Do you trust your ears more than measurements?

I spend money to please my ears. I measure to figure out WTF is happening, not to tell me what "good" sounds like.

So, if you ask me, what are the best amplifiers ever made, clearly the CJ Premiere 12s. How do they measure? Kind of like garbage!! :D

OTOH, I rely heavily on frequency and distortion measurements to guide m in building new speakers as well as setting the up, repeatably and predictably in a room.

Even then however, lots of studies show that we like different overall amounts of bass. Who should win? My mic or your ears? Tell me this: who worked hard for the home, amp and speakers? You did, so your personal and emotional tastes should win.

Also, the measurements most audiophiles read about were decided upon 50 years ago, so I cannot believe that they these simple half dozen or so measurements we read for an amp or speaker are inclusive of all that can happen in an ear brain mechanism for everyone, or that the mastering engineer in 1982 was listening to my system at the time, so .... be true to your own decadence I think.

No sense measuring without listening. So it’s not an either or. You can listen without measuring but when time comes to figure out what’s wrong or could be made better you can only guess and the devil is always in the details. No doubt measurements can only help if used correctly so there is a learning curve to tackle there before one can hope for positive results.

I’ve recently measured all my rooms using Room EQ Wizard freeware and that provides the information needed to make proper adjustments that make a night and day difference in each case. If you haven’t measured your room, you are working with a huge handicap. I suspect many would be off the hifi merry go round a lot faster once they come to the realization that it’s largely room acoustics they hear so it’s important to know what those are in order to be able to cut to the chase. Throwing more money at the problem alone is not a very effective way to fix what’s broken in most cases.

Dan Foley from Audio Precision wrote an interesting short article in 2016. A few clips from the article:

• "As he explains, instrumentation noise floor is an overlooked contributor for the reason we are not able to measure a particular audible “distortion,” especially with low sound pressure level (SPL) signals."
• "the reason given as to why a particular audible “distortion” cannot be measured is that the measurement equipment doesn’t have sufficient signal processing capabilities, such as measurement bandwidth or Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) resolution."

article: "Test and Measurement: “I Can Hear It. Why Can’t I Measure It?”"

I use my ears, 100%.

Every once in a while, I get the bug to change some settings, adjust some parameters, that sort of thing...

Invariably, I tune it back to where it was (or very, very close, anyway).

That leads me to believe I’m pretty much at the limits of my equipment. I’m OK with that.

I have never, ever had anyone who has listened to my system not leave smiling.

I have no idea how it measures. Sure sounds good, though. 😎

Funny how ignorant people may be because they are lazy or lack the time and energy necessary to learn ...😁

Measurements are not all about mere  electrical factors of gear design by the way ...

They can be physical mechanical measures...

They can be acoustical measures with various parameters...

They can be psychoacoustics measures...

Then claiming all is subjective impression is pure ignorance...Sorry...

Then claiming that all is objective measures  most of the times with few electrical measures specs as in ASR forums about a piece of gear ISOLATED from all other mechanical and acoustical and psychoacoustical  measures if connected to a specific system in a specific  for specific owner specific mearured ears is RIDICULOUS....

All these measures imply a variation of the possible set of parameters which must be correlated to your own specific ears impressions...

Then why people are so dumb and divide themselves in two blind  opposite crowds ? ( it remind me of the Trumpist opposed to the Bidenist )

It is because of the conditioning by marketing power focussing to their selling pitch about   ONE pice of gear to sell  at a times to the gullible reading the price tag as truth ...

What we buy matter less than the way we will embed it by listening in a training process by varying the set of possible mechanical,electrical and acoustical parameters of the system in a specfic chosen room . Period. 😊

Acoustics science rule audio and this include room acoustic as well as psychoacoustics not price tag or electrical design few specs measures confirmed or not... A system synergy cannot be ruled and established  and confirmed  only by few electrical measures, it takes more measures and of different kind,  and it takes our ears to learn the measured and to rule them by chosing the right set FOR US  because i must decide of my room dimensions and speakers types etc ......