I used to agree with the above (two posts up...), but let me offer an alternate view. First, much props and appreciation to Gary for this thread and all his efforts. If you are going to come in here with even a hint a criticism, IMHO you should take your shoes off at the front door and show some respect as this is not just a wild opinion thread that would justly leave itself open to all kinds of silliness. It is first and foremost a project thread, a serious effort that just happens to be mostly subjective, just like the big boys if they ever had the decency to admit it, and most do I think.
Anyways, I don't accept the surgeons and tools analogy. The average person, or first year student, and their relationship with surgical tools is not like the average person, or all of us here in general, and our relationship with music. I think anyone can hear a difference in just about anything for a bunch of reasons. Expectation bias and/or cognitive dissonance is pretty hard to rule out for any of us, but the key is to care enough to try to really listen. I haven't met anyone yet in the world of audio who doesn't hear the difference when a clear difference is present. We may all choose to characterize it differently and to describe it differently, but we hear it. And we hear it because we don't need school or professional training, we have life. We have the spoken voice, the experience of hearing it on a phone, of hearing someone sing and of a guitar or piano in front of us, and various other live music... and then all of the reproductions that modern living presents to us, from an elevator to our home stereo to our tv to our phone, etc...
I don't know Gary, and I don't know any professional reviewer or even the other highly experienced cats here on head-fi, and there are many I have come to trust and respect. If I am gong to invest in wine, then I want to know wine like a pro and want the opinion of other pros. But if I am going to drink wine, I trust my own taste buds. If I can't taste it, I will gladly listen to the formal or informal taste tests from anyone else, even if they describe it in terms better assigned to various flavors of Kool Aide than wine. Because I have drank Kool Aide, so I can think about how they would describe grape and cherry and whatever that green stuff was and look for things I can relate to and I feel are true for me, and then draw more trusted associations between various comments. To me, that is the value of a well known reviewer. It is not the training, or the level of skill, it is general caring, the effort of communication and consistency in being able to consider review after review until you get a sense of what values you share and what you don't. Just like reading a movie review, and then going to see the movie. I don't go to all the movies, so I don't know about most, but over time I compare what I did see to what a reviewer said about the same movie, and trust builds (or weakens...). But at the end of the day, I decide what movie to pay to go see, and I sure as hell have my own opinion of it when I walk out the door.
Not only do I have no reason to doubt that Gary's assessment is genuine and equal to any other human beings review, I can actually relate to enough of his points to know that I would probably be right in the same ballpark had I done this myself. But it doesn't matter, Gary hears what he hears, it is just as valid as anything else described to you rather than experienced directly by you..., but most importantly it just shows that he cares enough to listen, and to share, and for that I am grateful.