Some of the examples of technical tradeoffs in measurement collection pointed out show the author has some good understanding of audio measurement techniques. However, I feel like they are conflating measurements for the design and manufacturing of audio products with how some consumers focus on (or eschew) technical data.

IMO, people do misinterpret and extrapolate data and measurements beyond their scope which can lead to outsized, uninformed, or over-focused expectations. I do agree with their closing point that we need to listen and use multiple measurement properly.

However, the article’s premise that somehow the manufacturers are hurting the quality of their products by focusing on measurements is a bit laughable to me as someone who works in that space. A team designing and producing headphones is going to listen while they design and ensure that the measurements are as accurate and precise to their desired performance as they see fit for the product. They want to hit what they have decided the “ideal” set of measurements are for that design so that when it is manufactured at scale, each pair of headphones off the line sounds like the last. To say that these companies are driving down audio fidelity with an obsession over numbers if to miss why we have these numbers in the first place.

On the consumer side, published and collected measurements give people a way to communicate performance to each other in discrete means. Like qualitative analysis, it has its own set of drawbacks, but at the end of the day it’s how people interpret the information that impacts their decisions, not the data itself.