I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.

It's easy to "fool" oneself on a blind or short-term listening session. That is why the gold standard is long term evaluation. It's very hard to convince yourself somethings sounds good after you have experienced all it's flaws

ABX and blind tests are the platinum standard. Sighted tests are dismissed as irrelevant, no way to have a control for bias. I fail to understand this idiotic aversion to science.  

I do understand that a set of components, each with preferred set of measurements in allignment to accuracy would result in a whole that deviates less from this objective than those that deviate/color the whole. Following this, the system conforming with the objective requires less interpretation by the end user, being subject to human sensory failability. I get it.

So, prescribe to everyone components, or a set of components making up an entire system. I'm sure you guys could come up with a number of systems meeting your objective criteria to prescribe to us subjectivists. We then could have face offs between the objective systems and any number of subjectively chosen systems. What do you think the results would be? I presume great variability to the point  there would be no valid conclusions drawn other than humans are subjective. Individual/subjective human sensory perceptions would upset any conjecture humans would choose the objective system by any statistically compelling margin.

And so, imposing some objective measurement/accuracy criteria in evaluating hierarchy of audio components/systems is futile effort. People will continue to choose for themselves the sound qualities they prefer, you or I may not concur with their choices, but this is of no matter.

In speaking about First Watt amps just now in another thread, it comes to mind how Nelson Pass, a designer/engineer of some renown, has any number of these amps, with different colors we use to synergize with entire systems. I"m quite sure Nelson understands accuracy, linearity in regard to audio design, yet he allows and understands the human psyche and all their unique desires and preferences. He also understands that even at the level of individual parts, each has unique sound qualities, what some would dismissively define as color.

I for one am in love with color, I love all the colors we can perceive. I love we have choices of tubes, push pull, SET, all varieties of power and signal tubes, I love SS, class A, AB, D, I love all the various choices of parts, boutique parts included, I love all varieties of speakers, dacs, turntables, cartridges. I could go on and on, but I love the CHOICES we all have, color is a wonderful thing!  Black and white, zero sum games, prescribed heirarchies no fun, and more importantly, not the whole truth. Reductionist conclusions replaces critical thinking far too often these days.

Yes, individual human perceptions can be confounding, wrongheaded, infuriating, etc. In the end it is what it is, always seems pithy philosophical comment to my mind, but it is concise and true.

I wish I could be fooled into believing a system sounds good when it sounds bad. I'd save a lot of time or money. It's easy to "fool" oneself on a blind or short-term listening session. That is why the gold standard is long term evaluation. It's very hard to convince yourself somethings sounds good after you have experienced all it's flaws. 

This "the gold standard is a long term evaluation" was a lie started by people trying to extract money out of your wallet. I have been into audio like everyone else here for many decades. I don't remember exactly when this lie started, but I think in the 90s.

You also though are misinterpreting what I am saying. You will not be fooled into thinking a bad system. You could easily be tricked or trick yourself into believing that given two systems -exactly the same-, that one of them is better. That is not a minor distinction.

So, prescribe to everyone components, or a set of components making up an entire system. I'm sure you guys could come up with a number of systems meeting your objective criteria to prescribe to us subjectivists. We then could have face offs between the objective systems and any number of subjectively chosen systems.

This is not at all what I am saying.  No one knows whether you personally like your bass a little heavy, your treble rolled off, or perhaps what I have been told a warmth that can come from certain distortion artifacts. Any components or set of components that can cause these changes will be subject to subjective evaluation for your personal preference.

What I am saying, is that it is highly unlikely to the point of improbably, that given two components not easily effected by system level interactions, say two DACs, or two interconnects, that measure very close in their performance (and in the case of DACs make sure the settings are the same), that you will be able to differentiate them without visual clues. I am also saying it is quite evident that audiophiles rarely test their claim that they are capable of this.

@atmasphere When I'm speaking of accuracy and it's association with color, I'm thinking about two components that measure exactly the same in every measurement undertaken. Now lets say those measurements are such that one was deemed to be an accurate component. Will these  two components, or any number of components tested, meeting the above criteria necessarily sound exactly the same.

There is a failure of logic in this post. If all the proper measurements are taken and they are the same, the two pieces will sound the same too.

Since the rest of your post is based on a faulty premise, you might want to rethink this.

40 years ago it really wasn't practical to do the measurements that we can today. Sometime in that period we turned a corner. But the important specs don't show up on spec sheets for the most part (I do remember seeing an Adcom spec sheet clearly showing an increase in distortion above 3KHz, showing why the amp had brightness and harshness- even 20 years ago, this stuff was starting to show up). But audiophiles for the most part are living their lives as if the only measurements we can make were those of the 1980s and before. Back in those days the spec sheets were the Emperor's New Clothes- an amp that looked good on paper rarely sounded good as well.

This problem of audiophiles living their lives according to how things were 30-40 years ago has caused a lot of suffering (and to be clear, when people have made up stories about life and life does not agree with those stories, that is the source of all human suffering). Back then, if the manufacturer, distributor or dealer's lips were moving, he was lying and this has been a way of life for so long that we collectively no longer think about the fact that we are being lied to, we just know and accept that we will have to take the damn thing home and listen to it to know how it really sounds!

We are living in a transitional time where the measurement tech has caught up with our subjective experience- now we can measure things that we hear with excellent correlation. The problem now is actually seeing the specs we need to see and knowing what they are telling us.

I've outlined all this previously.

Rather the point is that measurements aren’t reliably predictive of what a given audio product will sound like. They do not replace the act of listening.

@charles1dad 's comment here puts this dilemma in a nutshell- although I've always appreciated his comments as being some of the more level headed seen on this forum, the simple fact is that we have arrived at a point where the quote above was true at one point but isn't any more (although his advice of simply listening to see if it works for you is quite valid). If we do all the measurements (including in the room itself) we can quite reliably predict how things will turn out. Honestly it appears to me that people don't do all the homework. For example, how many here have run pink noise through their system to see how it fares in the room? FWIW these days that is quite easy compared to only a few years ago- as they say, 'there's an app for that'.

Pink noise can show you room issues, breakups in speaker cones, all sort of pesky stuff! It won't show you brightness caused by distortion, but you can get that information from proper measurements of the electronics.

FWIW I fault the 'objectivist' camp as much as the 'subjectivists' in this debate. Many of them don't know about all the specs that make a difference and allow their expectation bias to color their perceptions. IOW guilty of exactly the same thing as the people they fault. That is no way to make progress! Put another way if one is in possession of the facts, then one knows there is no good reason for objectivists and subjectivists to be at odds.