High end has gone from searching for low distortion and high quality (longevity, low failure rate, equipment lifespan, etc)..and necessarily into the lext level of concern when those criteria have been conquered.
This means moving into the psychoacoustics of how we hear. How exactly that relates to the now ’more or less’ perfected aspects of ’engineering level measurements’ that was the prior emphasis.
Eg, a big debate gong on right now, outside of most people’s notice, that can make a mess of high end audio, and that is Bob Stuart’s MQA digital recording and playback software/mathematical manipulations.
We’re having a large amount of unsuccessful, on non-concluding debate as many people did not get the mental memo about ’what comes after electrical parameters have been stabilized across the board?’
It’s the connection between vanishingly small electrically weighted parameters and how this relates to the way that humans hear.
And how we don’t fully understand how humans hear in the specifics of the minutia of perfection in hearing..and how that VARIES between people, as people are all wired differently..and that this variance is as common and REAL as differences in athletics and intelligence, in individuals.
The debate has moved to being outside the electrical obvious to the esoteric and fleeting. As in science itself, the Newtonian debate ends....and moves to being quantum in debate and understanding of reality.
Which is where the debate and the reality of high end always was..but was covered by by the motion into low electrical distortions. And how those electrical distortions relate to how we hear. How in science the quantum includes Newtonian in it’s envelope ...but is actually, at a very different level, and requires a very different mind and mindset -to deal with it.
And just how alarmingly FEW people who debate audio understand that...if they solely pursue what they know and project that onto what they don’t know.
It’s like the multi-level jokes in what are obstinately a child’s cartoon animated film. Where the jokes can be understood by the one set but mean entirely different things -on a different level... to the other set in the audience.
The data is there in high end audio to ’get’ the esoteric but if one is looking at it strictly in electrical terms, that would be only the ’completed and obvious common-junior level aspects’ of the scenario.
So the debates center around the lack of understanding of the complexity and a stubborn inability to consider what they don’t know -but still calls to them if they look with different eyes/ears/mind..one one hand..and... those who note that difference.
Since it is all in mind and can’t be easily labeled but is ~very very real~, the debate rages due to one part of the group not even realizing they are not getting the multilayered complexities that are within (but poorly explored/expressed) the electrical end of things.
The vanishingly low levels of distortion in differential is the entire package of the intelligence of what high end audio seeks. It’s important to the envelope of the music signal’s expression as this is related to how we hear in the specifics of attempts at perfection in this ’expression’ we call ’high end’.
The non athletic, in their ignorance, rage against the athletic, essentially. Then there are other aspects of how the ’audio athletic hopeful’ are testing their own limits, exploring in the ways they may..how they may fall prey to a false presentation within those attempts of expressions. We hear that in those badly realized audio systems that are constructed of what are obstinately low distortion products but don’t have any real musical ’synergy’.
We’ve developed an entire language to try and express to one another....these (electrically) vanishingly low data sets and their overall contexts.
Like the edge of any complex science that is still being hashed out and is not wholly defined, we run into serious levels of contention and hard expressed opinion which happens in a multitude of directions.
To top it off, it is commercial, competitive and not in a professional arena.
It is figuring itself out but it will likely always be a bit of a mess and a area of contention, as it is about individual skills at the edge of human capacities, and not everyone is equal.
There’s no winning or losing as everyone can get to where they want to to be, if they try hard enough and well enough. But it can be vary argumentative as individual human realization, which runs rampant and throughout the envelope of the scenario..this realization in each individual is not equal or in possession of a common norm -outside of the basics.
It’s a mess and will be for a long time yet. Until the debate settles this out and moves on to the next level that will be under a cloud of confusion. Same as it is for all areas of complex endeavor.
Not exactly what you wanted as a contribution, but hopefully.... helpful.
