Originally Posted by
germanium 
You still are not providing any useful information.
I have done many experiments in my 55 some odd years
As a mere stripling of 54 I bow to your extra age, I too have done lots of tinkering with hifi over the years back from the days of trying out different turntable supports to braiding my own speaker cable from solid core mains cable - the endless TT adjustments the careful measurement , placement and toeing-in of speakers, swapping out turntable arms,stylii, blah drone etc. Every change I made seemed to make a difference, but actual meaningful critical auditory memory is too short. It is impossible to remember exactly what something sounded like an hour ago let alone a day ago unless the differences are huge. In other words I sympathize with your thinking, I was afflicted by it myself, still am sometimes.
& I for one can see why DBT sometimes misses even gross changes to audio. because people feel pressured to hear a difference they sometime even miss the obvious.
1. This is an archetypal subjectivist response, along the lines of the "I know the Masters and Clark (Do All Amps Sound the same?, 1988) study is flawed as I know these amps sound different"
2. Stress is bad, sometimes. Big stress is almost always bad, but a small amount of stress can enhance performance. I like the challenge of DBTs, maybe that is just me, they tell me just what my perceptual limits are, sure it is touch depressing to know I'll never hear above 15K again but that is life.
I happen to know what changes I have made to the sound at different stages & not all changes were completely positive at all stages of my experimentation which I have admitted here , but I was able to fix what was wrong by carying on with what I was doing by modding the previous stage as well. My hearing may not be what it was as a teenager but is still fine enough to be able to ascertain what sounds correct when I have a know source from the recorded instrument all the way through to the reproduced end. The question should be does it sound realistic? Does it sound believable? The answer is that with my system it does to both questions.
Even Edison back in 1908 was able to hoodwink listeners to think his recordings were live performances (See Dr. Sean Olive's (Harman) Audio musings for a fascinating description) - granted Edison did load the dice but fooling people's senses is easy and we can just as easily fool ourselves - Wilson years ago demonstrated their Speakers with a $20K CD player and of course listeners thought the sound was wonderful. Then they removed the shell from the CD player and underneath was a 2nd gen iPod.
An amusing case I cite a a lot (from another forum) concerns a guy who compares his boutique amp against a cheapo Onkyo. When the Onkyo is playing he hears all the faults he expects from a poor amp, when his amp is playing he hears wonderful sound - when the Onkyo is turned off the sound continues, the crap cheap amp he was listening to was his own beloved boutique amp. Are you immune to this kind of bias ?
I compared you with Big Shot because you both seem closed minded & won't accept the evidence that I have provided The only way to prove any thing sound wise is to hear it for your self which you are unwilling to even try. That I cannot provide unless you do what I have done. If you did I think your opinion would change radically.
In my close-mindedness I joined the AES at my own expense to get access to their library of peer-reviewed papers on audio topics, I've spent years researching audio issues, evaluating evidence and doing my own "experiments"