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

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.

@atmasphere 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.

Ralph,  this paragraph  succinctly nails the point I've tried to explain with numerous posts on this and other threads. The high level complete and "meaningful "  type of measuring audio electronics you are describing aren't being utilized .

The current type of measurements as practiced over at ASR and similar sources just are not predictive of how a product will sound. This is patently obvious,  no correlation to subsequent sound quality at all.

  Ralph what you are referring to in terms of measurements is far removed from what we are presently being provided from these sites and their advocates. I would sincerely welcome legitimate and predictive measurements.  Until this happens I'll just listen. BTW Thanks for your kind comments. 

Charles 

The current type of measurements as practiced over at ASR and similar sources just are not predictive of how a product will sound. This is patently obvious,  no correlation to subsequent sound quality at all.

How can you possibly state this with such confidence without proving that you or anyone can reliably detect differences after 2 components have been tested by a sight like ASR or equivalent.

- THD+N from 100mW to max power at 20Hz, 500Hz, 1-5-10-15KHz.

- Power versus distortion single frequency from 10mW to max

- Frequency response at 4R, which would allow extraction of output resistance

- 32 tone inter modulation tests. This would represent real music.

- I saw a 2 ohm test on a recent amp from 50mW and up

ON DACs add:

- frequency response at various input sample rates and with the different filters the DAC offers.

- jitter test

- usually tests all the input types, but not consistent

I am aware of some videos highlighting some potential corner conditions (at least with DACs) that ASR does not test for, but which may also not be an issue with real music. This still brings me back to my first paragraph. With real music can you detect issues?