If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

@devinplombier  Actually I view quite the opposite, mod everything. It's my equipment and I knowingly take any risks associated in pursuit of higher fidelity and increased emotional response. For me, I can't throw down for $10,000 speakers or $5,000 amp. So I tend to buy the best I can and upgrade what's feasible, or build DIY from the start to maximize budget. And along the way, if something works as an upgrade, I keep it in. If it doesn't work, I cut my losses and revert or double down and find what would be better. My point is that I'm a grownup and I can make my own choices whether an item is worth upgrading or not, with or without OEM approval.

@nlitworld — The car analogies are entertaining but they slip past the key distinction. If you put a lift kit on your truck, you're accepting known tradeoffs for your own purposes. Nobody is selling you that kit by claiming the Subaru engineers got the suspension wrong and that this is objectively better for all drivers. That's what Danny does — he makes public claims of deficiency and improvement, backed by measurements the evidence suggests weren't adequate to support them. That's a meaningfully different kind of intervention.

The salt analogy fails for the same reason — seasoning your own food affects nobody else. Danny has a platform and a commercial operation. His public claims about the Sierra 2EX have real consequences for Ascend's reputation.

As for stopping while I'm ahead — I'd push back on that framing. The engineering respect point isn't a retreat from the original argument, it's the same argument. The reason Danny's inadequate measurements matter is precisely because the speaker was carefully engineered by someone using far better tools. Those two points aren't separate — one explains why the other is worth taking seriously.

Taking a general pot-shot at ASR is for me a way of life...Like going to used record stores...

Daniel von Recklinghausen, the renowned audio engineer at EAD and KLH is famous for this old chestnut: “If it measures good and sounds bad, — it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, — you've measured the wrong thing.”Hard to argue with the man's logic.

If it sounds good and measures bad, — you've measured the wrong thing.

Bright speakers sound good at first and measure bad. So, it seems that the question is, "sounds good over X amount of time"