Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

And there it is, one of the ASR faithful has joined the effort to hijack Audiogon. The day to day content on ASR is exactly why the hypocrisy is being called out.

@texbychoice

Please stop with the cheap attempts to pigeonhole rather than produce intelligent arguments.

I’ve been an Agon forum member years before I ever joined ASR. I’m a member of all types of forums, Steve Hoffman, AVScience forum, What’s Best forum, long time Audio Asylum member, etc.

I’ve been discussing gear here in a "subjective" context for many years but also anyone who knows me knows I have defended the relevance of measurements and science to audio claims as well. Well before I joined ASR. So it’s hardly like I’ve been sent to hijack a thread. (Where of course "hi-jack" in your terms would mean "not letting us produce any b.s. and insults we want, without pushback").

Once again, the cult like mantra appears - Amir is right, everyone else is wrong.

Again...facile insults in place of actually trying to understand what someone has said.

Not once, ever, in this thread or anywhere else have I even implied "Amir is always right, everyone else is wrong." I’ve been explicit that isn’t the case! Did you still miss my critique IN THIS VERY THREAD of Amir’s post in this very which I argued was too dogmatic? I critique Amir on his site, so do plenty of ASR members. Your lazily throwing around labels like "cult" is not helping your credibility. Instead you are feeding in to stereotypes about people on this site - stereotypes about not having strong evidence against Amir’s claims, and so resorting to empty insults instead. Fortunately that doesn’t represent most on this site, but you seem bent on exemplifying this behavior.

Once again, I’m not saying "Amir is always right" but rather, if he’s pointing to empirical/measurable evidence for his claims, it’s best to up your game from insults and assertions to bringing strong evidence against his case.

And I’m just pointing out b.s. characterizations of a forum I know well, when I see them in this thread. For instance:

@texbychoice
ASR routinely labels anything "expensive" as snake oil when there is a cheap ASR endorsed option, regardless of real or perceived performance difference.

somethingsomethingaudio

07-12-2023 at 12:51am
@prof Okay your call. I was responding to what you said. My point remains that people on ASR call products snake oil based on their expensive price. All day long.

Both you guys claimed ASR routinely declares claims/gear "snake oil" simply based on high prices, and that is flatly wrong. I’ve argued that is NOT "typical" of how people apply the term on ASR. As I said, a search for "snake oil" on ASR will demonstrate my claim to be true.

And somethingsomethingaudio searched, found an ASR thread discussing what snake oil means, and completely ignored that it demonstrated he was wrong and I was correct: that vast majority of replies - making it "typical" - put snake oil as some version of a product "not doing what the product claims it can do," not mere "high price." somethingsomethingaudio had to ignore all that and hunt and peck for one example where he *thought* contradicted this. But that he had to choose that out of all the other posts, just shows I was right about what is the "typical" view on ASR. And it didn’t even turn out to support his point, as Amir pointed out.

So, yeah, you guys are spouting some real nonsense about ASR, and you are being called on it. Characterizing this as "hi-jacking" is weak tea when you are caught being lazy or disingenuous in your claims.

Incredible that some people after reading dont understand that everyone welcome his set of measures... At least me...Even more, ASR present  also some informative discussion...

I thank Amir 16 times for that... Who among you thank him 16 times ?

But his ideology about measures, supported by some zealots,  stating on the basis of mainly the small set of linear measures taken by him did not make any sense for PREDICTING AUDIBLE MUISICAL qualities of components then are useful to verify official specs, some engineering design problems and help for synergetic pairings... THATS ALL... The word qualitative "musical" did not have  even meaning for him...

You must trust your ears to pick a component or judging it...You must trust measures to pass over the worst design and coupled it optimally with other components.. Is it a mystery to understand ?

I explained why this is so with basic psycho-acoustic... Amir had not ansd cannot contradict me... he only distorted the 10 articles i suggest, use ad hominem attacks against 2 physicists... And never adress the problem of the link between gear measures and deesign and the hearing theory context...

i attacked his good faith ONLY after his behaviour convince me , he did not understand what is at stake or does not want to...

There is very knowleadgeable people in Audio here and on any audio sites ASR included..

But there is there and here too techno babble ignorant who use technology without understanding his relation to psycho-acoustic basic...

Simple...

Here prof is right...

Stop with the cheap attempts to pigeonhole rather than produce intelligent arguments.

Prof is right here too...

Not once, ever, in this thread or anywhere else have I even implied "Amir is always right, everyone else is wrong."

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."

                                 And now, the REST of the story:

                                             More in context:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.  So you have to be very careful about that.  After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists.  You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. "

          Dr Feynman was speaking at Caltech (CIT), in 1974, on the subject of Cargo Cult Science.   No: I didn't make it to that one (not my commencement).

           For anyone actually interested in HIS thoughts and WHY* he felt it necessary, to spend valuable time lecturing a body of future scientists on the topic,                         following are some verbatim excerpts.   

