Amir, you're a star - no, not really, but you should hear this

[SharpEars]

AVRant Podcast #742: ASR Flame ON! (Audio Science Review Rant, 4:3 on a 'Scope Screen & more)
Link to the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzoUIy8YNDQ - "Review" of ASR and Amir himself (!) starts at: 1:31:46, so you can skip the rest of the nonsense

 

[Daverz]

Comments turned off, how chickenshit.

 

[solderdude]

I don't get the idea Amir started ASR for laymen and noobs and to promote his subjective findings.
ASR is more suited for the more technical minded folks that like to see measurements and above all can discuss and sometimes even can have other plots. As most plots are kind of 'basic' or at levels others usually avoid for whatever reasons interpreting measurements may not be as easy.
Especially when it comes to transducer measurements.

 

[amirm]

I saw the video a couple of days ago. I don't know the people in there. But I thought the way Tom didn't even seem to want to be in the picture kind of disrespectful in general. He had this disgusted look the whole time.

Rob H seemed to intend well but I am not sure I wanted all of his defense. He calls me an engineer who doesn't know how to teach? I guess he doesn't know that for 10 years at Microsoft I managed (in addition to engineering) a very large marketing, PR and business development team. I also taught classes for years at University of California Santa Cruz (on Unix kernel internals).

Anyway, they have 2K subscribers. My channel is above 7,000 already.

 

[SharpEars]

I saw the video a couple of days ago. I don't know the people in there. But I thought the way Tom didn't even seem to want to be in the picture kind of disrespectful in general. He had this disgusted look the whole time.

Rob H seemed to intend well but I am not sure I wanted all of his defense. He calls me an engineer who doesn't know how to teach? I guess he doesn't know that for 10 years at Microsoft I managed (in addition to engineering) a very large marketing, PR and business development team. I also taught classes for years at University of California Santa Cruz (on Unix kernel internals).

Anyway, they have 2K subscribers. My channel is above 7,000 already.

And to complain about your lack of communication skills, Amir, of all the things he could have found fault with - well, don't know what to say other than he is soooo wrong. Justifying it all with, oh Amir's an engineer and they are not expected to be able to communicate well... Well, I guess he didn't read the comments to your YouTube videos thus far, now, did he? I have yet to read a comment that says anything negative about how a particular subject was presented, quite the opposite actually.

He made some reasonable points about measurements and sample size, but overall I sensed a very negative vibe from him when he in effect said he would not recommend ASR to people shopping for equipment. Granted, many of ASR's readers have technical knowledge way in excess of the average person asking a teen part-time salesman what type of equipment he/she should buy at Best Buy, but that doesn't meant that someone new to the hobby should not read the forums (and watch your YouTube channel) before investing a sizable amount of moolah into something he doesn't understand or has been misled about.

So, what is the right way to research an expensive high-end audio product? Read Stereophile and learn how sweet, tangible, and analog the sound is, and how the Golden Ears reviewer heard things he never heard before in his music?

 

[amirm]

It is fascinating how they think they have full mastery of the medium when you immediately see all the mistakes they are doing in producing their content. There is a lot involved in creating compelling technical content in text and video. They rank very low there as indicated by their low subscriber count.

 

[JSmith]

Comments turned off, how chickenshit.

Agree... what a couple of pretentious arseholes.

Rob is reasonable at some points, but then laughs at Amir as well, which is pretty disrespectful.

If comments were on I would have written a few pages for them.

If they think ASR is amusing in some way, what do they think about a $2200 Audioquest cable that has stuff all shielding compared to a $30 cable... do they think that is funny too?

Stupid of them to mention ASR... expect to see viewers and membership increase further @amirm. Negative or positive... exposure is advertising.

Apparently we are to ignore your conclusions... I wonder if we are to ignore their reviews and even their entire video?

Just a suggestion, but maybe make the speaker tests just measurements only... might get these types off your back as their complaint seems to be around the review, not the results.



JSmith

 

[Morla]

and always ignore the really short subjective part of the reviews ;-)


Oh and.. Of course there is distortion below 200Hz. Man no anechoic chamber "just" the klippel?

