Is ASR for real, or is it only for those sub $1k or even sub $2K?

@dynacohum 

While I agree with your assertion of an anti science bias in society at present, I don’t agree with your assertions on the whole. Despite the data posted on the site, many of the participants behave in a very cultish manner. From a psychological perspective, it appears to be a self enclosed bubble wherein members display an imagined sense of smug superiority based upon a "hive mind" conviction that anyone who accords the least credence to subjective considerations is a fool or worse.  One need not spend much time perusing threads to become aware of the pervasiveness of this mindset on that site. Science is based upon openness to possibilities and the denizens of that closed-loop display quite the opposite. This sort of dynamic is observed in many types of groups -- it’s not limited to audio. My sense is that many on the A'gon forum value measurements for that portion of the audio experience they address; we simply don’t find they tell the whole story. This does not mean we are anti-science. 

@stuartk 

It’s a good wheeze by ASC to pretend that science is on their side, so anyone not in agreement with them automatically becomes anti science.

Everything I have seen of them suggests that they are the antithesis of scientific.

Quantitative data is not any more virtuous than qualitative.   

+1

I was trained and worked as a scientist for a decade. I agree that measuring some stuff and publishing it as if it were science is not science. Science is about pursuing truth... and ASR completely fails at seeking and publishing truth. 

@stuartk 

A defect in ASR’s and some other objectivists’ reasoning is the reliance on the dictum “lower SINAD = Better”.  While I truly believe that what we hear can and should be explicable by objective measures, there comes a time when the accuracy is beyond the threshold where our ears can distinguish errors.  There is a noise level below which our ears no longer hear it. There is such a thing as low enough distortion.  Less than these thresholds ceases to be “better”.  ASR rates on a list from “the best” down the line to the “worst” measuring models.  They also rate amps and DACs as “transparent” if their linearity, noise, distortion, and in the case of amps, current delivery and load insensitivity, fall below above some place on the list, and pose the question ”Why pay more”…if your goal is to faithfully and fully reproduce the recording?  It all comes down to whether you agree that electronics are meant to be transparent in that sense, or if intentional errors are allowed in your system if you like the result.

As a scientist and engineer I think ASR is a welcome addition to the hobby and industry. First, it provides depth in comparison to the surface-grade preferences and coded adjectives that are the stock for subjective discussions and reviews. Second, it is important to have a comprehensive debunking forum that shows nonsense and snake oil through tests and an interrogation of the underlying arguments that justify things like power cords, conditioners, and expensive interconnects. Finally, there are deep discussions of core matters related to audibility and preferences (very much science) as illustrated by the recent discussion of preference curves for headphones arising from a Sean Olive AES paper. Many of the participants are designers, engineers, and scientists themselves so there is an inevitable depth to the discussions and reviews.

I encourage more people to use ASR as a resource to learn more about how systems are engineered, tuned, and the underlying science that backs up those methods!