Audiophiles should learn from people who created audio

Those who can't 'see' the difference between cables will never admit that their hearing is not skilled/ sensitive enough It's easier for them to jump to the false conclusion that all cables are the same.

Picture quality is a whole different thing from sound quality IMHO. For TVs folks march down to their local Best Buy or Target or whatever, check out a few TVs in their price range and figure out right away which one they like. They know what colors look like and constrast and saturation, without any doubt. Any yahoo in town can easily see differences among TVs. But audio is a completely different animal. Audiophiles stress over everything. One problem I suspect is that audiophiles for all their bluster aren’t very sure of what their listening to and uncertain as to how to proceed to improve whatever it is they've got. it's a sticky wicket.

Having been involved in work on video projection engines(how individual circuits I gear affects final outcome), both analog and digital, the optical intricacies (glass coatings, lens design, etc)..the screens, their placement, their design at the (photonic/atomic level)..the interlacing and associated scaling algorithms, and so on....basically the entire pathway..even the entire package of the image capture devices (including their fundamental physics) ..the entire package, in all it’s minute and interconnected overarching intricacies -and many aspects that folks don’t generally understand yet....and then going back to how people see...how they see differently...

....I can say that visual people suffer from the same complex issues as do the audio people.

I've done probably...1000-1500 'single cause analysis' tests in the video work in these mentioned areas. At least double that number in the world of audio. This is why I'm (now) in my 50's and getting into finally publishing works as product. The apprenticeship was fairly long it seems.... I like pure research, and selling product, building product - kills the fun of pure research. It's a grist mill, business is..it can ruin a mind and a life with ...well..what we see here in these threads. I avoided it as long as I could.

@willemj  

I agree that intrumentation is far more resolving and reliable than human hearing.

However, it is still astonishing that we can hear up to 10 dB below the noise floor. Our hearing is very much like a spectrum analyzer. I dont subscribe to the idea we can hear the shape of wavefronts - this is nonsense. However, given enough audio signal it is astonishing how well we can work out the frequency content. 

In theory, and according to the designer, there shoukd not be an audible difference from Benchmark DAc 2 to DAc 3 but I hear something. Extremely subtle and I admit that I would not detect this in a blind test but with rapid A to B I hear something. Instrumentation of course sees quite a difference in THD+N performance but at a level that should be inaudible.