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

Over this fight between " gear tasting fetichists" and "measuring obsessed zealots", all of them are anyway mesmerized by the gear importance, focused on a brand name to listen to it or to measure it anew ... Why not?

I use the term "Acoustic Analphabet" to describe the two warring groups...

Only acoustic and psycho acoustic can explain sound experience and make us able to not only control all his factors with ANY system at ANY price but also learn each of these OBJECTIVE factors with SUBJECTIVE listening experiments and integrating them in our body/room with the right devices and measures in acoustic balanced treatment but especially in acoustic optimal mechanical control...

We can operate and control a room/speakers relation at will or not...

If not,we can imagine that the peak of the audiophile experience will be changing an amplifier for another costly amplifier... 😁😊

The fact that one measure better than the other means little if you locate the system in a bad room...And all uncontrolled room are relatively "bad" unbeknonwst to the owner who will vouch for this acoustically unverified claim that his room is good... The difference between a room controlled and uncontrolled exceed almost any upgrade in improvement power... Save upgrading a 100 bucks amplifier for a 100,000 bucks one...Or a really bad one for a really great one...No normal usual upgrade can compare to acoustic mastery...

This upgrading obsession is the first symptom of acoustical analphabetism....

By the way the basic vocabulary of music is not the basic vocabulary of audiophile, and the basic vocabulary of audiophile is not the basic vocabulary of acoustic...

Then we must learn to translate one vocabulary into the other...

The rosetta stone is the relation between speakers A and B and ear A and B ...

A stereo system sound optimal when we feel like there is almost 4 speakers in the room sometimes, relatively to the recording....Is it not incredible? No it is not quadraphonic, only stereo well done...In some recording we are on the stage and the musicians are around us...There is an acoustical way to mechanically create these sound impressions...

How many experience that?

This is acoustic power...

After that upgrading is preposterous in most case if the system is relatively already well chosen for sure...And well chosen is not related here to price tag....

My post goal is to motivate people to think before throwing money...Especially nowadays...

My post goal is to motivate people to think before throwing money...Especially nowadays...

That brings me to another point about the products reviewed by ASR and their ilk. Why the obsession with what other people spend on gear and their insistence that anything over $1500 is just wasted money? 

We want to try and understand this divide, do we not?

The longer a question sits unanswered, the greater the error in the formulation of the question. Not the grand question, mind you, but the complexity and the points of debate and qualities/bits of the given question, that sits in our individual minds.

Here is an overtly critical aspect of the question component set --that few ever venture into finding and understanding. It goes deep into everything in our world.

It’s the why of mathematics, and science, and linearity in thinking, and dogmatism, scientism, the why of the idea and execution/creation of ’engineering’ by the renaissance creative types...and so on.

Why such things like excellence in open creativity is not just feared but hated with passion by a notable percentage of human population. Why the ’natural’ (person who can do impossible seeming things) is feared and hated. Why Pareto distribution exists.

To exaggerate for framing and parallax depth of view creation..... this is why ASR is not about creative people, at all. ASR is a love letter to human mental linearity tied to being a blunt instrument of war, based in very deep fundamental fears against the creative and adventurist lateral thinking mind. Why it will, as long as humans exist as they do..why it will remain among us.

ie, music is about creativity and lateral expansion, flowery language (in high end audio), which is required in the creation of the new (the new in audio, finding it’s voice, solving those complex unknowns)... and measurement is about hammers and boxes, and safely marching up and down the square in green uniforms.

If one wants to understand these never ending discussions, and why they will not end, ever....then this is an essential video.

This is about music, this forum. this is filled with the creative types, in at least some greater part of their expression, overall.

Thus it draws the linear minded conservative types to it like a zealot is drawn to correcting error as it sees danger to itself in those differences. This mind type will NEVER stop trying to kill it off with all the force of it’s being.

It’s a fight between consciousness and unconsciousness, in life and living to some degree, in the expression of human growth and having a viable growing future.. Probably more than you might think.

forums like audiogon, the idea of subjective reality and creativity is 1,000% essential to to humanity and it’s future.

Whereas... the idea of ASR, is to kill that, with vehemence. To kill the very thing that gave it life, shape, and a future. Excessive rigor and framing to the point that it has no future, as real world paths have curves, skips, blanks, and meandering.

Overt Linearity kills, if it is taken too far. Scientific rigor also has it's very important place! It’s a simple fact tha overt rigor, imposed - is dangerous to creativity. rigor and framing and linearity is good in the main/middle but not in the sum. If one watches the video in this post and, critically...understands it contents... this will become quite clear.

That brings me to another point about the products reviewed by ASR and their ilk. Why the obsession with what other people spend on gear and their insistence that anything over $1500 is just wasted money? 

I would be more concerned with why it bugs you so much when all they do is measure equipment and publish results. It's a rather unemotional thing.

I would be more concerned with why it bugs you so much when all they do is measure equipment and publish results. It's a rather unemotional thing.

not true at all. the negativity at that website is allowed to run rampant. It's out of balance.

the balance attempt is evident at audiogon, as you are allowed to post here.

If I tried to post at ASR, similar to how I post here at audiogon.....I'd be removed in almost seconds.

So no, it's entirely emotional over at ASR, with a false cloak of reason and correctness as a cover story.