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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
ossicle2brain's avatar
ossicle2brain
130 posts
 

 

Amir said and even proudly bolded it...

"I don't trust any subjective review that is not grounded on measurements."

 

This says it all about your mindset.  And all one needs to know about your site.  You should put this in bold letters on the home page.  

 Your subjective review is worthless since you have predetermined how it SHOULD sound based on some numbers.   You've guaranteed to have a biased opinion.  It's worse than any placebo effect from the appearance of the speaker.  Good experiment in psycoacoustics though. 

 

As far as the LRS, no one needs the numbers to know the sub bass isn't there or that they are beamy.  Anyone that has ever heard them knows that.  They heard it.  

So to reiterate....  Measurements are next to useless to determine how a certain  HI FI product sounds.  They can actually mislead and knowing measurements beforehand guarantees the placebo effect which might help cheap DACs sound "better".

 

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,949 posts
 

Hey wow!  Amir got a chart for everything!  They are all totally unbiased I’m sure. 😉

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,949 posts
 

I hate to throw the B word around but could reviewers and retailers be….gasp….biased? This is surely not possible with Amir though, right? The M word does talk though. That’s always a safe bet.

More salt please ….

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,949 posts
 

I trust subjective reviews if many unbiased reviewers draw similar conclusions. Then I like some  metrics to see if those correlate to what the people say they are hearing. When the stars all align anything is possible.

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,949 posts
 

Fact is the term audiophile has gotten a very bad rap over the years. The story is always how audiophiles seem to draw conclusions that can’t be substantiated by the data. I prefer the term hifi enthusiast. It’s the enthusiasm that yields the results in many cases. They synthesize truths from all the information available, not just numbers. The truths may relate to good sound which is subjective or good measured sound which is objective and Amir’s forte. Or both. No reason to just limit one’s information to numbers, though discounting valid numbers totally is probably not very constructive.

 

Different strokes.  More than one way to skin the cat?  Did I miss any appropriate cliches?

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