Originally Posted by ezkcdude
Those tests won't tell you why individuals have different preferences, if not perceptions.
While there are variations in the auditory system, generalizations across the population can be made, just the same as is the case for the visual system. Indeed, much of the early neural processing of sound exciting the auditory cilia has already been simulated by simple analog circuits.
Preferences are irrelevant; only preceptability of differences matters, and this is why ABC/hidden reference is a standard in the world of blind testing. Any euphonic distortion that one likes should be added explicitly by DSP or analog filters, not coincidentally by the source, amplifier, or headphone/speakers, whose job is to produce an amplified sound indistinguishable from what reached the recording microphone (mastering of recordings notwithstanding).
So, now we're interacting in threads on here, diyhifi, and diyaudio. What next, you'll post at prodigypro? ;P