phthora
Headphoneus Supremus
False. A statement made without objective supporting evidence can still have a truth-value (it can still be true or false) based on some objective evidence that either has not been included or has yet to come to light. Inferences and predictions about what will occur under certain conditions can be later tested to determine their truth-value. These, then, are not opinions, despite not being backed by evidence; they are statements whose veracity remains unknown. Moreover, even those statements that seem on their surface to be subjective, such as whether X's bass is 'loose' or Y's treble is too pronounced, are still relative to a norm that exists independently of the individual perceiver. While there can be variation within those norms (personal differences on what qualifies as tightness in bass, for example), there are always statistically verifiable patterns that emerge from the application of norms to experience. Indeed, sites such as Head-Fi serve to codify those patterns and train people into closer intersubjective agreement. Given all this, a person who says that the bass on a particular headphone is 'loose' can be 'wrong' by failing to conform to this intersubjectively agreed upon meaning of 'loose.' Intuitively, this may sound incorrect, so let me illustrate. An objective example of an objective standard is that a rise in temperature will co-vary with the rise of mercury in a thermometer which will then mark off a numerical temperature. It will do so in a way that is consistent, measurable, and causal, making the use of a term like 76 degrees Fahrenheit objective in such a context. In a similar way, the use of 'loose' by a group of perceivers will co-vary with certain types of bass presentation in ways that are consistent, measurable, and causal. Such co-variance in the latter case will not be 100% as in the case of the thermometer, but the application of 'loose' remains predictable and co-relative to the bass. Something more than merely subjective. You could easily, therefore, see any individual 'opinion' as merely a prediction as to whether a term (such as 'loose bass') will be consistently linked to a particular headphone; such a statement could then have a truth-value and cease to be subjective. This is exactly how the meaning of words works generally. When I use the word 'hamster' in conversation, I am making a prediction that your experience with the term will be sufficiently close to what I 'mean' when I say it, and that prediction has a truth-value that is typically revealed immediately. This despite the fact that my very use of the term, taken en masse with all other uses, defines the term.
But, it is also false to assume that all opinions are of equal value, importance, and weight. One would not assume that a person who has spent 10 minutes with a headphone would have the same level of understanding as a person who had owned it for years, or a person who had only heard one headphone to have the same value of opinion as a person who had evaluated hundreds. In both cases, such an inexperienced person may not be sufficiently capable of evaluating their own listening, comparing it to their own norms and standards, or categorizing in their own mind the various aspects of what they are hearing. Independent of whether or not their experience and evaluation corresponds with any other person's, an inexperienced person may be incapable of sufficiently understanding their own interaction with a headphone. A person can be mistaken, then, in evaluating how a headphone meets his own norms and can even be mistaken in something as basic as whether or not he likes a headphone (I've done this myself after a too-brief encounter with a headphone in less-than-ideal listening conditions). In the context of the OP, I would assume a "substantiated" opinion would be one coming from a source sufficiently experienced in such ways and therefore reliably in tune with his own norms.
