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

I no longer have the listening acuity that I once had, so my days of having firm opinions about one thing sounding “better” than another are behind me…like a wine snob with COVID whose sense of smell has gone away.  But as a person retired from a 50+ year HiFi career, I have opinions, some based on what I used to be sure I heard. I know that some audio designers believe as Amir does that audio component accuracy can be reduced to transfer function and SINAD.  What else is there, after all (they wonder)?  But I used to hear “depth” and “spaciousness” in some things, and not others, where both easily met criteria for flat, extended bandwidth and THD and noise.  I even had a preamp that sounded positively marvelous…unless you engaged the rumble filter, which collapsed the soundstage.  The engineer who created that preamp may not have noticed, or even listened to it to find out. If .1%THD in an amp or preamp is “inaudible”, why is .0001 better?  The ASR “less is better” approach doesn’t impress me.  He does base his recommendations on an array of measures and does recommend many items that aren’t “the best”, but there is a Calvinistic aversion to luxury build quality and pricing (if not matched with top class measurements) that is appealing to the less affluent, perhaps younger, reader.  I used to belong to the Boston Audio Society, and these debates between objectivists and subjectivists were just as entertaining then.

"To the best of my knowledge, ASR is unbiased (it does not accept advertising)."
I am not so sure this is correct. It would not surprise me if Topping gave ASR a kickback of some description. The fact that Amir wets his pants about every Topping product seems to point to this.
What annoys me about ASR is the fact that many, (not all), of the members are rude, objectionable know it alls. No contrary opinion is tolerated. The "chief cat herder", not Amir, is probably one of the most objectionable  and ignorant of all.

@Hilde45

"I honestly don’t understand why ASR is like Voldemort to some folks here"
Because as soon as you say well designed Dacs can and do sound different, (and they do), you get abused and banned from the site.

@hilde45

"Another ASR hating thread. One need not say that listening does not matter in order to see the value in measurements.

Are there ASR folks who think that only measurements matter? Sure. But that does not mean that the measurements done cannot be helpful at all. (I mean, I’m not a fanatic about my weight on a scale, but it helps to know when I’ve gained 10 pounds.)

I honestly don’t understand why ASR is like Voldemort to some folks here."

What you said immediately clicked the bulb in me. IMO, the error of ASR resonates a lot with the error of your analogy. About gaining 10 lbs.

You could be gaining 10 lbs in water weight, Or 10 lbs in muscle. Or 10 lbs in fat, or any combination of these things. You can look quite different depending on how you gained your weight.

You could weigh 210 lbs and be visibly/noticeably thinner than when you were 200. How is this possible? Well you could’ve gained extra muscle mass, lost fat in the process, and because muscle weights A LOT more than fat, you will look slimmer even though you are heavier.

Kudos to you for making a perfect analogy to weight gain on a scale vs what ASR does.

@prof Your argument relies solely on this simple equation

Good measurements = good sound.

Great measurements = great sound.

Bad measurement =  Bad sound. 

Different wording but it all implies the same thing. That if something measures good, it must sound good. Which is completely untrue and many can attest to this, Both consumers and designers. I have seen respectable designers come out and say they purposely use a worse measurement component because it sounded better than the better measured one.

If measurement was a good indication on the sound quality. ASR should only measure products and not do any listening. The Topping D90SE was (is?) the best measured DAC ever, and how does it sound? Honestly not very good. 

Going back to the measurements. There are products that measure just god awful and they sound great. It doesn't take much to realize there's something amiss in the way ASR do their measurements.