 

[sweetchaos]

My thoughts:
- I think the question was written in a provocative way... so Tom's immediate response was nothing surprising. Tom didn't really give his opinion, other than showing his smugness and being dismissive.
- Rob started to ramble, and contradict himself a couple of times. One minute he's praising the Klippel system, the next minute he's saying Amir is a bad communicator, the next minute he's just frustrated that the ASR forum members don't understand.

IMO, they handled the viewer question rather poorly.

That aside, I still think they're good guys.
Unlike that other YouTuber... Andrew Robinson.

 

[ironhorse128]

I am really sad to see two of my most favorite audio communities to go after each other. I am an AVRant patrion and ASR forum donor. I am happy for both of these resources exist in this world of audio where sensible and useful is really hard to get.

I have no idea why Rob rumbled in this way against ASR. It was shocking for me. In the last 300 episodes Rob has never been such incomprehensible. I am expecting an apology or clarifications from him the next episode. We will see.

I could imagine that Rob felt attacked from ASR as his most praised speakers got suboptimal reviews. That is the only explanation I have. I could imagine that it is hard as a public figure to be proven wrong in your field of expertise. Just my 2 cents why Rob rumbled against ASR.

In total I still value AVRant and ASR and I hope both communities can peacefully coexist and even learn from each other.

 

[restorer-john]

I think it's terribly disappointing that HiFi youtubers are squaring up against each other and attempting to score points in the court of public opinion.

 

[Koeitje]

Who are the these people and why should we care? Just let your content speak for itself.

 

[JSmith]

Just let your content speak for itself.

Indeed...





JSmith

 

[Berwhale]

Comments turned off, how chickenshit.

But the 'Dislike' button is available

 

[dasdoing]

I kind of understand what the Rob guy is saying. for a laymen the reviews are obviously confusing. on the other hand his wish for a simple explanation of complicated subjects is obviously not possible

 

[Tortie]

Comments turned off, how chickenshit.

That's the first thing I noticed. Tacit admission that they know their views can't withstand pushback.

 

[Tks]

"Some people defend Amir to death, and that's never a good sign"

Oh yeah, real good sign seeing comments turned off on your video..

Funny how some people body themselves in a single sentence.

 

[bbfoto]

But the 'Dislike' button is available

Unfortunately, even a "Thumbs Down" is computed as a "positive" for the channel in terms of YouTube's algorithms/analytics.

You're better off not clicking the Dislike/Thumbs Down button if you take issue with the content or message.

This is why some YouTube channel content creaters even state, "...and if you didn't like it, give me a Thumbs Down". It's even better for them if you leave a comment, whether it's negative or positive.

For the algorithm, almost any response is better than no response....unless you report them for some type of nefarious content, etc.

 

[raif71]

 

[ctrl]

What was probably intended to be a d'oh! or gotcha moment in Amir's direction is technically so wrong that it should be set right.

Rob H. at 01:45:25 in the video:

Coming to the whole thing of distortion...the distortion includes the bass...
one of the issues you will see when you look across most of his speaker reviews... any speaker that is ported has higher distortion.

Why? Because yes, it is resonating ...(laughing)... and that is gone show up as distortion when you are taking the entire frequency range in a 360° sphere you are going to see higher distortion numbers, if you have a port, it's just gonna happen

The distortion measurement is performed as a single measurement - so it has nothing to do with the "360° sphere" of the NFS measurements (to be more precise: concentric cylinders).

A ported loudspeaker usually has lower distortion than a CB concept, with the same sound pressure level response in the low bass. Because the woofer shows significantly less excursion around the tuning frequency than a CB concept (below the BR port tuning frequency, the excursion can be significantly higher and thus the distortions - depending on the selected BR tuning - but that's another story).
Therefore, a ported loudspeaker very often shows a significant decrease in distortion around the tuning frequency when the port resonance is dominant.

This is precisely one of the advantages of a BR concept. The intentional Helmholtz resonance in a BR concept is not "distortion".

Here are two examples: