The Audio Science Review (ASR) approach to reviewing wines.

@oberoniaomnia

There are thousands of people like you, Amir & Gene & Erin included, that cannot hear a difference with cables. Doesn’t mean there isn’t. Different metals of cables, purity, capacitance, inductance, quality of connectors, length, geometry, type of shielding, thickness. All of this come together to form a cable. To say cables have no difference is saying all of these aspects don’t matter. Which if you give it 2 minutes to think about, is quite ludicrous. Especially for a "no-nonsense scientist" such as yourself and Amir.

Erin has stated he cannot hear a difference between amplifiers, does not mean there’s no difference.

Leave the idea of cables aside for a minute. I’ve encountered hundreds, and perhaps even thousands of people that have said they cannot hear a difference between DAC, AMP, and pre-amp. These people, like you, truly believe there’s no difference with certain components.

The facts remain. If you cannot measure a cable, what can you really measure?

@oberoniaomnia I respect your opinion.  As a marine biologist do you think that Amir testing commercially available audio gear is in the same category of scientific work as an NSF funded project to understand how physical, chemical and biological processes mediate carbon transfer in and out of the sea surface, or a Sea Grant funded study of how plankton might affect oxygen levels in eutrophic coastal waters?  I suggest that if Amir were to submit a proposal to a competitive science or engineering funding organization claiming what he does on ASR somehow qualifies as “science” he would not get past the first round.

I read Amir’s reviews and look at his charts comparing different components and find it interesting.  But it is not “science”.  I never said that TAS reviews are remotely scientific, or even unbiased.  Stereophile often combines subjective reviews based on listening with independent machine measurements - is that “kinda scientific”?  No, it’s not, it’s just a combination of subjective and objective measurements.  I find the name “Audio Science Review” pretentious, inaccurate and mistakenly bestowing the reviews with the mystique of expanding the boundaries of our understanding when in fact Amir is just functioning as a dude with some measurement devices and a lot of time on his hands.  His professional work for Microsoft and others advancing digitally reproduced sound may more rightly qualify as “science”, I don’t know enough about it. His work at ASR, not so much.

if you tried different cables and they did nothing for you, be happy, you are saving a lot of money.  As for me, I’m going to turn off my phone, open a bottle from the bottom shelf of my wine rack with the sticky note on it that says “ask” and enjoy drinking it while listening to my digital front end without reminding myself that it measured well in Amir’s tests or that the new power cable on my power conditioner is making everything sound better.

kn

The real question is why do the doubters care?  

Amir is not a scientist! Wouldnt make a bit of difference if he was.

ASR takes an extreme view and attracts the disgruntled along the way.

Erin has stated he cannot hear a difference between amplifiers, does not mean there’s no difference.

@samureyex 

Only an imbecile would state that they cannot hear a difference between amplifiers, and Erin is not an imbecile. It is therefore doubtful that Erin actually said that, unless of course you can provide a link. Thanks

@samureyex I agree with you that there are differences. The question is, do they matter? Are they audible? In any scientific test, the null hypothesis is no difference. So the burden or proof is with those who think there is a difference. If you think there is something to cables that is not measurable, then show it with a controlled double blind test of listeners.My preliminary data with vastly different cables and one listener is that there is no difference. Doing a pilot study with something that should show something is the typical way to start a project. If AWG14 vs 5–6 does not show a difference, that is a good indication that there will be none with other cables either, at least for this listener (inductive reasoning).

@knownothing Re the name, if that is your hangup. As I said ASR is *more* scientific than TAS and SPh etc. combined. ASR certainly provides novel data with measurements that are objective and repeatable. Re NSF, a good chunk of science is done without grant support. Neither of my two NSF grants had anything to do with hypothesis testing (one MRI, one TCN, both in DEB).