What you saying? That we leave such claims unchallenged:
I don't think so. Not under the watch of King of Audio. No horse is safe....
Challenging in fairness is great Amir and I believe it is even more critically important here given the sensitivities of the argument for our leaders to take the higher road and act in ways that inspire and set the tone and direction for all. I applaud your determination to trial the Entreq gear but I also believe the challenge for you will now be to do it in a way that exemplifies fairness given the clear pre test biases that you have against the product prior to any practical assessment.
So when asked how you were going to plan the test of Entreq's gear your unfortunate response was that you were setting it all up on a poo stained pair of underpants, regrettably not so much the high road as the bottom road (and before one of the lackeys launches in again and misses with another cheap ad hominem salvo challenging my obviously complete lack of any sense of humour) I must admit that more importantly I don't think this is actually quite as funny as it is inappropriate.
I figure and hope that we all believe in the importance of fairness and transparency in assessment procedure. I work professionally in the field on teaching in both objective and subjective assessment and also in reviewing and validating assessment process and think here is an instance that was potentially a bit of a water shed moment where you could have probably done much better. It is a shame that in your clear and obvious frustrations (as well as some well considered and pre-determined doubts and concerns that you have over this type of product) that you might have maybe just lost sight of the best spirit of appropriate restraint when acting out in such full on overt prejudgement and just taking a crack with some poo stained disdain.
Without being toooo serious you are however also supposed to be a leader here. Maybe before you are seen to just hang this gear maybe you should actually give it a genuinely fair and open trial and that the visible quality of procedure here is now every bit as important as the assessment outcome. This really could have become a benchmark moment in some quality assessment given the history and nature of this topic if just handled in a more transparent and whole way with more rightness of purpose.
I'm figuring in reflection (given your professional career with Microsoft that you would likely have worked with standards for best practice in communications) that this kind of comment isn't a picture of you actually putting your best foot forward. As a leader maybe not your best moment but we all say awkward stuff on the internet that isn't at times the best of us however this is also unrepresentative of the best of this forum.
This comment would obviously make it reasonable for anyone to doubt any true impartiality or ultimate fairness of any assessment you might then make after saying it. Am I being unfair expecting the best of you as one of our leaders? Maybe... that is your call.
The challenge and opportunity here should be to turn this around into a better moment for the whole forum by using this as a model to develop a better, more true and fair assessment process embracing a range of both objective and subjective assessments. I understand exactly how this might be difficult as it would be much greater task and a more challenging road. But there is a magnitude of great resource in both primary areas of assessment here and this could only really be done in an atmosphere of true co-operation by a range of people from across the audio spectrum here. Perhaps those with subjective understanding could help by defining more specifically what this type of gear brings to their experience of listening to music and then the more technically skilled could then try to devise the best specific technique in some way to then measure that.
I for one never felt the Entreq's dominant characteristics were so much about lowering the noise floor so much as changing the way the music was experienced... shifting the balance of distortions in their different harmonics and that specifically the architecture of the music was changed, more fluid. This has been the most consistent reflection on the change in the patterns of perceptions that the gear does when wired into the listening experience. So can we try and measure that, it would be great to get some traction in this argument and some genuine enlightenment as I'm fairly sure that this current state of the debate is tired and dulled from intransigence. Maybe you could carry out both some objective and subjective assessment and to improve the transparency of your assessment do it in a benchmark setup with people who have already identified the effect is clear within their systems.
Perhaps this particular assessment for a bit of gear that has generated so much debate could actually serve as a better model of assessment that moves us forward and truly represents the best future for what's best forum.
.
