I just realized if ASR catches wind of this post by Youthman it's going to set of some serious flame wars over there.
It's there already. If Amir took a more diplomatic approach, he could have said the same things without getting misunderstood (unintentionally or intentionally by others) so badly. As it is now, unless people (e.g. me, HD, and a few other AH members) read the fine prints and try to interpret his comments as is, without seeing it through wearing tinted glasses, might just believe the hearsay, such as, tell people not to buy something because of SINAD, ASR cult, ASR people focus too much, or only on SINAD, ASR/Amir doesn't understand distortions are poor indicator of sound quality etc.etc.etc... The fact is, he has often made reference to audibility along with what he considered non sota results, such as:
For example, below is what he said about the 3800:
He did not recommend it, and explained why, but that's not the same as telling people not to buy one, and never implied the 3800 would not sound as good as the 3700 with the original AKM DAC.
Denon had been my "goto" recommendation for AVRs and even AVPs. When anyone asked me about either, I would just say "get a Denon AVR." While subjectively the performance of this new generation may be similar, I can't accept the regression in objective measured performance.
It is with much sadness that I cannot recommend the Denon AVR-X3800H.
In another example, he actually recommended the AV8805, even said ".....buy......" despite the significantly lower SINAD score than even the much cheaper Denon AVRs. So clearly other metrics than just SINAD are important to consider.
I would say buy the Marantz AV8805 because it has the features it has not because you think it will provide reference quality audio performance. It will not.
One more, on "more jitter on coax" (Anthem AVM70):
Fortunately levels are below threshold of hearing so not an audible impact.
On ranking, ASR does keep a chart of ranking by SINAD but that does not mean he considers SINAD the only important metric. For the exact reason for that chart one would have to ask him, but it could simply be that THD+N is one metric that probably all reviewers use for years, including the old S&V, Home theater magazines, Stereophile, Home cinema choice, Hometheaterhifi.com, SoundstageHifi etc., just to name a few.
There are numerous other examples. I don't need to defend him anyway. I just want to do my part to debunk some of the hearsay. I also know my efforts in doing so bound to be in vain because I don't have megaphones that many youtubers do.
