Objective measurements routinely expose flaws that subjective listening reviews miss

Evidence

John Atkinson of www.stereophile.com has provided consistent loudspeaker measurements for many years. He employs a combination of methods to generate useful quasi-anechoic information on products that were reviewed. There are flaws, which he admits, but the accumulated data are revealing. Interestingly, they occasionally contradict the subjective reviewer’s comments, almost always revealing the weakness in the “take-it-home-and-listen-to-it” subjective evaluations, not errors in the measurements. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 225

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: the persistent case for blind testing in audio, where accumulated measurement data repeatedly contradict expert subjective judgments.
• CANDY: A nicely tweetable point: a top hi-fi magazine’s own measurements routinely contradict its reviewers’ subjective verdicts.