Interesting link on hifi stuff (2)

JCAudio .. no I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that if you can't immediately explain why your ears hear a difference it's because your theory is not good enough.
Take an example ... digital cables. Basic theory says it's just ones and zeros, and that, so long as the cable is not so poor as to cause the two to be mistaken by the DAC then you'll hear no difference.
But we do hear a difference.
So the more advanced theory looks at the eye pattern of the signal, considers jitter, cable bandwidth (limited by capacitance and inductance), RFI, and impedance matching, and shows that the optimal eye pattern (which really means low jitter in lay terms) is actually quite hard to achieve, and will certainly alter the overall sound.
So I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying that we should measure audio by specs .. of course not, we should measure it by grins :-). That said it is important to strive to understand what are the phenomena at work that put the grins on our faces, so we can make those grins wider and available at lower prices.
I'm an engineer, but I'm a practical engineer. Engineering is about optimal performance at the right price. A wonderful sounding HiFi that costs $100,000 is about as much use as a chocolate teapot to the general population. A slightly less wonderful sounding system, that still sounds very good, but retails for $1000 is going to bring much more pleasure to many more people. However it is also a much more challenging engineering task, only accomplished when one has a very sound technical understanding of what makes a hifi work well.

Seandtaylor, I agree wholeheartedly with your point of view in this latest post of yours. And the crux of my agreement is that the consumer/audiophile should be well-versed and informed if he is to be spending his money on this hobby. Since this is a technical hobby, there are many technical reasons why things work the way they do. If you have a correct understanding of these, you can make a more informed decision. This should not supplant using your ears as a guide, but should help you to know what has a chance at working, and what doesn't. We all know that specs don't tell the story, and can be a pitfall to those who don't learn beyond the marketing ploy of specs. But, we also know that certain electrical characteristics of the equipment will make a difference in sound, and performance with other gear in your system. So it should be audible performance AND proper design parameters that should guide your decisions. With practice and listening, you will be able to "predict" with some accuracy, what gear will sound like, just by what designs it uses. For example, most people would be able to tell the difference between an EL-34 PP tube amp and a SET 300B. These tubes and designs have characteristic sounds. If you know these things, you can "know" approximately what amps of this type will sound like even before you audition them. If you know what the characteristic strengths and weaknesses are, you know what to listen for to see how well they do in these areas. This can be a benefit when auditioning. So the technical aspects can guide you, but the proof is in the hearing.

Lastly I cannot believe that there is anything that the ear can discern that is not measurable. The frequency response, dynamic range and phase sensitivities of the human ear are hardly so great as to present problems with measuring equipment.
When people find no measurable effect I suspect they're measuring the wrong thing. e.g. measuring bit errors on digital cables ... of course the bit errors don't change. But the DAC requires timing information along with the bits and timing info. probably does change.