Excellent post...
But i differ a bit about these three "goals"...
Using measurements specs of a single component even verified to determined if the sound experience will be good, is an "objectivist" beliefs which some want to impose on all audiophiles, this tactic is from some kind of misplaced attitude in electrical design which cannot replace anyway psycho-acoustic goals and methods ... The last revolution in listening come from psycho-acoustics not from electronic design of components even if a new DSP will come from this knowledge ( See Edgar Choueiri BACCH )
"Subjectivists" use their "tasting" ears only to define with most of the time highly costlier components as upgrades and imposing this through marketing and forums as true audiophile experience some branded names, this is a marketing tactic not psycho-acoustic goals and methods ...They forgot that hearing must be trained in acoustics not by listening amplifier or dac tasting...
Measures must includes acoustics and psycho-acoustics measures , not mere specs of each component; and ears must be trained by acoustic concepts and experiments including music basics...These are the ONLY goal....And we dont need new word, the basis of audiophile experience is determined by psycho-acoustics... The word psycho-acoustics exist already and the science connected to it... Audiophiles then love sound and experiment and use psycho-acoustics basic to determine for themselves a good sound experience... they are neither subjectivist nor objectivist... The subject cannot be separated once for all from the object in psycho-acoustics save for specific controlled experiments ...
I will add my personal experience with mechanical, electrical and acoustical system embeddings controls which matter as much as mere specs of separate component if synergy is there to begin with, then measured specs are insufficient, and embeddings controls matter more than costlier upgrades which are often unnecessary anyway...
For A. I. we have a long road to go, and i concur with tvrgeek , but this long road will be travel in a shorter time than we think.... I absolutely reject all transhumanists thinking ideology not because they are delusional about artificial intelligence, they are, but not as much and not in the way most people think... And anyway the beginning of Artificial consciousness with a mathematic way over the statistical tool used in neural network is already here... i pointed out by whom and which maths in a post above...
Transhumanism is way more erroneous and delusional and dangerous, and actually in dominance everywhere, it is for sure a more lethal ideology than audiophiles sectarism and ignorance of psycho-acoustics which is hilarious...😁
I dont think though that A.I. is hilarious now.... because it is a spiritual battle... ( i am not religious at all here)
I think we need a new terms in our hobby for three different goals. "Audiophile" is not a good word. Once upon a time, maybe we could say it was someone who appreciates music reproduction enough to sit and listen, and the hobby that represents. Not sure we are still there.
Kind of like the early computer days. "Hacker" was someone who dug into the OS and figured how it worked, made it better and learned. I was a proud hacker in disassembling the BIOS and changing the CAS/RAS timing to run a Z80B in my Kaypro. I wrote a Greek character PROM to match a Diablo daisy wheel. That was hacking. Then it became a bad word for people doing bad things to other peoples computers. The term "cracker" never took off. We do have a problem with words being stolen. Female dog, Person in a happy mood, etc. Context seems to not matter, just the word.
One term would be for the pure measurement objective only who thinks traditional static measurements are perfect and everyone else is wrong. All DACs are the same. All amps the same as they are below the "scientific .1% level. Their pursuit is for some level of perfection if it passes by our limited set of measurements, it must be right. And yes, ALL cables, analog and digital, are the same.
The opposite far end are the ones with unlimited funds and who believe in magic if it costs enough. To them, any system not costing as much as a house is "not resolving enough" and science is wrong. Somehow a power plug can unmask spatial details that were not recorded in the first place and believe only their hearing is 100% objective and if they hear it it must be real as they are immune to the placebo effect.
Then the rest who just want the best musical experience we can afford. Objective measures are only one data point as we understand they are limited. We also use our hearing. It is not objective, but it is what we think and our experience is what matters. Price is a matter of if it is worth it, some having a higher threshold than others, not what our friends think or a justification for being right because you paid more. It’s about if the music is enjoyable to us. Even if we fall for placebo effects.
Three different goals.
Computer Science comment: AI is based on data sets making an average assumption based on history training. Then newest technologies are "learning systems" in that good and bad guesses continually get logged to improve the data set. By the current technology, it may mimic a population, but not an individual. I prefer Turner to Rembrandt, Picasso to Warhol. What would some AI engine think? AI is a bad phrase. The earlier pre-press coined to be dramatic for headlines catch phrase" is "Expert System" and that is a far more accurate term. If anyone thinks AI is super advanced, they should look into the effort Kodak did to determine which way was up in a digital photograph. Hilarious actually.
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