The importance of measurements

Somehow the opinion that I am hesitant to embrace measurements as a means of determining sound quality has grown into a "thing". It's funny how ideas and notions can become a thing. Perhaps it's time to set the record straight. Over the past 50 years, there isn't a product we've released that hasn't benefited from measurements. In fact, let me go a step further by saying there isn't a product we've released that hasn't spent the majority of its development—hundreds of hours—on the measurement bench. And not just to check the results of our efforts. The designs themselves are mostly a result of measurements. I remember the endless hours I spent sitting at my bench while designing new amplification circuits. Before me were my trusted friends: a scope, an HP analyzer (and later an AP), and signal generator. Without them I would be lost. Only near the end of the process do we haul the device into the listening room for the final phase of development. Where I think we cross swords is the idea that measurements (or listening) are all that one needs. Black and white. Positive and negative. It either is or it ain't. The truth, like so much of life, is found in the in between grays of middle ground. We need measurements and we need listening. One without the other offers only incomplete results.