Why did you join ASR?

[David.M]

Hey everyone, this is one of the things as a fellow forum owner I am always intrigued by.

My answer: ASR kept coming up on Google searches when I asked audiophile questions, repeatedly. After a few days of this I thought I'd better get involved.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I first learned about ASR from Reddit. The post I read kinda said it was crap and Amir was a total boob. So I decided to have a look, and rather than reflexively taking what the Redditor wrote as true, I made up my own mind. As does almost everyone around here.

 

[kemmler3D]

I had been thinking about building my own speakers and reading threads at DIYAudio a lot. During this time ASR came up in a lot of audio related searches and I felt that I was learning a lot from the reviews. At some point I just got the urge to participate rather than just read, and for me it also became a good outlet for online idle time vs. Reddit or other social media, which tends to put me in a dark mood. The prohibition on political talk here is one of the best features.

 

[Mort]

I came because I had sold off my deceased dad's subjectivist audiophile inventory (Wilson, MIT, NAD) and had $20k to spend in his honor. I came for reviews.

Honestly, it's just got a higher-than-average community IQ. So I stayed.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Found it in audio related searches and liked the content. I've been interested in measurements ever since I first got interested in hifi back in ****.

 

[ryanosaur]

Strong review schedule and protocol; also a good place to learn from technically proficient and knowledgeable members who may be smarter than myself (and often times are! ).

Other main forum options have many drawbacks. While this site is not impervious to that, you can usually get some high quality discussion before a topic goes off the rails. Some of those other sites end up as train wrecks even before the conversation gets started, unfortunately, as certain members can almost be assured of bullying a conversation to their own agenda. This doesn't even begin to address the sites which are purely echo chambers for a certain mindset rife with audiophool drivel.

 

[SlowJim]

I stumbled across cheapaudioman on Youtube and purchased some speakers and an amp based on his recs. Once I got everything set up and started playing lossless audio... it sounded awful. That's when I did some digging and found out about affiliate links and youtube shills. I think I found ASR and Erin's audio corner around the same time and was able to get much better equipment for not a lot of additional money.

 

[ryanosaur]

The prohibition on political talk here is one of the best features.

This!

Another well known forum which used to be my go to site embraced their romper room subforum which is now seemingly responsible for at least half the traffic they see. That and a shift away from their free forum to putting new/premium content behind a paywall on Patreon...

(I still respect the primary there, and many of the staff. Just not a fan of the identity change,)

 

[scrubb]

Bought a NAD T758 v3, based upon brand reputation and after reading some reviews on line. One review that came up out of the numerous glowing reviews, was Amir's, which panned the device for poor measurements. Although it took me some time to learn and understand his measurements, I knew immediately that objective reviews were what I had always wanted to see. I only kept the NAD for a few years before trading for an Anthem MRX540 which has much better measured performance (inferred by measurements of the MRX1140).

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

The post I read kinda said it was crap and Amir was a total boob.

I admit that part of me starting to read here was to see just how bad it was. I read a LOT Of the objective/subjective megathread. It was easy to have confirmation bias kick in, but I saw some varied and nuanced takes. So I started to read things in general. Seemed like a good community to me

I learned a lot here by reading (on general issues by checking on new posts, on specific issues, because I can use a search function). I joined to do some work in the trenches on simple questions, as payback for the benefit I got from the content.

 

[WillBrink]

No idea how I got here, but this and Audioholics is the two places I'm aware of where objective testing is emphasized over subjective nonsense as all the other forums I have visited over the years seem to. I do not want to read about how a power cord made the noise floor darker, etc. Nothing wrong with subjective experiences either but it can't and never will trump objective reality, like no properly made power cord can audible sound different. My background is more in the biological sciences, I deal with similar subjective goofyness enough in my own world, so appreciate the evidence based approach here.

 

[HalSF]

Fifteen years ago I became an intensive reader and participant at the Steve Hoffman Forums, but after awhile the trust-my-ears, higher-cost-equals-upgrade, aud general Veblen-goods audiophile subjectivism and sheer nonsense about gear there began to grate. Archimago's blog and his testing of and cheerful advocacy for inexpensive DACs with great performance was a kind of gateway drug that led me to spend more time at ASR. My understanding of audio excellence benefitted greatly, and a series of rewarding purchases based on reviews here, of stuff that would be routinely condescended to as "budget" or "entry-level" elsewhere in audiophile-land, acted as positive reinforcement.

