Audio Science Review = "The better the measurement, the better the sound" philosophy

@laoman @russ69 Thank you for your experiences which reveal more about Amir and his buddies who accompanied him to Audiogon to TELL us what we need to make intelligent equipment decisions.  Just like you laoman, I don't need someone to educate me at 66 after my extensive listening experiences, what sounds best to me. 

When I upgraded my digital cable two months ago, I've had audiophiles and non-audiophiles just revel in the digital reproduced music.  The audiophiles say "best ever sound."  Well, I can't say that because I have heard absolutely fantastic sound systems better than mine (and expensive).   No problem as I'm living within my means.  My wife, a very tough customer who says she is now always concentrates on the sound before listening to the music much to her consternation, just sat and listened for several hours (also unusual) to a variety of smooth jazz and her rock music (1970s to heavy metal) when I upgraded the cable.  She said it sounds like vinyl.   

Today, Positive Feedback has an article by Roger Skoff-Hi-Fi Weather? Roger Skoff Writes About Something You May Not Have Thought Of…

I found the end of the article not dealing with weather’s affect on sound propagation most enlightening (especially if true) "None of those changes is massive but, with even average human hearing having a 100 decibel range from the lowest sound we can hear to the loudest sound we can bear without injury, our ears have a single-scale resolution range of 1 to 1 BILLION—far greater than any known test instrument—so even differences that might seem prohibitively small may be clearly audible."

What’s Best Forum I have for several years joined and enjoyed camaraderie of other audiophiles forums. That site is generally more congenial and well mannered than any other forum site I frequent. Disagreements do not involve character assassination or defamation. (Except with posters experiences with Acoustic Fields company/owner). I prefer hearing about others experiences than reading about the gold standard measurements as Amir prefers. Good for him but Darko uses different measurements and often reveals different answers. Choices and variable methods to conduct experiments occur in measurements. So Amir is not the greatest tester of audio equipment. There are serious drawbacks on measurements themselves. If measurements are the gold standard, then listening in a system in a room is the platinum standard.

Audioshark, Audiokarma and older sites I visited were quite nice and amiable. DIYers also was very informative lacking acrimonious postings. Why is that?

ASR Frgirard Your points are

The willful ignorance of the primacy of speaker-room coupling by taking refuge in the magic of equalization.

the willful ignorance of the primacy of the decay in the bass and the rest of the spectrum.

the spending of thousands of dollars on equipment to listen in rotten rooms, a total lack of rationality here and on AG.

I spent $150K+ building my listening room from the ground up (12" 3000 psi steel reinforced slab, 16" multi-dimensional walls with chambered activated carbon bass trap filters, etc). I use no equalization. I have various room treatments for mid and high frequency absorption, smoothing, diffusion and decay/reverb. In doing so, I do not require state of the art equipment to obtain a very high quality sound reproduction absent state of the art/expensive high end equipment. Putting well designed speakers of moderate price (even $1K) will react superbly in my new room. I’ve built several other sound rooms in prior homes but they were good but not great. Then again, I have heard a few superb large systems in very large untreated rooms at audio shows at high cost ($1m+). The room is generally very important (as it is in my live recordings) but sometimes the equipment can perform well in a wide variety of settings (Von Schweikerts).
 

I personally think the ASR mob are looking to ’justify’ spending much less money to get a hi-end sound.

They lean on ASR for reassurance that a Topping DAC and £500 amplifier is all they need to spend in order to get the very best sound possible.

More than likely most of them do not have deep wallets so perhaps somewhat ’envy’ those that can spend the money to - in reality - get far better sound than measured perfection can really give you.

I do not have a deep wallet to enjoy hi-end at its best - so I could easily been seen as one being suckered into believing that measured sound is the best sound to save money. That would suit me just fine - if only that were true.

Good post chopandchange. You are probably accurate. I also think Amir has fled. He has closed the thread on ASR which was intended as an insulting rebuttal to this thread.
It is a pity he has gone. I was curious as to how he would answer the comment that his testing methodology on the Chord M scaler was faulted. He consigned a whole product to the dustbin based on faulty methodology.