Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?


It’s easy to make snide remarks like “yes- I do the opposite of what he says.”  And in some respects I agree, but if you do that, this is just going to be taken down. So I’m asking a serious question. Has ASR actually changed your opinion on anything?  For me, I would say 2 things. I am a conservatory-trained musician and I do trust my ears. But ASR has reminded me to double check my opinions on a piece of gear to make sure I’m not imagining improvements. Not to get into double blind testing, but just to keep in mind that the brain can be fooled and make doubly sure that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. The second is power conditioning. I went from an expensive box back to my wiremold and I really don’t think I can hear a difference. I think that now that I understand the engineering behind AC use in an audio component, I am not convinced that power conditioning affects the component output. I think. 
So please resist the urge to pile on. I think this could be a worthwhile discussion if that’s possible anymore. I hope it is. 

chayro

When the ears/brain detect a meaningful REAL information qualities about two nuanced singing sopranos voices, no tool can qualifies these voices "harmonious" or not so harmonious blending... A tool can detect information, not qualify it as meaningful by itself...A musician can OBJECTIVELY qualify the blending of two feminine voices nuances and not only that he can detect their blending in time 13 times more precisely than Fourier analysis can predict.. Why ? because the ears /brain of the musician is trained to recognize the MUSICAL QUALITIES as an OBJECTIVE reality that can be TAUGHT...

NO need for a blind test...Now tell to this musician , that he cannot trust his ears to pick an amplifier but ONLY the measured verified specs , not  even with all possible measures, but only with  the limited set of linear  Measures proposed by Amir, and say to this musician that to choose an amplifier , nothing else will warrant musicality than these limited set of measures... He will laugh... 😊For sure as he said Amir listen too...But biased by his numbers he listen as if they were predictive of musicality... They cannot.. And he want to blind test anyone saying that his set of measures is not all there is to say about the gear not only about his material design but about his sound qualities... He goes too far with his claim...

The limited set of measures proposed by Amir are useful to verify the company specs claims... NOTHING ELSE... Musical quality must be perceived and cannot be predicted and interpreted by tools without ears, sometimes musical quality correlated with some measures, sometimes not... Design is not only an industrial process it is also a guided by the ears craftmanship and by psycho-acoustic principles and laws of hearings and the law of hearings are not Fourier frequencies based but based on an ecological theory as Gibson did for visual theory  ...Fourier is good but not enough...

Why ? Because any prediction must be based on an interpretation space... The Fourier interpretation space as tool cannot predict which is out of his linear window frame of interpretation, but pertain to the time dependant real world event of natural sounds and which qualities the ears perceive non linearly... QUALITIES as objective phenomena... Music is the main example... Measuring the linearity of a well working circuit did not predict musicality as qualities perceived non linearly by ears...

I am listening to and enjoying, speakers, an intergraded amp, a phono pre and a music streamer, and Amir felt compelled to hack the head off the pink panther. It's profitable to be controversial. 

I made the mistake of posting to this thread early on, so now I am curious if any of you know how to unfollow a thread on Audiogon, because I would like to unfollow this one.

Very comical that people believe i want to win a debate...

Nobody can win a rational debate...

Facts speaks by themselves...

I posted many articles anybody can read...

instead of acting as if we were two empty heads quarrelling in a brawling match because you dont understand what is at stake in this debate... STUDY AND THINK by yourself ... Dont insult those who discuss in these debate but explain to us with arguments WHY you favor the perspective of Amir or the other, the perspective of Magnasco and Oppenheim and of Van Maanen and of those who defend an ecological analysis of perception and not only a Fourier frequencies based perspective...

Qualities exist objectively as AFFORDANCES   and are not mere  ghosts born from the brain computer...

This is how j.j. Gibson became one of the most influential psychologist of the last century for the visual perception analysis...  The same perspective is needed in hearing analysis to complement Fourier analysis..