How do you know when a stereo sounds good?

@noske 

The arguments are meant to first divide the groups and then once divided to isolate the target group. You will note above I called this post thinly veiled marketing which it is. It is meant to create a division between those who use measurements and those that don't and then isolate those that don't from those that do so that those that don't can be targeted with specific marketing and sales messages which don't work with the scrutiny of the other group.

@cindyment 

The arguments are meant to first divide the groups and then once divided to isolate the target group.

Yes, I think divided only by sleight of hand and in my opinion by the use of some very deliberate and garbled misrepresentations that are abundantly transparent in their intent. I disagree that they are veiled, but I guess I'm just at the 6th standard deviation of cynical.

That this succeeds in many good and honest folk - the target group - being tricked is tremendously "clever" but entirely unethical.

When other systems/equipment are just different and I still find my own so pleasing and not wanting for more.

@noske 

@khughes The twisting of words by folk who eschew measurements sometimes makes my head hurt.

Since you only quoted/referred to me in that response, I certainly hope you are not putting me in the "eschews measurements" bucket? 

@mahgister 

Why people want to reduce everything to a binary distinction?

It's not really everyone who does that..

measurements are tools and necessary even for experiments...

There is a large cadre, however, that adamantly denies this simple reality. They self segregate, no need at all for me to do it for them.

But in audio our sujective experience is also primary...

Whether this is true or not depends on how you're defining "primary".  If, for example, I give you 2 identical power cords, one with a red plug, one with a blue plug, and your subjective impression is that the red plug is clearly better as it sounds more <insert audiophilic mumbo jumbo> than the black one. Now, that may in fact be true, but it's not due to the change in *auditory* stimuli reaching your body.  Should you rely on that subjective evaluation even when I tell you that the black plug cord is $10 and the red plug cord is $12K? I sure wouldn't.

As I replied earlier to @cindyment, in slightly different terms, correlation of measurements, a priori, to preference or enjoyment is not trivial, if possible at all. But measurement of *difference* is trivial IMO. So, if there's no scientifically known mechanism of action for A (latest floobie dust product) to act differently than B, in situ, and you cannot measure a difference between them in any relevant attribute or parameter, listening for a difference is folly.

Certainly any product can be designed to sound different, and do so, whether active or passive device.Those differences are easily measured as well. Because... if you don't know what to measure, or how to measure it (a couple of favorite disingenuous locutions favored in the snake oil world), however did you *design* it in the first place?