                              Preceding the infamous quote:

"I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call Cargo Cult Science.  In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people.  During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now.  So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land.  They’re doing everything right.  The form is perfect.  It looks exactly the way it looked before.  But it doesn’t work.  No airplanes land.  So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

 

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing.  But it would he just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system.  It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones.  But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in Cargo Cult Science.  That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation.  It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly.  It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.  For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

 

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.  You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it.  If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.  There is also a more subtle problem.  When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

 

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."

"We’ve learned from experience that the truth will out.  Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right.  Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory.  And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work.  And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science."

                       The sentence after the (more in context) quote, above:

"I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I’m not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being.  We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi.  I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist.  And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."

                                        Further on:

One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out.  If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good.  We must publish both kinds of result.  For example—let’s take advertising again—suppose some particular cigarette has some particular property, like low nicotine.  It’s published widely by the company that this means it is good for you—they don’t say, for instance, that the tars are a different proportion, or that something else is the matter with the cigarette.  In other words, publication probability depends upon the answer.  That should not be done."

             Betwixt the above quotes and before concluding with this, he gives many examples (skipped, in deference to the limited attention spans, extant):

"So I wish to you—I have no more time, so I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity.  May you have that freedom.  May I also give you one last bit of advice: Never say that you’ll give a talk unless you know clearly what you’re going to talk about and more or less what you’re going to say."

                         For any interested- the full the address given, here:

https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm#:~:text=The%20first%20principle%20is%20that,a%20conventional%20way%20after%20that.

             Cargo Cult Science (read the term's source) info (funny stuff), here: 

                       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

      Dr Feynman's *MOTIVATION, in the first paragraph and what he referenced, under 'Pacific cults of WWII' and 'Postwar Developments'. 

Amir keeps quoting that there is extensive research showing reflection and no treatment other than regular furniture is not only good enough, but that it is superior for home listening. 

We have hardly discussed room acoustics so the claim that I "keep quoting" research is obviously wrong on the face of it.  The other bit is what you are manufacturing on my behalf and then complaining about.  Really, the plot is lost.

We got here because someone claimed I must not have good enough equipment to hear the difference between cables.  So I grab a picture I happen to have of my room and post if that is good enough.  Neither that poster, or another who came to his defense would answer that.  So let's agree that the system was good enough and the claim that the system was the problem was fallacious.

Folks then tried to deflect by claiming that my room must sound like crap.  Why?  Because they saw no acoustic products in there.  I explained that ordinary room furnishings can act as acoustic products and that if you have a speaker with excellent directivity, above modal region, there is not much of an issue.  And that the focus must be to deal with the modal response first and foremost as that is a constant in every room. 

Importantly, I made no statement about superiority of furnishings relative to acoustic products.  I did note that audiophiles tend to not understand room acoustics and slap these things everywhere on their walls and ceilings, and then start to shame others who don't have them.  This is just wrong. This is a complex field and doesn't yield itself to such approach.  

You then chimed in claiming this:

I won’t say it is universal, but it is almost universal that treatment of first reflections in a small rooms is recommended by professionals. Unfortunately, there has not been extensive research on this topic to draw on and what does exist is mainly around speech intelligibility, however, Brett Leonard in his PhD dissertation did some excellent work showing effects of a rather early intense reflections on perception and even the variability of that perception across music genres. Your position does not appear to be based on the fundamental science, available research, or professional recommendation.

I quoted from the very research you put forward that it had nothing to do with listening for enjoyment but that it was a test of recording/mix engineer productivity.  And even there, a reflective sidewall as preferred by majority so quoting that was totally inappropriate and wrong.  Ergo, the claim that "almost universal that treatment of first reflections in a small rooms is recommended by professionals" is also misinformed.

This led to this admission:

Here is the thing, though, referencing this paper was a bit of a intentional trap.

If you don't mind, we rather have a proper discussion here than laying "intentional trap" for readers.

Back to your claim, I have repeatedly said that acoustic products are likely a good choice for a dedicated room.  If you know what you are doing of course they can be used.  What makes room furnishing superior is this:

1. Often they cost nothing.  Acoustic products can get quite expensive.  Yes, you can DIY them to save money but that is miserable work and at any rate, still cost more than decorating the way you like to live and look.

2. Ordinary furnishings look nice and don't create conflict with others living in the same household.  

These are hugely important benefits to audiophiles.  Not necessarily on acoustic front but from point of view of deployment.

3. The path of treating all reflections with absorption will inevitably lead to people slapping absorbers over every surface they can find.  After all, if a little bit is good, a lot is better. Soon the room is deader than the steak on your plate, sounds lifeless and the room ugly as heck.

Bottom like, get speakers that are well designed, do some EQ for low frequencies where acoustic products have little prayer of fixing issues there, put standard furnishing if this is an everyday room, and start enjoying your music.  Do NOT listen to people claiming expertise based on stuff they have read online.  And certainly don't let them shame you into throwing blankets on the wall or else your system sounds like "crap."  They don't know what they are saying.