I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.

This whole need to label people in camps is an ongoing failure in audio (and society).

You are totally right... I cannot say it better

To more accurately state what many believe is that if certain measurements are sufficiently good (and they appear to include significant tolerance in those measurements) and there are no system induced issues, then those two devices will sound the same.

i will never contest this fact at all... This is common place fact....

it seems we are more on the same page than what it appear...

i only say that environment and gear being different and each pair of ears, listening the gear is important and not only deciphering specs sheets...

For me there is no debate between O and S at all... Only participation...

When respected scientific research and respected technical users are predominantly in agreement, it is unwise to not give credence to their conclusions, especially if you cannot unequivocally, and as important easily show them to be incorrect.

For sure.....Who contest that?

A few fetichists...

Who contest about the necessity of a listening test before buying?

A few zealots...

@mahgister ,

Fundamentally, you are either confusing the situation or confused yourself as it concerns cause and effect.

Our labs are filled with millions of dollars of equipment for exploring cause. If we have a better (or worse) result, we need to know exactly why so we can replicate it or avoid it, or to confirm an intended change happened as expected at the process level.

The effects of those causes, or what the customer or application will experience, can be characterized sufficiently with relatively inexpensive equipment, and in some cases, a $25 multi-meter would be sufficient to demonstrate an effect (not that we use $25 multi-meters).

With odd exception, everything you are posting about is cause. You are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find potential causes, while ignoring the most important thing is effect. Listening is effect. What happens inside our head is cause. What we hear is effect. Trying to come up with causes without showing a conclusive effect is a thought exercise. Those thought exercises are popular in this community, perhaps because they require little effort, nor do they have to be correct or even relevant. The issue with thought exercises about cause is they are irrelevant if you cannot relate them in some fashion to effect. When we discover an effect, we will go looking for causes. We will dismiss some causes early as they are unable to cause the size of effect measured.

You are doing a thought exercise, based on a thought exercise, guessing at a potential effect, an effect you have no ability to relate to what is likely able to be heard, and attempting to use it to justify an effect that has not even be shown to conclusively occur.

I didn't say you were a quack. I said those videos looked like quack nonsense. I didn't understand what they were talking about or more precisely didn't follow close enough to care it looked beyond any relationship to this thread.

@deludedaudiophile 

"I had my own revelations many years ago now, thinking that I could easily hear differences between amplifiers, speaker cables, and yes CD players. Then someone forced me to do a listening test without knowing what I was listening to. All those changes I thought I heard disappeared. As opposed to dismissing the tests, I delved into the technical details and realized there was little reason I should hear a difference. I just had not really given it enough thought before."

The first time I compared my Sony MP3 player (an NWZ E585 or something similar) to my super duper Marantz CD6000 KI CD player, volume matched of course, just to see what I was losing when plugging it in to my system for convenience, I was in for a rude shock.

I couldn't hear any difference.

No, really, I could not hear any difference?!

Not on U2s Achtung Baby, or the Doors LA Woman. 

Now had I been an optimist I might have rejoiced in the knowledge that I wasn't losing anything at all.

However, all I could feel was a sense of disappointment that my CD player had, in some way, let me down.

So much so that I didn't even consider that the fact the Marantz was connected to the amp via some fancy IXOS cables as opposed to the cheap proprietary Sony cable that connected the MP3 player to spare RCAs on the back of the Creek amp.

That would have just rubbed salt into the wound.

I'm not a great believer in the sonic differences that cables can make, but that was ridiculous.

Surely there should have been SOME difference?

Just even a little bit?

Anyway, if I have some time to kill, I might repeat that same experiment with my phone next time just to see if O can hear any differences there.

To protect my sanity, I might also need to draft in some volunteers to a t as witnesses.

This kind of thing can sure be a little disturbing.

With odd exception, everything you are posting about is cause. You are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find potential causes, while ignoring the most important thing is effect. Listening is effect. What happens inside our head is cause. What we hear is effect. Trying to come up with causes without showing a conclusive effect is a thought exercise.

If you remember i do not contradicted your perspective...
I claimed that only psycho-acoustic explain sound experience... Not electronic design industry alone, it is based on psycho-acoustic research anyway at the end or on a basic hearing theory...

When we listen a piece of gear in a specific room, with our specific ears , with many components, we must learn how to perceive and analyse what we perceived in acoustic term...Reading specs sheets is no more enough here...
It is what i am interested in, in audio experience...Specific gear brand name is not my primary interest...Nor upgrading...

The idea that designer must SEPARATE cause and effect and not confuse them is trivial evidence...But the idea that all sound experience by someone to be valuable must be proved by electrical measures alone is meaningless in an audio forum...And meaningless because it takes also other science like acoustic to complete the description and explanation of the experience...

All my point is it will help audiophile to experiment with acoustic and psycho-acoustic to understand their own experience in a room ...

And yes for sure i am guilty of posting interesting theories about the brain and music, and numbers, etc which are specualation and experiments about "hypothetical" causes, not concrete designer day to day matter...

But at least i post interesting matter to say the least for at least i hope one reader....

Perhaps i presume too much... 😁😊