Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

" We do not measure devices in the working conditions they are to be used"

There’s a lot of discussion to be had about the scope of a standard suite of measurements, such as including ultrasonics to see potential IMD, how long peak power should last, highly variable loads, etc. But generally, the measurements Amir, Erin, and others on the site use are quite a bit more exacting and stressful to the equipment than listening to music, so I don’t think this is a very compelling objection. At any rate, scope of measurements is discussed at length and quite vociferously at ASR, with many differences of opinion.

" we still do not have a "human weighting" for the results"

I’m not sure what this means. Certainly, the human ear cannot detect a vast array of signals that can be detected with even cheap measuring equipment (REW and a $40 microphone). So another topic with a lot of discussion is the "audible threshold" at which signal artifacts can be safely ignored. You’ll find a post at ASR suggesting pretty useful loose and strict thresholds for noise.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/audibility-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/

Both of these dialogues provide examples of concepts I’ve learned more about by reading at ASR. I’m at a loss as to why people here wouldn’t feel the same way. To me it just seems incurious.

Of course, if you believe human hearing goes beyond what has been shown in controlled experiment, that’s your prerogative, but if you espouse that at ASR, it will get unpleasant for you. Usually the invective is directed (appropriately) at the idea, rather than the poster, but alas, not always.

Have fun on the internet!

""His does all this pro bono" Are you sure? He does not do it pre bono, he asks for donations. Also what does he do with the equipment that certain companies send to him?"

They sit here in an ever growing mountain of gear!  Here is a picture of 100+ samples I post a while back when the last guy challenged me this way:

It is much taller now and there are other places I stash them.  I should do something with them but I have not thought of what yet.  Occasionally they come in handy in  testing something.  Or re-testing the same gear because someone has found an issue.

The donations are there for a) members to show their appreciation for the work and b) to cover the expenses of doing all this.  With some exceptions, I pay for return shipping of anything I test.  This adds up to lots of expense given the hundreds of gear I test per year.

Keep in mind that *everyone gets the same information* whether they donate or not.  Nothing special is given to that membership class.  In that regard, donations are purely optional.  This is in sharp contrast to your typical reviewer who begs for money, buying form sponsored links, content behind paywalls, etc.

"You have never explained why you recommend a product whose quality control is crap."

If a product fails during testing, it absolutely does NOT get a recommendation.  But if it works and performs well, it gets a recommendation. It is beyond the scope of my evaluation to do reliability surveys.  No reviewer does this.  The forum however, does a fantastic job of bringing out such issues especially since manufacturers are there to respond as well (or at least read what is being post).

"No, you are the one doing the measuring and interpreting the data. Other followers chime in on occasion with their own "measurements" that would receive an F in high school science. "

I am indeed doing the measurements. But this nordost speaker cable didn’t just fall in my lap from sky. A member was told by a salesman he better buy these cables or else his system would not sound good. He tried them and it made no difference so he was curious if measurements would show any difference.

Well, measurements did show a difference: said Nordost cable picked up far more noise than a generic speaker cable! This was obvious to anyone with engineering knowledge so was trivial for me to create a measurement for it.

So next time someone says this cable "removes a veil" due to "reduction of noise," you know that is completely false. You paid more to get a noisy cable! That is the interpretation that you can’t argue with.

Post that testing, people gained general knowledge about the issues here and they will spread the word. This is why ASR is a team effort. Members enable testing of a ton of gear. Measurements provide very reliable facts. And knowledge gets discussed and disseminated.

As to testing others doing not being any good, claims like yours are easy. Clearly you don’t have any facts to back that or we would already be reading them in your post.

Remember, hundreds of gear gets measured every year on ASR. With very, very rare exceptions, no manufacturer has disputed them! As you imagine, no one has higher interest in measurements being correct than manufacturer. Yet we don’t see any counters even though 2/3 of the gear I test doesn’t get a recommendation due to poor performance.

As a corollary to above, no audio reviewer’s work gets scrutinized remotely like mine. I publish a new review almost every day, subjecting my testing and opinion to verification/rejection by industry and membership at large. ASR would have thrived if the work we were doing was bad as you claim.

"I was happy to see that Amir visited many rooms at Pacific Audiofest and declared them to sound good… no measurements needed!"

Indeed.  I can walk around and enjoy sound like everyone else.  OK, I am more critical but still, good sound is good sound.

What I bring back though is more than what sounded good and what didn't.  I also bring back data like this:

We have arrived in a world where the speaker cable costs more than the amplifier it is connected to!  The world of audio marketing is broken to the core with little checks and balances.  So I bring that to the table with the help of your fellow audiophiles.  Maybe that cable does improve audio.  So I test them as they arrive.  I don't dismiss them out of hand as many do (and rightly so).  It is that data that is damning, not what I think.  Ditto for what I say I heard at a show. It is a casual observation subject to proper verification in formal testing.