Forking from the cables thread to a discussion of whether hi-res is audible.....

@geoffkait as the OP I can assure you blind testing was there from the very beginning of the thread .

In general, I think those of us who have invested in this should remain open and humble towards all possibilities, if only to further our pursuit of happiness.

I don't mind stating my priors, and I'd be happy to be proved wrong:

• Personally, I find speakers the most important by a country mile.  No problems applying money and time to speaker auditioning. 

• Amps need adequate power and reserves for their load (no small feat for some speakers).  That difference is large,   differences beyond that are subtle.  This isn't surprising given that amplifier optimization has been critical for years in many fields beyond audio. 

• With sources, however, I believe I hear big differences.  Given testing results, I'm probably way overconfident. Nonetheless I am convinced enough to spend money here.  It's possible this is a hangover from my vinyl days.  With CDs I only thought  heard a real difference when  I listened to the first Theta DS. And nowadays, the front end is where all the features and ergonomics come in.

• Cable differences, if they exist at all once capacitance is equalized and guage is adequate, seem, at best, an order of magnitude smaller than amps.  I think the industry may have fallen off the deep end on that one.  Nearly Tice Clock territory. I have old Cardas and Analysis Plus speaker cables I bought in more foolish times which I just re-use, and Mogami balanced interconnects, which is likely what was used in the studio. I do like to work with a well-made, well-terminated cable.  But that isn't a sonic judgement.

• I clearly spend too little time on room treatment, which is very audible.  However, I have to stay married.

• I have noticed that poor build quality immediately biases my listening judgement.  It's like I'm waiting for something to be off.

My hearing rolls off above 16khz, not bad for my 55 yrs.  But I've felt more or less the same way on all of this since my twenties (my Magnepan era).  

We cannot measure everything the ear can hear, so how can we have measurements of items/things to tell us what we will or cannot hear? Hmmm.

@mrqmike 
 
An example of what we can’t measure?

I'm more concerned about the things we can't hear, but convince ourselves we can.

@ahofer

I’m more concerned about the things we can’t hear, but convince ourselves we can.

In I believe Stereophile’s review of the BorderPatrol DAC, the reviewer tested it against the Benchmark DAC3, and said on one track the Benchmark got rid of the sound of the church walls in the recording, whereas the BP DAC preserved it.
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