Make no mistake OP and anyone else - most posters (that I recall?) in this thread did not state (in this thread) that high end sales aim to fleece anyone. I for one don’t generally don’t assume that.
Thats not the same as calling need for respecting the fact that expensive-yet-experimentally unverified kit could set a buyer up to be fleeced. In this era of easy learning, that’s probably more on consumers than designers. I’ve met some audio designers that genuinely perceive differences that I and other hopeful skeptics (experimental design backgrounds) could not. I don’t challenge them in hearing differences, but rather in not being curious (or confident?) enough to properly test detectability of those differences. Make sense? Seems reasonable to me, especially when considerable finances are at stake.
Regarding any concern for measurements: stating anything that cannot be measured can also not be heard is unsubstantiated. It suggests over-confidence in current-state test kit and our ability to make accurate inferences from results, often with a complete lack of properly executed and corroborated listener preference studies, and is basically demanding that absence of evidence = evidence of absence (which is often false). That’s no more scientifically sound (pun!) nor experimentally robust than someone swapping cables and proclaiming profound difference has been “proven.”
@calvinj the stumble I find in the discussion of kit synergy is that it is one fully ignorant (or at least exclusive) of any mechanisms for how the process works. Engineering and physics aren’t magic, obviously, so if some kit, namely expensive kit, is functionally “less prone” or “more resilient” to various room effects, great - show evidence of it. Doesn’t have to be (nor likely could be) through gear-driven measurements: it could just as well be human preference score analyses.
What you describe seems to me more blind shots taken at achieving what effective active speakers (many with built in DSP) do through careful engineering, to provide optimal fidelity (= controlled playback characteristics) in a variety of environments. The companies that generate this kind of (active) kit arguably charge more for the tech ingenuity than for the relative cost of production, which I think in principle is exactly how this sort of non-essentials market should work. Arguing that a musical chairs game of expensive separates is, or at least often can produce, the same solution is not accurate and potentially misleading, mostly because success will come from unlikely chance much more than it will come from empirically tested and reproducible modifications through engineering principles. That make sense?
If/when the claims “I have good sound because I use properly matched [high end] equipment” can = “I have good sound after trying many expensive items for years” are interchangeable statements for someone, there probably wasn’t much to the process that was experimentally robust and repeatable among rooms / devices / listeners. Passive speakers with separates upstream aren’t being driven by AI to recognize and modify based on room characteristics. If someone has proper sound from such a setup in a bad room without physical treatment or DSP, it’s most likely because that person (eventually) got lucky.
Which beckons a claim by Napoleon - “I always make my calculations with the assumption that luck is against me.” He would’ve said it in French, but y’all get the idea. 😉
