I posted a meta-analysis that found that people could hear a difference. It was dismissed over supposedly bad methodology. I posted a Consumer Reports article claiming that in their audio lab they did indeed hear a difference. I was accused of cherry picking because they *also* said that the average consumer shouldn’t bother with high res files since the difference is so minuscule and, moreover, most people don’t have that kind of audio equipment. There was another study where subjects were ABXd and two sound engineers, trained tonmeisters, scored significantly above average, and the researchers wanted to have them back for further evaluation. But that was also dismissed out of hand, even by the researchers themselves, who basically discounted it as an anomaly. They just placed a big question mark over the sound engineers who scored so well. Not that I am convinced by the meta-analysis or by Consumer Reports, but it is clear that people have made up their minds and that having even a sliver of your thinking open on the subject is not allowed. The matter has been settled and anything that goes against it clearly has to be wrong.
My last post wasn’t an argument against the settled science but a reaction to peskypesky’s characterization of his brother as a poor dupe who is afraid to ABX because he might find that he couldn’t tell the difference and would then be filled with remorse because he paid extra for hi res files. I don’t know all the specifics there, but I wonder whether his brother would agree with that characterization and what he would say in his defense. As I see it, it’s more like buying extra warranty coverage for products that will probably never require it, i.e., peace of mind. For instance, if a label records in DSD 256 and doesn’t convert the file to DXD for processing and sends a copy of the DSD 256 file to NativeDSD, that’s the one I’ll choose because it’s basically an exact copy of the master. That file might not sound any better to me than the 320kb file were I to take the time to actually compare them, but since I don’t care to take the time to compare them, and since I know that the DSD file received directly from the label is as close to the source as you can get, that’s the one I choose. I don’t have to worry about it being converted, degraded, or manipulated in some way. If you don’t see the point in that, fine. But why call somebody else a dupe when possibly all they want is peace of mind that they’re getting the best product available