ASRs whole approach of anything that measures bad sounds bad, and the inability to describe how things sound or what people prefer sometimes - is a nonstarter for me. It all comes back to what people hear and what they enjoy most, and no metric tells us this very well.
Agreed. The point is not that "we should adopt the ASR Method." but rather we should avoid a false dilemma fallacy. Which both sides commit.
Measurements have their place. The measurements aren’t the problem with ASR. the problem is the mob of people that pounce anyone that says "hey this is better even though it measures poorer"....The sad thing is, the "happy panther" scale always rewards the highest measuring equipment because of the horde of stat hunters that are ready to say it’s better without hearing any of it.
My point is that people just being "against ASR and FOR listening" are throwing out some valuable data. I already made this point at length so I’m going to stop after this.
I'll add one more point -- people who focus on "how gear sounds rather than measures" frequently do not mention the rather complex effects of (a) other gear, (b) the recording, (c) the ROOM, and (d) their methods for listening. There is a very bad pseudo-science air in these conversations where it is supposed that the writer is conveying something that others would experience, but without any of the critical variables to help others know whether the claim would be something they can experience. How often do we hear "these speakers sound bright" and then we ask for a photo and find out they are listening with a bank of windows or a tile floor? It's this kind of thing that drives people to measurements even though those can be misleading or besides the point, too, but in a different way.