Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

OK Amir, I will help the activity over at ASR.  Your impressive efforts here have won me over.

I'm going over there right now and argue that measurements mean next to nothing.

That should help.... 

:)

"The ASR site seems to confirm this by rarely even mentioning sound quality of a measured component and doesn't even try to find any correlation between Amir's measurements and sound quality."

Is that right?  Here is my latest speaker review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/focal-solo6-st6-monitor-review.45784/

"On first playback, I was impressed by the dynamics and level of bass, in addition to clean sound. I could have lived with the speaker as is but thought I should play with EQ to see if I can improve on it:

Pulling down the 60 Hz hump resulted in "tighter" bass but then it was a bit light in that department and the highs stood out more. I dialed in the dip for the highs and that helped but still too much of a trade off. So I added the third filter in upper bass to fill that region. With all three there, I liked the sound better. Clarity was improved and vocals came more to the forefront. But I could see someone liking the stock sound as well given the small amount of adjustment here.

I could detect no distortion even after the clipping light came on. On that note, the above EQ postponed the onset of the light by a bit, getting me more volume. I could only detect some muddiness starting to set in as the clipping light was more on than off. Playing music with extreme sub-bass resulted in playback of such with mild amount of distortion. Many speakers either don't play these notes or severely distort them.

With the EQ in there, I could sit there and enjoy the speaker for hours."

This is not telling you how it sounded?  And the significant correlation between measurements and listening test results?

Here is a recent headphone review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/dan-clark-audio-ether-flow-1-1-headphone-review.45821/

Dan Clark Audio Ether Flow 1.1 Listening Tests & EQ
The immediate impression was that of the somewhat exaggerated upper bass/warmth. You could listen to them as is because it is not annoying in any regard. But EQ is mandatory to bring out what this headphone can do. The complex shape of the deviations made it a bit difficult but I managed to get there up to a few kHz:

Strategy was a dip for the resonant peak and then two PEQs to boost the whole region. Upper bass was pulled down and low bass pulled up to taste. Depending on good your high frequency hearing is, you may want to play with pulling those resonant peaks down as well.

Me? I was satisfied and was blown away by the incredible fidelity I was hearing with those 5 filters. The track you see on the snapshot of Roon was to die for with amazing resolution and detail. You cold almost feel the strings courtesy of very nice spatial qualities.

The high sensitivity allowed my RME ADI-2 Pro to drive them up to as high a level as I wanted with thundering bass that resonated the cups and my ear! I wish I didn't have to take pictures of the headphone for the review so I could keep listening to them!

Let say that I did not expect to be able to correct the response as well as I did. It was tempting to just write off the headphone and not bother. But owner had told me to try so I am glad I did."

Translation: you haven't spent a quality minute on ASR to be making the claims you just did.  Poster after poster uses talking points fed to them about what ASR is.  Reality and facts seem to not be important.

Hahaha. Love it. Thanks for the recommendation. 
Listing my Tyr 2 interconnects, along with my Bricasti M3 DAC and Pass Labs XP22 preamp. Going to replace these two pieces with a Topping D70. 
Bad news is, I will have shitty sound. Good news is, I will save a bunch of money on cables and components by switching to Topping. 

" Knowing the measurements before listening causes objectivists to be anything but objective. They are already biased. "

"Say that to your doctor next time he makes measurements of your health and then diagnoses what is wrong with you. Tell him to just trust his ears and hands. No need for X-ray, MRI, blood pressure, etc. You know, the measurement stuff that biases him. "

So you deny that knowing the measurements before listening may cause bias?

How could it be a blind test then? It’s worse than just physically seeing them and seeing what make they are or their price.

@daveyf 

If one has no real life frame of reference as to the sound of 'live' musical instruments in a non-amplified setting, then just relying on measurements might not be a bad idea. 

Hi Dave.  Long time no see.  On your comment, measurements are a great idea no matter what.  Ask any acousticians how to optimize the bass response in a room: they say to measure.  It doesn't matter how much you know some music.  Knowing that you have a peak at 40 and not 50 Hz won't come from that.  It will come from measurements.

And of course, what is on the recoding is not a copy of the live experience.  No microphone can capture what your two ears and a brain do in live music.  And of course that is on top of all the manipulations done in mixing and mastering of music.  It is best to think of a recording as a painting of real life, not a photograph.  In that sense, familiarity with real instruments won't help you.  This is why musicians as a rule are not audiophiles.