I almost wrote that in the review. At this rate, I won't have single industry friend left! Already lost a bunch.
That’s too bad. I’m a little surprised. I wonder if folks are taking these reviews personally or if it’s just a reflection that there are business consequences that make people/manufacturers need to be wary?
Of course, we’re all human and receiving criticism can hurt.
But honest criticism is so valuable. This reminds me of something I have pondered for years.
A big problem amateur musicians have is that people are reticent to be critical. So after a show, people either say, “sounded great” or the say nothing at all.
This deprives musicians of objective criticism (subjective opinions are an objective fact, if someone thought you sucked that is a real thing) and it’s very hard to improve beyond a point without it.
The root of the problem is there is no upside to sharing a negative opinion about a performance for the person who holds that opinion. As a performer you have to seek out honest, frank criticism. If you are not at the level where you are getting actual reviews you actually might need to pay someone to give you an honest appraisal.
The situation is obviously not parallel but it made me think generally about how valuable honest criticism is. The kind of feedback ASR is providing, which represents a rather large investment by Amir, could be used to improve and gain competitive advantage.
There is an issue with the approach taken by ASR that I could see a manufacturer feeling justifiably salty about.
The ‘rankings’ here for gear (non speakers) reflect attributes that are not audible. It’s fair to consider that such parameters should be largely irrelevant to an owner’s enjoyment of the equipment.
Someone made a comment a while back that investing resources into performance aspects of gear that have no objective benefit to the owner is a case of “over-engineering”. Arguably the best engineering would allow the manufacturer to provide the best experience to the purchaser at the lowest cost. Or to put engineering and manufacturing resources towards aspects of the gear that do affect the users experience like features, aesthetics, reliability.
It is impossible to not be biased by reading a ‘critical’ review, even if the criticism is on criteria that are inaudible. Sometimes owners of gear that get bad reviews here express a sentiment that they are now disappointed. This really misses the point about an ‘objectivist’ approach to audio.
Finding out about the absolute measured performance of an amplifier is a fascinating subject, but drawing conclusions from measurements needs to be done thoughtfully.
Seeking the absolute best performance in an amp, performance for performance sake, could be thought of as a pursuit similar to those who want the fastest car, even though they will never drive at those speeds.
This is a poor analogy though, because objective performance of an automobile is perceptible by human senses. (Perhaps not at the highest levels).
ASR has the word ‘science’ in the name, and I think this captures the ethos of the site. But what Amir is doing is not really science. He is measuring things and collecting the data. To do science with the data would require crafting a thesis and finding out whether the data support the thesis or not.
