Best Forum to hear experienced audiophiles exchange thoughts?

Audio forums can be tough on several fronts. There’s all the usual conflicts of humans discussing something. Audio topics are especially subjective, and very personal. There are many different views and variables going on, and some people see only one possible way for something to be acceptable....their way. If you’re happy with your system, you’ve succeeded in audio, but there will always be someone who thinks maybe you’re really not happy, or shouldn’t be happy.

Add to the human and preference differences the fact that we’re at different places in our audio journey. I’ve enjoyed every system I ever had for some reason or another, even though they weren’t as good as what I have now. Some people buy a system, like it, and enjoy it for as long as the components keep working. Other’s are prone to swapping and moving on to the next best thing. So it’s possible to be "into audio" for 25 years, yet do very little experimentation, where much of the learning comes from.

There’s also a strong emotional element that influences our opinions. If you associate a particular piece or a system with positive experiences, you’ll have fond memories of it even if there’s nothing special sonically to justify the emotion. We’re human.

It’s simply very difficult to gauge where someone is on their journey, or to explain in objective terms what you’re subjectively hearing...I suspect that’s one of the reasons people lean on measurements, which brings us back to the many variables and perspective involved in audio.

I wish I had a good answer about where best to discuss audio with an experienced crowd.  It can be a moving target and is something that we sort of each need to define and discover on our own.  Any forum is only as good as the current discussion, and the particular folks influencing the discussion...and that is another variable that's not even necessarily audio related.

"Audio topics are especially subjective, and very personal"

If I were a speaker maker, it would be. But as a user, buyer, I don't find it personal. If I had A speaker and B and someone said here that they suck, I couldn't care less. I care about what I hear. But I see the tribes here I just don't get it. Maybe they are selling stuff and it hurts their marketing. 

100% agree with you about what others think.  I meant that our tastes are personal... not as in "I'm offended" personal.  😄  The sound we prefer, the music style, the look of the gear, tonal balance, etc.....all personal choices.  Some people want their systems to sound like a dance club, others want a concert hall, yet others want a rock concert.  All different objectives, with a different reference, so very likely will have different systems with different strengths.  

Relative to the OP's reference to experienced high end listeners, I suspect more of them lean toward concert hall than dance club, or at least in many cases they want  the system to reveal whatever took place during the recording session, whatever that may be.

It’s simply very difficult to gauge where someone is on their journey, or to explain in objective terms what you’re subjectively hearing...I suspect that’s one of the reasons people lean on measurements, which brings us back to the many variables and perspective involved in audio.

@knotscott -- very much appreciated your survey of the variety of psychological factors at work. It’s so tricky for folks to engage a subject matter that is physical on one hand (electricity, acoustics, etc.) and psychological on the other (description, interpretation, evaluation).

One thing this hobby lacks is a well-known and standardized vocabulary for sensory experience. Without that, we have no "Rosetta stone" to communicate about what we are experiencing with this or that component. Even if we had a standard vocabulary, we might still disagree about what sounds "better" or "worse,"
but without some way to designate an experience which is significantly similar, we often wind up miscommunicating.

The audio "language barrier" has been a point of some confusion for as long as I can remember, and likely for long before I ever got into audio. (probably true of most hobbies) I’ve seen a few attempts by folks to capture the dialogue and provide definitions, but there’s certainly no standard.