I am hoping to breach the topic after the first of the year of how seasoned audio veterans can reach diametrically opposed conclusions. This, of course, would assume "due diligence" where careful personal experience (viewpoints NOT opinions) were injected into the conversation. Something that may "peg the needle on your BS meter" and therefore enthusiastically dismissed, will not qualify nor meet the minimum qualification for "hands on/ears on."
I also find it interested how entire product categories that have been "established" for decades and have an 80%+ adoption rate by this group (I did the survey) are still dismissed as "snake oil", "pseudo science", or "listening bias." It would take a vast conspiracy to trick dozens of quality manufacturers, their design/engineering teams, hundreds of reps/distributors, an extensive dealer network, and thousands end users into believing that they've been duped and benefits are all contrived and imaginary.
Call me naive, but I'd like to believe that audio industry veterans who actually sit down in front of prospective audio gear are actually hearing "something" and correctly relating those observations with a degree of credibility. I have too much respect for those who offer opinions (based on actual experiences) here, to dismiss their findings as rubbish, and not worth taking seriously.
