changed my opinion on DACs. There is very little difference. I did some prikitive blind-testing at home and can't hear differences.

I never had the feeling of audible differences between cables and solid-state amplifiers. There are exceptions (TotalDAC and Devialet Class-D sounded strange and ASR measurements afterwards confirm it).

What disturbs me at ASR (mostly the users not Amir only): SINAD as a fetish, not looking at other measurements more. Anything above 90dB is inaudible. Benchmarking on 120dB or more is theoretical. Even the low performance of 60dB of record players is irrelevant for sound differences.

I also differ from ASR's view on room acoustics and loudspeakers. There are big differences in data and perceptions, where ASR insists that research suggests, that people don't care. Also I agree with Magico, that resonances and diffraction need to be minimized. More focus should go there, to me it's very audible.

Loudspeaker measurements on Klippel is an important source. It should be mandatory for high end speakers, because in demo rooms one can't discern well the room from the speaker and they sound different at home. Why don't Magico and Wilson disclose their data?

I prefer ASR over the always positive reviews of Guttenberg, absolute sound, Stereophile. 

And finally: ASR gets facts back in HiFi, which was lost for more than 25 years. The ears are very bad sensors compared to the eyes and other senses, it's the brain which extracts the sound using imagination and other senses. That's why it can be easily fooled. Everybody can see differences between TV screens side by side, audio is harder.

@tosch : Wow! It took you 23 years since joining Audiogon in 2000 to make your very first post ever here in Audiogon forums! Amazing!