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

Measurements are the first thing.

But listening for yourself is the final thing.

ASR usually listens; it provided a reason for not listening in this case.  ASR provides objective measurements of equipment  It subscribes to the theory that good equipment should measure well.  It does not claim that equipment that does not measure well will not sound good to you.  There is a lot of equipment that measures well *and* sounds good.  For example, ASR raved about the measurements of the Benchmark AHB2 power amplifier and both The Absolute Sound and Stereophile raved about how it sounded.  

Who's Amir?

He's just a guy. Maybe knowledgeable, maybe he has an agenda. He may have a YouTube channel ... I have too. Why trust the opinion of just one guy? Look broader. What do other reviews say? I bet there are more? Are they positive? If a majority is so-so then I'd have my doubts ... if almost everyone likes the product it'll be fine. Thoughts on build quality, components used, functionality, specifications, measurements ... those can be objective but if it comes down to how a products sounds it's only my own ears I'd trust.

@russ69   Yup.  I find it incredible how many people here don't listen before laying down their bread.  But these days many people order a car without driving it.  However modern cars are mostly all the same.  Unlike hi-fi components.

+ @jjss49
+ @sns
+ @ghdprentice
+ @nonoise

@russ69

If something measures so poorly, wouldn’t you want to correlate the measurements with what you hear?

Good posts. Here’s how I see it.

There are several components involved in judging how something sounds:

1. How it measures
2. Personal perceptual equipment (your ears, your brain)
3. Personal expectations (your taste, sonically and in musical content)
4. Associated equipment
5. Room acoustics

ASR likely looks at this and thinks, the only one of these which can be measured and quantified in our lab is #1, how it measures.

If ASR did measurements and only reported the facts about what they measured, no one would care. Because measurements HAVE to be related to judgments about how things sound, aesthetically, or no one would read the site.

Thus, ASR derives it’s credibility from doing (1) but it drives interest in the site by claiming that (1) correlates with (2) and (3).

This results in two related ironies.

First, ASR’s claim to correlate (1, measurement) with (2, 3 subjective sound) abandons the sites’ main claim to validity.

Second, by reaching beyond measurement, ASR repudiates it’s own purpose as a website.

Here’s a guess on my part. Most gear is made well enough that it should not matter how it measures. Something would have to distort really really badly to correlate with nearly everyone’s personal taste.

Imagine a cup of coffee -- some like it with no sugar, and some like it with up to 4 Tb of sugar. Almost no likes it with more than 4 Tb of sugar. So, if I had a website measuring sugar in coffee, I’d only start to be useful to readers if I told them that this cup of coffee had more than 4 Tb of sugar. But coffee makers already figured *that* out. So, there’d be not much to measure.

What's the solution? Have a variety of subjective reviewers who declare their taste up front. Then, readers can decide if their own tastes are similar enough to a certain reviewer in order to accept their judgments as a helpful guide (not as rule of law). This is how I choose TV or movie reviewers. I find those whose observations and judgments are motivated in ways similar to my own. Then, their additional experience and finer perceptual abilities are helpful in pushing me toward new experiences that I can estimate might be pleasing.