I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.

It's a human thing: when it's written in stone, it becomes objective and sacred. It needs no further validation... (who cares about listening.) Judgements can be made, and people will fall in line. Who cares about the art, beauty, music, humanity.... let's turn our fascination of art to a fascination with number-crunching.

Sadly, people often neglect the fact that the EASIEST THING ON THE PLANET FOR _ANY_ even HALF-WAY COMPETENT ENGINEER is to design and build  a product that produces stellar measurement on the LIMITED SET OF MEASUREMENTS USED TO TEST AUDIO GEAR.

Great measurements will only establish 1 thing:

The product was designed to be a mainstream poster-child, most likely without any respect on how it sounds. If it measures absolutely perfectly: RED LIGHT, RUN AWAY!

Every amplifier and loudspeaker designer (worth his salt) will agree with the words above...

These measurements tell us these two things, and absolutely nothing more:

1. The equipment is functioning according to design parameters.

2. The equipment has been SPECIAL TUNED TO EXCEL AT THESE MEASUREMENTS. Excelling at certain measurements is EASY with certain tricks (eg loops of feedback). Yet, using such tricks skews other performance parameters, that ARE NOT MEASURED as pat of the standard measurement sets, yet still COUNT. We are routinely testing maybe 1-5% of all the parameters that are needed for accurate sound reproduction, and eve those measurements are MASSIVELY FLAWED. For example, we test how an amplifier drives a resistor, which has very little to nothing to do with how it drives a loudspeaker!

If an amplifier measures perfectly it means that the product is a PERFECT PRECISION HEATER. However, tells next to NOTHING about its sonic virtues.

@realworldaudio , I feel most of what you wrote is made up. I don't think you will be able to clearly articulate what is missing from the measurements and certainly not 95% of the things that are missing. Perhaps this is the issue. This sounds more like outrage mob mentality that reasonsed criticism. I am welcome to be proven wrong.

@deludedaudiophile 

I came up with the 95% missing using historic precedents for scientific discoveries. (Throughout history the narrow minds all firmly believed that everything that could be invented was already invented, and now even a 6 year old kid knows it better.) The practices for audio gear measurements are relatively new (just a few decades old). In even 50 years, our practices will be proven as massively inaccurate, and in general quite useless as it probably covers about 5% of what our children's children will count as measurements that point towards sound quality perception. Although that will be in the future, yet it does not detract from the reality that our current practices are in their infancy. To think we know everything, and we have discovered all the secrets to sound and audio gear is the only sure bet to loose. Doing a google search will do no good now, but will help in 50 years. Also, if google search would answer deep questions on audio measurements, we would not have this discussion, and everyone would be at perfect agreement.

(BTW the 95% is just a symbolic value, please do not start a thread on whether it is 92% or 96.786734% exactly, or it's truly 57.4%... only time will tell, and although our view will change decade from decade, but the reality will be still the same: today we have a very limited concept of how to measure audio parameters to reflect on sound quality.)

So, a few examples on issues with current standard measurement practices that I know of, I will take only amplifiers for now:

*all parameters tested on non-inductive perfectly passive extremely simplistic loads, while the loudspeakers are highly complex live loads affected by the room.

*Only additive distortion is measured, subtractive distortion is not.

*Change of THD in function of output level and frequency are no paid attention to, while these are strong determiners in relation whether the sound is perceived as natural VS manufactured.

*Amplifier behavior is tested with constantly repetitive primitive signals, while the music output is a highly variable extremely complex waveform.

*It is not examined how an amplifier deals with small signals following a large pulse at the frequency extremes.

I mentioned the names of known and proven audio authorities in my initial post, because they have the answers you want from me, but I have no credibility in your eyes, so it's a waste from me to yap around. Do not believe me, as you do not know who I am, and that's fine. 

I just humbly point out to you (again), to listen to interviews with the fathers of audio measurements and high end industry and hear what they have to say. Thank you for the chat. I hope I have answered your concerns. What I wrote might be completely irrelevant to your quest, and it's quite likely that you have specific experiences that point you in the direction you want to go, where you will find fulfillment and purpose.

However, ignoring the experts on audio measurements will quite likely lead to a more protracted learning curve than what you are looking for. I wish you success and luck!