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

@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. 

@analog_aficionado 

Thanks for sharing your invaluable knowledge. A quick word and disagreement on Amir. I don't think Amir means well. I've seen him spoken out so many times. His demeaner is "my way is the right way". Never a good trait for any scientist. 

What you said about SINAD reminds me of the TV industry these days. It's all about the nits and how bright the TV can get. Completely forgotten the many other important aspects that make a TV good. 

I think a better analogy would be to measure the bottle and it’s ability to deliver a “neutral” end product. One that doesn’t change the flavor of the contents. Though in the audio context, we would have to agree on what is a “neutral” vessel/ measurement. And we don’t know what the “original content” sounds like to begin with. Measurements are still a good baseline though.

@analog_aficionado ..."I’ve built, lived with and loved tube amplifiers with rather embarrassing distortion figures compared to the modern benchmark. I’ve also built solid state amps following the guidance of famous objectivist Douglas Self, and while the result measured extremely well (~0.004% THD), the subjective listening experience of my earliest efforts was... disappointing to put it mildly. I kept using my tube amps while spending years trying to decipher how to build a better sounding solid state amp."...

I’ve always been fascinated about this part of amplifier design and the few remaining OG designers who still choose to use their ears to decide what sounds right to them for the final version that goes to production.

As for the amplifiers that I’ve owned or borrowed and enjoyed the most, none really offered what anyone would refer to as spectacular measurements.

This post was inspired by a question posed by @kjl1065 in a post in Tech Talk titled  'Seeking a Power Conditioner'.

In it the OP wrote:  "Read reviews on both Niagra 1200 & Puritan Audio PSM 156 power conditioners and the reviews were extremely positive. While reading I came accross a review of both products by Audio Science Review (ASR) who claims his reviews are objective with scientific data supplied and his reviews were not nearly as positive to say the least. Anybody have any thoughts on how I should proceed with the differing of opinions."

There was clearly an opportunity to voice an opinion about the ASR approach to audio reviews that in this case was based only on measurements but without any listening, and so the wine analogy was born and I thought it would be fun to expand on it here.

This was not meant just an exercise in ASR bashing, but as an exercise in educating those who might not be as familiar with ASR that they should be wary of their absolute opinions.

I believe that objective measurements are important, but so it the subjective listening experience.  Objective and subjective balance and complement each other as we see in the Stereophile approach to in-depth reviews.