Each major high end audio company has a house sound.. B&W, ARC, Sonus Faber, Conrad Johnson, Wilson, etc. They know what they are trying to achieve.
I read an interview with the head designer at MBL (?), Burmeister (?). Anyway, one of the most highly respected high end audio company. He talked about how he approached design and that he could achieve what ever sound he wanted. He knows that brand x capacitors sound like this… and brand y sounds like that… so he can make the equipment sound like anyway he likes. Their high end (very high end) was designed to be an assault on what is possible… but that there was a limited market for that sound. So he just completed a design for folks with less refined tastes, for a lower level markets (not remotely cheap).
Additionally these are trade secrets. A company / design engineer that understands the characteristics of different components within different design has proprietary knowledge. This is the stuff of competive advantage. Over time it becomes widely known in the community, the company moves on, to say, using cryogenic treated wire… or machined solid blocks of unobtainium for the case.
Design engineers capable of that level of sound quality engineering are exceedingly rare. I have had the pleasure of managing and working with truly incredible minds… literally geniuses. Those that make smart people look stupid. These are the kind of people capable of creating leading edge designs. Companies that produce really high end equipment are not unaware or stumbling around. They don’t play with blind tests any more than the top birders in the world need to refer to google to make sure of the correct identification of a sparrow.
