Audio is not about reading lol.
I have to admit though, in the last two years, I've probably read and written more about audio than I've listened to it, since I have a hard time concentrating on music/audio and writing at the same time, unless I'm listening to speakers.
As for subjective VS objective, I think they both have limitations. Here is an example for objective, if you show an expert the measurements of a new headphone, without him having any idea what the headphone is, can he tell you exactly what it will sound like? If it's open-air or closed? If it's an little earbud or a STAX? An IEM? How many drivers in the IEM? Nope... they can't.
What the science can do very well though, is compare different measurements against eachother, such as here
http://sonove.angry.jp/, or make sure all units are identically volume matched, such as with the Etymotic
ER-4.
Nonetheless, some scientists like to believe we can measure speakers, IEM's and headphones
beyond human perception, and that science is king. That simply isn't reality, and yet they'll wave off human perceptions like sound stage, transparency, natural tone or sensations of higher resolution as "psychoacoustics" with a "pix or it didn't happen" attitude. The same applies to DAC's and Amps, if someone has a theory for example X sounds better due to less EMI/RFI they'll say "pix or it didn't happen", come on, it's difficult to take accurate pictures of audio, in 2012, maybe in 2112 it'll be easier.
As for blind tests, they have some limitations too, one limitation is they're time consuming and difficult to set up, so usually the tester has a motive, and is inclined to a certain outcome, he may tweak the conditions and variables to his liking, to achieve that outcome, subconsciously. This most likely happened in Oohashi study of ultrasonic content, and it happened in the Meyer&Moran study too, neither study is intact at all, and yet, you'll find people cherry-picking them as "evidence" to support their own flawed belief system, whether it's SACD or "objectivist", in those two examples.
The other limitation of blind testing is people think ABX testing is easier than normal blind testing, I suspect ABX is harder in some situations (with very similar sounding content, and same FR) due to the way our mind culls audio information and likes to identify sounds. See the McGurk effect, for an example.
On the subjective side of things audio is littered with marketing, fashion, hype, and people believing in expensive CD players and cables, because they want to believe in it, not because they can actually hear any difference. It's like when people talk about FLAC saying how much better than MP3 it sounds, that's just a belief system, keeping stuff pure, in reality they sound extremely similar, more similar than different sound-cards or DAC's, for example.