I agree with everything Amir has said. However, we are seeing the situation from a moral high ground and failing to understand Erin's circumstances or see things from Erin's perspective.
Erin does not have the economic freedom that Amir have. Amir has worked for Microsoft and has been an embedded engineer in the U.S. for a long time. He can afford to conduct these reviews purely to inform people. I don't think he cares about that but ASR serves as an unintentional, non-directional advertisement for Madrona Digital, given that he owns both entities.
In contrast, Erin does not have the financial freedom to conduct reviews solely as a hobby, to merely inform people, or to enhance rational thought within the audio community. He is obviously preparing reviews to make this his full-time job. (I know that he does not aim to make money out of YT ads but Amazon affiliated links) Recently He began his audio reviews focusing on the subjective aspect first because that's what his audience demands. In the past, he did not emphasize subjective analysis as much, but now he is responding to what his audience wants. Despite this, Erin manages to strike a balance between informed-subjectivity and objectivity so beautifully that, personally, I do not mind it 99% of the time. Most of the time, he builds bridges between perceived audio quality differences and measurements, teaching his audience how to predict the sound quality of speakers based on their measurements. I also believe that the subjective opinions of someone who understands measurements are always valuable. Let me provide a few examples where subjective opinions can be beneficial and can light few details that may be hard to see within measurements:
1- Preference ratings do not include dispersion pattern of speakers. Speakers with the same preference score, one with wide dispersion and the other with narrow dispersion, will sound very different. Narrow dispersion speakers may perform better with electronic music, which includes many clearly audible phase tricks between channels, while wide dispersion speakers will blend into the room more seamlessly with classical music. These nuances cannot be discerned through measurements alone because this depends on the music too. Someone needs to convey this information, or one must experience it firsthand. In such cases, subjective opinions can be beneficial for the audience.
2- Narrow vertical dispersion(or overall narrow dispersion) can increase the direct/indirect sound ratio, enhancing the detail in the presentation. This enhancement isn't readily visible in measurements, as the angle at which sound reflects off surfaces influences its Interaural Cross-Correlation(IACC in short), and thus the overall sound quality/perceived detail. It's possible to learn about how the directional characteristics of speakers affect reflections with varying IACCs and their contribution to sound quality. However, grasping the impact of these directivity characteristics on the perceived sound quality without actually hearing the speakers, or without a significant amount of experience with different speakers and an understanding of how their measurements relate to sound perception, can be a complex task. The subjective insights of someone who understands both the concept of IACC and speaker measurements, and how to relate these to perceived sound quality, can be very useful. This can allow you to experience speakers without hearing them better. Or better to say, this can allow the reader/listener to predict the sound quality of speakers without hearing them more accurately. Preference ratings do not factor the IACC of reflections.
I can list more points where subjective opinions of someone who knows how to relate measurements to the perceived sound quality can be beneficial. Subjective opinions can help us to conceptualize the things we haven't experienced yet. If subjective opinions are conveyed by someone who doesn't know a little bit of sound reproduction and audio science, they'll almost always be useless and misleading however someone like Erin or Amir's subjective opinions are always valuable for me.
In conclusion, Erin's financial dependence on his audience and published reviews frequently places him in challenging situations. To generate income, Erin needs to maintain the popularity and relatability, a constraint Amir is free from. I think, this freedom allows Amir to present his evidence-based approach to audio reviewing in a more blunt way than all other reviewers. Erin, on the other hand, encounters criticism from his viewers for not giving precedence to subjective opinions, and again, when he voices his skepticism regarding the audible differences between amplifiers that measure moderately well. This economic necessity has driven Erin to actively promote each of his reviews on ASR, aiming to attract new subscribers to his channel. It was not ideal but he did that. Despite a few instances, the way Erin handles these challenges, striking a balance between the objective truth and his audience's preferences, and how he guides people toward trusting measurements, showcases his integrity. I fail to understand why there is a campaign to dislike him or even to push his reviews out of these forums. In my view, he is one of 'us' — one of those who strive to correlate our experiences with measurements and recognize the value of deepening our understanding of audio science. This approach aids us in finding better paths to enjoying music more than before. There's more people to dislike in this community than Erin, Erin should be one of the last persons in the community that we should dislike and actually I enjoy supporting him and promoting him as much as possible. I think he is overall a decent person, his measurements have top notch quality and I like to talk about measurements and find a relation between them and how I experience things. Erin's measurements help me with that as much as Amir's measurements do. Why can't we like both?
My english is far from being native level, I may have reflected my opinions in a way different than how I feel. Please do keep that in mind.
