Does hearing the best in high end audio make your opinions more valid?

Obviously, if you take high end to be mean high quality, and not merely price. If you’ve only ever been listening to 128kps MP3 files through low quality headphones your experience will be limited and can only be valid for yourself. It can hardly be relevant to anyone else if that’s all you have as a reference.

I love hearing from people who have years of experience in high end audio. It’s even better when they tell you that although x costs only 10% of y, it actually sounds just as good, or even better! It’s the worst form of heresy in some circles I know, but it’s great when it happens.

An honest owners opinion can also give you a better idea of what living with a pair of Wilson speakers, McIntosh amp, Grado woodies etc might be like. It’s a great leveller when owners sometimes post less than flattering reviews. How dare they!

However, one major problem with reviews I think, is often one of communication. Words are a notoriously slippery way of conveying sensations. And then there’s issues of hearing capability, individual bias, and last but certainly not least, vested financial interests. And even if they’re bring honest, not everyone will always know themself inside out that well. Sometimes not even after a lifetime alas.

We know HiFi shows set in hotels aren’t always the best place to hear great sound but it’s not impossible. I one heard some Avantgarde Trios near as damn it bringing back to life (via vinyl) some long, long dead jazz musicians. Almost spooky, like that cowboy scene in Poltergeist.

So it’s either the reviews or we go back to shows and the dealers, and back to listening for ourselves. It’s far from an easy life being an audiophile unless you’re the audiophiliac himself, Steve Gutenberg!

If you're listening to the sound of the equipment then it's totally failing to do it's job regardless of price.

I've certainly had my fair of hearing expensive systems sounding bland and 'monochromatic' before. Then there were the Quad electrostatics which sounded weird on Pop, the Naim Ovators (early s6000s I think) which were only 'good'. We were expecting 'great' at that price from Naim Audio.

We're often advised to go and listen to live music to help establish a frame of reference but unfortunately a lot of venues seem to have bad (phasey?) acoustics. Perhaps I've been unlucky but I did manage to catch a beautiful piano recital in an old rickety theatre some while back. I was surprised at how loud a piano can get in a small venue, you really have to hear it for yourself.

On the other hand I can't help but notice that PA equipment seems to have come on leaps and bounds. The sonics at the last Richard Hawley concert were more than acceptable. I didn't once start wishing that it sounded like my system back home. In fact it would have blown my system right out of the water on sheer power alone. It wasn't just power though, there was plenty of texture and timbre thrown in too. 

There's a few shows coming up here in the next few months. Having not been to one for about a decade, (Manchester 2007/8?) with a but of luck I will be able get to one of them. Just got to remember to not get my expectations up too high.

Measured performance versus cost levels off alarmingly early with cables, amps, digital sources. Especially if you were under the impression that you were paying extra for gains in measurable performance. Once you’ve seen one CAD CDP or SS amplifier frequency/distortion chart, you’ve seen them all.

Even turntable analysis is heading that way as the recent Technics decks gave demonstrated. PC hardware is rapidly going that way with the adoption of SSD drives, similar with phones as the iPhone X fiasco demonstrated (unless you specifically wanted a handheld games console with a sub 6 inch screen).

It can be like a mountain climb trying to upgrade your hi-fi. By the time you near the summit the effects of altitude sickness and snow blindness seek to destroy whatever rationality you had left.

You could then easily find yourself heavily out of pocket lost and disoriented in a place of little consensus. Your erstwhile friendly sherper / dealer nowhere to be seen.

Audiophiles and Wine Tasters of the world unite. We have much in common with our Sommelier brothers. For some strange reason, not many of our sisters seem to share our passion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting

What a difficult pastime this is to get any sense out of? 

First of all no two people interpret the movement of air in the same fashion. What sounds like cacophonous noise to some can be interpreted as sweet music to others.

Then there's the problem of hearing loss and missing - or merely reduced in volume - frequencies (ie damaged hearing). I seem to be able hear 16kHz better than 14kHz and then very little above.

As if that wasn't bad enough then there's the question of mood and levels of fatigue, health etc. Not much sounds good with toothache etc and neither will love songs if you're going through breakup.

To finally cap it off regarding the human condition, we all change. A friend of mine has a great system topped off with a classic pair of KEF floorstanding speakers yet listens to it with the bass reduced and the treble turned up. It would be funny except I can remember being the same when I was in my teens! Just couldn't get enough sweet treble in those days. The rest of the frequency hardly mattered then, I wanted music with energy and speed, I had enough of my own to burn in those days. 

Then we come to the differences in listening rooms. Shape, floor, walls, location, seating position etc We haven't even got to the music or equipment yet!

Audio equipment can attempt to follow the rules of conforming to a flat frequency response, but often it doesn't as the trend of boosting the bass in headphones proved. The trick of boosting the treble can also be attention grabbing in the short term, or a pain in the backside in the long.

Finally we come to the recordings themselves. We could ask whether anyone ever tries to record accurate sound in the studio. Ever since the 1950's the trickery in manipulating sound has developed in leaps and bounds to such an extent that recording anything 'straight' is usually limited to documentaries or simple location recordings, sometimes in a church!

Basically, most recordings, all if we're talking Pop, are works of fiction which stretch if not actually break our credulity.
They exist to cater to our fantasies. OK maybe someone else's fantasies. Perhaps the producer's, the artist's but usually the record company's idea of what the paying public wants.

So is any attempt to make sense of audio doomed to be just a question of interpretation, a mere art form at best? Can we ever reach anything more than a loose vague consensus given the difficulty of communicating our sensations and thoughts with any degree of precision?

I doubt it. I think it is all a question of interpretation whilst seeking a something we can be happy with. The only people who seem to care for consistency seem to be the broadcasting professionals as the famous example of the BBC funding expensive painstaking research into loudspeakers proved (one result was the legendary LS3/5). 

For us audiophiles it can only be a good thing to listen to music through as many different systems as we can, even if our opinions can only be of limited relevance to anyone else.

At least until telepathic machines are sufficiently developed! 

@harrylavo, thank you for your considered advice.

Whether I can follow it all I don't know but I will keep it in mind because it's everything I'd want this forum to be.