Despite the awful things I'd read about ASR and its proprietor, and despite the occasional hazing and semi-mean treatment I encountered early on (behavior that contributes to ASR's notoriety in some circles), the value of the knowledge here and the overall community positivity increasingly came shining through, and ASR is now a daily read for me.

I'm still loyal to the high level of music discussion and appreciation of recordings at the Hoffman site, which despite its hoary OK Boomer proclivities, honestly runs circles around the music-recommendation content at ASR, but the SHF Audio Hardware section and the advice you tend to get there seems pretty sad to me most of the time these days. For audio kit, ASR is where it's at. I do wish it could be a bit less of a one-man show, but that one man and his site are great.

 

[SSS]

Well, I found ASR by chance when traveling through the internet. As a serious electronic/audio tech I was attracted by the various posts with interesting content. Of course there are also posts which make not much thought sense to me but this may lay in the fact that pros and amateurs and newbies are in. So I tolerate it. Other audio forums I read were full with opinions without underlying facts and lack of knowledge. Therefore ASR is left as the last audio forum I am in. Since I also work on old radios, various radio frequency equipment, measurement instruments of various kind, vintage studio gear, guitar and bass amps (vacuum tube based) occasionally I read in other more dedicated serious forums.

 

[kemmler3D]

Strong review schedule and protocol; also a good place to learn from technically proficient and knowledgeable members who may be smarter than myself (and often times are! ).

Other main forum options have many drawbacks. While this site is not impervious to that, you can usually get some high quality discussion before a topic goes off the rails. Some of those other sites end up as train wrecks even before the conversation gets started, unfortunately, as certain members can almost be assured of bullying a conversation to their own agenda. This doesn't even begin to address the sites which are purely echo chambers for a certain mindset rife with audiophool drivel.

Yes, I didn't mention that I had also spent some time on e.g. Head-fi and found it pretty pointless if I wasn't doing it for marketing purposes. (people say all kinds of things about ASR being this or that, but what does it say when you explicitly ban science and objectivity outside of a specific sub-forum? "Please don't interrupt our make-believe fantasies"?)

I already had enough of a formal background in audio to know a lot of those discussions are actively harmful to learning about audio, so ASR was a breath of fresh air in comparison.

 

[tineared]

I joined mostly to learn about class D amps and because it's what the cool kids are doing...

 

[OCA]

I used to follow Amir's YT channel and the day I learned he ran a forum, I joined.

 

[Salt]

Short story: read about a purify amp in a magazine, looked it up at audiophonics, saw ASR logo and link to the forum the first time in my life, invested some time to explore the stuff (and 'aura') that was in here and stayed.
First and probably last audio forum I joined ever.
Ps. bought that amp, of course.

 

[PatentLawyer]

I got fed up with a thread on Audiogon about high end streamers, and the thread either actually or obliquely referred to ASR. I stopped lurking on Audiogon and joined here. I learned a lot and saved a lot of money.

 

[Mort]

Bought a NAD T758 v3, based upon brand reputation and after reading some reviews on line. One review that came up out of the numerous glowing reviews, was Amir's, which panned the device for poor measurements. Although it took me some time to learn and understand his measurements, I knew immediately that objective reviews were what I had always wanted to see. I only kept the NAD for a few years before trading for an Anthem MRX540 which has much better measured performance (inferred by measurements of the MRX1140).

I owned one of those too! was of course disappointed but it also reinforced that it still hadn't been audible to me, all those years.

 

[GD Fan]

I was building my first 'real' system and was frustrated with all the purported reviews that were full of flowery adjectives that didn't make sense to me. I didn't know what I was after but I knew that wasn't it.

Sadly, after hours of internet searches and research, I discovered ASR only after I'd made my purchases. Joined and donated when Amir invested in the Klippel - that was precisely what I'd been after!

Had never previously been, still am not, and likely never will be a member of any other discussion forum. The quality of membership here and the shared objective mentality are exactly what I appreciate on this topic (and the others we occasionally veer into).