You are just proving my point thecarpathian ... you are in this thread, a thread you pshaw, but you have to get your statement in. I mean how could you, of all people .... be possibly fooled by your own ears and brain to convince yourself you are hearing or not hearing something. You could never fool yourself like that.
I actually find that you truly believe that mildly amusing. I don't perceive you to be ignorant, and perhaps you are being shilled, but I don't follow your purchasing decisions, so I can't say and how you spend your money is completely your choice, but you are fooling yourself. If I have any goal at all, it is to help other people not fool themselves.
I also find it amusing as you and others attempt to paint me with a broad brush, just like you paint everyone else that dares to disagree with you and does it with passion (and backs it up with knowledge). You won't find me putting down turntables, whether I find them technically inferior or not, I have enough knowledge about psychoacoustics to know that their imperfections in signal reproduction can be aurally pleasing. I won't be saying all amplifiers sound the same, both because I have heard differences in controlled tests, and also because I have measured differences with complex real loads. Though, within a range of amplifiers and speakers, it is probably effectively true, hence why blind tests have shown little ability to differentiate.
I won't claim that signal transmission is at all affected in a streamer by a cable for any modern competent USB or ethernet DAC, and I will call out any claim that bit timing makes a differences in those scenarios (but can prove other timing never mentioned may), because, it is just not true in any modern DAC, both because they don't time off USB or Ethernet, and because data loss in a home environment is so close to 0 as to be 0. Similarly, I will take on any "technie" that does understand that noise injection, even via Ethernet can be an issue.
I am also going to call out anyone that claims one particular fuse is going to make an improvement in every piece of equipment ... because I know enough about and have enough experience designing audio equipment of various types to know that what potentially improves an amplifier could make a pre-amplifier or a source worse, and even what makes an amplifier better at low volume is different from what may help at high volume. I will maintain a healthy skepticism as well about cables, at least interconnnects and speaker cables, again due to claims of "always improves", given how varied source/loads are in audio, that no cable vendor will shine light on their claims with blind tests, that actual blind tests don't show differences .... AND .... because I have lost count of the number of times an "audiophile" buddy has claimed they could clearly hear a difference .... and then I proved they didn't by taking away their ability to know what product they were listening to. Clearly that statement does not apply to turntable cables who can massively impact cartridge loading, that time a better power cable was cutting through corrosion on an IEC receptacle and the odd EMI issue with cheap cables.
It is a popular refrain with products with questionable value that "we can't measure everything", we don't understand all the measurements, the ear is complex, the brain is complex, and similar refrains including the usual misquoting or wrong application of psycho-acoustic research or just right out false-hood (sensitivity to phase being a common one). When one discusses how we as human's perceive sound, for the most part, they are absolutely correct. We don't know how to take acoustic measurements and translate them into how a human will perceive them with high accuracy. We have some good ideas, but given human-human variance, we will never have one view of perfection. The one good thing we have a pretty good handle on is the limits of human hearing, critically limits on perception of sounds both on their own, and masked by louder sounds.
However, when we are talking purely electrical signals, which covers amplifiers, cables, power, the noise on a turntable (and what it can mask), etc. we can measure with exceptional resolution and accuracy, think of what we are able to measure in the scientific field and what level of resolution and accuracy that must require. So when someone says " we don't know what to measure", that is absolutely true when you are trying to compare the euphonics of a turntable and a 24/192 DAC, and true when viewed for what MFRs share with customers, or quite frankly, what is possible with the equipment that many boutique companies have. But to say we can't measure the impact of a cable or fuse and how that is going to correlate to human perception is just not true ..... what it is is convenient.
